Academic career making in the era of globalizing knowledge and a globalized knowledge enterprise demands on individuals and constraints over individuality

Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 Academic Career-Making in the Era of Globalizing Knowledge and a Globalized Knowledge Enterprise: Demands on Individuals and Constraints over Individuality Victor N Shaw* Abstract: Academic career-making in the era of globalizing knowledge and a globalized knowledge enterprise is not only an individual undertaking but also a social process It impacts individual academicians as they meet requirements, secure resources, find opportunities, follow procedures, and build structures to make their careers It has consequences for society as it establishes institutions, opens markets, provides media, creates values, and enforces rules to connect individual academicians and their products to the larger social system This paper explores academic careers, and career-making as knowledge and the knowledge enterprise become globally hegemonic Specifically, it examines how academic career-making makes demands on individuals in the form of brainwashing, emotion rechanneling, life-simplifying, and social isolation It also investigates how academic careers place constraints over individuality by way of socialization, massing, fashion, and lifestyle Keywords: Academic Careers; Career-making; Individuality; Institutional Demands; Knowledge Enterprise Received 16th October2018; Revised 10th April 2019; Accepted 20th April 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33100/jossh5.2.ShawVictorN Introduction creates values, and enforces rules to connect individual academicians and their products to the larger social system This paper explores academic careers, and careermaking as knowledge and the knowledge enterprise become globally hegemonic Specifically, it examines how academic career-making makes demands on individuals in the form of brainwashing, emotion rechanneling, life-simplifying, and social isolation It also investigates how academic careers place constraints over individuality by way of socialization, massing, fashion, and lifestyle Academic career-making in the era of globalizing knowledge and a globalized knowledge enterprise is not only an individual undertaking but also a social process It impacts individual academicians as they meet requirements, secure resources, find opportunities, follow procedures, and build structures to make their careers It has consequences for society as it establishes institutions, opens markets, provides media,  California State University-Northridge; email: victor.shaw@csun.edu 147 148 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 Demands on Individuals A successful academic career involves the attainment of degrees, positions, titles, publications, awards, honors, and tenure In secular terms, these attainments symbolize an assurance of job safety, a realization of professional goals, a reification of ego, and an actualization of personal potentials A career, however, is not a given Even a mediocre career is often made at the expense of personal relations and fundamental interests in life If there exists a personal domain, career-making may destroy important segments of it to the detriment of the individual (Jacoby 1987; Becher 1989; Bender 1993; Dews and Law 1995; Krenzin 1995; Cyr and Reich 1996; Kolpin and Singell 1996; Norrell and Norrell 1996; Rice 1996; Rossides 1998; Shaw 2000; Gossett and Bellas 2002; Schuster and Finkelstein 2006; Shaw 2013; Burge 2015; Shaw 2015; Kuhn and Vessuri 2016; Shapiro 2016; Taylor 2017; Zavattaro and Orr 2017; Gray 2018; Shaw 2019) 2.1 Brain Washing and Restuffing Academic career-seekers need to submit to the diplomacy, morality, and ideology of a discipline and the community of scholarship There are standardized images and models to internalize and follow They prescribe what and how one sees, hears, and thinks like a scholar Early during their educational preparation, students are taught how to wash commonsense from their brain and reconstruct their inner and outer worlds according to disciplinary theories and methodologies Prospective academicians must also change their private domains into those of disciplinary scholars they aspire to become, such as physicists, sociologists, and philosophers Deviations lead to objections from the academic mainstream, and, in extreme cases, expulsion from a discipline The process of socialization for career academicians is gradual, lengthy, and constant It is gradual because higher levels build upon lower levels of knowledge and skills It is lengthy because academic beliefs, values, norms, and codes of conduct take root slowly in the mundane world with which every would-be scholar begins It is constant because scientific versions of reality and ways of thinking evolve in contrast to the world of common sense in which most academicians live their lives Depending upon their discipline, academicians may undergo socialization with different frequencies, intensities, and durations But in general, they all need to sharpen their natural and intuitive minds with scientific or rational inputs The bottom line is a basic sense of alertness or a universal level of sensitivity to the distinction of science from commonsense, scientific observation from commonsensical experience, and scientific explanation from commonsensical speculation With it, one maintains a mindset that predisposes one to identify causes, analyze relations, develop explanations, and propose solutions while one‟s nonacademic friends, neighbors, or coworkers might normally panic or suffer in the face of a crisis or stressful situation Specifically, academicians become identified with scientific beliefs in their socialization process Belief is faith in the truth of something that is not immediately susceptible to proof Although it emphasizes evidence, science operates under a fundamental conviction about the reliability of human senses, accessibility of the world by human cognition, analyzability of the world, and in the matter of analysis, Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 determinism, and reductionism The reliability of human senses