Filed under: "Writes of Passage" | Tags: anthropology, fiction, fieldwork, thesis writing
[to explain, since this post is not very self-explanatory, this is a story about how two sections of my thesis have changed drastically over the summer - one section, on self-archiving, part of a larger discussion on open access, discussed the Mana'o Self Archiving Repository for Anthropology, which coincidentally, a day after writing this story, officially announced it is shutting its doors. It is also about my exposure to all sorts of different kinds of anthropology on the OAC. And yes, its been turned into a ridiculous story with absolutely no regard to objectivity or science. Enjoy.]
The thesis could, err… should?… have been finished in June. The topic was clear and arguments were starting to take shape. Yes, it should have been finished.
But as I was writing I was hit in the face with a tweet, which while not quite a lightning strike, ended up burning just the same. It was a news flash – one announcing the new Open Anthropology Cooperative.
 Lemmings by Surreal Art surrealart.com |
Within a matter of weeks a thousand members had signed up to the cooperative, and with the encouragement of my thesis supervisor who had sent me an overzealous welcome to the OAC, I began to explore. A thousand anthropologists in a room? Yes, very exciting. And a fantastic example an idea I had been developing in the thesis: “anthropology in public”. Funny thing is my supervisor bailed out on it after a week, being the wiseman he is. |
Through the OAC I have been exposed to all sorts of anthropology. Kinds of anthropology no parent would ever allow their children to witness, and certainly not study. Yes, the OAC hit me head on, and it knocked me right out. Or perhaps I dove in head first and forgot to check how deep the water was. Either way I ended up unconscious floating out into an ocean. When I woke up I found I had drifted far away from home.
| I woke up in the south of France. The weather was perfect, the wine was fantastic, and the girls were of course stunning. Anthropology you say? Okay then, let’s get back to the story – no, not the one about the girls. And not the one about the OAC, although I’ll share some of it here (that post will come very soon, once I get home). No, this story is about being delayed, and about why such delays have been exceptionally lucky. |
 |
As I said, the OAC hit me pretty hard. All sorts of emotions and reactions stirred as I wandered its classrooms. At first I was ecstatic to see so many anthropologists jump into the water. The thought of thousands of anthropologists sharing ideas openly was incredibly motivating – but I was pushed through that excitement pretty quick. Maybe it was the waves.
“Silent Scream” by Diane Dobson Barton. 15×16″ (38×40.6cm). Acrylic on canvas. |
Soon I realized that there were hundreds of shadow-anthropologists around me. Avatars of sorts, but with their mouths sewed shut. I wondered if with the hit to the head I’d lost my hearing. Thankfully a few voices came into focus. Some of these voices I’d encountered before in the blogsphere, others perhaps in my dreams. I listened for a while then decided to sing a few songs of my own. Others chimed in, and pretty soon there was almost a chorus playing along. Whale songs? As I said, I’d been hit pretty hard. |
That feeling faded too. Soon the voices wouldn’t stop. I kept hearing the same voices over and over. I shut my eyes and listened carefully hoping to pick up on the chorus again but a louder, harsher voice dominated my ears. I screamed loudly hoping it would go away. It didn’t. My head started to pound, and I passed out again. This time with an empty bottle of rose (from Bandol).
| I woke up confused and again on a beach. I felt strange, as I probably should have after dreaming so vividly about an anthropology cooperative. Or was it the rose? I could see a small island a short distance from shore. A red neon sign glowed above it, reading “Repository”. I remember stuffing messages into bottles and casting them off into the waves, hoping they would reach the little island. I remember it being a magnificent paradise, an oasis of hope. But I couldn’t remember if I’d corked the bottles, and I worried they never quite kept float. |
 |
And then the strangest thing happened. The big red light went out, and with it I could have sworn I saw the island start to sink.
Yes, this brings us back to my fortunate delay. Well, in time anyways.
I looked out again over the ocean but everything had disappeared. I couldn’t see the island. My head still pounded. Where did those lights go?
