January2009 | Page 5 of 7 | antropologi.info

God natt, Blindern!

Published on January 8, 2009 by lorenz Posted in forskning(spolitikk) akademia, neoliberalisme / velferdsstaten, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, utdanning

Er dette satire? Eller står det virkelig så ille til med forskningen? Nå har kommunikasjonskonsulentene inntatt Universitetet i Oslo. De har vel allerede skrevet denne pressemeldingen. Jeg må le når jeg snubler over alle disse fancy ordene men egentlig er dette en trist sak.

Les:

Undersøkelser viser at Universitetet i Oslo er et tradisjonsrikt universitet med akademisk tyngde og troverdighet. Samtidig er det i verdensklasse når det gjelder nivået på fremtidsrettet forskning, og utdanning av toppkandidater til offentlig virksomhet, næringsliv og organisasjoner.

– Vi skal bli enda bedre til å vise landets dyktigste, mest motiverte og karrierebevisste studenter hvorfor Universitetet i Oslo er det beste valget for dem, sier Siv Nordrum, kommunikasjonsdirektør ved UiO.

Kvaliteten på UiOs forskning og utdanning vises i den prestisjetunge Shanghai-rangeringen. Der ligger nemlig UiO som nummer en i Norge, og som nummer tre i Norden. Av totalt 16 000 universiteter og høyskoler på verdensbasis, ligger UiO på en 64. plass.

– I tillegg til å utdanne flere høykvalifiserte kandidater til arbeidslivet enn noe annet norsk universitet, har Universitetet i Oslos forskning bare siden 2004 resultert i over 300 innovasjonsideer, etablering av 14 nye selskaper og nær 30 kommersialiserte prosjekter. Dette ønsker vi at flere skal vite om, sier Nordrum.

Verdensklasse. Toppkandidater. Fremtidsrettet forskning. Innovasjonsideer. Kommersialiserte prosjekter. Prestisjtung. Karrierebevisst. Smak på ordene. Hvilke signaler gir de? God natt, Blindern!

>> les pressemeldingen i Uniforum

SE OGSÅ:

Antropologer kritiserer produksjonslogikken på universitetet

Kvantitetsreformen og effektivisering: Hylland Eriksen varsler døden for den frie kunnskapsutvikling

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Universitetenes grunnleggende unyttighet

Meningen med universitetet: Ut mot “produktifiseringen” av utdanningen

Protests at Yale: When Walmart’s management principles run an anthropology department

“Sovjet-liknende produksjonskvoter truer forskningsfriheten”

Opprop: Forskningsfinanseringen en trussel mot vitenskapen og demokratiet

Kommersialisering av forskning: Artikkel om aidssyke barn uønsket

Fagidioter på eliteuniversitetet – Akademikernes utspill møter motstand

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Sett Israel og Palestina under administrasjon!

Published on January 7, 2009 by lorenz Posted in konflikter katastrofer, Midt-Østen, politikk, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, vi og de andre

Få antropologer har kommentert krigen i Gaza. Thomas Hylland Eriksen er et av de få unntakene. Hvorfor har ikke verdenssamfunnet forlengst rykket inn med tungt artilleri og satt Israel og Palestina under administrasjon? Det bekreftes jo gang på gang at befolkningen i området er ute av stand til å styre seg selv, skriver han i en kronikk i Aftenposten:

De siste 15 årene har man med vekslende hell grepet inn bl.a. i Irak, Afghanistan, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia og Rwanda. Så hvorfor ikke i Israel og Palestina?
(…)
Vanlige jøder og arabere fortjener bedre enn å bli holdt som gisler av religiøse fanatikere og krigsherrer. Det er kort sagt vanskelig å se noen annen løsning enn påtvungen avvæpning, utvikling av en ikke-etnisk offentlighet med forbud mot etniske og religiøse partier og der en arabisk/palestinsk stemme er like mye verdt som en jødisk, muliggjort fordi verdenssamfunnet har fylt opp gater og torv med FN-soldater og internasjonalt politi som ikke har tenkt å reise hjem med det første.