is in contrast to the validity of human senses The latter is out of question from a scientific viewpoint because it is just impossible for humans to ascertain whether the world of their senses is the same as the real world The former is meaningful because it is about the consistency of human senses In science, since it is assumed that human senses remain consistent from person to person, place to place, and time to time, features discerned and changes detected by the senses are automatically attributed to the objects out there in the external world The accessibility of the world by human cognition is related to the reliability of human senses After all, it is the human sense that buttresses human cognition and connects it to the outside world The analyzability of the world builds upon the reliability of human senses and the accessibility of the world by human cognition In addition, it involves an essentially non-scientific assumption that the external world operates under the same logic that governs human thinking In other words, whatever relationships humans induce and deduce among things they sense can be applied to things out there in the real world Most important, academicians, in their scientific analysis, follow the principles of determinism and reductionism By determinism, things are connected to one another through a universal causal chain, that is, for any single event in the world, there is not only a cause preceding it but also a consequence resulting from it According to reductionism, the world is comprised of elementary objects, each of which is further composed of ever smaller elementary units In the spirit of reductionism, scientists study an object by breaking it down into elements By examining elements and their interrelations, 149 they hope to understand the object in its entirety While it remains doubtful as to how much science learns about the universe, it is a fact that science has reached the smallest world of the smallest object humans can ever imagine, by way of reductionism Career academicians internalize scientific values in their induction into the community of scholarship Value concerns what is important, beautiful, or respectable and what is insignificant, despicable, or secular Individual scholars may value simplicity or symmetry when they develop a theory or propose a mathematical formula But in general, scientists share basic values in their quest for knowledge, including empiricism, rationality, analysis, prediction, and control Empiricism emphasizes facts gathered through scientific procedures as both beginning and ending points of scientific explanations Theories are developed with evidence They must also be amenable to empirical validation or invalidation Rationality assumes that human subjects correspond with their research objects in spatial patterning, time sequencing, and other universal laws It requires that scientists follow human reasoning to uncover laws of the external world Analysis acts upon rationality It prompts scholars to move from whole to part, content to form, and phenomenon to essence or from concrete to abstract, particular to universal, and regional to systemic in their search for truth Prediction injects human purposes into the scientific process It connects scientists to the larger crowd of social actors as forecasters, counselors, or just truthtellers Finally, control may even go beyond the realm of science It reflects human wills in using knowledge about nature to conquer nature, about society to manipulate the social 150 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 process, and about life to raise the quality of life Scholars learn and follow norms as they interact with each other in the world of science The norm prescribes what is appropriate, moral, or legal and what is immoral, wrong, or law-breaking Violation of academic norms leads to condemnation, expulsion, and other penalties For example, the norms of originality, honesty, and creativity in academic work stipulate that scholars turn out creative products by their efforts Violators who plagiarize existent contributions, fabricate evidence, or imprint their name upon a subordinate‟s products may gain visibility and influence, but in the end, will be regarded as incompetents and outcasts Of course, there are also those who break with norms and who rebel by seeking new paths within a discipline For instance, scholars are supposed to follow conventions and honor established paradigms But there are always novices or mavericks who build their success upon criticism of tradition, rebellion against convention, and defiance of existing ways of thinking Scientific products are assumed to appear in required formats or styles But there is no scarcity of cases where an unconventionally packaged work makes a successful debut in conventional settings, drawing unusual attention from usual sources Academicians acquire skills as they specialize in an area of study Academic skills can be general and specific General skills are reflected in reading, writing, and presenting activities Specific skills may involve modeling, experimenting, and operating tasks — for example, one reviews existing literature about ancient tombs in a region One sets out to explore the region to identify specific tombs for excavation In excavation, one follows a complex procedure to ensure that digging does not damage a tomb and unearthing does not cause any significant change to the artifacts inside the tomb Following excavation, one uses different technologies to determine the meaning of each item one is interested in investigating about the people who lived in the time when the dead were buried It is obvious that a variety of skills are required in a typical research project In order to learn skills involved in an area of inquiry, prospective candidates attend school or apprentice with a specialist To sharpen research skills as a proficient scholar, one may practice one‟s disciplinary scholarship for a lifetime It is normal that one fails over one set of skills at the same time when one excels in other skills For example, a philosopher may use his or her brain eloquently in his or her disciplinary specialization, but he or she may