Strolling along the beach as one does in the south of France, I found three bottles washed up ashore, all corked. I opened them, tearing out the messages inside. Each paper was titled “Mana’o”. A clue perhaps. But where was that island again? I felt uneasy but comfortable. The air was warm and the sand soft. I lay down, resting my head in the sand.
 |
Then I remembered. I was on an important quest. Travelers had warned me not to stray from the road, and no matter what, that I would tempted away from the path. They had warned me to take notes, to write as many details as possible in a magical book which they called “the field”. With those notes they said I’d find my way home. I surprised myself, looking at it, that I’d even organized the field into numerous chapters. |
Like the notes in the bottles I’d found on the beach, one chapter read “Mana’o”. I opened the book to that chapter, and before me was a beautiful rendition of an island and with it a picture of the glowing sign “repository” that had disappeared. But none of the field notes made sense. Where was this place? How would I ever find it now that I could not see it? Was it even real?
And so I set off once again, wandering in search of a road, and I started writing again – this time painting the larger ocean.
“all those who wander, are not lost.” were the words of another traveler I’d met somewhere along the way.
“Bullshit” I thought.
I was bloody hell lost, and worst of all, I was lost in France. And my head hurt like hell…
[all that = OAC has proven to be an exceptional, and exceptionally depressing, field site - which while sometimes feeling like a kick in the face, has proven to be quite rewarding - funny how being kicked in the face can be appealing. I'll be developing this much more soon, as after a few months of existence, some of the more terrible things have turned into quite positive ones... and if you haven't already go check out the OAC - i'd love to hear your thoughts!]
[my chapter on self-archiving proved to be way too naive, given that the Mana'o anthropology repository has gone under - servers broken, and manpower lacking, and well, overall willingness to keep it afloat - nonexistant... or at least.. i don't know the story and hence can't write about it hence its a wonderful thing to have delayed the thesis over the summer. ]
[sun and wine are nice. taking a break from anthropology lets you see just how unexciting it is, which is good when you are trying not to exaggerate in your thesis].
[all images copyright by their original owners - which each image links to...]
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.
The semester is in full swing and I’m challenged to maintain a strong focus on my thesis while engaging in other classes. And as much as I’d love to keep a relaxed, care-free strategy of writing about what interests me, I do need to produce a thesis. My supervisor has been extremely patient with me as I explore tangent, possibly irrelevant topics, but having spoken with other graduates and hearing their thesis writing experiences, I can only assume that this is the calm before the storm.
Planning for a hurricane then, where will I take this blog and the thesis?
- a little more data collection and analysis, and bring more material from interviews and surveys to discussions on this blog. To avoid issues of confidentiality and all that, I’ve been blogging about the blogsphere, and leaving my interviews private. I can however carefully take issues I learn from the interviews onto the blog, I just haven’t processed the material yet (sitting on a tape recorder.. uggh).
- In the writing ethnography class I am taking we are discussing the use of stories/narratives as a way to share ones field experience. I’ll try and share some of the drama I’ve gone through participating online using this method.
- Find out all there is to know about open access and thesis publishing in Canada – differences from U.S. universities? Do all Canadian academics publishing a thesis maintain the copyright? What choices to masters students have? -> pay option for OA publishing in ProQuest.
- Send my little survey out to all you readers, and beg for even more participation.
- Organize the data into concepts, outline chapter ideas and general logic flow for the thesis.
- Fix up sloppy posts on the blog. Refine ideas, find the good shit.
- Bored yet? Sorry it’s a thesis.
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: "Writes of Passage", Self-archiving: How and Why? | Tags: key perspectives ltd, open access, self archiving, self archiving statistics
[some notes I thought I'd share]
Reading Response:
Open access self-archiving: An author study (2005)
Swan, Alma and Sheridan Brown, Key Perspectives Limited
Key Perspectives Ltd “was set up in 1996 to provide high quality market research and consultancy services to the scholarly information industry.”
This survey involved 1296 respondents, the responses from an email list of 25,000.
In part deals with “…author experiences and opinions on publishing in open access journals…” (p1)
reasons for publishing OA:
- “principle of free access for all”
- seen as way to reach larger audience
- way to publish more rapidly
- or even considered more prestigious than toll journals
reasons for not publishing oa:
- “unfamiliar with any [oa journals] in their field”
- no OA journal covering field/topic
This study, one of many Key Perspectives has produced, focuses on self-archiving.