>> les hele kronikken i Aftenposten

For ti dager siden har teolog Anne-Hege Grung skrevet en fin kronikk der hun har avmytologisert Midtøsten-konflikten: “Konflikten er rett og slett ikke særlig mytisk, den er knyttet til kamp om land, vann og politisk kontroll” – les kronikken Godt nytt år, Gaza i Aftenposten.

Jeg er forresten nettopp blitt ferdig med innlegget Anthropologists on the war on Gaza (handler om engelskspråklige media)

PS: Thomas Hylland Eriksen har organisert et adhoc-seminar “Gaza: Hvilke scenarier er mulige?”. Det skal finne sted mandag 12. januar 2009 kl 1415 i Auditorium 2, Eilert Sundts Hus (SV-fakultetet), Blindern (Universitetet i Oslo). Mer informasjon oppdatering Les oppsummering av seminaret

Anthropologists on the war on Gaza (updated)

Published on January 7, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Middle East, politics, Us and Them

LINKS UPDATED 26.10.2023 (See also part II David Graeber: Boycott Israel! – More anthropologists on Gaza) After two weeks war in Gaza, it’s time to round up: How have anthropologists contributed to a better understanding of the conflict? According to my overview, they have been quite silent. And they have been more active on blogs than in traditional media. Neither Google or Yahoo news search give any relevant results.

Gabriele Marranci has written one of the first blog posts: Gaza: bad politics needs blood. He criticizes both Hamas and the Israeli government:

And here lies the main issue: both parties, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, share at least something in common: an immoral and unethical view for which political gain are more important than innocent lives, including those of women and children.
(…)
Hamas has no problem to sacrifice Palestinian lives in the name of an impossible mission (to remove Israel from the Middle East), and the Israeli government has no issue with endangering the lives of innocent Israelis with the inevitable retaliation of suicide bombing and killings.
(…)
Palestinians and Muslims have to accept one simple fact: Israel is here to stay. Israel and its supporters have likewise to accept that sophisticated forms of ethnic cleansing will not be sustainable nor sucessful. Palestinians are, generation after generation, there to stay, and if a solution not found, to fight.
(…)
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has some clear historical reasons. Yet the fact that it is still one of the most deadly conflicts affecting civilians is due to extremely bad politics, and bad politics, akin to a kind of cancer, requires innocent blood in order to perpetuate itself.

In New American Media, William O. Beeman explains why Hamas is Not Iran’s Puppet:

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and is now widely promulgated with little or no support. (…) Hamas has been effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt.

tabsir – one of the best resources regarding the Middle East – collects continuisly news stories and analysis on Gaza. Daniel Martin Varisco wrote two posts: Rizpah and the Politics of Vengeance and David vs Goliath, the IDF vs Hamas

John Hutnyk posted two eyewitness reports by Ewa Jasiewicz, a former student from Goldsmiths.

Maximilian Forte has collected lots of links in his post Currently Covering and Commenting on the Gaza Massacre and reflected on using twitter in Tweets of Conflict in the New Online War Zone.

Erkan Saka is also sharing Gaza-analysis with us, see More than 200,000 protested in Çağlayan, Istanbul and For the people of Gaza

That’s it so far. Not much. In Gaza: A Frightening Anthropological Analogy, Pamthropologist criticizes her colleagues:

Is presenting a discussion of these issues not, exactly, what we should be doing as Anthropologists? And yet, our blogs rarely cover these issues–the notable exception being Open Anthropology, wait he is a Canadian. You know, as a discipline, we have no functioning voice in the American dialogue.

But anthropologists have raised their voices about this conflict before. Last year, among others, Adam S. Kucharski published his thesis about The Politics of Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.. Linda Teigland Helgesen was eight months of fieldwork among Palestinian students at Birzeit University. The result is her thesis The construction of resistance. A case study among “Il-majaneen” students in the occupied West Bank

Earlier this year, Jeff Halper published his new book An Israeli in Palestine. Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. It was reviewed by Electronic Intifada. See also interview with Halper ‘As Israelis, We Also Fight for Palestinians’ (Oh My News).

