Filed under: New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking | Tags: ethical issues with open access, knowledge shraing systems, sharing knowledge, why not open access
(by way of Max’s twitter feed)
If you haven’t already, check out Kimberly Christen’s recent article “Access and Accountability: The Ecology Of Information Sharing in the Digital Age“, published in Anthropology Now. Then check out the website referred to in the article.
The essay addresses the importance of respecting different norms for sharing information. She introduces the idea of creating knowledge sharing protocols that respect existing “ethical systems”. Her work is one of the best examples I’ve found that considers anthropological sensitivities in relation to open access:
“As users maneuver through the site they can access information about specific places, their cultural significance and history. But within each area a random sampling of content is tagged with protocols that disturb their viewing. As a visitor begins to get acquainted with a place, a video clip may stop halfway through because the material is restricted by gender, or audio of a song may fade in and out because elements are restricted to only those who have been ritually initiated, or a photo may be only half visible because someone in the photo has died.
In every case, users must grapple with their own biases about information freedom and knowledge sharing online. After each restriction pops up with a short textual explanation, an animation plays describing the Warumungu protocols for that specific type of content. The site is designed to frustrate Internet users who function out of an “information wants to be free” paradigm—that is, those who expect that clicking on something or searching for information should necessarily result in unrestricted access to the materials they find. Our goal was to use the medium itself as a means of reflecting on the limits of the Internet to value other knowledge systems, and at the same time challenge people to take seriously different types of information distribution and production systems.”
(Christen 2009)
Another professor of mine shared similar concerns about open access sharing in an interview I held with him. I don’t have permission to post the discussion here, but he mentioned how he had done fieldwork among a group that considered certain kinds of information should be shared during certain seasons. For this reason he was unable to publish certain stories he had collected, as it would be disrespectful to the groups desire to share the information at certain times.
Big thanks to Kimberly Christen for a great article, and for stressing the valuable contributions anthropology can bring to the open access debate.
Related:
“Two Sides to Sharing Knowledge”
http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/sharing-knowledge-open-source-and-open-access/
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", Doing ethnography online, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking, What is anthropology? | Tags: ethnographic method, online ethnography, othering, practice theory
In his book “Body and Soul”, Loic Wacquant discusses the way he approached his research on boxing and the ‘universe’ around it:
“The other virtue of an approach based on participant observation (which in this case, is better characterized as an “observant participation”) in a run-of-the-mill gym is that the materials thus produced do not suffer from the “ecological fallacy” that affects most available studies and accounts of the Manly art. Thus none of the statements reported here were expressly solicited, and the behaviors described are those of the boxer in his “natural habitat”, not the dramatized and highly codified (re)presentation that he likes to give of himself in public, and that journalistic reports and novels retranslate and magnify according to their specific canons.” (Wacquant 2004:6)
Part of ‘being there’ is to engage people in a more natural setting. More natural than say, sitting directly in front of a microphone. The day to day interactions can ‘correct’ or balance out representations based on ’solicited questions’. Boxers, he argues, play up to stereotypes when interviewed (surveys won’t cut it, he is pushing ethnography to sociologists). His engaged long term participation allowed him another position – that of the apprentice. As an apprentice, there is less emphasis on general ‘otherness’ which avoids numerous issues of representation. He is a boxer, not an academic studying boxing from ‘afar’. Also a key point is that people can be represented, and can represent themselves, differently in the context of public media.
Applying these ideas to this research project – and to other ethnographic studies done online, we can ask, “is the blogsphere both public and natural?” A well disciplined ethnographer might argue that it is impossible to observe online interactions in person, without invading their homes and watching them type. Who are they? How old? What gender? Without knowing these things the interactions will lack necessary context. Following Wacquant’s argument that people represent themselves differently in public media, we can also ask what ways people represent themselves differently online. [link to studies on identity formation online]
This ties in to my chapter on “new ways of speaking”, and on knowing ones audience. I found I represented myself quite strangely on an academic list serv. Writing to hundreds of Ph.D’s somehow motivated me to write very differently, with more attitude, than I might normally. The language I used, call it pretentious, changed and to date I can barely re-read it.
