The Academic Echelon: Working-Class Research, First Nations Cultural Load and Relational Ethics in the Settler-Colonial University

Abstract

Working-class and First Nations communities are among the most governed and researched populations in contemporary Australia. Criminological and socio-legal research routinely produces knowledge about policing, youth justice, child protection, welfare and poverty, yet pays less attention to the academic labour relations through which that knowledge is produced. Focused primarily on Australian universities, while drawing on patterns that also resonate in the United Kingdom and other neoliberal settler-colonial systems, this article argues that research on working-class and First Nations communities is structured by a racialised and classed academic echelon. By academic echelon, I mean the layered division of research labour through which professors and senior investigators, continuing academics, fixed-term researchers, sessional staff, doctoral candidates and community co-researchers are positioned differently in relation to authority, employment security, proximity to participants, cultural load, authorship, data control and aftercare.