OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

Not knowing where to begin, let me start with a list of links pertaining to resistance studies, militant ethnography, and some very interesting work by anthropologist Jeffrey Juris.

RESISTANCE STUDIES
A very comprehensive website, the purpose of which is described as follows: “In an attempt to remedy the lack of academic study in the field of resistance to power and its social transformation the School of Global Studies at Göteborg University has launched this Resistance Studies Network. With the help of networking, collaborative conferences, research and publication projects and thematic educational events, this network hopes to deepen the cooperation between researchers interested in understanding practices of resistance, and its connections to power and social change.”

RESISTANCE STUDIES MAGAZINE
Linked to the project above, this has just started publishing in 2008. It describes itself as a peer-reviewed, open access magazine devoted to the study of resistance and social change.

RESISTANCE STUDIES ON FACEBOOK

RESISTANCE STUDIES WIKIPAGES

NETWORKING FUTURES: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization
A new book by Jeffrey S. Juris, published by Duke University Press. Description:
“In 2001 and 2002, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris participated in the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti-corporate globalization networks in Europe. Juris took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests, and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization. In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, he explains how activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation but also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.”

Also by Jeffrey S. Juris, online:

Youth and the World Social Forum

Practicing Militant Ethnography within Movements against Corporate Globalization
Extracts:

This paper explores militant ethnography as research method and political praxis based on my experience as activist and researcher among anti-corporate globalization movements in Barcelona. What is the relationship between ethnography and political action? How can we make our work relevant to those with whom we study? Militant ethnography is a politically engaged and collaborative form of participant observation carried out from within rather than outside of grassroots movements. Traditional objectivist perspectives fail to grasp the concrete logic of activist practice, leading to inadequate accounts and theoretical models of little use to activists themselves. Meanwhile, the classic figure of the organic intellectual has become increasingly undermined, as contemporary activists produce and circulate their own analyses through global communication networks in real time.

…

Militant ethnography breaks down the distinction between observer/intellectual and activist/practitioner. By organizing protests and gatherings, facilitating meetings, participating in strategic and tactical debates, and putting one’s body on the line during mass direct actions, militant ethnographers can better understand complex movement dynamics, while remaining active political subjects. Rather than generate sweeping political directives, collaboratively produced ethnographic knowledge aims to facilitate ongoing activist (self-) reflection about movement goals, tactics, strategies, and organizational forms. At the same time, there is often a marked contradiction between the moment of research and the moment of academic writing, publishing, and distribution, which involve vastly different systems of rewards and incentives. Indeed, the horizontal networking logic associated with anti-corporate globalization movements represents a serious challenge to the institutional logic of academia itself.

…

The practice of militant ethnography is partially meant to address what Loic Wacquant in his discussion of Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 39) calls the “intellectual bias,” or the way our position as outside observer “entices us to construe the world as a spectacle, as a set of significations to be interpreted rather than as concrete problems to be solved practically.” The tendency to position oneself at a distance and treat social life as an object to decode rather than entering into the flow and rhythm of ongoing social interaction hinders out ability to understand social practice, as Bourdieu (1977) suggests:

The anthropologist’s particular relation to the object of his study contains the makings of a theoretical distortion inasmuch as his situation as an observer, excluded from the real play of social activities by the fact that he has no place…inclines him to a hermaneutic representation of practices (1; cited in Paley 2001: 18).

Social Forums and their Margins: Networking Logics and the Cultural Politics of Autonomous Space
Abstract:
The World Social Forum (WSF) emerged in the wake of a global wave of protest against capitalism characterized, in part, by the expression of broader political ideals through network-based organizational forms. The WSF was thus conceived as an “open space” for exchanging ideas, resources, and information; promoting initiatives; and generating concrete alternatives. At the same time, many grassroots activists have criticized the forums for being organized in a top-down fashion, including political parties despite their formal prohibition, and favoring prominent intellectuals. Radicals thus face a continual dilemma: participate in the forums as a way to reach a broader public, or remain outside given their political differences? Based on my participation as activist and ethnographer with the (-ex) Movement for Global Resistance (MRG) in Barcelona and Peoples Global Action (PGA), this article explores the cultural politics of autonomous space at the margins of the world and regional social forums on three levels. Empirically, it provides an ethno-genealogy of the emergence, diffusion, and proliferation of the concept of autonomous space. Theoretically, it argues that the cultural politics of autonomous space express the broader networking logics and politics increasingly inscribed into emerging organizational architectures. Politically, it suggests that the proliferation of autonomous spaces represents a promising model for rethinking the Forum as an innovative network-based organizational form.

By SSRC President Craig Calhoun

I want to suggest four crucial ingredients of a more public social science that are not always stressed in such discussions.

1. Engagement with public constituencies must move beyond a dissemination model. It is not enough to say that first scientists will do whatever “pure” research moves them and then, eventually, there will be a process of dissemination, application, and implementation. Writing more clearly is good, but not the whole answer. For one thing, we should be cautious about assuming that social scientists should always write directly for broad publics; this may be more the task of some than others, and raising the standards for how journalists draw on social science may be equally important. As the crises of libraries and university presses reminds us, we have also failed to ask enough questions about what publications deserve public subsidies and which should proceed on market bases. In the process, we have made it hard for both ourselves and especially our nonspecialist readers to identify what is really worthwhile. We also need to bring non-scientific constituencies for scientific knowledge into the conversation earlier. Those who potentially use the results of social science in practical action, and those who mediate between scientists and broader publics, should be engaged as social science agendas are developed. Neither broader dissemination nor better “translation” of social science will be adequate without a range of relationships to other constituencies that build an interest in and readiness to use the products of research.