Ways to self-archive:
- institutional repository
- subject-based repository
- personal/institutional website → most popular
“Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst the most prolific authors, that is, those who publish the largest number of papers.” (p6)
“There is still a substantial proportion of authors unaware of the possibility of providing open access to their work by self-archiving. Of the authors who have not yet self-archived any articles, 71% remain unaware of the option.” (p6)
“Nevertheless, the evidence there is to hand points to the likelihood that the peaceful – and perhaps mutually beneficial – co-existence of traditional journals and open access archives is entirely possible; in biological terms, mutualism, rather than parasitism or symbiosis, might best describe the relationship.” (p11)
As the recent release of Anthropology Now magazine shows, there are still new journals/publication outlets being formed under the traditional tole-access business model. Anthropology Now seems to give some OA to articles as they first appear, but controversy abounds as to its true nature given that it also has a subscription page and asks for help promoting it to libraries. See Jason Baird Jackson’s post on his blog.
“in the vast majority of cases (over 90% is the latest estimate9,10) the publisher expressly permits an author to self-archive their own final draft – the version that was finally submitted to the publisher after peer review revisions and recommendations have been incorporated.” (p10)
“We know from Key Perspectives Ltd the work reported here and elsewhere17,18 that authors publish primarily to communicate their research findings to their peers, so that they can be built upon in future research efforts. Depositing an article at the time of acceptance for publication also means that the inevitable delay at the publisher before the article finally appears in the journal is immaterial – the article is already available to anyone who wants to read it and use it for their work. The research cycle is thus shortened. And of course, the article is available to all interested parties, not just to readers in institutions that can afford the journal in which it is published.” (p12)
Interesting to incorporate anthropology specific arguments for opening up readership – “speaking back at anthropologists”
“Previous surveys by KPL1,2,17,18 and others22 have indicated that there is a substantial level of ignorance within the scholarly community with respect to open access, both open access journals and self-archiving. Those respondents who had not self-archived their work by any means were asked whether they were aware of the possibility of providing open access to their work in this way.
Twenty nine percent of them were aware of this and 71% were not.” (p 50)
“80% of self-archivers have deposited their articles themselves; in 19% of cases the library staff archived articles for them and in 10% of cases this was carried out by students or assistants.”
Go assistants go!
“Some employers, such as Queensland University of Technology in Australia29, and some research funders (the Wellcome Foundation has announced a mandatory self-archiving policy for its own grant-holders21) see the benefit of providing open access by self-archiving to the research carried out under their auspices and have elected to mandate this activity. On the whole, though, employers and research funders have as yet not chosen to go down this path. Only 4% of the self-archivers in this present study say that they are required to make their work open access in this way, and 86% of these people are from Southampton University School of Electronics & Computer Science which has had a mandate in place since January 2003.” (p69)
I have been pretty focussed on individual choices, and individual publishing experiences. Perhaps I’ve been too focussed on authors themselves, and should spend more time looking at institutional policies as mentioned above. If institutions begin to mandate OA, than it won’t matter what pushes anthropologists to publish OA or not, since they will have to. I wonder what kinds of deliberation have gone on at Concordia about this.
“A lack of awareness is also seen with respect to open access-related issues generally, as has been shown in previous studies.” (p77)
Hopefully this project can help scratch at the awareness issue…
“The more prolific an author – that is, the more articles s/he publishes – the more likely they are to self-archive their work on websites or in institutional repositories. It is likely, therefore, that as greater numbers of the most productive authors become aware of self-archiving the number of articles in open access repositories will rise quite steeply.
One teacher I have who has been a very generous collaborator is also a prolific author. It’s true that he/she has self-archived a large number of articles. This goes against what I said about part-time being more open to self-archiving since their publications didn’t lead to tenure… In this case, more publications -> more self archiving. Also, all self-archiving I’ve seen has been on personal websites – which this study claims is the most popular route. I’ll try and get more people onto Mana’o this week.
The caveat here is that issue of awareness. Awareness of self-archiving amongst those who have not carried out this activity remains low, though scholars in the disciplines of library and information science, computer science, physics and mathematics are better informed than those in other subjects. But there are still many scholars who remain unaware of self-archiving and still others who, though aware, have not elected to undertake the activity, at least so far.” (p78)
This provides some nice support for the advocacy and engagement side of my research project. I’ve succeeded in raising the open access issue with a number of teachers, and will continue to do so.
The amount of material on OA Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown have produced is awesome to say the least. I’ll be commenting more on it soon, but for now I’ll have to settle for scribbled notes and quotes]
Big thanks to Olivier Charboneau for suggesting these articles!
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", Doing ethnography online | Tags: brainstorming, lost in my thesis, refining ones research, writers block
Writers block is one thing, but I’m feeling cursed. Everytime I sit down to fix my original proposal I blank out. The original got a tenuous approval, and has since been returned to me with a list of necessary corrections (ie. I failed to include page number references in my quotes…).