end up being a person who “can neither use his or her four limbs nor tell five grains apart.” Scholars accumulate knowledge as they make their academic career Knowledge builds up by layers Foundation knowledge includes basic vocabularies one knows about science, history, and the world System knowledge provides one with a system of theories, methods, and references in a discipline Operation knowledge refers to one‟s command of existing situations, such as challenging issues, prevailing explanations, and possible solutions, in an area of inquiry Although operation knowledge builds upon foundation and system knowledge, it may override the latter as if neither of them ever exists in its presence For example, one is so preoccupied with one‟s current research that one may forget all learning in a discipline and one‟s general knowledge about the world Preoccupation or Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 compartmentalization of knowledge points to the irony that a scholar with knowledge in one field of study may be utterly ignorant about basic facts in science and human affairs One may act clumsily in social arenas as if one were uneducated or unsophisticated Academicians take on a scientific frame of the world as compared to commonsensical and religious frames they begin within their lives In the world of common sense, people see flat land, arcshaped sky, the Sun, the Moon, and alternation between day and night In a religious world, believers may perceive another world in contrast to the world in which they live The purpose of suffering in this world where they feel fearful and helpless is to live securely and enjoy eternal life in the other world Believers may also envision this world as sandwiched between two opposing worlds, heaven to which virtuous people ascend and hell into which evil people fall In the world of science, however, academicians imagine a universe of infinite space and endless time Humans live on the Earth, a planet in the Solar System that belongs to the Milky Way Galaxy of the Universe We see the Sun rising and setting because the Earth revolves around it Organisms grow and die because they follow the principle of evolution Objects fall off a cliff because they are subject to the law of gravity A whole object breaks into smaller units because objects are made of substance and substance is made of elements Woods burn in the air because carbon reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide Scientists think and act upon the world of science The logic they use, mode of analysis they adopt, train of thought they follow, degree of creativeness they attain, and level of productivity they demonstrate 151 all lie in the order of the world that they perceive, explore, and explain Although people who grow up with standard science education in contemporary society may take the world of science for granted, they need to go much further to identify with science as their world of thinking and acting should they become career scholars in scientific research 2.2 Emotion Rechanneling Withholding and Career-making academicians need to withhold their personal likes or dislikes in the service of scholarly conventions and etiquettes Papers are written in an abstract language Presentations are made in a solemn tone Transactions with academic authorities are conducted in an atmosphere of non-solicitation and non-irritation Revelations of nonacademic intentions are considered a menace to academic impartiality One puts one‟s career in jeopardy if one lets one‟s emotions govern in the conduct of scholarly businesses In conducting research, academicians need to focus on an area for a recognizable period of creative productivity Naturally, when one works on a task, one may become tired or bored, switch back and forth with another task, or come back to it after an interval of inaction To tackle research, however, an academician may have to change, at least for a time, some of his or her habits For example, one may compete with others in the field No matter how stressed one is, one still needs to struggle to be the first to the finish line An academician may work with a team No matter what urgencies one faces in other arenas of life, one still needs to complete the task to meet the team requirement An 152 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 academician may also feel an obligation to maintain a certain record of creative productivity in his or her specialization No matter how exhausted one is in scholarly talent, one still needs to turn out something once in a while until one departs from the scene In dealing with colleagues, scholars need to follow the spirit of professionalism Normally, when people relate to one another in life, they may borrow things from neighbors, negotiate on job duty with workmates, and share feelings with friends But academic colleagues are not neighbors, peers, or friends They are not even ordinary workmates In universities, faculty members are independent scholars working in their respective areas of specialty They keep a distance from each other They judge one another not so much by what they say but mainly by what they publish on paper Personal feelings are either sealed inside each professor or conjectured from language on academic records For example, one risks being looked down upon as lacking an academic agenda if one asks colleagues to take one in their research project One may be considered infringing upon colleagues‟ rights of intellectual freedom when one suggests that they incorporate certain contents in their classroom teaching Most illustratively, one is not supposed to argue with one‟s senior colleagues when one is denied promotion or tenure One may “respectfully disagree” with them and pursue one‟s cause through institutional procedures One is discredited as “unprofessional” should one take the path a commonsense person might take in the face of difficulty, complaining, pleading, or screaming Analogous to farmers who perform planting or harvesting rituals, academicians hold conventions where they interactively meet with each other Usually, when farmers celebrate harvests, they feast, dance, and engage in other activities that serve to vent their