2. Public social science does not equal applied social science. More “applied” research may be helpful, but the opposition of applied to pure is itself part of the problem. It distracts attention from the fundamental issues of quality and originality and misguides as to how both usefulness and scientific advances are achieved. Sometimes work undertaken mainly out of intellectual curiosity or to solve a theoretical problem may prove practically useful. At least as often, research taking up a practical problem or public issue tests the adequacy of scientific knowledge, challenges commonplace generalizations, and pushes forward the creation of new, fundamental knowledge. Moreover, work engaging important public issues-democracy and the media, a ids and other infectious diseases, immigration and ethnicity- is not necessarily short-term or limited to informing immediate policy decisions. While putting social science to work in “real time” practice is vital, it is also crucial to recognize that none of these issues will go away soon. We won’t learn how to deal with them better in coming decades if we don’t commit ourselves now to both long-term pursuit of deeper knowledge and also systematic efforts to assess and learn from the practical interventions made in the meantime.

3. Problem choice is fundamental. What scientists work on and how they formulate their questions shape the likelihood that they will make significant public-or scientific-contributions. Of course there are and must be research projects driven by intellectual curiosity and by attempts to solve theoretical problems-and these may produce useful, even necessary knowledge for a range of public projects. But it is also true that many academic projects are driven by neither deep intellectual curiosity nor pressing public agendas, but simply by the internal arguments of academic subfields or theoretically aimless attempts at cumulative knowledge that mostly accumulate lines on CVs. To justify these by an ideology of pure science is disingenuous. To let these displace the attention of researchers from major public issues is to act with contempt towards the public that pays the bills. Making the sorts of social science we already produce more accessible is not sufficient; we have to produce better social science. This means more work addressing public issues-and being tested and pushed forward by how well we handle them-and high standards for the originality and importance of projects not tied directly to public issues.

4. A more public social science needs to ask serious questions about the idea of “public” itself. What is “the public?” How are its needs or wants or interests known? How are they formed, and can the processes by which they are formed be improved, made more democratic, more rational, or more creative? Are there in fact a multitude of publics? How do they relate to each other and what does this plurality mean for ideas of the public good? How is public decision-making saved from “tyranny of the majority?” When are markets the best way to achieve broad public access, and when are governmental or philanthropic alternatives most helpful? Can ideas of the public be reclaimed from trivialization by those who see all social issues in terms of an aggregation of private interests? What are the social conditions of a vital, effective public sphere and thus of an important role for social science in informing public culture, debate, and decision-making? Indeed, science itself must be public- findings published and debated, theories criticized. This is how it corrects and improves itself. And social science informs public debate, not only the making of policies behind closed doors. Good science raises the quality of debate, clarifying its factual bases and theoretical terms; it doesn’t just support one side or another.

…READ MORE HERE…

by SSRC Executive Director Mary Byrne McDonnell

BACKGROUND

To imagine how we might move toward a globally connected, public social science-and, indeed, why it is critical to do so-we must know something about the context of our work as well as the character of the intellectual issues that require our attention.

The Context of Our Work as Scientists

There are five factors concerning the context of the work of the social scientist today.

First, the world is a different place now than it was immediately following World War II. Globalization is a large part of this difference, engendering both interconnection and fragmentation.

Second, our education and research systems for the training of research professionals and the development of their careers are better suited to the needs of past decades than to the needs we envision in the future.

This has, third, created a global need for new kinds of research professionals who are capable of understanding local situations in relationship to global, transnational, and international trends and impacts. The impacts and resonances of globalization are two-way streets.

Fourth, the research community today includes people both inside and outside the traditional academy. Similarly, the researchers and analysts we train will be employed in both the public and private sectors. Regardless of their affiliation, it is important that their skills be retained in service of society.

And fifth, changes in the environment in which we work encourage working in partnership and in collaboration with multiple actors from the initial stages of a project to ensure that the project meets a specific need.

…READ MORE HERE…

Anthropology bloggers know of Erkan Saka for, among other things, diligently tracking the contents of a great many anthropology blogs on his own online field diary. It is by very far the best roundup of anthropology blog postings that one can find, and I very much appreciate the inclusive and extensive nature of his coverage. In addition, one can see the headlines of a wide range of anthropology blogs at Lorenz Khazaleh’s “Anthropology Newspaper,” and a massive collection of feeds to an even wider range of blogs.

Given his time spent blogging and reviewing anthropology blogs, it is good news that he has produced a working paper titled, “Blogging as a research tool for ethnographic fieldwork,” for the Media-Anthropology discussion list. Hopefully this will generate some good discussion, and usually the comments of the discussant, and those of the readers on the list, are posted along with the paper at the end of the online seminar period.