Similarly, when I first started the blog, I would allow myself to comment on other peoples blogs more freely. The comment’s I would leave would be immediate gut reactions to posts. Sometimes I’d just be trying to make a joke, some stupid one-liner. And guess what, later on it stayed there as a stupid joke. It would have been fine in passing, but dumb jokes stick around forever in the blogsphere.
On many of the academic listservs I participate on, emotional outbursts frequently occur. I was relieved to see other people embarrassing themselves as much as I had, and eventually I got used to it, realizing we are all human beings who spazz out, act irrational, miss our morning coffee etc. Being able to send messages instantly means that those spazzy emotional outbursts are bound to get archived. So be it. Does this change the way I present myself? Absolutely. Can I avoid future embarrassment online? I doubt it. It’s a different place, but it’s still real life. I have no doubt that after going through such experiences, that online actions are every bit as real and embodied as offline ones.
Going back to Wacquant’s introduction, he discusses the first chapters goals:
“A reflection on an experience of apprenticeship in progress, this first part of the book pursues a triple objective. The first is to contribute precise and detailed ethnographic data, produced by means of direct observation and intensive participation, on a social universe that is all the more unknown for being the object of widely disseminated representations.”
I am an apprentice anthropologist, a student-researcher if you will, engaging myself online. Cultural anthropology is widely mis recognized, misinterpreted, and basically misunderstood outside the discipline. Anthropology bloggers are a new public face of anthropology, (as are the Human Terrain military anthropologists). That cultural anthropology is not well understood reflects a poor relationship between mass media and anthropologists. Perhaps anthropologists were irrelevant and uninteresting, or perhaps they were ignored because they were saying something unpopular. Thankfully Anthropology bloggers are playing a role in re-representing anthropology in the mass media, as the chapter, “Human Terrain System meet the Blogsphere” will detail.
The blogsphere is so widely disseminated, that it too can ‘mis-represent’. The blogsphere is filled with unedited drafts, drunken rants, emotional outbursts, passionate engagement, and yes bias. Already I am guilty of misrepresentation to some extent. When I blogged Johannes Fabian’s conference at Concordia, who would have guessed I would dominate Google’s index for a period of at least three weeks. As one discussion among many its contribution would be great, but as the only discussion available it can cause trouble. In other words, you need to be tapping into a crowd.
[link to online community and personal networks -> "tapping into wisdom of the crowds", and filtering information].
[moving all these undeveloped crap posts to Diigo if it works out]
References:
Wacquant, Loic. 2006. Body & Soul. Oxford University Press.
Filed under: Engaging anthropology, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking
I just found an interesting review of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s book, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. In it the author criticizes Tsing’s literary style, arguing that it will fail to convince the right audiences:
“Despite the interesting stories she weaves together on topics of considerable environmental and social significance, Tsing’s motivation to be “a hair in the flour” (p. 206)–that is, to “speak truth to power” or to be a fly in the ointment–is unfortunately and severely undermined by her own writing style (which has nonetheless become clearer and considerably less dense than in her first book, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen). Coming from the humanities end of the American anthropological continuum, her “evocation” and clever literary turns-of-phrase will simply put off most of those who need to read of these things–foresters, ecologists, policy-makers, and the like. (I would argue that the usual culprit of postmodernism is not the main issue here.)”
I’m too tired to comment properly, but there are some important links between audience and activism that this comment brings up. The reviewer clearly holds contempt for anthropology’s literary side, but maybe he has a point. Are policy planners, foresters, and ecologists the most important people to target to bring about change? Is Tsing’s audience a small group of ‘literary’ academics? Or is the writing style an appeal to a broader public? I haven’t read her first work, but Wadley points out she took on a “less dense” writing style. Who influences policy planners, foresters, and ecologists?
