The Limitations of Blogging about SSHRC

Blogging about complex topics about which little has been researched and published obviously confronts and presents some serious limitations. I am referring here to the previous post on funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Trying to understand, let alone convey, the complexities of shifting memberships of disciplinary review committees, changing executives in charge of SSHRC, the impact of new decisions made by the Federal Government which allocates SSHRC’s budget, the pressure from universities and individual faculty, transformations in the level of funding and the number of applications, and the changing landscape of research interests, all together present an almost dizzying array of possibilities that render any conclusions tenuous. To then simplify further in the form of a brief blog post becomes even more problematic…which is why I intend to make this the last of the series of posts on SSHRC for the foreseeable future.

SSHRC Facts and Figures

SSHRC has moved to a much greater degree of transparency in terms of disclosing statistics on previous levels of funding and who received funding, as well as providing the names of those who serve on disciplinary committees. Thus one document indicated that Regna Darnell served as the chair of the anthropology committee in 2007-2008, which does not tell us anything about her role, her influence if any, and so forth, but simply indicates that one of Canada’s better known and most senior anthropologists was at the helm.

I was also able to gain a detailed view of the tremendous funding constraints on social science funding in Canada, from publicly released SSHRC statistics. With reference to the latest results of faculty competition for Standard Research Grants, this year SSHRC received 2,731 applications, of which it funded only 904. The total request for funds amounted to more than $331 million (CDN), with just over $76 million actually awarded. In other words, 33% of the proposed projects were funded, and 23% of the requested funds were allocated. Of the $76 million that was awarded, Ontario universities got $30 million, and Quebec universities got $22 million, so that together they received about 68% of the available research funding — this has consistently been the case for the past decade at least. The most heavily funded universities in Canada are, in descending order: the University of Toronto, McGill University, and Université de Montréal (see below for more about this).

The “main disciplines” funded by SSHRC are:

1. Archival Science
2. Classics, Classical & Dead Languages
3. Communications and Media Studies
4. Fine Arts
5. History
6. Library and Information Science
7. Literature, Modern Languages and
8. Mediaeval Studies
9. Philosophy
10. Religious Studies
11. Anthropology
12. Archaeology
13. Criminology
14. Demography
15. Economics
16. Education
17. Urban and Regional Studies, Environmental Studies
18. Folklore
19. Geography
20. Industrial Relations
21. Law
22. Linguistics
23. Management, Business, Administrative Studies
24. Political Science
25. Psychology
26. Social Work
27. Sociology
28. Interdisciplinary Studies

I then did a comparative search of the statistics of funding, by discipline, for a few of the usually most prominent disciplines, from 1998 through 2006, which breaks down as follows:

Sociology — $35,124,062
History — $33,933,984
Political Science — $32,997,977
Economics — $22,535,221
Anthropology — $20,252,622
Law –$13,560,255

Ontario and Quebec were again almost identical in the amounts they received for anthropology funding, with the two combined taking 70% of all payments made by SSHRC in that time period.

CENTRE VS. PERIPHERY: SSHRC Funds Reinforce Regional Inequalities

In keeping with the previous post of those who have a large pile attracting even more — the University of Toronto is already the holder of the largest private endowments in Canada, even as it receives more public funding for research than any other university in Canada. U of T possesses as of 2005, over $1.4 billion in endowments — by its own admission, these endowments go to support teaching and research (p. 22).

However, in order to obscure its preeminence within Canada, the same report published by U of T claims: “the University’s endowments are not large in comparison to our public university peers. When we consider the top 30 endowments at Canadian and US public institutions in 2004, Toronto ranked 18th in terms of size, and when compared with the same Universities in terms of endowments per FTE (Full Time Equivalent) student, Toronto only ranked 27th. Including the endowments of the federated universities, Toronto ranked 12th in terms of size and 22nd in terms of endowment per FTE student.” The fact of the matter, even as indicated in the report’s own statistics is that U of T has no Canadian peers which even come close to its position — of the 30 institutions to which it compares itself, all are American except for McGill, which itself possesses almost $800 million in endowments (p. 22-24).

A critical political issue is being suppressed here: how is that that so much public funding is concentrated on an already wealthy university, with restrictive admission policies, located in a single city, when the Government of Canada repeatedly claims to be committed to ensuring that all students everywhere in Canada have access to the same quality education, so that no regional disparities and inequalities are reinforced and perpetuated? It is interesting to see the extent to which SSHRC mirrors other areas of public policy, which themselves carry the traces of the workings of world capitalism and the divisions between centres and peripheries. No wonder, then, that “national” unity is treated as a largely empty slogan in many parts of Canada — and not just in Quebec whose universities are actually faring extremely well in this system, and better than most universities outside of the University of Toronto.

Aid to Open Access Research Journals?

