Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural identities from the bottom up – labour relations perspective
pay excessive prices, particularly in comparison to restrictive access to articles which they
have already financed once through research funding. The reason that they nevertheless
bargain with publishers is due to the particular position of publishers in the evaluation
of scientific work. Publishers have created out of academic publishing a kind of stock
exchange with a system of quantification and monetarization of not yet monetarized
items, such as publications, citations, rejections of articles, and so on. Authors use this
new money in exchange for university posts, research funding, rewards and prestige, the
national founder as quantitative research funding criteria and as international score rates
of national scientific competitiveness, while publishers sponge well off public funds for
education and research. The system seems to work and each agent has obligations and
benefits. The role of publishers may seem superfluous, but the “monetary dependence”
they have been able to build up out of academic publishing binds all agents tightly
together. The fact that commercial publishing slows down the use of digital technology
for further circulation of scientific findings, that it inhibits epistemological advancement
in the representation of scientific results, seems to worry only marginal groups of scientists
(Cope and Kalantzis, 2009: 13-61). Despite technological progress, scientific publishing
imitates the print culture, using a pdf document as a simple replacement for printed text,
while peer-review is still kept highly secret. It would be possible to create a new system
of electronic publishing in which editors, authors, readers and peer-reviewers could
openly discuss scientific problems by means of new communication tools. It would not
be so difficult to create a new model of publishing, since much of the work in scientific
publishing is already free of charge, but the bonds of monetary dependence nevertheless
prevent any such attempt.
The alignment of the state with the interests of commercial publishers
Where did the interventionist state go The role of the state in academic publishing
is a puzzling one, while the state subsidies for book publishing are really instructive. We
would assume that state subsidies go where there is a lack of sufficient resources. Table 3
shows, to the contrary, that state subsidies are almost proportional to publishers’ profits.
Thanks to substantial profits many publishers could easily finance books which they
consider less profitable, but they nevertheless condition the publishing of these books on
state subsidies. The state, giving its consent to their demands, aligns with the interests of
publishers and finally defends their right to profit. Moreover, the state distributes subsidies
to the publishers (see Table 3 below) paying no heed to the fact that the same publishers, by
holding a monopoly in publishing as well as in distribution of books, inhibit production and
circulation of non-commercial publishing programmes which the state otherwise supports
through public subsidies. The position of the state is therefore ideological through the
evident support of commercialization and the profit-seeking strategies in publishing despite
all social consequences. It shows also the clear intention on the part of state authorities to
block eventual attempts to constitute an independent publishing system on the basis of, as
Bourdieu would say, the “autonomous principle of hierarchization”.
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