The abstract for Saka’s paper is as follows:

This presentation argues that blogging emerges as a new research tool for the ones conducting ethnographic fieldwork. Moreover, I argue throughout my paper that new media with a particular emphasis in blogging will have even larger consequences for the discipline of anthropology. In order to substantiate my main argument I focus on these issues:
a) Blogging might be a remedy to the anxiety of being in ‘after the fact’ that is shared by many anthropologists. Blogging takes place in the present tense while actively engaging with ‘the fact’;
b) blogging brings immediate feedback
c) not only from the limited scholarly circles but from a wider public/audience
d) which exposes the ethnographer to a much more effective issue of accountability.
Moreover,
e) blogging urges to seemotives in a more regular sense, thus creates a strong sense of regularity
f) that forces the ethnographer to produce on a regular basis
g) with a constant appeal to narrate what would normally remain fragments of fieldnotes. In addition to depending on scholarly sources of interest, this paper exploits the presenter’s own experience of blogging during his fieldwork.

Interested readers should also see NO DIVIDE for a research project that is also devotes its attention to anthropology blogging, and one can witness and partake in the development of the research project as it proceeds.

The Craft of Social Anthropology, edited by A.L. Epstein and published in 1978, was jokingly referred to by some older anthropologists as “The Crafty Anthropologist” (or maybe it was a private joke in a small circle — no matter). I think the joke is a useful point of departure for this post.

CRAFT

• cræft “power, strength, might,” from Proto-Germanic
• a vehicle designed for navigation
• shrewdness, cunning, dexterity
• art, skill
• the artful construction of a text or discourse

MEDIUM

• a middle state
• a conduit for the spirits of the dead
• a substance in which a specific organism lives and thrives
• a substance that makes possible the transfer of energy
• an intervening substance, or agency, by which something is conveyed or accomplished
• a means of communication

MESSAGE

• mittere, missum, to send, from Latin, related to mission
• a communication containing some information, news, advice, request, or the like, sent by messenger, radio, telephone, or other means
• the point, moral, or meaning
• the inspired utterance of a prophet or sage

And now watch this, to refresh your memory a little:

The medium is the message. The very statement reflects the craft to which it implicitly refers, and might be the most valuable, not to mention publicly the most prominent, statement uttered by an academic in a century. And McLuhan had an anthropologist as a partner, Edmund Carpenter, and the references to tribalism in the video segment above are not accidental. As Carpenter later explained in a video memorializing his work, he and McLuhan did all sorts of unconventional things to get their ideas noticed, as Carpenter explained, “you almost had to make a fool of yourself to get anyone to pay attention to what was being said.” Carpenter himself did radio and television shows, wrote for TV Guide, and filmed — well off the beaten track of scholarly production as we know it, or as some defend it.

Many have criticized the technological determinism buried in the McLuhan-Carpenter message, and Carpenter’s own ethnographic evidence leaves a lot of room for doubt, but I would not rush to dismiss technological determination. The secret shared by the best guerrilla and the worst dictator is that when you alter the time-space parameters of an opponent you will eventually have that opponent on the ropes. Media certainly do alter the temporal and spatial conditions of any social being. How knowledge is represented, conveyed, accomplished, becomes inseparable from what we think knowledge is.

•••••••

Craft, medium, message — when I review the assortment of standard dictionary meanings above, it strikes me that these may be the three more important multi-layered words/concepts, that we could possibly ever use as anthropologists. Ultimately, one might be able to envision a new post-disciplinary anthropology that is rebuilt around a combination of the meanings in these three keywords. As a thought experiment, one could assemble elements of the definitions of each and come up with some very interesting and peculiar theoretical and philosophical statements (and some, of course, will be pure gibberish to be sure, especially if one wishes to be crafty):

• the powerful transfer of the energy of the prophet’s message
• the shrewd intermediary of the prophet
• the vehicle of the prophet’s cunning missionary
  
• a mighty vehicle for accomplishing meaning
• artful agency on a mission of inspiration
• the intervening art of communicating meaning
• an organism thriving in communication
• sending the spirit of the artful text
• the mighty message of the middle spirit
  

Readers with more imagination and insight than myself will come up with better suggestions (please do share). But there is a bundle of ideas here that span liminality, spirituality, power, agency, energy, inspiration, life, death, materiality, virtuality, and effects wrought by communication. The medium is the message is a well crafted statement, and what McLuhan wants us to remember is that media reshape thought processes and social relations. This has some — a lot — of bearing for understanding the importance of what all of these online anthropology bloggers are doing, many doing so with modesty, self-consciousness (not in the base sense), and some courage. Unlike Carpenter, I doubt that any are making “fools” of themselves, but like Carpenter they are taking anthropology onto new paths, and it’s the path that may transform the traveler.

•••••••

Take a deep plunge, as I have done, into my blogroll. (My aim is to get as complete as possible a list of anthropology blogs, so if I missed yours, it’s my fault for not noticing it yet. Please send me your link for which I will be grateful.) Imagine wandering through these blogs, as a young student, without much or any advance knowledge of anthropology, going from page to page, exploring lateral links, reading discussions, checking background sources, and tell me if that young person would not learn far more, be stimulated more, and achieve a deeper understanding and broader consciousness in one month online, with those blogs, than in six months in an anthropology course in a university. And it’s not because quantity is what matters. I would welcome contrary views. I think that my colleague, Alexandre Enkerli, if I understood his own blog posts, is onto something special when he thinks there is a problem with conventional classroom teaching and learning strategies compared to the richer possibilities for online learning. The Internet really is “serious business” (no “rickroll” is on its way, not to worry), and the more that is asserted as a joke, the more it proves precisely that which it seeks to mock.

