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In the tradition of anthropological reflexivity, this article examines how the structure of early doctoral training contributes to the construction of particular kinds of anthropologists. Based on research conducted in an anthropology department in the U.S.A. during the late 1990s, the experience of the transition from undergraduate to doctoral studies is explored as simultaneously a process of culture learning and culture making, with power relations expressed, imposed, and contested through language. The implications for questions animating current anthropological debates, including calls for 'public anthropology', are considered.

Ethnographers have constructed contradicting assertions, and indeed assumptions,

about the nature of learning, how it is best accomplished, and

how students internalise this learning in order to form both individualised

and collective identities. Are the rites of passage, so often described in analyses

of postgraduate socialisation – the oral examinations, the viva voce, the

departmental seminar, or graduation ceremony – the only routes available

for understanding how anthropological culture is inculcated into students?

Is the role of the supervisor as mentor pivotal in the successful completion

of a Ph.D? Or is this more of a master/apprentice relationship? Does this

proc ess maintain its relevance in a globalised field and with instant virtual

access to experts from other institutions anywhere in the world? Such issues

have been of interest to both students and faculty within the anthropology

discipline, in particular, and the social sciences more generally.

In this article I will present a range of experiences of graduate socialisation that have been discussed in past articles in the journal Anthropology Matters. These are the experiences of social anthropology Ph.D. students in the United Kingdom. The overarching theme for the article is 'regulating emotions', and the excerpts presented illustrate how Ph.D. students experience and deal with different emotional states that they encounter during the pre-fieldwork, fieldwork and writing up stages. I argue that the way in which these emotional states are handled may be just as important, in terms of gaining a Ph.D., as the increase in knowledge that is the ostensible marker of a completed Ph.D.

Myra H. Strober (2011): Interdisciplinary Conversations. Challenging Habits of Thought

Review by Silvia Rief

Hans Radder (ed.) (2010): The Commodification of Academic Research: Science and the Modern University

Review by Antonino Palumbo

Gabriela Pleschová (ed.) (2010): IT in Action: Stimulating Quality Learning at Undergraduate Students

Review by John Craig

Les Back (2010-11): Academic Diary, http://www.academic-diary.co.uk/

Sally Fincher, Janet Finlay, Isobel Falconer, Helen Sharp and Josh Tenenberg (2008-11): The Share Project, http://www.sharingpractice.ac.uk/homepage.html

Review by Dorothy Sheridan and Barry Stierer

Sabine Hikel (ed.): Leaving Academia: Offering Resources for Academic Leavers and Accounting for the Phenomenon of Brain Drain in Academia, http://www.leavingacademia.com/

Review by Gabriela Edlinger

Commentaries on issues raised by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska's Academically Adrift

A wide variety of British universities are expanding efforts to attract international students. This article argues that higher education's implicit claim to all-inclusive 'universality' may hereby be challenged by subsequent issues of cultural particularity. Here I set to conceptualise possible differences in the learning culture of Asian international students through a Confucian-Socratic framework. The Socratic method, our archetypal Occidental model, is traditionally seen as an experiential learner-centred pedagogy that values creativity and intellectual independence. But the Confucian approach, the archetypal Oriental exemplar, is normally presented as a didactic teaching-centred pedagogy with greater emphasis on strategic, directed thinking. I conclude that refl ection in these ways may lead to a culturally sensitive form of education and also help identify the epistemological and ontological dimensions that enhance a more flexible approach to teaching and learning.

This article is based on anthropological fieldwork undertaken at two elite universities in Beijing. It addresses the paradoxical situation of the many instances of suicide among Chinese elite university students in Beijing, which constitute a public secret. The pressure of education weighs heavily on the shoulders of China's only child in each family, known as the generation of little emperors and little empresses. Since the 1980s, the suzhi jiaoyu reforms (education for quality) have involved various attempts to reduce the pressure of education. However, simultaneously the aim is to increase the competitiveness of individuals. Drawing on existential and phenomenological thought, I suggest that the discourse seems to objectify and quantify a concern for well-being, rather than recognising its intersubjective character. Finally, I argue that the suicides are controversial since they are seen as a form of social criticism.

We have been investigating universities in our own countries for many years and are now turning our attention to exploring alternatives to current reforms. As part of these investigations, we spent two days of interviews and meetings at Mondragón, a town in Gipúzkoa in the Spanish Basque Country.

Mondragón is at the centre of one of the largest groups of co-operatives in the world and in 1997 set up what is probably the only co-operative university in existence. This highly successful university has a solidary economy, effective methods of knowledge generation and transfer, and is expanding. Among its unique features are flat hierarchies and forms of self-management, community engagement and student participation built on an overall concept of the solidarity of the stakeholders.

Annie Vinokur and Carole Sigman (eds) (2010) L’enseignement supérieur entre nouvelle gestion publique et crise systémique

Review by Eli Thorkelson

Michèle Lamont (2009) How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

Review by Steve Fuller