So many audiences… makes advocacy work through scholarship a real challenge. He continues:
“Over the next few years, like James Scott’s “resistance” and “legibility,” it will launch a spate of writing using “friction” and her other neologisms; one will not be able to attend the annual meeting of the AAA without bumping into numerous presentations about it. But will it become the hair in the flour that it should be? I fear not.”
And Tsing made this point, that she had misgivings of academic scholarship being a meaningful/effective vehicle for activism. I suppose the difference is Wadley wants to target different people to make things happen. And yes, I’ll throw “friction” into the thesis somewhere. lol.
Reed L. Wadley. 2007. “Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2005, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection.(Book review).” Borneo Research Bulletin. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-7925843/Anna-Lowenhaupt-Tsing-2005-Friction.html
[If audience = academics, does scholarship work as an agent of change?]
[Don't mask 'getting a degree' with 'saving the world'] -> anthro’s often produce more than just a thesis. The act of being there can be positive (or negative). It’s wrong to assume the ‘thesis’ is the most important outcome of a research project. Journal articles, theses, etc –> academic audience, but during the research more important actions/dialogs occur.
Filed under: Engaging anthropology, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking, online collaboration | Tags: activism, marketing research, popularizing scholarship, pure research, selling out to academia, selling out to popularity
Academia is often referred to as an ‘ivory tower’, where walls seperate wizards from commoners. Wizards you see, like to speak to other wizards. Of course this is a huge generalization and many academics… sorry wizards… have broken out from the walls to find recognition outside. But should they have to? As my research has progressed I have had a number of discussions with academics who do not see any benefit to pushing ones work out from the university. Is it a concern if a researchers work is uninteresting? What criteria can we put on ‘good’ research? Who should benefit?
the positions
There is an idea that all scientific knowledge is important, and that we can never really know what will be important down the road. Just because it’s popular now doesn’t mean its ‘better’. As opposed to pushing for more popular research projects, most teachers I’ve encountered have recommended I find and stick to something I find stimulating. What’s popular today probably won’t be tomorrow.
Many cultural anthropologists, and probably sociologists, have been pushing for more collaborative research practices (what other disciplines push for this?). All academics are involved in collaboration, ie: they read and comment on each others work, prop each other up, etc… But in the context of cultural anthropology it’s about collaborating with communities and people involved in the research project. The idea is that social science can work to benefit the communities involved just as much as the academy. In order to do this a research project must remain flexible to other interests. Ie: your idea was to study kinship in a small remote community, but when you get there you learn the community is being pushed off their land for a huge hydro project. What do you do? Stick to your guns and study their kinship patterns, or talk with the community and do a project that helps to inform and raise awareness of their land claim issue?
Whoa, isn’t that activism? Yup. So am I lost as a social scientist? Perhaps. But such is the way of academia – researchers follow trends, and jump on bandwagons [like interdisciplinary studies of the internet for example]. The fight between ‘pure’ research (popularity? who cares.) and activism (popularity helps) has been a long one – as Tsing describes:
“In the late 1990s, scholarly trends were moving away from an endorsement of activist projects and experiments. Practitioners and scholars often gravitated to different styles for discussing programs. Where practitioners focussed on the strengths and weaknesses of particular projects, scholars tended to place these projects in longer histories and wider geographies of knowledge and power.” (Tsing 2004:264)
And the fight continues among students and teachers today. The program I am in is setup to give students a taste of each ’side’. For us students it’s like a game of chess, where we are pawns. Who’s perspective will win? Probably neither, or at least no one has yet. The battle itself seems to be whats important. Tsing describes how such a tug of war worked out in the end:
“In the process of the discussion, I found myself provoked to think differently. On the one hand, scholarly colleagues challenged me to consider the real dangers of too easy a generosity toward programs for “community” empowerment. On the other hand, community advocates made me consider whether scholarship had stopped working well as a public interlocutor.” (p.264)
So these opposing perspectives can come together quite nicely in particular contexts. The ongoing war in the academy has a transforming effect on the way researchers see things. I can never quite find my bearings, and I find it reassuring to know the constant back and forth and the dramatic oppositions are part of the game. Further, they aren’t really in conflict. They often go hand in hand (ala, research online communities and publishing, and advocate OA.).