Finally, I spoke in a previous post about SSHRC’s alleged support for international collaboration, which over emphasizes the need for a large Canadian presence in such projects. This tendency can be found as well in SSHRC’s new “Aid to Open-Access Research Journals” fund. This should be something worthy of celebration among those espousing open access, independent academic publishing, except for three major problems in the way SSHRC has arbitrarily limited the scope of the journals it will consider.

1. SSHRC insists that the majority of members of the editorial board of the journal be affiliated with a Canadian university;
2. SSHRC insists on the model of peer review that all of the journals it funds must adhere to; and,
3. SSHRC demands that the journals be already well established, with at least four issues published, a minimum of 250 regular readers, and proof from citation databases that articles published have had an impact.

This is why obscene expletives were invented.

In purporting to support open access journal publishing, SSHRC’s policy seems to have missed one very critical ingredient: the Internet.

With open source collaboration on the Internet there is no reason why Canadian scholars would or should cluster together rather than form invisible colleges with colleagues from across the planet…that’s kind of the whole fun of the Internet.

Secondly, collaboration is usually based on negotiation and some sort of working consensus. When SSHRC imposes its preferred model of peer review, this minimizes the room for academic independence, academic freedom, and the ability of scholars to create the model that they think will work best.

Thirdly, while not impossible, how does one prove the exact identity of readers to know that 250 of them are “regulars”? How do we know they are reading, and not just downloading?

Finally, citation databases that I have seen tend not to cover electronic journals, and cover only a minority of the print journals, opting instead to cover the most highly cited ones instead. This limitation is not a secret: some companies that compile the citations boast about this happily (see this also).

While SSHRC has actually funded several open access journals in Canada, for some who read these various restrictions, the sub text might be: “serious applicants need not apply.”

Despite the broad sweep of the title of this post, this is most definitely not a detailed historical overview and statistical analysis of the current state of research funding for the social sciences in Canada. As this post goes through various stages of revision, some of these details and relevant documents will possibly be added. For now I only wish to comment on some key details that have impressed me as someone who has worked in Canada full time as a professor for the past five years, and as an applicant for five research grants, and recipient of three. My objective is not to write praises, but to write about problems, otherwise one cannot hope for any improvement if we simply busy ourselves with congratulations. (Warning: this post will only be of interest to those with much more than a passing interest in Canadian academic research funding.)

Let me start with an “old Italian saying” that my mother used to share with me when she would say in a Roman dialect, “il diavolo caca sul mucio grosso.” Another version is: “il diavolo va sempre a cagàr sul monte più alto.” The translation of the first version would be “the devil shits on the big pile” and in the second case, “the devil always goes to shit on the highest mound.” The idea, more evident in the first version, is that an already big pile of excrement is very attractive to the devil, who will add more to what is already in place. I have a dog — by no means a devil — who also sniffs out where other dogs have defecated, so he can join the chorus, so to speak. In essence, it comes down to an idea about capitalism itself: those who have a great deal already, can expect to gain much more, and those who start with little or nothing, can expect to end up with little or nothing. It’s not an “American Dream” view of the world, it is a much more sober persistent poverty view of reality.

There is something about systemic discrimination in the allocation of research funds in Canada that brings to mind devils and shit. When I was a tenure-track assistant professor in Cape Breton, I learned that the consistent trend was for excellent applications for funding to be approved…but denied funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (our primary and often only source of research funding). In other words, they came ‘just short’ — there was nothing seriously deficient with the proposed projects in the minds of reviewers, but they were put aside in a pile of projects to be funded if there were sufficient funds. Universities in Atlantic Canada tend to be small (with some major exceptions), often rural, and several do not have graduate programs but do have very intensive undergraduate programs where students can do a fair amount of research in partnership with faculty. (One example being the number one rated university for undergraduates in all of Canada which has consistently been St. Francis Xavier, in a small, easy to miss town in Nova Scotia called Antigonish; in terms of the overall quality of the student experience, the number two university is grossly underfunded Cape Breton University, where students get much more direct research experience than their counterparts in larger and better funded universities–but student research is undervalued, or lumped under the heading of “teaching” for some bizarre reason.) The implicit notion at work is that there are primarily teaching-oriented universities in Canada, and those that are primarily research-oriented (usually the very large, older, metropolitan universities such as the University of Toronto and McGill University), and that there is a way of weighing applications to favour the latter.

Thus one problem is that of structural discrimination that favours metropolitan universities, and that retains peripheral universities in a funding backwater. Research becomes the occupation of the privileged and knowledge creation is effectively restricted to special geographic zones.

The additional problem that derives from this situation is that for a primarily teaching-oriented university to expand and develop graduate programs it will immediately be hamstrung by a low level of predetermined research funding that is available, based on that university’s past research record. That means that fewer scholarships are made available for graduates in that university. In addition, faculty will have a harder time securing funding. If the university is poorly funded, it will rely on faculty to generate research funds so they can hire graduate students as research assistants, and thus supplement the students’ incomes, because the university itself will offer little in the way of scholarships, which means there are fewer inducements to attract and retain graduate students to begin with. No secrets are being revealed here — it is that very fact, that this knowledge is public, that makes the maintenance of this system of inequality all the more interesting.

