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

Published on November 7, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Northern America, politics, University / Academia

Generally, anthropologists support social justice, but in their own department, they fire colleagues like David Graeber who publicly supported graduate students’ right to form a union. “In increasingly corporate universities, the gap between one’s scholarship and one’s university politics is increasing”, Nazima Kadir writes in a commentary in Anthropology News November (not online, for AAA-members access via AnthroSource).

Kadir is PhD candidate at Yale’s anthropology department and an organizer for GESO, the graduate employees and students’ union.

The non-renewal of David Graeber’s contract, she writes, has received widespread attention as a sign of the conflict between ideology and engaged practice. But, she continues, it is rarely viewed in the context of union-busting. An avowed anarchist, Graeber publicly supported graduate students’ right to form a union. When the director of graduate studies attempted to expel an organizer, Graeber was the only faculty on her committee to defend her.

Weeks later, senior faculty voted against renewing Graeber’s contract, demonstrating with clarity the consequences for faculty who break ranks to support the union, Kadir writes.

More anti-union activities included another attempt to expel an organizer; the firing of David Graeber for defending this student; a series of aggressive emails sent by an anti-union faculty member to her; and the director of graduate students threatening to void the qualifying exams of several third-year students (all union activists).

Taken together, the administration and faculty’s actions constituted a pattern of systemic, organized abuse and created a fearful, anti-intellectual climate.

Following Yale’s lead, during the joint Yale/Columbia strike in 2005, Columbia’s provost (a noted labor historian) advised faculty to withhold grants and teaching fellowships from strikers. His memo was leaked and published in The Nation.

Background: In 2004, the Bush-appointed National Labor Review Board (NLRB ) reversed the Clinton-appointed board’s decision of 2000, which recognized graduate students’ right to organize at private universities. Current decisions “reflect the current administration’s anti-labor polices”. At public universities, it’s a non-issue, she clarifies: Berkeley and the University of Michigan have recognized their graduate student unions for decades.

For Union membership is a democratic right:

I’ve began organizing for the Graduate Employees and Students Organization when I realised the academy was in crisis. With 40% of all teaching being conducted by adjuncts, it is clear that the “casualization” of academic labor is not the future but the present. If I want to have job security, health benefits, gender equality and anything as banal as pregnancy leave, I have to fight for it as a graduate student before even considering having it as an adjunct.

I refuse to accept that Walmart’s management principles should also run a university setting. While Yale demonstrates another vision, I am encouraged by the efforts of the graduate students who organize to make the academy into a forum for democratic possibilities, and not corporate interests.

For those of you without access to Anthropology News, Nazima Kadir mentions most of her points in her paper The Challenges of Organizing Academic Labor (pdf)

The website of the graduate employees and students’ union is quite informative, see among others their reports.

Solidarity with David Graeber website

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

Blogging and Public Anthropology at Yale: When free speech costs a career

USA: Censorship threatens fieldwork – A call for resistance

Censorship of research in the USA: Iranians not allowed to publish papers

Generally, anthropologists support social justice, but in their own department, they fire colleagues like David Graeber who publicly supported graduate students' right to form a union. "In increasingly corporate universities, the gap between one's scholarship and one's university politics is…

Paper by Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork

Published on November 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, technology

Erkan Saka, one of the most active blogging anthropologists, has published his paper Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork that he presented at the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in Brisbane six weeks ago.

The paper is a good introduction into the topic. It was inspired by recent discussions on anthropology blogs.

His main points:

Blogging occupies an interesting place between the personal and the public. The moment one starts blogging, s/he becomes public.
Blogging brings immediate feedback; not only from the limited scholarly circles but from a wider public/audience which in turn exposes exposes the ethnographer to a much more effective issue of accountability.
Moreover, blogging urges to see motives in a more regular sense, thus creates a strong sense of regularity that forces the ethnographer to produce on a regular basis which in turn produces a constant appeal to narrate what would normally remain fragments of field notes.
Finally, 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’, with the emergent phenomena unlike the later edited institutionally accepted monographs most of which become outdated.

In this paper, Erkan Saka also compares blogging to traditional journalism and reviews relevant literature on blogging.

>> read the whole paper

UPDATE: An updated version of this paper was discussed in the Media Anthropology Network.

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Anthropologist Kerim Friedman: Welcome to the Blogsphere: Stop Yelling at the TV and Get Online!

More and more academics use blogs

Ethnographic study on bloggers in California & New York

Why blogging matters: Handbook for global bloggers is out

Anthropology Newspaper – Overview over blogging anthropologists (and some others)

Helgeland Arbeiderblad støtter rasistisk forsker

Published on November 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in forskning(spolitikk) akademia, media, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, vi og de andre

Professor Lars Kolvereid mener at kinesiske innvandrere lykkes bedre som gründere fordi de har høyere “nasjonal intelligens” enn etiopiere. I Helgeland Arbeiderblad blir professoren fra Handelshøyskolen i Bødø til tross for sitt rasistiske utspill framstilt som en helt.

