Ranked epistemic life: how governance, position, and becoming shape the meaning of research in Chinese universities

This study examines how academics in Chinese research-intensive universities conceptualise the meaning, purpose, and value of research within stratified institutional environments. Drawing on interviews with 27 lecturers, associate professors, and full professors, the analysis reveals that research is not a singular professional activity but a ranked epistemic life shaped by governance pressures, positional hierarchies, and evolving forms of scholarly becoming. Rather than remaining stable across career stages, understandings of what research is, what it is for, and what makes it valuable shift in patterned and hierarchical ways: from aspirational compliance among lecturers, to ambivalent negotiation among associate professors, to stewardship-oriented commitments among full professors. The paper advances conceptual insight by theorising academic rank as an epistemic regime that organises differentiated horizons of purpose, legitimacy, and agency. It introduces a three-part model of ranked epistemic life, comprising epistemic governance, epistemic positioning, and epistemic becoming, to explain how governance logics, symbolic hierarchies, and subjective meaning-making co-produce stratified intellectual orientations toward research. Situated within a rapidly reforming Chinese context, the study demonstrates how performance-based accountability reshapes the conditions under which research is understood and valued, and contributes a broader theoretical lens for examining the differentiated epistemic lives of academics in contemporary higher education.