feelings Academic gatherings, however, are not getaway vacations or forget-it-all parties Scholars put on suits, instead of dropping their personal fronts They rehearse to present the best of themselves, instead of appearing in their natural outlooks They meet by time slot, instead of just seeing one another for casual interactions They use professional argots, instead of speaking naturally in everyday language They act with all their scholarly skills, without expressing their inner sentiments A few who break from the protocol of an academic meeting risk being labeled as having no manner The attention they gain may offer no compensation for the respect they lose, should they attempt any “entertaining” behavior at the convention When it is time to publish their research products, academicians need to communicate with editors In an open market, farmers can put their products on display and negotiate directly with buyers Academicians, however, not have much occasion to reach their readers in a face-toface way They must impress editors in order to enter their products in the academic media for circulation to the community of scholarship Dealing with editors is no easy job Journal editors are mostly academicians themselves They edit journals as if they were kings within publication kingdoms While the majority of journal editors are conscientious scholars, some are plainly rude or incompetent Ordinary scholars, therefore, must exert caution and patience in dealing with editors They remain silent, even for months, until they hear from editors They follow directions for revision Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 when they are asked to change by editors They turn to another journal when they run into trouble with the editor of an existing journal It can be quite counterproductive when one follows one‟s feelings to question an editor as to why it takes so long to go through review, challenge an editor that a recommended revision is unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the major thrust of one‟s manuscript, or suggest that the editor has misread one‟s rather significant paper In general, academicians need to withhold most sentiments they normally have as humans They behave like trained professionals Primitive desires are contained or rechanneled to academically compatible and professionally acceptable forms of expression If it is natural for people to show off, academicians can never brag about their talents or achievements in front of any counterpart they deal with regularly Instead, they should remain calm in every professional setting and turn all their show-off drives into scholarly productivity If it is normal for people to influence one another, academicians may never persuade any colleagues they work within an institution Instead, they must be collegial in every academic dealing and channel all their innate hunger for power into a legitimate rise to leadership roles in organizational settings If it is commonsensical for people to be disappointed, frustrated, and tired in life, academicians may never allow their emotional impulses to run loose in the eyes of their professional fellows Instead, they must stay insistent though their academic career and redirect all their inner inclination toward comfort to intellectual persistence for career success 153 2.3 Life Deferring and Simplifying Academic career enthusiasts may have to abandon their familial and communal life as they are often unable to reconcile their aspirations for an academic career with their innate inclinations for personal attachment It is common that students give up their adolescent desire for beauty and love in quest of a somewhat abstinent and Spartan academic career It is also true that new entrants, such as assistant professors and junior research scientists, put off marriage, set aside family life, and commit all their time, energy, and resources to an academic career dream Simplifying life is a common phenomenon among career scholars Since they are devoted to scholarly pursuits, many academicians reserve little or no time for recreations, health maintenance, and other personal interests Because they not make much money, many scholars cannot afford to live in spacious houses, dine in fine restaurants, vacation in luxurious resorts, or hire maids to take care of essential needs in life There is no lack of stories wherein a scholar gnaws bread to crush hunger while delving into a manuscript, sleeps a couple of hours a night on the office or lab floor for a few days while working on a project, does not shave and shower for a week while crafting a proposal, or does not have sex for years after graduate school Simplifying or neglecting life has obvious consequences One may catch colds and other illnesses easily One may gradually develop eating disorders, sleep problems, or other unfavorable conditions There are no systematic health statistics about academics in comparison to other professionals Nonetheless, scholars often appear absentminded, weary, or bald and exhibit 154 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 premature senility in media portrayals as well as public impressions Deferring major satisfactions of life seems to be a natural choice for many academic aspirants On the one hand, they know they want to settle down and live a normal life like everyone else On the other hand, they realize they need to get on track, gain momentum, and see a bright prospect of success before they can think about anything non-academic The truth is this: The academic undertaking is an endless effort No one can ever be ready for or away from it once he or she enters the arena Academicians who initially thought they would land on firm ground in a five-year time may still find themselves in the middle of nowhere after ten years of serious endeavors As they keep postponing liferelated commitments, some academicians are still alone, long past the golden age for marriage Some middle-aged female scientists can hardly look for a life partner because they spent all their early ages on research projects, because they long ago fell in an unrequited love with a charismatic mentor out of their admiration for scientific achievements, or