“Nå har han måttet advare familien og naboer mot reaksjoner fra innvandrer-miljøet”, skriver journalisten Knut Folkestad som er tydelig stolt over at en forsker fra sin landsdel får omtale i hovedstadspressen.

– Hva sier du til barna dine, spør journalisten og forskeren svarer:

– Jeg har bedt dem være oppmerksomme dersom det kommer fremmede som lurer på hvem som er faren deres. De mest ubehagelige mailene er fra afrikanere.

IQ-artikkelen har han skrevet sammen med doktorand Evgueni Vinogradov. “Kolvereid har bestemt seg for å ta støyten”, skriver journalisten:

– Jeg står fram sjøl. Ikke for å ta æren, men fordi jeg ønsker å skjerme ham til han blir ferdig med doktorgraden sin.

– Hvordan opplever du å bli kalt rasist?

– Det tar jeg ikke så ille. Det blir bare komisk. Og jeg har fått mange støttemeldinger også. (…) I går opplevde jeg å få spandert en øl “på huset” da jeg var på pub. Det har aldri skjedd meg i Norge før. Det var rett og slett en belønning for å ha turt å ha stått fram, og for det jeg har gått gjennom den siste uka.

>> les hele saken i Helgeland Arbeiderblad

>> les Rangerer innvandrere etter IQ i Dagens Næringsliv

Forresten: På spørsmålet “Hvilken betydning mener du dette bør få?” svarer professoren overfor Avisa Nordland:

– Vil vi ha økonomisk vekst, bør vi være mer åpen for asiatiske innvandrere og mer skeptiske til afrikanske.

Til Dagens Næringsliv sier Thomas Hylland Eriksen:

– Det er helt skandaløst, rasistisk og useriøst. Dette er rent pølsevev. Det går ikke an å vektlegge slik forskning som en forklaringsfaktor på at kinesiske innvandrere er best på gründervirksomhet i Norge. Det er ikke noe vitenskapelig over metoden disse forskerne bruker for å komme frem til hva som er de ulike nasjoners intelligens.

I artikkelen Vitenskap og “nasjonal IQ” (forskning.no) forteller oss Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren hvorfor «nasjonal IQ» ikke kan forklare nasjonale forskjeller i entreprenørskap.

Resultatene er basert på omstridt raseforskning. I Bergen Tidende spør derfor Morten Strøknes: Forsøker forskere ved Handelshøyskolen i Bodø å gjenopplive raseforskningen?

Bente Aasjord fra Steigen i Nordland argumenterer på en lignende måte og ironiserer i Nationen: “Høgskolen der Kolvereid jobber er tross alt plassert i et område av landet hvor man i følge forskerne selv må anta at intelligensen er lavere.”

Og Odd Arne Olafsen (LO-Aktuelt) kommenterer:

At noen i vitenskapelige miljøer i det hele tatt skal gidde å bruke krefter på sånt, er om ikke uansvarlig, så i alle fall helt bortkastet. Når nordmenn har gått fra å være en fattig bondenasjon til det moderne kunnskapssamfunnet vi er i dag, sier det mye mer om de mulighetene vi over tid har fått lagt til rette for at IQen vår skal få komme til nytte.

Tidligere ble Kolvereid spurt etter religionens rolle blant dagens entreprenører. Han svarte: “Vi vet imidlertid at politisk tilhørighet spiller en rolle. De fleste gründere stemmer Fremskrittspartiet og Høyre.”

OPPDATERING (kl 1725): Det viser seg at en forsker ved London School of Economics gikk ut med en lignende påstand: Afrika er fattig fordi afrikanere er mindre intelligente enn folk i rikere land, se i dagens Guardian Low IQs are Africa’s curse, says lecturer Les også kommentaren Africa is filled with people too dumb to live, according to the LSE

SE OGSÅ:

Rasetenkning i Språkrådet?

IQ-testing i norske skoler: Innvandrerelever stemples som dumme

Norske verdier, islam og hverdagsrasismen

– Kategorien ’rase’ er blitt en blind flekk for nordmenn

Professor Lars Kolvereid mener at kinesiske innvandrere lykkes bedre som gründere fordi de har høyere "nasjonal intelligens" enn etiopiere. I Helgeland Arbeiderblad blir professoren fra Handelshøyskolen i Bødø til tross for sitt rasistiske utspill framstilt som en helt.

"Nå…

Open Access: “The American Anthropological Association reminds me of the recording industry”

Published on November 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, University / Academia

(via Erkan’s Field Diary) “The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is starting to remind me of the recording industry and their rearguard actions against file-sharing and online dissemination in general”, Eric Kansa from Digging Digitally comments on a recent AAA-decision against open access anthropology.

