Originally a twitter thread, here: https://twitter.com/MarkFabian_PAIS/status/1752322049790325243
Part of the reason why academia is toxic, especially to juniors, is that we uproot from our social networks at PhD, postdoc, and tenure track. We then need new friends, and we try to get them through 'defensive' status seeking.
We project our our top journal publication, our affiliation with fancy universities, our general brilliance etc. in order to be regarded as someone worth knowing. I honestly think this is more about loneliness than networking or professional advancement for many.
This behaviour is 'defensive' because it is rooted in loneliness.
We are trying to protect ourselves from risk, threat, and the pain of loneliness by attracting people to us.
Self-determination theory has extensive empirical evidence of how this doesn't work for wellbeing.
It's deeply toxic because it alienates us from people who aren't similarly published/affiliated, creates a culture of socialising only with people who have 'status', and narrows our frame of reference regarding what's valuable in people and communities.
The turgid culture of competition at many elite institutions feeds this. I was actively discouraged by profs from talking to good, nice, friendly people at big conferences in the past because they weren't 'strong' and so knowing them wouldn't advance my career.
The culture of not caring about publications < PNAS, AER, AJPS, JPSP, Nous, etc. in many faculties further undermines intrinsic motivation and our ability to connect with people who might be super beneficial to us in non-career ways but who are publishing in 'lesser' journals.
The reason why cafeterias & dining rooms at places like Cambridge at so great is because you socialise with people just because they are also there. People become known to you through proximity and habit and not for instrumental reasons.
At my undergraduate residence we cared about each other simply because we all lived together. We were used to each other. It wasn't even about reciprocity, karma, or exchange, certainly not value, just straight up familiarity.
Communities that are instead predicated on transactional relationships are deeply toxic because they depend on continual reaffirmation of your worth to people. As soon as you start slipping, you worry that you're going to lose your social support.
I appreciate that these dynamics are MUCH worse in economics faculties than elsewhere, but I've spent time in 4 disciplines now and it seems pretty universal to academia.
The healthiest academics are the ones who have a life outside of the ivory tower. But this is rare because the early career, from PhD to tenure, is so demanding (especially if you have kids), that you don't have time for much else.
So the people who do best are the ones that have stayed in place. But outside of Oxbridge this is extremely rare because almost everybody uproots for PhD, postdoc, tenure track. Not exposing yourself to other universities and intellectual communities is also genuinely bad for your intellectual and professional development (especially if all you know is Oxbridge because they are frankly very weird places, much like Harvard).
I don't know what to do about this except to encourage everyone to
a) have a life outside of work so that you have a frame of reference for what's valuable besides articles
b) do not engage in defensive status seeking
c) network with humans not 'contacts'
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