because they unfortunately engaged in a private affair with a dominating advisor Difficulty in finding true love makes some women single throughout life and misleads others into marriage mismatches Male academicians after middle ages generally fare better than their female counterparts They sometimes can find candidates for marriage or companionship among their students when they become established at an institution or in a field of study But generational gap and physical imbalance exist, opening doors for friction, extramarital affairs, and unhappiness Of course, academicians who remain single and family-less throughout their career may have to bear most loneliness or suffering in their lives Imagine that at the age of fifty, one loses one‟s job and has no relatives to turn to for emotional support Imagine that at the age of sixty, a scholar lies on a hospital bed and feels nobody cares about him or her and he or she has nobody to care about in the whole world The person is likely to commit suicide unless he or she can cling to some extraordinary hope, perseverance, and resilience that still exist inside him or her 2.4 Social Isolation Career academic practitioners need to dedicate their intelligence and life to disciplinary specialization, isolating themselves from the mass media, fashions, and social currents A discipline is a selfsufficient knowledge enterprise, with its own repertoire of theories, techniques, and tools Academic practitioners, under disciplinary self-sufficiency, could develop a false impression that their disciplinary world is the real world and feel that it is unnecessary to go anywhere beyond the disciplinary boundary in life pursuits But as a complete human, one needs to reach out to different viewpoints and opportunities across society for one‟s self-actualization Social isolation is a problem facing every profession in the contemporary era A business person may not know anything about health and medicine while profiting from the marketplace An artist may sound naive when he or she talks about politics A diplomat may have difficulty figuring out his or her bank statement while navigating through the world of words and people However, depending upon the distance, it is removed from social currents, depth of specialization it demands of individuals, and Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 difficulty of content leaning it invokes, one profession may make its members more socially isolated or integrated than others For example, businesspeople, politicians, media workers, and entertainers may feel that the more they delve into their field, the closer they have their fingers on the pulse of society Career scholars, on the other hand, may feel exactly the opposite In fact, science and academic research are the most substantively demanding and therefore socially isolating undertakings among all occupational fields The consequences of social isolation can be subtle An organic chemist seldom watches movies When he or she watches a movie with a group of people and asks questions about some characters or episodes in the movie, he or she may show obvious ignorance about popular culture He or he may then become a subject of gossip: “Oh, my gosh! „X‟ does not even understand why Julie puts a pie on her boyfriend‟s face in the movie What an idiot!” A mathematician hardly puts any effort into social etiquette He or she goes shopping late in the night, with hairs looking messy He or she stares at the monitor when the cashier checks out his or her items A few minutes after the transaction, he or she walks back to the store, asking the cashier to refund a few cents he or she finds the cashier overcollected The cashier refunds him or her ten cents, watching him or her leave the store with a despising look: “What a lunatic!” A sociologist drives to an academic conference On his or her way, he or she miscalculates an attempt to change lanes, getting too close to a fast-moving truck The truck driver yells at him or her: “Damn you, stupid head!” A nuclear scientist is embarrassed in the public eye in a crowded immigration office when he or she has trouble following the direction of a fast 155 speaking officer A philosopher walks home lonely from a bar whereas a lawyer or businessman drives with a newly acquainted companion at the same bar to a high-class hotel All these scenarios may look incidental and insignificant But they demonstrate that academicians, due to the nature of their work and specialization, may fare poorly in daily-life knowledge and skills in comparison with people in other walks of life Social interaction is an exchange as well as a creation of value A loser in social interaction is likely to be looked down upon, taken advantage of, or denied important benefits On more serious fronts, academicians can become likely victims of managerial neglect, social mistreatment, and human manipulation Most academicians are conscientious and stoical They take whatever comes to them, a meager salary, a small office, and other inadequate work conditions or compensations Compared to administrators who occupy spacious office with bounty clerical support and who obtain one pay raise after another upon an already big base salary, academicians are undoubtedly neglected members in colleges and research institutes The majority of scholars are simple and honest They offer their knowledge and skills in free service to mass media and social establishments In contrast to lawyers and other agents who compile information or sometimes purloin knowledge for profit, scholars are probably most exploited professionals in the labor market Many academicians are unguarded and unpolitical They trust their colleagues and leaders They say what they know They do, oftentimes, what their socially more sophisticated colleagues or friends ask them to It is not uncommon that trusting faculty members are used by their rather politically motivated 156 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 counterparts in voting, protesting, and other movements on university campuses It occurs from time to time that scholars are made to testify in courts, mass media, or legislatures for causes they themselves have no control over In