—
Now where was I going again? Ah yes. The audience. As Tsing comments, scholarship has trouble generating public interest which makes it questionably useful as a tool for activism. But this isn’t always the case, and when academics do get popular they are sure to draw fire. For one, academics have little experience marketing themselves. Because of this, they have very little control over what topics become popular. Popularity in turn has a powerful influence in funding circles. So getting an audience can also be away of fighting for money, and this is one thing most academics agree is a bad thing (along with selling yourself out to the military).
Over at Teaching Anthropology, Pamthropologist discusses the effect of public opinion on research, looking at what kinds of research become popular and how. Specifically they talk about how public interest can skew and guide research (just as much as a hundred million dollar Minerva program, a pentagon/military program funding academic research). She quotes the original listserv post by Bob Muckle, who wrote:
Not unexpectedly, as almost all lists of top discoveries in archaeology are apt to do, they describe stories that tend to appeal to the public’s imagination of the things archaeologists do, with a clear bias towards pyramids, well-known civilizations, historical figures, and human biological remains.
…
I think that as the media itself is increasingly driving archaeological research, especially that which focuses on things that make good television, archaeologists are going be faced with increasing challenges connvicning people of the value of lithic waste flakes, potsherds, and rusty bits of metal.
So here the need to appeal to public opinion is a concern for researchers, just as the lack of relevance to the public in scholarship is a concern for advocates. Audience here is one of the big differences, where we can find a kind of “friction” discussed by Tsing.
So back to the blogsphere and the internet – how will appealing to ones collaborators change research? Are there pitfalls to encounter? This ties into my previous post on reader interaction where I discussed the role reader comments can have in skewing the image readers have of a blog. More importantly however, I think blogging ones research is a way to take back some of the foreign media’s control over what research becomes popular. If academics got more excited about their work in public, I’m sure that passion would transfer to others. Blogging research can help correct the bias emerging out of popular science publications like National Geographic. But that is also asking academics to market themselves, and who wants academia to be a popularity contest?
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2004. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press.
random notes from reading:
[Universal of the day: Montreal is cold.
Particular detail of the day: Montreal is cold.]
Universal + Particular = Montreal is cold.
See how well they work together?
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", A Changing Anthropology, Doing ethnography online, Making research accessible, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking | Tags: anthropology, ethnography, online community, research blogging, sharing knowledge, thesis proposal
Getting lost is part of a great adventure, but finding a path again took quite some effort. Part of this involved rewriting the introduction to my thesis proposal, as a way of tightening up the projects goals.
—
INTRODUCTION
This research will examine how the internet is fueling change in anthropology, looking at how anthropologists share knowledge online. In this way the research will focus on the culture of publishing in anthropology – paying special attention to the role of new communication technologies. Through online participation, interviews and small surveys, the research will explore what is unique about new communication mediums and how they are changing anthropology. As an ethnographic project it will explore ways of participating and engaging online communities of anthropologists. Unlike traditional projects, this research will be shared publicly on a blog as a way of engaging others to share their thoughts and opinions while the research progresses. The blog will serve as a field site created to invite collaborators to share their own perspectives, and in doing so it will explore opportunities and challenges of online collaboration. This experience will serve as an interesting backdrop to investigate traditional publishing. What happens to anthropology when it serves different audiences?
To inform this question the project will investigate the motivations researchers have for publishing in particular venues. Who are they writing for, and where? A series of stories, informed through interviews, will detail individual researchers publishing experiences. This will form a backdrop to look at new publication opportunities online, and it will investigate the choices anthropologists make to disseminate and develop their ideas. This will touch on issues of peer review, authority, tenure opportunity and discipline, as well as issues of audience, distribution and production of anthropological work, accessibility, and style. It will highlight new participants, new audiences, and new ways of speaking in anthropology.
