In light of the transformations that universities currently undergo, with Bologna as a key- word, the following questions are put: What ideals lie behind the assessment of academic “excellence” and “quality”? What agents have the ability to define what is good science and education today? These questions are approached through Pierre Bourdieus concept of field .

Looking at the development the last decade, traditional academic values, such as the ide- al of universal knowledge as (personal and collective) enrichment and the intellectual inde- pendence “of all political authority and economic power”, as stated in the Magna Charta Universitatum, seem to have emerged into the shadow of employability, knowledge control, competitiveness, and economic benefit .

In connection with the formation of concepts such as “the knowledge society” and “knowledge based economies” the university has received a somewhat different and more central role in society . The university has come to take the role more of a knowledge producing enterprise clearly directed towards the surrounding society. There are higher demands on academic knowledge to contribute to economic, regional or national development and competitiveness . When the university is regarded as a knowledge company whose task is to account for the requests of the students, the labour market, and the business world it undertakes to follow trends and short term social phases rather than to critically examine them, which has been a traditional task for the university. If the academic work is guided by the market eco- nomical principle, that the client requests decide what quality is, instead of the experts on the academic field themselves (i .e . the scientists,) it is obviously not scientific ideals that con- stitute the criteria for what is good science and education .

Normalizing problematized youth by governing their parents: From structural explanations to family-centred solutions The current article explores the ways that organizational representatives outline the causes of and propose solutions to the problematic behaviour of youth living in, what is described as, an immigrant neighbourhood in a Swedish city. The empirical material, consisting of interviews with representatives from various organizations (such as the police, schools, social services and NGOs) as well as field observations, has been analyzed using the theory of governmentality. The causes of problematic youth behaviour are related to disadvantaged immigrant urban space, unemployment, unstable home situations and family relations, and parents’ deviant norms, knowledge and culture. In the discourses about causes and solutions, a recurring frame of reference is the issue of immigration in general and parent’s migrant background in particular. In spite of the complexity of the proposed causes, the pronounced solutions are directed towards the fostering of immigrant parents, the establishment of zones of communication and early prevention. Hence, the prevailing solutions are permeated by discourses of activation of parents.

This paper discusses modern organizational meetings in the public sector, with a focus on time, specifically the planning and scheduling of time among managers . In this qualitative analysis, data were gathered through an ethnographic study of managers in several public organizations, all in Sweden . During interviews and field observations, managers told about their time work involving strategies for dealing with their fully booked calendars, or for handling what they described as boring or meaningless meetings . These strategies can be conceptualized as a form of ”meeting resistance” among the managers in these organizations . Their retold experiences and strategies raise issues of meeting resistance in relation to the meetingization of contemporary work life and, in a wider sense, questions of power and control over time at work . By using a variety of strategies for negotiating and resisting the rule of the calendar, managers may achieve a greater sense of control over their time . Nevertheless, despite their strategies and resistance, the machinery of meetings is hard to stop due to an Eigendynamik of meetings.