a sense, academicians are more manipulated members than streetsmart people in society Finally, academicians are usually not so vocal, organized, and demanding as other professionals, such as those in legal practice, business management, and public administration In an open society, people gain when they speak up, stand out, or just make some noises People are ignored when they remain quiet or inactive Academic professionals may lose a considerable amount of what they earn by what they offer to society Although there is no way to measure how much academicians lose what they deserve, there are conspicuous indicators to compare in areas such as social attention, political power, and economic compensation For example, scholars on average are less featured in the mass media, less represented in political establishments, and lower paid in the marketplace than entertainers, lawyers, administrators, and other comparable professionals It is an irony that while science studies nature, humans, and society, producing knowledge about the world, mankind, and universe, individual scholars may still likely be among those who are most ignorant and naïve about market forces, social currents, and human manipulations Academic life, as it has been characterized as squatting in the ivory tower, is to a large degree monotonous and painstaking Living an academic life through a career pathway, individual practitioners may have to make sacrifices or change various qualities in their personal domain Constraints Individuality over Choice and An ever-expanding social process deems individuals more and more unimportant An ever-strengthening social dominance makes individual forces more and more insignificant A standard socialization process emerges It imposes standard knowledge upon newborn individuals, turning them into all-alike products in the capitalist mass production line A lifestyle mainstream appears hand in hand with an ideological hegemony, sweeping individuals into a standardized way of thinking, acting, and living As they make most contributions to modern and postmodern socialization and spiritual hegemony, career-making academicians in the knowledge enterprise become not only the first but also the last to succumb to the conditions and means they themselves produce to overwhelm and contain individuals and individuality in contemporary society (Schrecker 1986; Jacoby 1987; De George 1997; Walters 1997; Popkewitz and Brennan 1998; Toren and Moore 1998; Torres 1998; Shaw 2000; Burge 2015; Shaw 2015; Kuhn and Vessuri 2016; Shapiro 2016; Taylor 2017; Zavattaro and Orr 2017; Gray 2018; Shaw 2019) 3.1 Socialization: A Standardizing Process The system of knowledge provided by career-making academicians in the knowledge enterprise makes socialization a standardized process New generations attend classes from elementary school to middle school, high school, college, and further graduate school Career educators take charge of delivering systematic information to students There are foundation subjects, such as language and mathematics There are specialty courses Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 ranging from the study of mind, culture, and society to the investigation of objects, species, and the universe Students acquire not only pure knowledge but also operational skills They learn not only information about what life is, but also values concerning what the world should be There is no choice on the part of individuals as to whether to avoid or forge ahead with standard socialization To avoid school is to drop from the labor market, and eventually society Would anyone without a standard education be able to find a decent job and function well in the contemporary world? To bypass school is to deviate from recognized occupations and institutions A person who learns fortune telling or miraculous healing from his or her parents outside school may survive economically but can never dream of being accorded the same social status as scientifically trained forecasters and physicians Only by forging ahead with formal schooling, can one be accepted into the mainstream, honored as a successful professional, and celebrated as a faithful contributor to social progress Continuing expansion and updating of knowledge by career academicians make learning a lifetime process People need to connect to the educational system and knowledge enterprise to entertain new information, explore new subjects, acquire new skills, and experiment with new ways of thinking and acting Indeed, resocialization is not a one-time commitment It is a continuous engagement It is not a choice if one does not want to be left behind It is a must if one wants to remain competent and competitive in job performance and social functioning With standardized input from the knowledge enterprise, socialization and resocialization become a standardizing process They turn people into one type, an 157 indistinguishable mass Everyone believes that the universe is infinite in time and across space Everyone knows that two multiplying two equals four Everyone reasons that rational planning leads to effectiveness and efficiency in task performance People relate to one another as peers, neighbors, and friends because they share the same beliefs, knowledge, and process of reasoning A minority who not share this set of implicit understandings are abandoned or shamed as illiterates or deviants Within the majority, while most people remain in the indistinguishable mass, a few who believe more of the same beliefs, know more of the same knowledge and use more of the same process of reasoning emerge to be models and leaders Academicians become academicians through the same socialization and resocialization process as other common citizens In fact, since it keeps those who believe, know, and identify with it most for its own use as educators, the educational system creates a false impression among the populace that it is there just to reproduce itself rather than serve the larger social structure Since it retains the best of its products for its own employment as scholars, the knowledge enterprise makes people feel that it is there just to replicate itself rather than inform the general social