Scientific Career Trajectories – How the US-Academic Field Affects the Researcher's Habitus

It has been shown that there exist crucial inequalities in the distribution of financial resources among US-universities. With Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital universities can be described as actors competing for economic and symbolic capital what is also reflected in raking positions. Research has also indicated that the level of prestige of US-universities plays an important role for academic career opportunities of PhD candidates. Based on Bourdieu’s field theory I (1) constructed an academic field that indicates these inequalities on a macro level by using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to identify different prestigious groups of US-universities. In a second (2) step, data on researchers’ career trajectories have been analyzed with event history analysis to detect significant factors of career paths according to the prestige of a researchers university. Finally (3) interviews with researchers shed light on different formations of habitus according to their position within the academic field.