After the AnthroSource Steering Committee has issued a public statement in support of open access to research articles on the internet, the commitee has been officially disbanded by the AAA according to Alex Golub at Savage Minds.

Eric Kansa writes:

This speaks volumes about how beholden this organization is toward failing and outmoded publication business models, models that hurt AAA members, universities, libraries, students, faculty, groups with limited financial resources, and the public.

(…)

Trying to horde anthropological research seems self-defeating. It seems that anthropology should do more to attract more people to its research. FRPAA, which would require government funded archives of paper drafts accepted for publication, would be a great way for anthropology to become better known to a larger community.
(…)
By opposing FRPAA, the AAA is also working against the dissemination of vital knowledge in other disciplines that directly impact health, conservation, and economic development. That makes this whole affair sordid, ironic, and even somewhat tragic, especially for a discipline that positions itself in advocacy on behalf of marginalized peoples and communities.

Changing the AAA, he writes, is going to require some grassroots organizing. He welcomes therefore the initiative by anthropological bloggers who want to discuss ways to push forward an Open Access agenda at the AAA meeting in San Jose.

Kerim Friedman: Open Source Anthropology

The Anthropologists – Last primitive tribe on earth? (Take a look at indigineuos people’s use of online communication as a mean of resistance and raising awareness.)

(via Erkan's Field Diary) "The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is starting to remind me of the recording industry and their rearguard actions against file-sharing and online dissemination in general", Eric Kansa from Digging Digitally comments on a recent AAA-decision…

“The Maori ethnopolitical movement threatens democracy”

Published on November 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, maori, Pacific Oceania, politics, Us and Them

“The ethnopolitical Maori-Pakeha movement in New Zealand is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Maori and non-Maori and promoting a cultural elite within Maoridom”, Elizabeth Rata claims. She has just published her second book, “Public Policy and Ethnicity, the Politics of Ethnic Boundary Making”. The book is written with 13 other academics, including anthropologists Jonathan Friedman and Alain Babadzan.

Her PhD was in the philosophy of education, her thesis was an investigation of Maori revival and retribalisation. In an interview with New Zealand Herald, she says:

My research threw up the opposite of what I thought I’d find – that retribalisation would serve the interests of social justice – so disproving my original argument.
(…)
Many New Zealanders originally supported Maori retribalism because they saw it as a means to much greater social justice – and my argument is that, in fact the opposite has happened – that group of poor marginalised Maori is in the same position now.

Rata discovered the emergence of “neotribal capitalism”: Once Maori people were given back assets, they behaved just like white New Zealanders. The aggressive and adventurous grabbed the spoils, she claims, while the rest remained as poor as ever. Although it might have been an unintended consequence, the Maori movement led according to her to an ethnification of politics and society. It led to the belief that ethnicity was our primary identity – more basic than any other identity we could choose. People were classified ethnically within mental health, education. Ethnicity was institutionalised at all levels.

But the biggest problem, says Rata, is that no one will talk about what is happening.

>> read the whole article in The New Zealand Herald

Rata has received lots of criticism for her views. In a Call for papers for the Journal of Indigenous Nations Studies we read:

Rata’s rhetoric bears a resemblance to global right wing conservative messages that promote the notion that when “traditional fundamentalists” succeed in intervening into western power structures they contaminate and weaken western democracy.
(…)
Through what amounts to unchecked media access, writers around the globe use their privileged positions to promote western bias and dogma, deepen colonial trauma, and undermine futures of Indigenous Peoples.

And the International Research Institute For Maori And Indigenous Education (Iri) And Te Aratiatia (Maori Education, The University Of Auckland states:

The recent attack by Elizabeth Rata on Kaupapa Maori developments highlights a disturbing trend of racism being disguised as public debate. Director of the International Research Institue for Maori and Indigenous Education, Dr Leonie Pihama, states that the comments by Elizabeth Rata where couched within an “almost unintelligible academic language” do in fact merely reflect the Don Brash position that Maori language and culture have little significance in this country.

I suppose one example of these racist attacks can be found in this article Gene linked to Maori violence

I’ve neglected Maori issues in this blog. For current news, see Waatea News Update by journalist Adam Gifford and for more links Wikipedia: Maori.

Stephen Webster: Maori hapuu and their history (Australian Journal of Anthropology, Dec 1997)

Judith Simon: Anthropology, ‘native schooling’ and Maori: The politics of ‘cultural adaptation’ policies (Oceania, Sep 1998)

Jeffrey Sissons: Anthropology, Maori tradition and colonial process
(Oceania Sep 1998)

"The ethnopolitical Maori-Pakeha movement in New Zealand is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Maori and non-Maori and promoting a cultural elite within Maoridom", Elizabeth Rata claims. She has just published her second book, "Public Policy and Ethnicity, the Politics…