Why a block? because I’m at a point in the research where I need to refine my research strategy to bring it all into focus.
So let’s look at what I’m trying to do and what I have done:
- Explore the culture of publishing in anthropology, focusing on how internet communication technologies are changing the way anthropologists share and develop knowledge. -> I’m learning a lot, but I don’t feel like an expert yet. I think I left this aspect too broad in the proposal and I will try and focus on clearing this up…
- journal publishing -> publish or perish in promotion and tenure review (prestige journals), accessibility arguments (need for open access, inability for universities to maintain full range of journals, inability of those outside academia to read what is written about themselves), gatekeeping (maintaining disciplinary control), audience (Eriksen’s arguments for public presence), copyright law (self archiving rights, creative commons)
- Blogging -> Release Early Release Often (rero). Sharing ideas before publishing to get feedback. Inviting criticism, being open to change. Engaging collaborators. Using the blog as a learning space (how to make it two way). Private/Public dichotomy -> gradient of public and private (ie listserv -> blogsphere, different online spaces). Identity formation in the blogsphere (what is an anthro blog? How do we identify it? Should I blog with my name? Do I want my google identity to be so openly academic? What do I do when I act like a fool and can’t delete my !@#! post? <– why i don’t write enough comments on other bloggers posts)
- Book publishing -> distribution, audience… havent looked into much more here.
- Open Access Publishing and self-archiving -> Exploring process by volunteering time to do the legwork archiving some collaborators publications. I’m also developing a series of narratives around teachers experiences publishing. Why not support open access?
- Motivations behind publishing work. -> building up decent series of interviews with teachers to find out how they got published for the first time, and why they were motivated to do so. Who did they write for? Also section on how the work was received, reviewed (stories about how peer review changed their articles), etc… This is my attempt to bring in “life history”-like perspectives… except I didn’t bother going for a holistic life history, and instead am just going for the publishing history.
- Experiment and contribute to online ethnography -> check. I think using this blog provided an interesting way to develop conversations. It hasn’t always worked, as it depends heavily on the generosity of ones collaborators, and the topics one writes about, and how it is approached.
- Advocate open access publishing. -> check.
Other notes:
- Not all teachers are required or even encouraged to publish in journals, it is most important for teachers on the tenure track.
- Some non-tenured teachers publish anyways, and in my limited interviews these teachers are very open to open access while the tenured ones less so. (pathetically small sample to generalize with.. so consider this a possible hypothesis rather than a result).
- New Participants, New Audiences, New Ways of Speaking
- Audience -> Is writing for a broader public a matter of dumbing things down? -> language, accessibility… teacher -> student and teacher -> teacher, but with blogs we have student -> student, student/teacher -> public, and public -> student/teacher.
- Participants -> kinds of participants, (informants, interlocutors, collaborators, expert, non-expert), -> Lassiter, Marcus, -> collaboration…. —> Online boundaries – community, social networks, disciplinariness, “disciplinary turf wars” as Carl called it.
- Ways of speaking -> blogging culture, issues of academic formalities, issues of political bias and speaking past each other (election as example, studies revealing audiences pick and chose what to read and hence ignore/hide from opposing views). Ways to present anthropology differently -> multimedia, remixing. Fabian’s ethnography as commentary (comments and texts building into virtual archives).
- Anthropology as advocacy -> do we need to find “new” things? Is it really about “gaining knowledge” or could it be more engaged and practical. Who is gaining knowledge? I can learn about self-archiving, but people already know about that. In doing this research I’ve engaged a number of people to think about these issues, and so by doing “research” many people gain knowledge that others already had. Why wouldn’t this be considered good research?
- Research could be more about sharing/advocating ideas than about generating revolutionary new insights… Some feel it’s not about getting information, but more about analysis and comparison. In terms of analyzing data, I have a lot I could do with this blog (word clouds for one). I can talk about where people come from, how posts worked and didn’t, etc… so I have enough data to satisfy the analysis hungry profs, and enough advocacy to satisfy myself and the activists).
- Ways of learning. Collaborative learning processes. Discussion with Pamthropologist and Wesch about classroom management -> value of lecture, value of motivation and interest, value of team work.
One thing I avoided doing was creating categories for this blog. I did this to keep an open mind and see where things went and because I prefer key words to category searches. Now that I have a bunch of posts built up, I can create categories consistent with my thesis proposal.