The inspirational work of my blogging colleagues may not be readily recognized or valued by those who are blazing new paths into incomprehensible linguistic oblivion and old media seclusion, but what they are doing is changing the world. What remains open to debate is whether this new medium will “retribalize” the world, reintegrate individuals into collectives, replace linearity with laterality, and so forth.

I will most likely need to revisit and revise this post many more times before I can delude myself into thinking that I can be satisfied with it.

(And Owen, cheer up, because when you are on the cutting edge you can expect to get a few lesions.)

This is a continuation of a series of articles on social science research funding in Canada (1, 2, 3, 4), with the aim being to produce some form of provisional closure before I turn my attention to other issues. In the long run, however, it will be important to get a more complete sense of the political economy of social science, and anthropology, research funding internationally to understand some of the opportunities and constraints at work when conceiving of an “open anthropology.”

Why the Silence, Eh? Quietly Canadian.

One of the main concerns I have as I write these articles is that there is little in the way of criticism to be found online concerning the workings and structuring of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC/CRSH), which can mean many different things: that SSHRC’s position is so well entrenched that it is too far beyond questioning by researchers who take it for granted that this is the way things are, and maybe this is way things should be; that researchers do not take the time to post their opinions online, reserving them for private grumblings among colleagues (and there are many of these complaint sessions, as I have observed and participated in them); and, that academics in Canada, beyond unions, have not formed anything resembling a radical movement that directly grapples with transforming the social position and politics of the university. Given that SSHRC is largely run by scholars who volunteer for, or are invited to serve, and is constituted and funded by the state, the apparent lack of political “noise” by scholars will surely not prompt any significant changes within SSHRC. The wider public is simply not well informed, or not informed at all, about SSHRC, and hence there is rarely any mention of SSHRC in terms of public political debate in the mass media. SSHRC is simply not on the public’s radar screen. Inertia is always a factor. Of course the silence to which I allude is not absolute: it’s that the questioning is not vigorous, direct, and prominent.

I must point out that we do have the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS). The CFHSS was originally created by Canadian scholars in the 1940s and relied on funding from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations, among other American philanthropic trusts, in order to survive. The CFHSS is supposed to act as an advocate for social sciences and humanities researchers, and has done so in select moments in the past — indeed, to date it has published numerous statements on open access, copyright, e-publishing, research ethics, and various position papers presented to the government concerning funding. Part of its own funding comes directly from SSHRC, and it represents a wide variety of interests, from researchers, to associations, to scholarly publishers, to universities — possibly too broad a spectrum for meaningful, transformative political action.

A basic structure for mobilizing scholars therefore does exist but could be better utilized. For now, the CFHSS is largely part of the status quo, with its most prominent functions being to sponsor gargantuan multidisciplinary conferences (the “Learneds” congresses) and to help fund various scholarly publications. In fact, one of the few “progressive” features of the CFHSS today is that it is directed and staffed almost entirely by women. Another positive feature has been its conversion to open access of books that have benefited from its Aid to Scholarly Publications Program and received its Scholarly Book Prize. Otherwise, I can attest, and will insist, that the CFHSS has been a minimal presence in my life as an academic in Canada — most times I am barely aware of its existence (I accidentally “re-discovered” it for the purpose of research for this article), and I have no idea how one even gets involved in the organization.

[Update: Thanks to a colleague for reminding me that the Canadian Anthropology Association is not a member of the CFHSS, and therefore anthropologists remain unrepresented at that level]

Two More Problems for Funded Research

In the previous articles I linked to above, I already delved into a series of problems and constraints posed for social science research by the nature of funding. Here are two more problem areas.

INNOVATION: SSHRC makes many claims about supporting innovative research programs and its creation of new funding opportunities. This is a problem in itself: with restricted funds, the multiplication of programs and the heaping of restrictions on each program means that basic research funding in the form of the “standard research grant” is increasingly strangled. Beyond this, it is very questionable that SSHRC supports research innovation when its grant application procedures have a heavy conservative bent, almost promoting stasis. For example, I have heard from too many colleagues that when they try to apply for funding to undertake a new research project, rather than continue an old one, they are almost always denied — their applications are rejected, at least in part on the premise that they have little or no research background in the new area of research that they wish to undertake. Let’s take a closer look at SSHRC application guidelines for the Standard Research Grant. Within the application guidelines we find the following:

CONTEXT
Situate the proposed research in context of the relevant scholarly literature. [But what if the scholarly literature is slim on a particular topic? Then reviewers have a choice to make: either they believe that the research program is truly innovative, or, as tends to be the case, they second-guess the applicant, and instead suggest that the literature review was inadequate. Moreover, this kind of language that SSHRC adopts promotes the kind of arid niche-seeking that is coming to dominate academia, with too many looking for research "gaps". Sometimes, some things have not been studied because they are simply not worth studying.]

Explain the relationship and relevance of the proposed research to your ongoing research. [And there it is, plainly stated. "I have no ongoing research, I wish to do something brand new, I am fed up and bored with what I have been doing. The proposed research is almost entirely irrelevant and totally unrelated to my past research!" One can just imagine how reviewers, who are in practice almost always conservative and blush indignant with any challenge, would receive such a statement.]