Back in 2003-2004, the directors of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) toured Canadian universities with an ambitious proposal to seriously transform the landscape and structure of research funding in Canada. I was one of those at Cape Breton University who met with them. One of their wonderful ideas, that I enthusiastically endorsed, was to establish a system of permanent research funding for all faculty in Canada. What that would mean in practice is that if a professor could show that she or he maintained an active research record, they would be assured funding year after year, for the rest of their careers. The way to do that would be to essentially take the total amount of social science research funding available in Canada, and divide it equally among all professors. Who opposed this? The big research universities of course. The idea that a professor could no longer compete for a $250,000 grant to cover three years of research (and maybe fail to gain the grant, or perhaps only gain a fraction of what was sought), and instead have to settle for maybe $10,000 annually, was roundly rejected. Those professors want the big research teams, the small tribe of graduate researchers, the labs, and so forth.

Inequality in funding leads to the mainstreaming of research priorities:

The vetting of grant applications by SSHRC committees that comprise scholars who serve voluntarily, means that with the artificial scarcity of funding caused by the bloated $250,000 applications and the lack of a system of equitable distribution, there is a tendency to fund projects that best satisfy the interests, priorities, and prejudices of reviewers. Inequality demands that review committees be in place to judge who gets what, and who gets naught. With committees in place, and no automatic funding, then active selection and exclusion takes place. The result can be that “unpopular” and unorthodox projects are sidelined, with a greater tendency toward mainstreaming research. From the inequality of public research funding, which should belong to all researchers in publicly funded universities (nobody can can claim to have more of a right to taxpayer funds), comes the inequality in distribution of research interests.

One can be certain that the large research universities, with researchers with heavy axes to grind in terms of defending particular research agendas, are well served by such a system. The contrary scenario, of shared funding, means a diminished profile, less clout, fewer students to serve as clones, and to add insult to injury, the threat of heterodox research projects suddenly coming to light.

(Update/Revision: One needs to do some research, or examine any published documentation, before coming to any firm conclusions as to what kinds of research agendas are tending to prevail, and to what extent one can establish a general set of trends. The additional step is to then determine whether the peer review of grant applications leads to the entrenching of established research trends, whether these trends are reinforcing themselves, whereby previously funded scholars, who have gained respect with proven research records, are then being called to act as peer reviewers and thus using their positions to discriminate in favour of research areas better suit their perspectives — drawing any direct links may be very complicated and may offer uncertain results. Making the tasks even more complicated, we need to figure out at what level to look for prevailing research trends: at the level of preferred theoretical approaches? methodological approaches? philosophical assumptions? The term used above, mainstreaming, may in fact mask something more complicated: a hierarchy of preferred research agendas, among a cluster of differing research projects — in other words, we might find both dominance and diversity, rather than homogeneity. I would be interested in learning about how many identifiably social constructionist projects are being funded, compared with post-structuralist projects, etc. In addition I am interested in learning the rate of approval for Canadian-based ethnographic projects compared to projects in non-Canadian settings. This could end up being a monumental research agenda taking years, and access to mounds of archived documents, and some solid statistical analysis. I am offering none of that in this post — in this case, I am offering speculation, guesses, questions.)

A second problem has to do with the dissemination of research paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

The directors of SSHRC proposed different forms of research dissemination that ought to be more valued: newspaper articles, websites, etc. Among others, I actively advocated for open access research dissemination in statements directed to discussions of the SSHRC transformation. Canadian taxpayers had already paid for the research, and print publishers were profiting without having made the initial investment. Why should taxpayers have to pay for the same research twice, which is what they would be doing whenever they bought a researcher’s book, or whenever their children had to pay fees for coursepacks? The system as it stands struck me as unethical to say the least. Since then, SSHRC has come up with a weak statement that nominally supports open access, without mandating it.

A third problem has to do with notions of “peer review”, and the cover for university operating costs.

Here I will be sparing with details of who said what or where, for obvious reasons. Let me just say that I have been exposed to the argument that one must seek research funding because it is solid proof of “peer reviewed research.” I continue to be amazed by this statement. I will attest that the slimmest forms of peer review that I have ever received were from commentators on my grant applications –which are not in themselves research, but proposed research. Comments were either brief, or by individuals with little knowledge, or no comments were forthcoming at all, just a letter announcing the award.

This is instead better understood as a case where university administrators use the carrot as a stick to motivate faculty. The reason for doing so is that financially strapped institutions siphon off the research funds for general university operating costs, which then frees them to pay administrators more, to offer them pay raises in the double digit percentage range, while granting only meager raises, if any, to staff and faculty. How can they do that? When a researcher is awarded a grant, his or her university gets in some cases 40% for every dollar awarded in addition, supposedly to cover the “indirect costs” of research, i.e., the need for office supplies. What the university can then do (and actually does in some cases) is to say, sorry, we need that money, we have a deficit, you make your own arrangements for office supplies. This can mean that a researcher goes out of pocket to fund some of the real costs of research…and that is while they actually have a research grant.