That I can’t immediately come up with these categories probably reflects the scattered nature of my mind and of my results so far. I’ll have it sorted soon.
—
more more more… let it flow…
I will be writing the thesis in a multi-genre style. I hope to experiment with fictional narratives, directly transcribed conversations, blog posts, etc… This is as much a personal strategy to try everything out a bit as it is a flexible strategy that is open to using whatever presentation style suits the material. This of course needs to be balanced within academic culture, and so I’ll use these other styles of presentation as backdrops to the more traditionally academic writing I hopefully will be able to do.
—
Woops missed out on all my notes on Bourdieu and social fields. Taking this on should bring a nice wordy academic tone to the thesis, and I’m happy to do it because I think the concepts will actually be useful to think with.
social drama’s —
- I also want to talk about the kinds of discussions blogging opens up. The HTS program, and the debate surrounding will make a perfect story to reflect on the role of public and private debate in anthropology -> but is this close enough to the main thesis topic?
- disciplinary turf wars.
- what makes it an anthro blog?
- anthsoc.com’s decision to move from blog to e-journal
- story about racing heart rate after posting stupid messages on a listserv.. feeling idiotic, worrying too much about it… this will be a fun and informative narrative of my experiences and embarassments online.
[/brainstorm]
[so where do we go from here?]
- expand thesis question to allow for a discussion about anthropology as an online community perhaps? This would fit with the HTS debate and other happenings in the blogsphere. How to justify the link between publishing and communities? Simple, focus on “sharing knowledge”. Then integrate social fields, talk about the promotion, tenure, and publishing system as a field where people establish authority. Then talk about public engagement -> blogs, other tools to communicate anthropology beyond traditional boundaries. Then talk about fighting that occurs in disciplines when they all break into a new field together… [big topic on the media anthro list recently]. Can also use the publishing stories i’ve developed in interviews to look at how “the game is played”.]
- I think I will do a few email surveys to investigate non-tenured teaching and publishing… peaks my interest, will make it fit somehow.
Filed under: "Writes of Passage" | Tags: academic disciplines, academic publishing, contribution of publishers, what makes a field?, why do we need publishers
As I engage the issue of open access in anthropology, my position and views continue to change. I am one seriously biased academic, but this doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind often (several times a day even).
Having stalled out on the research front, I went back to some trusty sources to find inspiration. Blogs are a great place to find information, but its rare to find such extensive coverage of a topic as you do on Peter Suber’s Open Access News.
—
Berg is an academic publisher that has been mentioned a few times in my interviews with professors. One of my professors regularly publishes books through them, and he spoke quite highly of the review process and the ability of Berg to publicize the books.
OA News points to a recent press release by Bloomsbury, a large publisher who recently acquired Berg. The press release states:
“Berg is a market leader in its field having pioneered the concept of fashion theory which is now a course widely taught at universities throughout the world. The company is in the process of creating a major online subscription-based resource, the Berg Fashion Library, for fashion students, lecturers and the broader industry. It is scheduled to be launched in 2010.”
It is interesting to consider the possibility that publishers are a driving force in the academic world, not just a middle man skimming profit from an economically exhausted academic system. Berg claims to have *pioneered* a field. The “fields of care” anthropologists spend time working on are dependent on a lot of different forces. How helpful is it to have publishers advocating certain kinds of research? I suppose there are two poles to look at this – one being that publishers restrict, funnel, and control academic topics – and the other that publishers encourage, promote, and develop academic topics.
—
Bloomsbury will also be creating Bloomsbury Academic, a new “imprint” (hadn’t heard this term before), which will encourage open access publishing. They write:
“Publications will be available on the Web free of charge and will carry Creative Commons licences. Simultaneously physical books will be produced and sold around the world.
For the first time a major publishing company is opening up an entirely new imprint to be accessed easily and freely on the Internet. Supporting scholarly communications in this way our authors will be better served in the digital age.”
Can open access and capitalism get along? Maybe… just maybe.
[prior to internet publishing, publishers were essential for distribution]
[publishers can drive research fields]
[what is an imprint?]
[interrelationship between academics, disciplines, research topics, and publishers] –> possibly related to savageminds discussion of “fields of care”.
