Field of Academic Publishing: A Reflection Using Bourdieu’s Theory.

This article aims to provide an understanding of a multilayered academic publishing field by situating it within broader social, cultural, political and technological contexts. Despite the proximity to higher education, a sociopolitical, economical approach to academic publishing has been limited only to the business perspectives of the field. By interpreting and exploring the field of higher education in Australia using Bourdieu’s concepts of <italic>field</italic>, <italic>capital</italic> and <italic>habitus</italic>, the article strengthens the critical analysis of the academic publishing environment and its position within higher education. While the concept of field assists with identifying the field of higher education in relation to publishing, the concept of capital provides an understanding of the factors that are significant for academics in the field; the capital academics aim to pursue and their publishing habits are explained using the concept of habitus. However, neoliberal academic governance prevalent in universities, such as Australia, emphasize the role of DiMaggio and Powell’s institutional theory in analyzing the university environment and Fligstein and McAdam’s subfield theory strengthens our understanding of the different influencing field of academic publishing. This article, by examining the role of academic publishing within the field of higher education and the dynamics of interdependency of academics in the field of publishing for resources, establishes the interpolation of different social field theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]