Scholars without borders? Not quite

By Melonie Fullick. The term “talent market” has always seemed vaguely obnoxious to me. Maybe it’s the extraction and objectification of “talent” as something apart from those who might have it and use it, and transformation into a product available for sale. Maybe it’s the fact that “talent” used in this way reminds me of a circus or sideshow (not without reason). Or perhaps it’s just that it’s another term like “creatives”, which is being mobilised in an increasingly pervasive rhetoric about who, or what, is most desirable in the “new” economy (what fate awaits the non-talented?). In any case, the “talent market” certainly isn’t a “free market”, if such a thing is possible in any context. I’ve had multiple recent reminders of this fact. One example that stands out is something I mentioned in my last post, regarding the HASTAC panel I helped organise. Two of our panel members were unable to attend in person, one because of a lack of funding and the other because of problems obtaining a visa in time. Read more...