If the proposal represents a significant change of direction from your previous research, describe how it relates to experiences and insights gained from earlier research achievements. [There is more room for ambiguity here, perhaps. However, again the tendency for SSHRC is to tie you to what you did in the past, which again is not a recipe for innovation.]

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH PLAN AND PREVIOUS OUTPUT
C. Description of previous and ongoing research results
In this section, summarize the results of your most recent and ongoing research grants. Note, where appropriate, the relevance of each to the proposed research program.
[Once more, and this is at least the third time, SSHRC demands that you remain accountable to the past.]

MATCHING THE STATUS OF “SCIENCE”: As I understood the situation, thanks to Dr. Marc Renaud (Sociologist, U. de Montréal), a past President of SSHRC — more than two thirds of Canadian university students are in the social sciences, and yet funding for the social sciences is less than a third of what it is for the natural sciences. And yet SSHRC is challenged by one politician to account for itself in comparison to scientific-funding agencies. SSHRC public affairs chief Garth Williams said:

SSHRC’s peer review process matches up well with more science-oriented funding agencies: “Experts in the different fields evaluate the track records of the researchers [seeking funding] and the quality of the proposals. It’s rigorous and extremely competitive.” (McGill Reporter, February 8, 2001)

What Solutions am I Proposing?

A good question would be: “Hey Max, who cares about what you propose?” Another good question would be: “Hey Max, who asked you, eh?”

To answer the first question: Nobody. To answer the second question: Nobody. And that is precisely why I write in public, because my two answers here are identical to the two answers that would be honestly given by many of my colleagues in Canada, which is why they remain publicly silent (largely silent) as individuals, and why they are being represented by cautiously quiet agencies, and why they remain alienated by a system that governs them. Caution, care, silence: these might be effective for bringing about very slow change, but they are even better for bringing about no change at all.

Thus here is my provisional list of proposed solutions, my contingent manifesto:

THE DEVOLUTION OF RESEARCH FUNDING, ENHANCING RESEARCHER AUTONOMY:
These are public funds we are talking about, and if the public does not want any of its money to be in our hands, then the public ought to take back the money. Until the public does so, however, no one agency, no one university, can lay a greater claim to public money than anyone else. SSHRC has become a tool for the intervention of federalist politics, when the Provinces are supposed to be in charge of funding education. Therefore, at least (1) start by devolving all funding resources to the Provinces, at least on a per capita basis. SSHRC has also become a tool for maintaining regional inequalities, with already heavily funded and endowed universities getting proportionately more than others. These heavily financed universities are also located in the centres of Canadian economic growth and development (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver). Where does proportionately less research funding go? Sydney (Nova Scotia), Saskatoon, Moncton, Winnipeg, and so forth. And yet the boast is that Canada offers its citizen students the same opportunities no matter where they happen to live, no matter where they were born in Canada. That is simply not true.

Given that some universities are overfed with public research funds, then at least (2) start by allocating research funds to universities on a per capita basis that combines the number of students and faculty in some reasonable form. And, as argued previously, (2a) consider creating permanent annual research funding for each professor with a research record. At the very least, the devotion of a vast number of working hours to preparing and/or reviewing funding applications would be better spent on research itself, or disseminating that research.

These two steps, combined, respect the autonomy of Provinces, and the autonomy of universities. Doing otherwise is contrary to the law, as a matter of fact, since both principles are enshrined in federal and provincial law.

Quebec, incidentally, has its very own funding agencies (see FQRSC and FQRNT), which is a very smart, big first step (of course, Quebec also has its own laws, its own foreign representation, its own media, etc.). Now it needs to devolve that research funding to its universities. Otherwise the question is: what is the state scared of? Is it afraid that academics might have their own ideas about how to fund their own work?

An aside:
I trust negotiations within my university about what to fund and to what degree, and what are the appropriate requirements, far more than I do SSHRC. Indeed, the positive results of local and internal decision making have been subverted by negative cultural practices that take the form of snobbery. Universities currently do have limited and minimal internal funding, and given that artificial and arbitrarily restrictive requirements are not in place as with most SSHRC programs, these much smaller amounts are usually easier for researchers to gain. But, as I was told by one university Dean during a job interview: “Don’t tell me about any internal grants you got! We all get those.” Well, that should be good news, and we should all get more of these. Are we really going to get picky, snobby, trendy, and elitist about research funding? That’s just a first step in research production — if you are going to be so crassly boastful, at least wait until you get prestigious awards for your work before you start blowing your trumpet. But this “tell me where you got your funding” attitude is one that I personally find is vulgar, almost grotesque, but perfectly adequate for what is, after all, a capitalist institution.

GENERAL RESEARCH FUNDS:
There are too many straitjacketed (i.e., specialized) research programs created by SSHRC, and all of them share one central assumption: that a researcher has one research program. Yet, many of us have a cluster of numerous small projects that do not necessarily tie into each other, short term projects that may result in single reports, that could occasion the hiring of student research assistants. While not dismissing funding for specialized research, I would argue that (3) we need to consider allocating “general research funds” that support multiple small research projects with no unifying theme in common. This is vital: researchers will, one hopes, have their curiosity stimulated by the unforeseen implications of a current research project, and begin to diversify and branch out, attempt a few small projects, delve into spin-off areas, or develop new interests altogether. If we want innovation, then we need to reconsider the current mode of streamlining.

