A fantastic blog from Max Forte’s Cyberanthropology class has moved into the public realm! Check out “Shannanigans“. She writes:

“since I’ve finished Max’s Cyberethnography class I’ve been hesitant as to what to put up here. I’ve decided to keep this blog going for a reason and I believe I’ve found it… What is going on in the world today has much to do with what I am studying, how can Anthropology change things? By keeping people up to date with current events going on around us and making changes that will eventually change things for the better, voicing your opinions and expressing yourself.”

In Dr. Forte’s class blogging is part of the class assignments. The blogs however are restricted and open only to those in the class, creating an interest space for students to speak to each other. I think this forms an interesting place to practice engagement with ones writing, in that it is done with the knowledge that people aside the professor will read it. I’m looking forward to reading more, and wonder if the blog will change now that its not an assignment! Her writeups on readings are very insightful, and as much as I’ve thought about it, I haven’t managed to get energy to comment on all the readings I’ve been doing on here. Reading Shannanigans I realize I should also start including more reading responses (especially when they are written like hers!).

I just came across a great post that paints a rather brutal picture for my upcoming year of thesis work - Jenny Ryan recently completed her thesis and describes the process:

“Looking back, I see that the stress I put myself under, however much I rationalized the need for it, took a serious toll on my health, and ultimately affected every other realm of my life in the process. Take this blog, for example. I had all but abandoned it this past month, and for the most part it has been mostly a repository of snippets of my thesis and musings related to my research. In focusing my energies on the single-minded pursuit of one aspect of my life, I became unwell and overwhelmed.”

The whole post can be found here.

It sounds like things have much improved since handing it in thankfully. I’ve already felt the effects of stress completing regular course work (i tend to enjoy a breakdown at the end of each semester, as part of my drama queen nature), and I was looking forward to a more relaxed research process - but clearly I was dreaming!

For those interested in blogging and academics, check out the discussion going on at the Media Anthropology Network. The list is currently reviewing and discussing Erkan Saka’s fantastic essay on blogging as a research tool (a version of which I referenced in my mini ethnography assignment). I’m looking forward to hearing more from the list members!

As I reflect on the arguments I made in the blogging mini ethnography, I realize I failed to incorporate one serious challenge to the idea that journals have ignored students - in that there certainly are journals out there catering to student work. Marc Herbert recently let me know about a call for papers on collaboration, inclusion and engagement in anthropology, a topic I am trying to contribute to on this blog, and yet I have yet to consider writing for it!

With more time to reflect, I realize students ignore journals, just as much as journals ignore students. Both perspectives however lead to the same thing - most anthro journals are struggling to get a name for themselves, or are not trying to at all (this is assuming journals need an expanded readership, maybe they do not need to expand boundaries and I admit I have yet to explore these questions from the side of journals). Are journals meant to be read cover to cover? How many try to get people to do this? It seems the process of getting published in a journal is more important than the content one writes about - ie: journals have a more functional position of filtering content through a panel of reviewers, which establishes disciplinary control. So perhaps they don’t need to be known, as long as other databases present them.

But why aren’t students more interested in them? As students, we have no responsibility to publish. What does it take to get someone to produce an academic essay? I enter this debate with the opinion that students have a lot to say, and are simply not given a place to say it. However, when asked to contribute to a student run e-journal, I thought “hey cool, this is awesome” and then never got the energy together to try and contribute to it. I *have* been extremely busy with everything else in life, so time is one thing. And I’ve been riding the blogging bandwagon and have gotten quite caught up in it.

Enkerli comments on the mini ethnography, arguing that teachers are in the business of giving grades and that often students expect and desire this. He argues that while its unpleasant marking, it does work to get people to produce assignments! So perhaps there is something to this “forced” writing.

But blogging is exactly the opposite - here I write freely with no assignment. Why the hurdle to try and contribute to a student e-journal when I have so much energy to blog? Are the standards for academic writing so high that people give up and don’t bother? Or is it that you have to write in a certain way?