For general news see The Guardian and the impressive round-up of blogposts from Gaza by Global Voices: Palestine: “In Gaza our future is almost destroyed”

UPDATE 5: Metronews in Halifax (no longer available) writes about Israelian anthropologist Jeff Halper (mentioned above): “It’s unusual to have an Israeli who’s critical of Israel and supports Palestinian rights, especially with the war in Gaza going on,” he told Metro yesterday. Something needs to be done, he said, because the current situation isn’t just affecting Gaza, it’s “messing up the whole world.”

UPDATE 4: New posts by Gabriele Marranci: Gaza and the ethos of death and Maximilian Forte at Open anthropology Campus Gaza: Academic Boycotts and Complicit Silence

UPDATE 3: Palestinian anthropologist Yara El-Ghadban has collected lots of information on her bilingual (French / English) blog Tropismes

UPDATE 2: New post by Maximilian Forte: Accepting the Might to Exist: Some Israeli Lessons for Anthropology:

Anthropology teaches us not to naturalize any human construction, and to recognize the arbitrariness of culture, not to mention the arbitrariness of power. Political Anthropology invites us to recognize that the state is the most violent of all arbitrary institutions in human history, that all states on earth owe their existence to massive and bloody assaults, and continue to preserve and promote themselves through violence against the peoples governed by other states.

UPDATE 1: Today, here in Norway, Thomas Hylland Eriksen wrote an article in the newspaper Aftenposten where he proposed a possible solution – to put Israel-Palestine under (UN-) administration (in Norwegian only). Yesterday, the Norwegian Psychological Association demanded the end of the war. The psychologists are among other things concerned for possible consequences for children’s mental health (Norwegian only)

SEE ALSO PART TWO OF THIS POST

David Graeber: Boycott Israel! – More anthropologists on Gaza (II)

SEE ALSO EARLIER POSTS:

Lila Abu Lughod: “In Israel and Palestine we have an amazing opportunity”

Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

Selected quotes from “On Suicide Bombing” by Talal Asad

The anthropology of children, war and violence

Conflict Resolution and Anthropology: Why more scholarship on violence than on peace?

For an Anthropology of Cosmopolitanism

LINKS UPDATED 26.10.2023 (See also part II David Graeber: Boycott Israel! - More anthropologists on Gaza) After two weeks war in Gaza, it's time to round up: How have anthropologists contributed to a better understanding of the conflict? According…

What is good applied anthropology?

Published on January 6, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, University / Academia

Most anthropologists work outside the university where they don’t enjoy academic freedom. These anthropologists must be better prepared for the perils of non-academic applied work, Brian McKenna writes in Counterpunch. For good applied anthropology is being troublesome:

He quotes Robert Lynd who in 1939 wrote:  

[T]he role of the social sciences to be troublesome, to disconcert the habitual arrangements by which we manage to live along, and to demonstrate the possibility of change in more adequate directions . . . like that of a skilled surgeon, [social scientists need to] get us into immediate trouble in order to prevent our present troubles from becoming even more dangerous. In a culture in which power is normally held by the few and used offensively and defensively to bolster their instant advantage within the status quo, the role of such a constructive troublemaker is scarcely inviting.

Too often, applied anthropologists say “Yes, sir”:

Some years back Harvard anthropologist Kris Heggenhougen argued that the strength of anthropology in collaborating with other disciplines lies in saying, “yes, but. . . and to critically examine the decisive factors affecting peoples’ health including power, dominance and exploitation.” (Heggenhougen 1993)

Yes, but. . . . while that sounds good, more needs to be said.  

First of all, we spend much more time saying “yes, sir” than “yes, but” in paid employment. This is necessary if we wish to stay employed. The workplace is a not a democracy but a hierarchy in which academic freedom does not apply. (…) (A)pplied anthropologists have to be prepared to travel the road from “yes, but,” to “no, sir” in order to better serve the public interest.