CATER TO THE RESEARCH SPECIALTIES OF PARTICULAR UNIVERSITIES:
One of the most critical flaws of the current mode of centralized, federalized, research funding is that it assumes — incorrectly — that there is a single, universal research landscape in Canada (or maybe it does not assume it, but rather wishes to create it, which is more sinister). The fact of the matter is that, by either design or by chance, many universities have unique clusters of research interests and specializations that are not duplicated elsewhere. In anthropology this is an almost mandatory reality in Canada: we have a hybrid model of four-field anthropology departments, social anthropology departments, and sociology-anthropology departments. My university is currently developing what it calls “signature areas” that distinguish it from other universities, to attract students not because we do the same thing everybody else does, but because we do not. Those signature areas may not map onto SSHRC’s structure of research funding, perhaps not neatly, perhaps in some cases not at all. Therefore, I suggest that (4) we consider universities to be the best stewards for special and new research programs that better speak to their individual strengths, and that are in the best position to nurture and evaluate those research programs.

Collaboration between researchers across universities would still be possible, indeed there is nothing that has been put forth thus far that would raise any impediment to such collaboration.

The ability of autonomous, local decision-making structures would not only better help to foster new research programs, it would go some distance toward diminishing the alienation suffered by so many academics in Canada, for whom governance is not an opportunity, but a series of sour constraints. We need to get past the SSHRC model, of the unitary, federal brain that can envision and predict all possibilities, that seeks to administer and dictate from the centre. We need more than just “consultation,” we need direct participation.

I am very grateful to Dr. Anthony McCann for inviting me to join a group of eight other contributors at the Rethinking Academic Conferences blog. This is an interesting site for reflecting on the nature, impact, and assumptions of our regular academic practices, placing them in both a social and environmental context, while considering new and expanded notions of open access. I am very enthused by what I have read so far on that blog and I hope to contribute soon.

Among Anthony McCann’s numerous papers online and other sites is Beyond the Commons, which deals primarily with with issues of music, intellectual property, copyright, and performing rights. Also, and this is very interesting (offering me personally a great deal to learn) is Anthony’s Crafting Gentleness blog, which is part of a much larger site, also called Crafting Gentleness dealing with the political possibilities of gentleness in our everyday lives. Very intriguing I must say! I look forward to learning more.

In the meantime, many thanks again Anthony for offering me the pleasure of joining your collaborative efforts.

In an article by Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed titled, “Blogs and Wikis and 3D, Oh My!” (09 May, 2008), there is an interesting section featuring discussions of the nature, purposes and benefits of academic blogging, and some of the lingering suspicions that surround them. I will post a few extracts that I think are worth considering, though one may need to read the complete piece to get a greater sense of the context and a sense of who are the speakers quoted in the article.

Volokh has the characteristics of most successful academic blogs: Its contributors are scholars and experts in a given field, and they use that expertise to provide on-the-spot analysis and running commentary on issues that matter. They interact with readers who comment on posts and build on (or push against) each other’s insights. Not unlike peer review … except on a potentially wider scale, and in public.

…

Of course, academic bloggers can broaden the scope beyond their field of expertise - or even venture beyond their means. In academe, scholars “tend to be very narrowly focused,” noted Mano Singham, director of Case’s University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) and an adjunct professor of physics. But talk to a professor, and it’s clear that most of them possess a “wide range of opinion,” he added, and why confine it to the cocktail party circuit?

Besides providing breadth, and an outlet, for scholars’ extracurricular interests, blogs can also quicken the pace at which serious questions get considered.

…

Yet some (or even most) in academe view blogging commitments as a distraction from scholarly work. “There is some tension between blogging and academia in certain disciplines. Many academics view blogging with suspicion,” Adler said. “It is often assumed … that it is time that one could and should have been spending on one’s scholarship.” He disagrees, arguing that it all comes down to “free time.” Still, before he earned tenure, he blogged under a pseudonym.

Singham, who also has a blog, added that the popular conception of bloggers as “no-life, underemployed losers” explains “why academics would shy away from that kind of association.” He argued that a frequent regimen of writing for a blog could actually improve efficiency and scholarly output in the long run.

…

Scharf - keeping in mind the varying quality of blogs - said that he made sure to clarify his blog’s intent and high standards by displaying awards that it had won and a prominent list of expert contributors “so that people were getting the sense that this was a very serious [effort], that these experts were well-qualified to be saying these things.”

Personally, I am a bit dismayed by the last paragraph. It relies on an appeal to authority as the basis for evaluating the credibility and validity of statements posted on blogs, which is a poor way to make a logical argument in any context simply because authorities can also be wrong. My larger concern has to do with the importation of standards from the offline realm, and from past academic traditions, in shaping and evaluating a new wave of scholarly practice that, ideally, should be seeking a break with those standards and traditions while questioning them severely. Being cautious is one thing, and the need to be self-critical is never redundant — but choosing to do something new, only to do it defensively and with a chip on one’s shoulder seems to defeat the point of going online. The prejudice against producing websites is not new — indeed, some think it is the activity of graduate students who seek immediate attention and gratification, and will let the sites fade once they get their doctorates and their first teaching positions. How pleasant it is to see such prejudices defeated by actual practice.

