Contending directions. Gender studies in the entrepreneurial university

This article explores the ambivalences and aporias that arouse from the institutionalization of degree-granting programs of Gender Studies in German-spealdng countries at a time in which universities are being transformed into entrepreneurial managerially governed organizations. It asks if Gender Studies is a proactive element of those transformation processes or has, as a kind of premium segment of the academic market, even profited from them. It asks if Gender Studies has amassed sufficient academic capital to determine the rules of the academic "game" in Bourdieu's sense or if it is falling victim to global processes of academic accumulation and segmentation. The paper's main argument will be that if the paradoxical precondition for dissent is participation, and if critique and regulation are tied up in a fraught but intimate connection, then the point will be to reflect critically upon those circumstances and conditions under which we produce, distribute and consume knowledge. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.