[I'd love to tie this into the kinds of fields Bourdieu discussed (my bourdieu readings are no longer fun at all, and I'm sort of lost. ) Thankfully Dr. Postill is hard at work liberating social fields from the archives of bad translations. I'm still too unsure of my understanding to make use of it (and I've read three Bourdieu books so far... + a number of essays), but i'm working on it]
[long live tags in brackets]
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", emo rants | Tags: really bad anthropology poetry, we do need peer reviewed blogs
bolopolos
do we need peer reviewed blogs?
hell yes.
I can’t help but hurt myself.
[save me from my irrational self]
I’m starting to see the value of peer review. In fact, the way I see peer review is a lot like I see the blogsphere. Comments from your peers! Not strict control and set topics, but rather comments given on your work. So rock on peer review system, save me from my irrational self. Bring on the discipline. There certainly are times we could all benefit from feedback prior to sharing our thoughts. There’s also something to be said about worrying less about what others think, and more about just getting it out there! Peer reviewed blogging would simply give us more options. Having options is a great thing, and perhaps there is room for a middle ground between self-publishing and journal publishing.
Filed under: "Writes of Passage", Doing ethnography online, What is anthropology? | Tags: cultural relativism, culture, sharing knowledge, What is anthropology?, writing anthropology
How can culture inform my investigation into the distribution/publishing of anthropological ideas? Is the concept of culture (in a relativistic sense) necessary to be considered anthropology?
I will be asked “what makes this anthropological” and I’m developing a few answers in advance. One argument I can use is “it’s ethnography”, but as Johannes Fabian stated, ethnography is really quite trivial in the way it gets information. For Fabian it isn’t about information gathering at all. [although this argument needed more backing up to really understand his position].
This research is also based on participation online, so I am an active agent creating events, and recording them. In fact recording the events is an event in itself [gotta love reflexivity].
But so far I’ve ignored culture. Largely on purpose, since I used to play around with anthropology essays by doing a search and replace to remove all the places the word “culture” was used, and I found all the essays read much better after that. [ala, the word culture wasn't explaining anything, it was just there to emphasize relativism].
So how does blogging play out in different contexts? [different cultures if you want]. How different are anthropology departments around the world?
By looking at Concordia specifically, I have a very limited view of academia. For example, in a discussion I had recently it was pointed out to me that I see anthropology very differently than others since I am in a program with only 8 master’s students, and where the size of the program has been progressively shrinking. Other universities might have growing departments and see the discipline very differently.
Pamthropologist has been extremely helpful in providing me with insights from other universities. I really appreciate hearing how limited her student’s access to information is. They can’t read anthropology journals since their library doesn’t subscribe to them. I on the other hand have access to most of them. As her discussion with Michael Wesch showed, this can profoundly change the way one can approach education. Wesch wants students to learn to sift through vast archives of information to learn to evaluate the credibility and authority of a text. Pamthropologist emphasizes the value of lecture, and given the lack of material her students can access, it makes a lot of sense. This points to different academic environments.
So within North American universities, there are huge differences in the way one can approach anthropology and anthropology online.
Living in Montreal gives me access to another possibility. I can examine language issues in anthropological blogging. For example, in Max Forte’s recent post on Canadian bloggers, he lists English ones and misses out on the French ones [we'll avoid other issues that came up with that post!].
This is interesting because coming from one location we have English and French universities. Discussions between them depend on bilingual speakers. Students in French speaking universities are often required to read English essays, but English students never need to read French ones! Online, these divides can take different shapes. Alexandre Enkerli and Lorenz Khazaleh blog in multiple languages and even if one can’t read it one can certainly see that these other language groups exist. Further, some staff at Concordia blog in French only.
I’ve also had a few links coming from Spanish language blogs, and I feel terrible in that I can’t actually contribute to the discussion on their blogs, but I very much appreciate that they read mine.
The question of “being public” also takes shape differently in different contexts. During the Media Anthropology’s seminar on Erkan Saka’s paper on blogging as a research tool Erkan discussed the way he had to write strategically given the political nature of his research. At the same time he was quick to criticize those who would bring “orientalist” arguments saying that it would impossible for women in Turkey to blog like he does. He argued they can and do.
Looking at publishing and blogging, it’s important to look at these issues. I don’t like the word culture, nor do I like general depictions of culture. I do however appreciate that a dominant English language publishing industry profoundly affected academia in the colonies. During colonialism, and continuing now, academics are restricted in their ability to publish in particular languages. I’ll be digging up research done on this in the next while, and I’d love to hear your recommendations for readings on publishing, language, and colonialism. Or just on publishing and language.