The result is that researchers who win grants, in an underfunded university seeking to develop graduate programs, pay for university operating costs and research assistantships, so that we effectively end up paying the university from our efforts, which can almost appear to be that we are paying for our own jobs to a certain degree.

A fourth problem is bureaucracy, that is, time spent in non-productive activity.

Anyone who has had the dubious fortune of winning a research grant in Canada will remember, with pain, the months spent on nothing other than producing the application (aside from teaching). That is not the end of it. Once you get the grant, a complex system of accounting and management comes into force, and you can find yourself inundated with paperwork on a regular basis: expense reports, time sheets, cheque requisitions, vouchers, balancing funds, accounting for funds spent, reports on funds spent, etc. In some of the busiest times of the year, I have devoted entire weekends to doing nothing else except filling out expense reports.

The question then is: why bother applying for a research grant? When it comes down to it, everything is much simpler, and there is less of a scam, when one is funding-free…so why bother? Obviously there are many reasons: in some cases, such as mine, the very purchase of a computer is only possible with a research grant, since the university provides none. There are status issues as well. And, let’s not forget, the thrill of doing research.

In some cases, however, it is better to be free. SSHRC has recently begun to fund open access journal websites. In my case, I prefer not to apply: I cherish my independence too much to suddenly make years of my work accountable to a government agency.

SOLUTIONS?

I do not trust that the system will change from within universities, certainly not entirely. To some extent we need better educated taxpayers who actively seek to inform themselves on how their money is being handled — how they pay for research twice, as explained above. I do not advocate that we make researchers accountable for what they seek to research, but I do think that government agencies need to be held to account for how they handle the funds, how the universities handle the funds, and for how the research is disseminated. In the meantime, tenure and promotion committees, especially in the social sciences and humanities, need to start valuing non-peer reviewed research dissemination, online publishing, websites, and so forth. I have a lot to say about peer review, but this is not the time and space for that (yet). Researchers themselves need to start thinking less in terms of dollar figures and status, and more in terms of independence, and look for avenues of doing research that is light in cost, or free of costs, or independently financed, or collaboratively financed with those at the centre of the research. Lastly, we need to actively militate against the vetting of grants by SSHRC, and have public research funds equally distributed among faculty in Canada, with severely reduced application procedures and less of the accountancy. Right now we have great accountancy and poor accountability.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has just released a report warmly praising itself for its achievements in fostering “international collaboration.” SSHRC states at the outset:

Now as globalization heightens its importance, collaboration is crucial to sustaining excellence in Canadian research and training. It secures access to the world pool of knowledge, helps us address critical national and global issues, and provides training opportunities that prepare Canadian students to thrive in an increasingly interdependent world.

SSHRC also refers specifically to its International Opportunities Fund (IOF) — a monster of an application process that can suck up a year’s worth of non-teaching time and can span several hundred pages by the time it is complete (who reads all of this material is largely a mystery).

In practice, what SSHRC actually requires is that half or more of the participants in an “international” working group must be Canadian citizens. Given that a working group could consist of anything from one to two dozen persons, and given the limitations of a small pool of local scholars who have not blanketed the world, it means that certain research topics are certain to not be funded since most of the experts will be “foreign” thus diminishing the “distinctive Canadian contribution.” This is a tremendous pity, and ultimately a shortcoming of blinkered nationalism, which SSHRC of course does not admit to in its glowing self-assessment. The result is that if the research has no distinctively Canadian basis to begin with, and does not involve Canadian researchers in substantial numbers, international collaboration is rendered largely off limits. This is the “Canadian content” reflex that one finds in the Canadian media and other spheres of Canadian public life. (I don’t mean to diminish the benefits…I grow up with melancholic TV documentaries on the habits of the Woodchuck, priceless stuff.)

A similar problem is in place with respect to SSHRC’s Aboriginal research awards, which are currently under review. Aboriginal has been effectively treated in SSHRC’s practice as Aboriginal in Canada only, meaning that any comparative work on indigenous populations elsewhere in the world cannot be funded by this program (someone in that program wrote to me to ask why I was not submitting any grant applications to them since I have research interests in “aboriginal issues”–when I indicated Caribbean aboriginals were at the centre of my research, the discussion ended in silence). The effect of this, contra globalization propaganda, and contra the reality of indigenous communities and organizations linking up in various transnational fora, and discovering very important commonalities, is that SSHRC confines and constrains aboriginality to a remote, local isolate.

In a sense then, government-funded research agendas are meant to mirror government-directed aboriginal policy, which historically has been designed to splinter, fragment, and divide aboriginal nations into tiny local pockets, and to keep “Canadian” issues of aboriginality far removed from international currents.

