Writing power: Intellectuals, legitimacy, and the making of knowledge - Hardcover

Burton, Saorfhlaith Victoria Alexandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1526169320 ISBN 13: 9781526169327

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2025

Synopsis

Writing power radically rethinks the place of the canon and canonicity as objects and concepts in contemporary academia and the everyday intellectual practices of academics. It is distinctive in its demonstration of how academics’ engagements with canons shape their writing practices but also how scholars’ writing practices, spaces, proclivities, and desires shape the canon and changing ideas of value in canonicity. The book thinks through frequently discussed problems of legitimacy and knowledge production from fresh perspectives of lived experience and the everyday to offer new insights into the politics of knowledge in contemporary social sciences. -- .

About this title

About the Author

Saorfhlaith Victoria Alexandra Burton is Lecturer in Criminology at Robert Gordon University -- .

From the Back Cover

Associated with 'gleaming spires' and 'ivory towers', academia has often been seen as a space for social and cultural elites where the knowledge produced is disconnected from, if not outright disdainful of, the 'real world'.

This book explores the forms of power that shape academic knowledge production. Looking specifically at the case of British sociology, and doing so through its modes, styles, and everyday practices of writing, the book examines how certain forms of writing are deployed to assert intellectual legitimacy and claim an elevated rung on the knowledge hierarchy. It offers a rich and personal ethnographic examination of the structural, intellectual, and affective factors which shape the way sociologists write and the knowledge they produce.

Writing power details how academics and intellectuals engage with the politics of writing in order to position themselves within the politics of knowledge. The book argues for a more textured approach to understanding power relations in the field of knowledge production through its demonstrations of how scholars use their writing and writing practices to narrate themselves into legitimacy and position themselves with value in both disciplinary and wider intellectual spaces.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526169320
• ISBN 13: 9781526169327
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208