process Indeed, academicians, as they represent the core of the educational system and knowledge enterprise, feed most directly and substantively back on the socialization and resocialization process they themselves share with all other members in contemporary society 3.2 Mass: An Inviting and Alienating Crowd The mass is an inviting crowd Individuals feel they are left out and discriminated against if they not stay 158 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 with the mass They feel they miss opportunities and lose resources if they wander outside the mass Most importantly, they feel ambivalent or lost about their identity as well as a sense of belonging when they fall out of the mass The mass attracts everyone because it is large and powerful It can attack anyone and push him or her to nonexistence if he or she dares to be no part of it The mass keeps all it controls because it makes everyone fearful of being outside it Individual perceptions and mass pressures combine to force individuals into one direction: Join the crowd, think as everyone else thinks, say what everyone else says, and things in the way everyone else does There is not much choice for individuals in front of an inviting crowd There is not much individuality in the middle of an overwhelming mass The mass is an alienating crowd Individuals come from the same socialization process and are kept in the mass by the same resocialization force They may be out of different schools, but they all have similar knowledge and skills They may work in different organizations, but they all function with similar rules They may live in different communities, but they all follow similar routines Similarity makes people identify with each other But it also makes people wonder who they are and what they are for as unique individuals There is an inevitable loss of self-identity among individual members of the crowd On the other hand, the mass keeps its scale and domination by minimizing differences and maintaining a state of sameness from individual to individual Different appearances may be allowed only when substance is kept the same Different words may be spoken only when meanings are made similar Different ways of doing things may be accommodated only when spirits of doing things remain the same and outcomes converge into similar comparisons Collective coercion comes into play when there is a crowd It accelerates in intensity when the crowd grows To resist collective coercion and regain self-identity, some individuals attempt to rise above the mass to become extraordinary or elite Ironically, as elites are so distanced from the ordinary, they serve only to highlight the height the mass attains over massive individuals As elites are so out of reach by the regular, they exist only to reinforce the alienation individuals feel toward the alienating crowd they fall under 3.3 Fashion: A Swirling and Sucking Current The mass not only holds people in place but also engages people in fashions from one time to another Fashions entertain and exhaust individuals, their energy, intelligence, and wealth so that they not go astray Fashion is a way of doing things When it gains currency, fashion can sweep and swirl a population into particular channeling of human capitals and social resources, to the state of fanaticism Fashion gathers individuals from different genders, age groups, racial and ethnic communities, and socioeconomic strata It moves individuals from one level of activity, stage of development, social class, historical era, and state of being to another Fashion makes individuals disappear from their original personality, primary ties, and communal embedment into an indistinguishable social character, secondary relations, and global flotation For example, education, in the Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 sense that it is school-based, sciencecentered, and curriculum-standardized, has become a fashion in contemporary socialization Education impacts rural villages in the same way as it sweeps metropolitan regions It connects past to present, East to West, and developing to developed societies Education transforms age, gender, race, and class-specific individuals into value, norm, knowledge, and performance-general personnel in mass production lines Individuals are no longer who they are and what they want to be They are merely indistinguishable and negligible elements in a process that is far larger than any of them Fashion is a sucking and absorbing current To people caught in a fashion, it demands, consumes, and exhausts all their time, energy, and resources Fashion covets attention Fashion followers may other things in life, but they are taken by fashion by heart Fashion eats time Fashion pursuers may continue with their normal duties, but they spend all their spare time on fashion-related activities Fashion burns energy Fashion fans may muddle through their regular routines, but they save all their energy to act out their favorite fashion deeds Fashion wastes resources Fashion diehards may even forgo their basic survival needs to finance a fashionable fantasy with substance, efficacy, or power For example, under the domination of science, people follow scientific advice about health as a fashion People keep their eyes on scientific findings about body and mind They spend hours on books for scientific information regarding diets and exercises They fast to be fit or engage in sports to burn calories Should scientists say some drugs are effective in making humans perform better, look prettier, or live longer, people would 159 discomfort or even starve themselves to save money for just a few dosages of those magical drugs What is individual choice when a fashion strikes the mass to which individuals belong? Where is individuality when individuals are swirled and sucked in a fashion? Obviously, individual choice is to follow the fashion Individuality is nowhere to be found in the current of a fashion 3.4 Lifestyle: A Dominating Mainstream Going through standardized education, staying in the crowd, and following the fashion, people to a large degree live their lives in a way informed and dictated by the knowledge enterprise There is, however, more