Canada voted against the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples last September, one of four neo-colonial settler states to do so (the others being the United States, Australia, and New Zealand). The government, via SSHRC, is interested in ‘globalization’ only until Aboriginal issues come into play, when, all of a sudden, “Aboriginal” is treated as an exclusively Canadian notion.

These problems need to be discussed openly, and not through the usual quiet Canadian routes of silence here, and a nod there, and a glossy magazine filled with smiling officials.

The previous post, meant as a humorous educational exercise caused me to reflect on some of the conflicted tendencies contained within it, both on my part and the part of Trinidadians with different perspectives, personal histories, and social class backgrounds, and I am thankful for the messages that were posted, and those sent in private, both serious and tongue-and-cheek.

SLACKNESS
There are those who will assert that “the Trinidadian way” is one that frowns upon any public coarseness, and identifies obscene language and its spread through the mass media with the process of Americanization. Indeed, as Americanized as the mass media may be in Trinidad & Tobago, there were always local interpretive filters at work that kept things “in their proper place.” Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless was reinterpreted as a hero, not a villain, a true “smart man” who knew all the right tricks and always came out on top. Despite the abundance of American media inputs, Trinidadians (unlike many if not most Canadians) retain a different way of speaking English, different accents, a different lexicon. While many older generation Trinidadians, especially urban Afro-Trinidadians, carry notably British names–Ian, Kelvin, Selwyn, Evelyn, Lionel, Luther, etc.–and younger Afro-Trinidadians may carry Africanized names, it is still almost impossible to find Trinidadians with white American names broadcast through the media. There is virtually nobody in Trinidad named Nancy, Hannah, Britney, Ashley, Kate, and none of the American short forms such as Bill, Pete, Bob, Bobby, Al, Jim, Jack, or Chuck. The idea of a Trinidadian called “Chuck” is almost laughable since it would be so “unusual” and “out of place.” Charlo, on the other hand, as a short form of Charles, might be more common.

The point here is that the use of the word “fuck” is seen by many Trinidadians as the height of coarseness. Having used this word in conversations myself with Trinidadians — not all the time, please — I noticed how some would cringe, wince, and turn their heads away — “too much nastiness.”

What my previous post might do then is to act as yet another forceful North American intrusion and imposition, in the name of anti-colonialism. But that is only side of the story, and it ends up being much more complicated than this.

SNOBBISHNESS
Some Trinidadians, especially those who in the previous post were taken to court, will argue that it is old-fashioned Afro-Saxon middle class snobbishness that raises any concern about “foul” language. Some will note–generalizing of course–that terms such as those used in the previous post are commonly to be heard from urban working class Afro-Trinidadians and lumpen proletarian types, as well as those of East Indian ancestry, and can spill across class and status borders (note the cases where a police constable is accused of obscene language, while himself accusing the person he arrested of obscene language; the Member of Parliament who was charged; and, the courts themselves, which replay this illegal language in the very maintenance of legality).

The argument that may be made here is that those who would charge anyone for using “obscene language” in “public” are reinforcing Victorian colonial ideas of public order and decorum, another foreign imposition, another manifestation of a much older and longer lasting form of globalization, that known as colonialism. We have a battle then between the two localized variants of two historical phases of globalization, which takes the form of a contest between “high culture” and “low culture.”

The maintenance of putatively local values as noted in the previous section then becomes instead an exercise in localized, internalized, domesticated colonialism.

GLOBALIZATIONS
So we have two contending sets of globalization and locality. We have domesticated Victorian colonialism mapped onto an Afro-Saxon middle class which touts its values as “Trinidadian” (because with time they have in fact become a firm part of the local cultural landscape, without a doubt) versus American cultural globalization (taking the form of Rap), not mapped onto but coincident with the habits of certain “low classes” and “slack” individuals, as “local” and as “national” as those Trinidadians above. What is funny and customary for one side is an alien intrusion or gross vulgarity for another side.

What I was conscious of, in terms of my position, but did not let tie my hands (or my tongue), was that all sides in this local debate with global backdrops would agree that a white, foreign, professor should never say “fuck” — it’s not proper, it’s not professional, and it’s kind of troubling. Well, it’s not “professional,” I can agree on that point, but even filth has its place.

P.S.: Coincidentally, on the same day that “fuck” appears in a post, traffic to this blog exploded. Between that post, and “the Yanomami controversy”, I may have stumbled upon a recipe for increased traffic…but I am not adventurous nor foolish enough to look for a combination of the two.

(Following my colleagues at the APE blog, I will have a special little entertaining piece from now on, to start off each new week)

It is illegal to say

FUCK

in public in Trinidad & Tobago.