In connection with the items below, see:

“NOT RADICAL ENOUGH”: DISENGAGED ANTHROPOLOGY

Newly published articles:

American Anthropologist
March 2008, Vol. 110, No. 1, pp. 53-60
Posted online on May 8, 2008.
(doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00008.x)

The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls

MATTI BUNZL

Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801

Concepts: sociocultural anthropology, positivism, Boas, Geertz, Writing Culture

In this essay, I critique the currently dominant mode of American sociocultural anthropology. Through a historical reading of canonical texts from the 1970s to the 1990s, I trace some of contemporary anthropology’s limitations and probe their implications for the possibility of a publicly engaged discipline. I focus my critique on the demand for ever-increasing complexity, identifying it as an implicit form of positivism that renders the results of anthropological inquiries increasingly irrelevant to the big questions of the day. Epistemologically speaking, contemporary anthropology is thus not radical enough. In conclusion, I mobilize the Weberian-Boasian tradition as the most viable alternative to sociocultural anthropology’s status quo.

American Anthropologist
March 2008, Vol. 110, No. 1, pp. 61-63
Posted online on May 8, 2008.
(doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00009.x)

A Response to Matti Bunzl: Public Anthropology, Pragmatism, and Pundits

CATHERINE BESTEMAN

HUGH GUSTERSON­

Department of Anthropology, Colby College
Waterville, ME 04901-8840

Department of Anthropology, George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Concepts: globalization, neoliberalism, public anthropology, media, inequality

Discussing only two out of 11 chapters, Matti Bunzl argues that Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005) embodies an excessively deconstructive approach that undermines public anthropology by opposing all generalization. In fact, the contributors to the Pundits volume come from a variety of intellectual positions, some unfriendly to deconstructionism. In a book that is deliberately jargon free, the contributors are unified not by postmodernism but by pragmatism. They oppose generalizations that are manifestly ideological and untrue, not all generalizations. The point of the book is not to nitpick generalizations but to unmask media apologetics for neoliberalism and neoconservatism that misuse core terms (e.g., culture, ethnicity, human nature, gender) from the anthropological lexicon. We advocate a revitalized public anthropology based on grounded research, translation of sophisticated anthropological knowledge into accessible English, and a passionate concern for the well-being of those at the sharp end of neoliberal globalization.

American Anthropologist
March 2008, Vol. 110, No. 1, pp. 64-65
Posted online on May 8, 2008.
(doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00010.x)

A Reply to Besteman and Gusterson: Swinging the Pendulum

MATTI BUNZL

Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801

Concepts: epistemology, politics, the public sphere

In this rejoinder to Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, I clarify that my essay “The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls” is not primarily a critique of their volume Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005). Instead, I maintain that it takes issue with the current state of sociocultural anthropology and its inability to communicate with a larger public sphere. In conclusion, I reflect on the historical location of my argument, likening my position to advocacy for a swing in the discipline’s epistemological pendulum and finding additional cause for such action in the realities of the current political moment.

Backdrop to a Non-Starter

Recently I have been considering the prospects for a collaborative (action) research project between myself and some of the younger members of Trinidad’s Carib community who have years of working experience in the local media and local publishing industry — bright, articulate, committed individuals with an eagerness to implement their own training in research, to conduct their own local archival research, to produce their own video documentaries, and finally to learn how to create, manage and host their own website (and “wrest” that function from me). The project would have been titled something like “Recovering Indigenous Heritage“, and would have involved the training of Carib youth to, among other things, research 200 year old baptismal registers of Trinidad’s 16 former mission villages, to create a genealogical database for all Trinidadians of Carib ancestry especially in light of the government’s refusal to admit any category on the national census for people of who wish to self-identify as indigenous, Amerindian, or Carib. In addition, an aim would have been to create an online network linking Caribs in Trinidad with those in the diaspora, to set up local conferences and national gatherings, to archive indigenous self-knowledge, and to disseminate it, while critically investigating how images of indigeneity have been disseminated to date. It had the potential for being an important project that could have led to valuable local transformations — keep in mind that the Carib identity has historically been one of the most stigmatized in the Caribbean, the result of the institutionalization of shame that has formed one part of the cultural process of genocide that has caused many families to suppress their identities.

But what would have been a vital part of such a project was to work in tandem, and at least on par with Trinidadian Carib counterparts, as formal co-researchers, as equals in the administration of research funds, especially since they are based in Trinidad and would be coordinating events “on the ground” in ways, and for a duration, that I could not possibly do at a distance. So what’s the problem?

SSHRC’s Notions of Collaboration: Fear of the Non-Academic Other?

As I have already mentioned, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada remains one of the central, if not exclusive sources of funding for anthropologists in Canada. Most anthropologists will tend to apply for the “Standard Research Grant” (SRG). The SRG does allow for collaboration, of sorts. Let’s look at what SSHRC considers to be appropriate and applicable “collaboration” in terms of applying for and managing grant funds.