substance to fall under lifestyle First, lifestyle concerns how contemporaries live their entire lives It is not a one-time issue but an all-time commitment to a particular way of life People go to school so that they live an educated life People connect to the mass media so that they live an informed life People join groups so that they live an affiliated life People engage in a profession so that they live an occupational life People work on jobs so that they live a productive life People make money so that they live a self-sufficient life People marry and raise children so that they live a family life People follow regular routines so that they live an organized life While all these styles may singly persist in one‟s journey through life, they converge to form a mega-lifestyle for all contemporaries in the social mainstream In other words, a dominating lifestyle requires that people live an educated, organized, productive, independent, and family life in the contemporary era 160 Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 Second, lifestyle involves an inventory of specific approaches to life People see doctors when they are sick Doctors prescribe medicines or perform surgeries when they treat patients People consult experts when they have problems in job, finance, and relationship Experts gather facts and offer analytical directions when they deal with clients People turn to the mass media for information The mass media send reporters to different locations or conduct opinion polls to obtain current accounts On a typical day, people go through specific routines: Eat breakfast, work for half a day, take a lunch break, labor for another half, and eat dinner In normal life, people follow a sequence of activities over different periods They attend school beginning childhood, experiment with drugs during adolescence, move from lower to higher levels in employment through adulthood, and retire to a slow pace of life at the senior stage Third, lifestyle concerns general attitudes and behaviors toward life People value property ownership, social status, and material amenities in life They invest time, energy, and talents to acquire wealth, gain control, and achieve success People believe in science and technology They not only use knowledge to entertain their intelligence, but also apply their intelligence to advance knowledge People cherish freedom, self-sufficiency, and selfdetermination They overcome their dependence upon family, religion, or tradition They strive for independence in what they think, say, and People yearn for adventure and excellence while disdaining extreme views and destruction By the principle of the golden mean, they still honor God although they live a secular life They still indulge in pleasure although they work diligently on everything in which they are involved They still experiment with substances although they abstain from addictive drugs Finally, lifestyle distinguishes people from those in style to those out of style While most people remain in style, some fall out of style Among them, the illiterate bypass or fail the standardized educational process They live a life that is out of touch with the knowledge enterprise The jobless never enter the labor force or drop out of it They live a life that is distant from occupational success The homeless skip or retreat from mainstream activities They live a life that is foreign to family support The property-less never own wealth or lose all of it They live a life that is out of reach to material affluence The illiterate, jobless, homeless, and property-less, sooner or later, converge to form the dependent who live lives that are everything but lack sufficiency, independence, and dignity It ought to be pointed out that while academicians contribute most to the mainstream lifestyle, they are not necessarily spared from falling out of synchronization in the larger social dynamics The academic job market is so tight that there are always Ph.D holders being sacrificed, initially to the jobless, further the homeless, and eventually the dependent, for the sake of knowledge and its expansion and triumph as a knowledge enterprise Conclusion In all, academic career-making is a prevalent phenomenon of modern and postmodern capitalism It is made possible by large-scale production and mass Victor N Shaw / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 147-162 consumption Without the demand for knowledge and trained personnel from the political-military-industrial complex, the system of education, research, and publication organizations would not have existed Without money supplied by corporate businesses and knowledge consumers, professors, researchers, and all other academic professionals would not have arrived on the scene Career-making was originally an individual undertaking that built upon personal aspiration and diligence In modern and postmodern social conditions, however, it has become a process that serves the dominant authority in social establishments Personal success and self-realization are byproducts that randomly fall upon only a few of God‟s favorites The real results are social dominance and ideological hegemony that not only belittle and negate academicians themselves but also overwhelm and overshadow all other human fellows and their initiatives There then comes the ever-tightening cycle in postmodern academia: The more career-making academicians there are, the more they contribute, the stronger the knowledge enterprise is to become; and the stronger the knowledge enterprise becomes, the more dominance the academic establishment holds over its individual participants, the more career-seekers are to be rallied around to make yet greater contributions Is this cycle evil or golden, perhaps both? 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Papers are written in an abstract language Presentations are made in a solemn tone Transactions with academic authorities are conducted in an atmosphere of non-solicitation and non-irritation... abandon their familial and communal life as they are often unable to reconcile their aspirations for an academic career with their innate inclinations for personal attachment It is common that