The production of academic research and some barriers to academicization in the creative and performing arts

Abstract

The creative and performing arts have recently entered the university system in many European countries. They bring with them expectations of forms of practice and understandings that are nontraditional. These practices and understandings are manifestations of underlying values held by each community and, in our analysis, we see the difference in values as being the fundamental cause of the ensuing conflict. This article describes the development of a Profiling Culture model used by the authors to investigate this phenomenon. Following a usability trial, questionnaires were completed at TU Delft by ‘aspiring members’, ‘full members’ and ‘gatekeepers’ of the academicized community of professionals in Spatial Planning, in which they identified their ‘heroes & icons’, habits & behaviour, techniques & skills, language & rhetoric, and place & environment. The analyses of the data from the Profiling Culture model, using comparative analysis of culture as ‘variable’ and as ‘root-metaphor’, will yield initial outcomes that are based on a qualitative ‘categorical’ analysis. Ultimately, the findings will be expressed in terms of the different worldviews in operation in the academicized design field and the professional design field, in terms of a comparison between the academic worldviews and research models on the one hand, and the practitioners’ worldviews and expectations on the other. The critical interpretation of the empirical data will enable both diagnosis (in which we will infer underlying values from observed practices) and prognosis (in which we will associate inferred values to significant practices) of the observed conflict.