First, there is the definition of the role which I would occupy:

Applicant (principal investigator/project director): an individual who has primary responsibility for the intellectual direction of the research and who assumes administrative responsibility for the grant. In the case of team research, the principal investigator/project director is understood to be responsible for the overall leadership of the research team. Eligibility requirements may vary with specific programs. In most cases, applicants for SSHRC’s research, strategic and communications grants must be affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution.

Second, various complementary roles are then outlined:

Co-applicant (co-investigator): an individual who makes a significant contribution to the intellectual direction of the research, plays a significant role in the conduct of the research, and who may also have some responsibility for financial aspects of the research. In the case of the Standard Research Grants and the Research/Creation in Fine Arts programs, the eligibility criteria for co-applicants are the same as those for the applicant. (What that means is that a co-applicant must also be an academic based at a Canadian university, end of story.)

Collaborator: a scholar or researcher who may play various roles in a research project or program of research, including participating in setting its intellectual direction. Collaborators do not need to be affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution.

Other assistants and support staff: individuals employed to assist the research team to conduct its research who are neither students nor members of the research team. Research assistants must be citizens or permanent residents of Canada unless it can be shown that qualified candidates are not available in Canada or that the proposed research requires the hiring of assistants abroad.

What this means then, in light of the kind of project I outlined in the first section, is that my Carib partners could, at best, be classed as “assistants” or “support staff.” All one needs to add here is: “This is the bucket, and this is the mop, finish the floors by 5:00pm.” It simply is nowhere near adequate, acceptable, or even ethical to work with collaborators who are meager subordinates, and who have no decision-making power of their own, and no funds to manage on a day-to-day basis. The only way to do this is, quite plainly, to circumvent SSHRC’s guidelines, ignore the labels above, and simply transfer the funds under various guises…and then be caught in “wrongdoing and misconduct” and either be blacklisted by SSHRC or even be sued for the return of the funds. And monitor they do: this the organization that pinpointed my purchase of pens as an ineligible expense (I am not allowed to write fieldnotes with SSHRC funds), among thousands of expense reports it had read during an audit at my home institution, and that had “questions” about a cocktail that I organized for colleagues at a seminar I hosted in Montreal (and for which I paid out of pocket). They learned of the cocktail from a document on my project website — amazing that they were the only ones in the end to have read the contents of the site so carefully. Therefore, it is not a good idea to try to be clever and engage in flexible interpretations when dealing with SSHRC.

Surely, there are other options?

Yes, indeed. One may work with community, voluntary, and non-profit organizations. So then that should solve the problem. At first SSHRC implemented what it called the “Community-University Research Alliances” scheme, and until very recently, the “community” had to be a Canadian one (so much for globalization, transnationalism, immigration, diaspora, etc.). Now it has the “International Community-University Research Alliances ” — SSHRC is dynamic after all, the reader will exclaim, and only a cantankerous naysayer could persist in finding fault with SSHRC.

But wait, the International CURA comes with one very big string attached: it must be conducted in alliance with one of the Government of Canada’s international development arms, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). As a result, only a finite and short list of acceptable areas of work are permitted, that fit within developmentalist goals, goals that again are predetermined and not negotiated in partnership with a community — where is the collaboration? We set the goals, we create the plan, we administer the funds…and you collaborate.

In addition, the domestic and international CURA schemes are far bigger arrangements than “a Canadian researcher and his Trinidadian Carib counterpart”. These are major productions, involving multiple disciplines, and multiple scholars from the Canadian university’s side (I can’t think of even one other person in my entire university who would even be vaguely interested in Carib anything, let alone participate as an active researcher). CURAs are associated with academic units within a university, such as a department, more than one unit ideally, and not a single researcher within the university.

Debating Collaboration

Clearly there is a spectrum of possible notions of collaboration. In the colonial context, the collaborator, as typecast in works such as Frantz Fanon’s, was a lowly, subservient pawn who aided the colonizers to reduce the threat to his or her own existence. The old ethnographic fieldwork situation, where the researcher asked the questions and the native supplied the answers, is also collaboration. In fact, let’s take matters to the absolute extreme: I own all resources, I occupy all offices of authority, and I give commands…and if you play any role, even as a groveling servant, you are still collaborating with me.

I do not think, however, that when we speak of anthropological collaboration, and develop notions of partnership, consultation, and negotiation as can be found in our professional codes of conduct, that we are looking for groveling servants. Agencies such as SSHRC, which monopolize public research funding — and it’s a federal body, in a country where the provinces are supposedly in charge of funding university education, so something is unclear to me here — have clearly “stacked the deck” against applicants such as myself who would truly like to take collaboration to new levels. Any new avenue proves to be a new dead end.

What also remains unclear to me — and this kind of information SSHRC definitely does not publish — is who are the persons and agencies responsible for deciding which programs SSHRC will create and fund, and how they are created, and who decides the criteria for eligibility and why.

As far as I can see at present, one initial solution would be for a decentralization and devolution of research funding to universities themselves, with public funds allocated equally on a per capita basis to each institution. In this manner, we can hold discussions among parties who are familiar to one another, who are in more or less regular contact within the university, and who can discuss and negotiate at length and produce tailor-made funding to suit the specificities of individual research projects, instead of the current model of “we create the schemes, you figure out how to fit in.” That is not how to support “research innovation” — and I suspect that if we set aside the glossy hype, it will be revealed that SSHRC has as much of federal political plan as anything else.