Brian McKenna mentions several applied anthropologists who were “troublesome”. One of them is Barbara Johnston who has worked with environmental justice. She warns about associated risks:

Environmental justice work “requires confronting, challenging and changing power structures.” When someone is involved in this work, says Johnston, “backlash is inevitable.” Because most anthropologists usually enter organizations as change agent s of some kind they need to be aware that they are especially at risk of being labeled a “troublemaker” at any time. If the label sticks it can lead not only to getting fired; it also can lead to a vicious form of bullying that can make one’s life unbearable.

According to Johnston, academic culture “trivializes the importance of this work,” while, at the same time, the engaged anthropologist struggles to find disciplinary support.  

Another example is Ted Downing who worked for the World Bank. In 1995, he wrote about the potential social and environmental impacts a proposed World Bank dam project will have on Chile’s Pehuenche Indians. The result: The report was censored:

After his report was censored Downing demanded that the World Bank publicly disclose his findings. The Bank responded by threatening “a lawsuit garnering Downing’s assets, income and future salary if he disclosed the contents, findings and recommendations of his independent evaluation.” (Johnson and Garcia Downing). As a result of his whistleblowing, Downing was blacklisted from the World Bank after 13 years of consulting service. 

In his case, “yes, but” didn’t work. He progressed, reluctantly, to “no, sir”:

In fact this happens to many applied anthropologists but most do not have the resources, support or disciplinary guidance to assist them in their struggles. They might become whistleblowers but their careers suffer. And their stories are untold. We do not have a good accounting of how often this happens to anthropologists, but we need to learn more about this. In any case, resisting censorship is, as Downing says, “good applied” anthropology.

>> read the whole article in Counterpunch

When applied anthropology becomes aid – A disaster anthropologist’s thoughts

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

USA: Censorship threatens fieldwork – A call for resistance

Examples of engaging anthropology – New issue of “Anthropology Matters”

Omertaa – Open access journal for Applied Anthropology

Most anthropologists work outside the university where they don't enjoy academic freedom. These anthropologists must be better prepared for the perils of non-academic applied work, Brian McKenna writes in Counterpunch. For good applied anthropology is being troublesome:

He quotes Robert…

Do we (still) need journals?

Published on January 5, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, University / Academia

“Journals? Who cares?” anthropologist George Marcus said recently. Journals as we know them are a thing of the past, and the last to understand this fact are universities and academics, philosopher Mark C. Taylor says in an interview with E. Efe Çakmak in the new Eurozine issue:

For the most part, presses and journals as they now exist do not serve the interests of intellectual or cultural development. To the contrary, their proliferation is symptomatic of increasing hyper-specialization in which there is more and more about less and less. This is going in the opposite direction of history, in which there is increasing interconnectedness.

So my advice is to forget journals – I no longer read any academic journals and I stopped publishing in them years ago. The only function presses and journals serve is to authorize those who write for them among a dwindling group of peers. If ideas are to matter – and I believe it is crucial that they do – we must completely change the way in which they are communicated.

Taylor is critical of the “tyranny of the word”:

What I want to stress is that language in today’s world is not primarily verbal but is, more importantly, visual. The problem is that we are visually illiterate – and nowhere is this more evident than in the university. In the “real” world, image trumps word every time; in the academic world, word represses image all the time.

If communication is going to become effective on a global scale, we must liberate the image from the tyranny of the word. This does not mean giving up reading and writing as they have been known in the past. But it is no longer enough. The multilingualism of young people today is multimedia. If we do not learn to communicate in this language, we will have nothing to say.

>> read the whole interview in Eurozine (link updated 18.8.2020)

Already in the early 90s, Taylor has experimented with new information technologies according to Wikipedia. See also his comprehensive website.

SEE ALSO:

George Marcus: “Journals? Who cares?”

Anthropology blogs more interesting than journals?

"Journals? Who cares?" anthropologist George Marcus said recently. Journals as we know them are a thing of the past, and the last to understand this fact are universities and academics, philosopher Mark C. Taylor says in an interview with E.…