In “Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An In-depth Study of Faculty Needs and Ways of Meeting Them” (Harley et al. 2008 ) (via Suber’s OA News) a group of researchers from Berkeley provide a preliminary report on their study of how new communication technologies are viewed by faculty. I almost worried my research might be redundant (not that it matters at masters level?) but then I started reading and realized they didn’t include much from an anthropological perspective, and instead cover numerous disciplines to explore differences between them as well. It’s a really well put together report, with revealing statements about the academic hierarchy. I’m looking forward to hearing more from their research!

“As we found in our planning study, peer-reviewed prestige publications are the “coin of the realm” in tenure and promotion decisions.”

this next one is really great - considering I plan to do my research at Concordia if its approved.

“Another observation is that every institution and department can have different traditions and standards. It was suggested by some that standards at second-tier institutions vary significantly from those in the top tier (less selective journals and presses, fewer publications, more emphasis on teaching, etc.), but that anxiety about getting published in what is described as a “competitive” market can be much higher.”

now is when the news they are reporting gets REALLY bad

“Finally, the advice given to pre-tenure scholars was quite consistent across fields: focus on publishing in the right venues and avoid too much time spent on public engagement, committee work, writing op-ed pieces, developing websites, blogging, and other non-traditional forms of electronic dissemination (including courses).”

lol! ouch! Is it April fools? Nope, its May. This study reveals a faculty bent on maintaining the status quo! I am honored to be studying at such a progressive school - where I’ve met incredibly dynamic teachers who blog and encourage blogging! Thanks to Max Forte and Alexandre Enkerli who have encouraged, and inspired the use of blogging in academics. I’m also encouraged with the line of investigation I proposed.

Over the past few months I’ve been looking into the question “why do anthropologists blog?”. I’ve written up my reflections into a “mini ethnography” of sorts. The project involved a small survey, interviews, and a focus group - involving students and teachers. I would have kept it short and sweet, but there was a bit of a length competition going on in the class, and I encouraged myself to write perhaps a bit too much.

Yes, it’s a class assignment - it weaves in debates that are less interesting to people not involved in the class, but for those interested in academic blogging and the culture of publishing in anthropology, why not give it a read and let me know what you think.

I was holding off on posting this till it was reviewed by my professor and classmates, but as is the problem with all forms of review - it takes a lot of time! So here it is, mostly unreviewed, raw, and certainly in need of some revision. Feel free to comment anonymously, and again, flame on! (especially at how I just drop this reference to Wacquant and then drift off into nothingness… someone pick up on this and comment because im just too tired to critique myself!).

“Why do anthropologists blog?” - a mini ethnography, and class assignment.

Abstract

In the past few years Anthropologists have increasingly taken up blogging. The anthropology blogsphere is a rapidly growing community that has created a new space for all levels of the anthropological hierarchy to express themselves. It has also opened doors to engagement with those outside anthropology. Within debates surrounding traditional publishing formats, this report examines the ways blogs might work to allow anthropologists to reflect and discuss more, while officially publishing less. It is an exploration into the culture of publishing in anthropology, and the reasons anthropologists do, or do not, blog.

]]> http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/why-do-anthropologists-blog-2/feed/ http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/presenting-my-research-proposal/ http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/presenting-my-research-proposal/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:19:22 +0000 o.w. http://nodivide.wordpress.com/?p=42

sharingknowledge1 (powerpoint form) - I had to convert it from open office format to upload it here. Backgrounds got a bit butchered…

This presentation serves as the basis for my main thesis proposal. I’ve run it by two classes so far, and since I’ve been talking so much about blogging and sharing knowledge, I’ll just get this out of the way and start sharing myself.

It weaves together numerous debates I’ve found interesting in class readings, and in debates being held in the blogsphere. It doesn’t yet deal with how I’m going to add to this topic with ethnographic research, but it develops what I think makes for an interesting theoretical background to look at online anthropology.

Vassos Argyrou, in “Anthropology and the Will to Meaning” (2002) writes:
“The academic game is the game of knowledge (and ignorance) which inextricably, if not always intentionally, is also a game of power. The only way to put an end to this game (the only way under the conditions of domination, that is) is to play it better than the players themselves.”

So how have new communication technologies changed the way the game is played?