•••••

Creep with me as I crawl through the hood…

Rapper DMX was arrested again this weekend. This time, the rapper, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was nabbed mid-concert Saturday night in Trinidad, where police officers accused him of using profane language. According to the Associated Press, the 28-year-old performer was taken from the stage because public use of obscene language is illegal in Trinidad (Foxy Brown’s July 3 concert was stopped for similar allegations). DMX spent the night in jail and is scheduled for a court appearance today…(source)
12 July, 1999

•••••

A Jamaican artiste was actually arrested recently for using obscene language while performing on stage. However, there are many people who believe that freedom of expression gives artistes the right to use obscene language and satanic lyrics in songs. No wonder our society continues to decay.
…a letter by Harrack Balramsingh of La Romaine, Trinidad, to the editors of Newsday, 19 July, 2001, reproduced by “Concerned Citizens for a Better Trinidad and Tobago“

•••••

Charges to be laid against MP tomorrow:

By RICHARDSON DHALAI Sunday, May 6 2007
EMBATTLED Point Fortin MP Larry Achong, who is expected to appear in court on an obscene language charge tomorrow, was noticeably absent from the high profile People’s National Movement (PNM) contingent, led by Prime Minister Patrick Manning, at Borough Day celebrations in his constituency yesterday….(Newsday, Trinidad)

•••••

REPUBLIC OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
COURT OF APPEAL
Mag. App. No. 81 of 1999.
IN THE MATTER OF THE APPEAL OF
POLICE CONSTABLE
HARRIPERSAD JAIKARAN NO. 11857
AND
ELIZABETH RAMKHELAWAN

“On Monday 30th March 1998 at Cocoyea a public place in the County of Victoria the defendant Elizabeth Ramkhelawan at Cocoyea, used obscene language in a public place to the annoyance of persons of the said street contrary to section 49 of the Summary Offences Act Chap. 11:02 and that she on Monday 30th March 1998 at Cocoyea in the County of Victoria did resist Harripersad Jaikaran Police Constable number 11857 in the execution of his duty contrary to section 43 of the Police Service Act Chap. 15:01.”…

The defendant said “…..whey the mudder cunt all you bothering me for,” at the location which was both well lit and a public place and that the complainant heard the obscene word/phrase.

•••••

Mitra Harracksingh Appellant
v.
(1) The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago and
(2) P.C. Neville Adams Respondents
FROM
THE COURT OF APPEAL OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
—————
JUDGMENT OF THE LORDS OF THE JUDICIAL
COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL,
Delivered the 15th January 2004

….On arrival at the police station P.C. Adams said, “Throw the mudder cunt in the cell. He can’t get bail until Monday morning.”

….It was P.C. Adams’s evidence that, as the officers were about to leave in the van, the appellant said, “Is that all yuh come and focking harassing me for, it have focking bandit pushing coke and all you not arresting them.” He was immediately arrested for “making use of obscene language” to the annoyance of persons in the street…

•••••

IT IS ILLEGAL TO USE OBSCENE LANGUAGE IN PUBLIC IN TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

another law first instituted by British colonial authorities and upheld by successive post-independence regimes (and how suitable post-independence is here).

Similar laws were promulgated late into colonial rule, to prohibit DRUMMING and banning participation in SHOUTER BAPTIST practices: “It shall be an offence for any person to hold or to take part in or to attend any Shouters’ meeting or for any Shouters’ meeting to be held in any part of the Colony indoors or in the open air at any time of the day or night.”

•••••

Now, about that Internet thing…is it public or private in Trinidad? Because we would not want some anti-colonialist business causing moral degeneration, and if China can censor the Internet and if Saudi Arabia can censor the Internet, and if Brazil can ban YouTube and WordPress…then maybe we should ban…

DEM MUDDER CUNT WHO ABUSIN’ WE FUCKIN’ LAWS TROUGH DE INTERNET

•••••

THE FOLLOWING VIDEO WILL BE SEEN IN TRINIDAD & TOBAGO…

thank you kindly Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog for your lovely lyrics…

CNN aired a piece on a “baby dropping ritual” in India in the Anderson Cooper segment last night, accompanied by Cooper’s wincing, and news reader Erica Hill’s raised voice exclaiming: “Look at that!“. The transcript on the CNN website is titled, in the mode of the gawker: “Villagers throw babies from temple roof“.

Given the lack of contextualizing, the almost complete absence of any explanation, and the continuous looping of the drop (which looked harmless to me), accompanied by shouts, squeals, and grimaces from the CNN “newsroom”, I realized that this scene was familiar to me, not so much the precise ritual itself, but the picture as a whole of a “bizarre” custom, the lack of ethnographic analysis, and the intent to shock, ending with a moralizing message that introduces “rationalism”. What the CNN piece looked like was something straight out of Mondo Cane, an Italian “skockumentary” in two volumes, from the 1960s, by two Italian fascist writers and directors (Gualtiero Jacopetti and Paolo Cavara). (I used their first film in a course about “Images of Self and Other” when I was still at Cape Breton University.) The leading line in the CNN segment–“In a ritual that would terrify most mothers”–reminds me of the typical tagline for Mondo Cane stressing “shocking” and “astounding” acts, “real archive footage displaying mankind at its most depraved and perverse, displaying bizarre rituals, cruel behavior”, which also imitates the typical posters and bulletins of mid-nineteenth century European ethnographic festivals (see examples in Edwards, 1992). “Most mothers”, CNN says, but then immediately adds: “Indian villagers have cheered as screaming babies were dropped from a 50-foot temple tower”…so not Indian mothers, but most white, Western mothers, i.e., “viewers like you”.

