Graduating Tactics: theorizing plagiarism as consumptive practice SUE SALTMARSH Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia Email: sue.saltmarsh@aces.mq.edu.au ABSTRACT Plagiarism is a growing concern to educators in the tertiary sector, although currently its appearances in the higher education literature have predominantly been concerned with its prevention and management. This article draws on the poststructuralist theory of consumption developed by Michel de Certeau, to consider plagiarism as a tactic deployed by consumers in their attempts to negotiate the demands of an increasingly commodi®ed tertiary education sector. The article interrogates institutional structures of power through which consumers of tertiary education are attracted, progress and are occasionally excluded, to argue that the tertiary sector's subscription to market ideologies makes educational institutions complicit in the production of a climate in which the illicit appropriation of the work of others is deployed by students as a tactic to achieve educational success. Theorizing plagiarism as a consumptive practice is a necessary step in developing adequate institutional responses to plagiarism designed to facilitate student's negotiation of curriculum, rather than negotiation of institutional strategies. Introduction The tell-tale signs were all there. An essay which appeared to have only the most tenuous link to the assignment question, paragraphs whose content appeared disconnected and out of place, shifts in register and syntax which seemed as though a different writer was responsible for each paragraph, ¯awless (albeit inconsistent) English from a student I knew to struggle considerably with spoken English, and the curious mention of Brazil in the third sentence of a paper on the secondary science curriculum in Australia. In the second semester of convening postgraduate units offered in online mode, yet another plagiarized essay lay before me on the desk. Over the following days, the by now familiar process for addressing the issue had been put in place: a meeting called between myself, the student and the Head of Department, the sources of the plagiarized material documented, the relevant paperwork completed, and the grade `Fail' entered as the student's ®nal mark. My growing sense of unease at the increasing percentage of postgraduate students whose illicit appropriation of the work of others was putting a whole new spin on the term ISSN 0309-877X(print)/ISSN 1469-9486 (online)/04/040445-10 ã 2004 NATFHE DOI: 10.1080/0309877042000298911 Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol. 28, No. 4, November 2004