A brief outline yanked from the powerpoint…

• Decolonizing anthropology - juicy quotes from Vassos Argyrou, and Max Forte
• Public Anthropology - juicy quotes from Kerim Friedman, and Kimberly Christen
• Online Prestige - (Bourdieu, Khazaleh) -> the political economy of publishing in anthropology
• Three main research areas

1. The Filtering Knowledge debate - Peer review, social ranking,
2. The Open Access debate - creative commons, open access journals, licensing and law
3. Public engagement - the language/content debate.

Once I have time to link a wiki, I’ll make this a permanent page and develop it properly… The powerpoint should give you an idea where I’m trying to go with this research project though.

p.s.

The idea about a “publishing paradox”, where more is produced then can ever be consumed, or where more is produced then is _allowed_ to be consumed, comes from Willinksy’s fantastic book “The Access Principle” (2006) which I highly recommend.

and the write up of this mini ethnography begins! It feels quite strange hitting the end of the semester just as things had started to roll.

I’ve done a lot of talking about blogging recently, interviewing students and professors about how they do and do not use blogs or other ict’s, for academic purposes. I asked about sharing assignments in public to generate feedback and about exposure to online anthropology in general.

To tie into the ideas floating around the blogsphere about sharing and distributing knowledge online, I asked a lot of questions relating to prestige and publishing. I wondered to what extent students had an idea about which academic journals were considered prestigious, and it is interesting to compare to the response I get from professors. Discussions also dealt with privacy, and the desire and necessity to engage people inside and outside the university.

I wondered to what extent people would rather restrict access to their blogs to people in their class, or if they would be happy sharing it publicly. Not very many people I interviewed would be happy sharing their class assignments online. These questions of privacy tied into the question “why don’t anthropologists blog?”.

In a focus group held with mostly social science students we had an engaging discussion around the need for public engagement in anthropology. Almost everyone in the focus group felt that jargon in academia worked against developing interest, and that they used different language in their essays depending on the particular class and teacher.

This post is mostly to encourage myself to post my own work online and as soon as I’ve written up a mini ethnography based on these interviews and of course all the great self reflexive “why this blog” posts out there.

The blog seems to encourage short, brief, disconnected thought. I want to keep coming back to these entries to edit them and somehow it seems wrong to do that in “blog form”. It’s hard to develop on ideas when you can control how they link together. Order by date? I’m not so timely! Howabout order by “last edited”?

And of course, once this mini ethnography is finished it’ll be time to start the real thesis research. I presented the topic in class, and I’ll work on posting the presentation on here soon.

Omar Khadr - Why isn’t he being set free? And why won’t the national post publish my comment supporting his lawyers who are trying to rescue him from hell? Reading the National post is quite scary, I find the reader commentaries are insane. Not just thoughtless, but terrifying, in the way people just go with path of least resistance. Somehow supporting a 15 year old kid who got caught up in a bad scene is beyond the morality of most National Post commentators. They do however, express a lot of sympathy for Sir Conrad Black! (why not.. but lets give Omar some too?)

It brings up the point that we aren’t a very open society, and there are very good reasons for keeping private. On this Omar Khadr issue though, it just feels wrong blogging about nonsense while so many people are turning a blind eye to unethical behavior [particularly Stephen Harper].

Okay thats enough politics from me. I’ll file this next to the emo rants section, and try to stay on focus to get this blog geared towards research.

Oh yes, and for an interesting look into the brains behind the CIA - check this new fear propoganda out - please define a “Western” appearance please.

“”(They) look western (and) would be able to come into this country without attracting the kinds of attention that others might,” Hayden said, without offering further details.”

I wonder what anthropologists and sociologists have contributed to American intelligence so far… Maybe Al Qaeda and the US Army are learning from stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com?

Earlier today I posted a long winded rant. It was motivated through negative reviews I received on some classwork.

In the spirit of not turning this blog into a rant board, I deleted it. “blog me a river” would have been a great title for the post however.

But don’t just blabber mr. blogger -make a point! Yes sir. My point is getting “marked” is always an ego-stiring exercise. Anyone have any comments as to how numerical values being placed on your work motivate you?