As I have argued elsewhere, what CNN is doing, like other media outlets, is not just displaying, harmlessly and without intention. The more ambitious aim is to train their audience in acquiring and applying certain values which support Western domination. Needless to say, CNN knows what it is doing when it selectively chooses to use a terror word in its opening line. Then we find out these villagers are Muslim (and Hindu, but CNN places them second, even if they outnumber Muslims in India) and they are opposed (despite the absence of any evidence of any harm done to babies) by Rationalist International and the Indian Rationalist Association which both “support secularism”, among other goals (and I do not intend to suggest that there is anything “shady” about these organizations).

It is not at all clear that the rationalists want the practice banned because it is “unsafe”–safety, like the hygiene trope, is one that CNN chooses to insert. It has a colonizing and exclusionary function as a practice of domination: next to the “unclean” other, the dirty savage, we now have the “unsafe” other…who after thousands of years of child rearing still has not learned the basics of how to treat babies.

This is not the most disturbing behaviour one can expect from CNN–after all this was the company that cheered the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, with its weeks of whipping up spectators with “countdown to a showdown” (cowboy style), and its glowing assessments of “shock and awe”, and its mild-mannered questions to generals about ballistics and ordnance, some memorable examples from Doha press conferences being: “Are you considering dropping some JDAMS, sir? How have the Cobras fared in the desert climate? Are we going to see the MOAB in action?”. CNN is an insider, at the top of the society it occupies.

It does give us one more example of what mass-mediated discourse looks like without ethnography, without intellectual curiosity, and without honesty. After all, CNN drags in a talking head for every little tid-bit of political gossip, but can’t be bothered to call in one of the thousands of anthropologists in the US to offer a little contextualization.

ADDENDA:
As I posted the item above, I did not realize that this “news story” was slowly beginning to spread from blog to blog, from news site to news site (almost absent is any Indian coverage, with most of the sites I have seen being exclusively Western). Rather than try to comment on each item, let me simply post some descriptive links below (by no means a complete list, nor necessarily representative either), and show two videos, one from CNN and the other from Reuters.

From other blogs:

Red Neck Riches Web 2.0: “When I seen this headline at Foxnews.com I was really afraid to read the whole story….The bizarre ritual of throwing newborn babies off a temple 50ft high….” — notes this as a Muslim practice.

BagOfNothing: “Babies thrown from tower for good luck”–”Worshippers at a Muslim shrine“

Babylune: “Babies thrown off temple for good luck”–FoxNews.com is reporting about a tradition that is done every year in India, I’m not sure on the name but the basic idea is to drop babies off 50 ft from the roof of a temple and landing on a cloth sheet. Once the baby lands on the sheet they bounce, this is considered good luck or health. I have no clue how they think this would be good luck unless they consider the baby not making it to be the bad luck….”

From other news sites:

Fox News: “Indian Babies Dropped 50 Feet for Good Luck in Bizarre Ritual….A jaw-dropping ritual….”

Huffington Post: “India’s Baby Dropping Ritual….Muslims in western India have been observing a bizarre ritual…”

ITV.com: “Devotees drop babies 50ft for luck….Worshippers at a Muslim shrine in western India have been dropping babies from a tower for good luck…”

Reuters: “Apr 30 - Muslims in western India have been observing a bizarre ritual - they’ve been throwing their young children off a tall building to improve their health….”

NBC Zeitgeist: “…shouldn’t you be more shocked that a human baby has just been dropped five stories in front of you?….Stop throwing babies from the roofs of buildings.”

WBKO: “Muslim parents in Indian drop babies from tower….You won’t believe this video…”

Miscellaneous:

From Craigslist, Sacramento, 01 May, 2008: “Baby Drop Day in India”–”Drop the little naked sucker from the top of the temple….TOSS YOUR BRAT from the top of your temple.”

Daily Comedy: “Drop It Like a Tot–Worshippers at a Muslim shrine in western India have been dropping babies 50ft from a tower for good luck…. In other news, Michael Jackson has been named Father of the Year in India.”

From SodaHead: Indian Baby Drop–What do you think of this strange 500 year old ritual?…”This is footage from an actual CNN report…”

Videos:

From CNN

From REUTERS

Many thanks again to Lorenz Khazaleh at antropologi.info for bringing my attention to this fascinating interview with Maurice Bloch, where views are expressed that sit perfectly well with the thrust of the Open Anthropology Project. This also ties in with my response to the comment that I am “ambivalent” about my own work that one can find here.

Interviewed by Maarja Kaaristo in Eurozine in February of this year, Maurice Block makes several statements that I found to be critically relevant.