The research will be carried out online and at Concordia University. Blog interactions, interviews with researchers, and email surveys, will serve to inform current issues surrounding the dissemination of anthropological work. A major goal of this project will be to engage anthropologists in debates surrounding public engagement and accessibility to knowledge.
—
Filed under: Making research accessible, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking, Why do we need open access? | Tags: censorship, net neutrality, open access, sharing knowledge
I just got a Facebook update from Resistance Studies Magazine. In it, editor Christopher Kullenberg discusses the issue of access to information and internet regulation:
“ – For centuries the printing press has not only been a gate-keeper for the distribution of knowledge, it has also been fragile towards censorship, and highly dependent on economical interests. Of course, some actors in the media industries wish to conserve this order. The internet allows for the Resistance Studies Magazine to distribute articles globally, without spending more than a few Euros to host our site. Academic knowledge does not have to be trapped in the claws of anti-market institutions, such as the great publishing houses. We can destabilize these power-relations by way of creativity and sharing. As long as the Internet is uncensored, which unfortunately is not the case, not in Sweden, and not in other countries either, anyone can download our articles for free. In the long run, this European Union directive will lead only to building protective walls against the free transfer of knowledge.”
Just tagging these quotes away to support the upcoming thesis writing marathon. Be sure to check out the magazine online, and if your interested they also have a call for papers detailed on the magazines website (which happens to make great use of blog style – posting frequent information updates).
Filed under: New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking | Tags: anthropology, professional blogs, unprofessional blogs, writing in public
It’s been a rough week for the faithful here in anthro-blog world. Blogger spats spurred by the ability to write fast and inability to delete brought a quick end to one blog I followed. And another blog is pondering the idea of changing the blog into an open journal.
Yes that’s right – the blog vs. journal debate is back! Would you rather post your work on a blog, or in an “open journal”. What motivates the preference? A few quick thoughts -
Not everyone appreciates or feels the need to be unprofessional! Blogging can be a reaction to stiff academic culture, but many people want that professional identity to be carried and developed online. For them, there is concern that blogging their ideas would work against that image. They would prefer to post their work in a journal, with less responsibilty for frequent posting and discussion. Another possibility here is, they are happy to make their work available, but they don’t want to commit to regular interactions about it. Or they choose to make these interactions elsewhere, like in academic conferences.
Others take issue against any sort of professional label being dumped on them! Bloggers can react negatively to the idea that they are “anthropology bloggers”, preferring instead to blog from a personal space. More than one blogger I’ve interviewed has expressed this concern, arguing their blogs were not really “anthropology blogs”.
This points to the wonderful flexibility blogging gives, since it’s not a genre at all. It’s a writing/publishing platform and that’s it. So it leaves a lot of room for all sorts of more specific categorizations for those who chose to do so. The one thing that differentiates the blog generally however, is that it revolves around self-publishing without peer review!
Blogs are a space to express yourself more freely. Here’s to keeping faith that free expression is a good thing, and that learning to write in public is a worthy academic goal. [and learning to write to a broader public, which I'll play with someday!]
[Don't you dare label me] –> don’t professionalize my blog
[but.. it's just a blog... I want my work in a journal!] –> blog is too unprofessional!
[this blog is both professional and unprofessional. Deal with it.]
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", Making research accessible, New audiences, new participants, new ways of speaking, online collaboration
As part of my research into publishing and anthropology, I’m looking for stories about getting published.
I’d love to hear about your first publishing experience (especially if you are an anthropologist, but I welcome stories from all academics). What inspired you to try and publish an article? At what point in your academic career did you start on it? What obstacles did you run into? How did the article change during the review process?
I’d also love to hear about responses to the publication. How was the response? Who did you write the article for, and where did you chose to publish it? Did you decide on place to publish, or a topic, first?
Who do you write for, and who do you want a response from?
Do you ever want to edit those publications? Update/fix/correct them?
If this stirs some memories, please share them here!