First, on anthropological knowledge:

Anthropologists don’t usually talk about the basis of their knowledge because they take it for granted. What they do talk about, and what they tend to use in their representation of the knowledge of the people they study, is a kind of second level that assumes an earlier level….More and more, I began to stress that the basis of our knowledge, the knowledge that we use to making inferences, is based much less on culture than anthropology tends to believe. So many anthropologists began to think of me as an anti-anthropologist.

Second, concerning applied anthropology, the discussion seems a bit muddled, perhaps as a result of the interviewer conflating “development experts” with “applied anthropologists”, with Bloch’s response largely focusing on critiques of the former, and the problems posed for the work of the latter who do not necessarily fall in line with the goals and practices of development agencies that hire them as consultants. Let’s move on before someone asks me why people are not wearing enough hats.

Third, on the two senses of the term “anthropology” and the disappearance of institutional anthropology:

(a) I would like to distinguish between two senses of the word “anthropology”. It can refer to institutions inside universities, which are called “anthropology departments”. Anthropology departments teach and are coherent insofar as they have a tradition. That’s one sense of anthropology - as institution. It’s very possible that anthropology departments will disappear, there’s no reason why they should continue existing. They only exist insofar as they’re useful in terms of teaching and developing a tradition. It may well be that they just disappear; it wouldn’t bother me very much. That’s why I’m not very interested in the crisis of representation, because I’m not that interested in anthropology as an institutional system.

(b) On the other hand [there are] the general questions of anthropology, which exist irrespective of anthropology departments. In fact, I would consider that all human beings are anthropologists: all are concerned with the general theoretical questions about the nature of human beings, about explanations of diversity and similarity. Of course I’m not worried about the continuation of this form of anthropology, it seems to me impossible that it could ever disappear.

Fourth, on letting anthropology departments die, and what the loss would be:

One could say, all right, let anthropology departments die, let them spend their time considering themselves to be the most fascinating phenomenon in the universe, and let them get on with fewer and fewer students. Then we could just forget about anthropology and start again. Yet if we did that it would just be repeating the mistakes of the past. To lose the knowledge, both theoretical and empirical, which has been accumulated - and I fear that is what’s happening - because anthropologists have not been addressing those questions that are burning questions for human beings. Other people have done it and have not made use of what anthropologists have learned.

Fifth, on anthropology in public debates:

Having said this, there’s another thing that has to be said, and that is that when professional anthropologists join the anthropological debate, which they rarely do, it may well be that their role is one of caution. Because we have learned that easy answers don’t work. So we anthropologists will always have a negative role and I think that’s right. But I think we should engage with the general questions that people are ask, rather than spending our time navel gazing.

I rarely agree 100% with anything anyone says, but I am close to doing so in the case of Bloch’s comments above, and in that interview as a whole. There are questions that remain however:

(1) How do we ascertain what is “navel gazing”–is it the abstract discussion of how the human soul is formed, or is it the seemingly pointless question of “why aren’t people wearing enough hats”? I hope people will see why that vignette from Monty Python remains so brilliantly germane to the work we do.

(2) Not letting anthropological knowledge accumulated over past generations simply vanish, is one thing. To locate that knowledge, and to identify it with the continued existence of anthropology departments, is another. I do not believe that the death of departments means the death of knowledges that were generated in such departments, or that suddenly they become more closed off to a wider public.

(Thanks again to Lorenz Khazaleh and his blog for notification of the release of the current issue of Anthropology News.)

In a short commentary titled, “Practical Challenges of Multi-Sited Ethnography“, written by Ulla Berg in Anthropology News (May, 2008), there is one basic limitation that I want to highlight, and some of my commentary might remind readers of George Marcus’ “no new ideas” argument (parts of which I agree with, and parts of which apply to his own argument).

Ulla Berg is not mistaken in observing that, “a real challenge with multi-sited fieldwork is that the researcher has less time at each individual site and with each localized population, thus having fewer opportunities to ‘get to know’ people and their social worlds, and to establish more profound social relationships in ways that allow us access to more existential fields of experience”. The problem comes with conflating physical spaces with the meaning of experience–the former is fixed, and the latter is communicable. Interestingly, Berg states that her research interests focus on communicative practices, and this is where the familiar blind spot presents itself, as I argued in “Another Revolution Missed” (also from Anthropology News).

Anthropologists are not well suited to studying new transformations if they are not willing to consider new ways of doing so. The multi-sited Malinowski who follows a positivist notion of “sites” definitely hamstrings any attempt on our part to break out of the little boxes we have inherited.

The challenge to studying transnationalism and globalization is, first, a conceptual one, and only second, and as a result of the first, a methodological one. While calling for new analytical categories and research strategies, Berg never raises the possibility of following “informants” online as they communicate across places. Her article is very well intentioned and constructive, and I only raise the question as to why, if one is interested in communication and transnationalism, working with people who span communities in the U.S. and Peru, there would be no mention of cyberspace…especially when dealing with U.S. based informants. Facebook “Español”, as one example, exists I imagine to serve an audience that does not consist of Spain alone.