anthropologies: The neoliberal university

The Neoliberalized, Debt-plagued,
Low Wage, Corporatized University

January 2013

 ~ Contents ~

Introduction:  Speaking of the neoliberal university

Ryan Anderson

Fear and loathing in academia

Francine Barone

Busting apart the silos of knowledge production

Erin B. Taylor

Some historical notes on the decline of the university

Keith Hart

Passing with Pills:  Redefining Performance in the Pharmaceuticalized University

Tazin Karim

 

Neoliberal Education: From Affordable Education to Expensive Training

Patrick Bigger & Victor E. Kappeler

Surviving in the meantime

Greg Downey

Review of Andrew Delbanco's "College"

Ryan Anderson

Dear AAA: Sink or Swim?

This statement, written by Jason Antrosio, Eliza Jane Darling, Sarah Kendzior and myself, is a response to a post on the American Anthropological Association blog that discusses our recent writings about adjuncts, anthropology, and academia. Cross-posted on Savage Minds.

We are gratified that the American Anthropological Association has taken note of our critical commentary on the vagaries of the academic career, and we thank fellow blogger Joslyn O. for publicizing our work on the Association website. However, we would like to clear up a few misconceptions.

The AAA post suggests we represent two “camps,” but we share only one: a commitment to ending precarious intellectual labour. We protest the transformation of our profession into a swelling Hooverville congregated on the margins of universities whose dwindling tenured citizenry is bankrolled by our low-wage, low-benefit, low-security, low-respect work.

The bleak future of the aspiring anthropologist is not a concoction rooted in cynicism. It is an empirically demonstrable, material condition that speaks its truth in the language of debt, dependency, discouragement, and occasionally, the dole. We queue up for the work time and again because we deeply value anthropology. There is little other reason to plough the terrain of a field whose prospects for success resemble a lottery more than a competition. But as the national belt tightens in the face of prolonged economic crisis, contingent workers are increasingly unable to afford to subsidize the discipline financially, however highly we regard it intellectually. And the dignity deficit takes its toll on us all.

Anthropology is, and is not, “what we make it.” The most powerful producers of anthropological policy and practice seldom include the ranks of the precarious, yet even the privileged can lay no proprietary claim to a field whose fate, like that of its sister subjects in the social sciences, arts and humanities, rests at the mercy of profitability. Nonetheless, anthropology’s commitment to the science of social justice makes the studied ignorance of its own internal inequities insupportably ironic.

The resolution of these contradictions is served by neither silence nor sympathy, but solidarity. An academy structured upon the division of a two-tiered labor market discourages such an alliance. Yet we hope that anthropologists will join together to fight for the value of our work beyond the barometer of the bottom line. We must, for the same structural forces that divide tenured and contingent faculty threaten to subsume us all beneath a wave of public retrenchment, whose end game will inter us on the same sinking ship if we do not turn the tide. While the reserve army may constitute the foot soldiers in this battle for survival, the generals are hardly immune to the war on intellectual value.

The AAA can play a role in promoting solidarity. The first step is acknowledging that we are a house divided: not into camps which value, or do not value, the craft of anthropology, but into classes which are unevenly able to extract a living wage from that craft. The second step is to extend the professional respect and responsibility the Association demands for students, informants, the public and science itself to our fellow workers, within and without the academy. This solidarity is not only desirable but vital, for the future of anthropology is far more than academic.

Ryan Anderson
Jason Antrosio
Eliza Jane Darling
Sarah Kendzior

UC Davis: Dissent and pepper spray

The police show the world how NOT to handle dissent and protests at UC Davis.  From the Huffington Post:

On Friday, a group of University of California, Davis students, part of the Occupy Wall Street movement on campus, became the latest victims of alleged police brutality to be captured on video. The videos show the students seated on the ground as a UC Davis police officer brandishes a red canister of pepper spray, showing it off for the crowd before dousing the seated students in a heavy, thick mist.

 And here's more from CNN:

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, under calls to resign, Saturday called police use of pepper spray on seated Occupy protesters "chilling" and established a task force to look into the incident.

The video broadcast by CNN Sacramento affiliate KOVR showed an officer, in a sweeping motion, spraying protesters point blank on Friday before other officers moved in. Eleven people were treated on site for effects of the yellow spray. Two of them were sent to the hospital, university officials said.

Here's one of the videos of this incident:

Assistant professor of English Nathan Brown wrote an open letter to the UC Davis Chancellor.  Here's a selection:

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

Read the rest.  Here's my question: Now what?  I find it pretty shocking and disturbing that the police reacted to this protest in this way.  Yes, I can understand the fact that the police had a job to do, and I can understand the fact that UC Davis felt it needed to "do something" about the protests.  Fine.  But this?  Since when is it necessary to resort to these kinds of actions when dealing with non-violent protesters?  Why are these student encampments so threatening that they necessitate pepper spray and violence?  What were these police thinking?  What do they really think they accomplished with this?  Do we really want to sit back and watch as the government (and university officials) respond to dissent and protests like this?  At what point is enough enough?

Quote of the week: Jason Baird Jackson

"I have long cared about the serials crisis and now that the world is thinking more critically about student debt, I want us all to realize the direct relationship between the scholarly communications system, and the scholarly society system, and the neoliberalization of the American research university. Skyrocketing tuition is a consequence of public disinvestment in public universities like mine and yours. Leasing (we no longer purchase) toll access scholarship at ever higher costs from exceedingly profitable commercial firms (and their society partners) is not helping close the inequality gap in higher education. It is hardly the only factor involved (ex: think health care costs) but it is one of the few factors in which faculty and graduate students have a direct role to play—as authors, as disciplinary policy shapers, as peer-reviewers, as editors, etc. As contributors to the scholarly publishing system, we have choices available to us. We can make our work open in a number of ways and we can support and encourage those whose values and commitments align with our own."

-Jason Baird Jackson, here.

(just wanted to highlight this in case some of you missed it)

Anthropology & Open Access: An Interview with Jason Baird Jackson (Part 2 of 3)

See Part 1 of this interview here.

Ryan Anderson: So what are the major stumbling blocks holding up a transition to Open Access in your view? What's keeping most people from making this jump? Lastly, what do you think about the system employed by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) where authors can post working papers? Can a system like that be a stepping stone to OA?

Jason Baird Jackson: At the author level, one stumbling block is a pervasive lack of basic knowledge about these issues among scholars and policy makers within our field (and in most fields). I am sympathetic to everyone’s plight. It is all very complicated and uncertain therefore doing what we have always done has proven the easiest path. Most of us do not understand copyright or the Creative Commons system. Most of us do not understand journal business models or how it is that librarians have made so much (expensive) information so easily available to those of us with the luxury of university affiliations. In the face of much confusion and anxiety, just sending our manuscripts to the editors and journals that we know in the way that we have always done has seemed sensible and prudent.

Related is the situation in which we perceive that we understand the changing landscape better than we do. A clear instance is when we post the final published versions of our writings online because we wrongly believe ourselves to have the right to do so. The increasing prevalence of such accidental piracy fosters the misunderstanding that such practices are the right way to do open access. Such piracy is counter-productive on many levels and is unnecessary given that there are legal and technically better ways to pursue OA.

Such author-centered issues are the major stumbling block for green OA. The fact that many scholars do not have direct access to a home institutional repository is another factor. I tried to suggest that there are usually workarounds for this in my earlier comments. Your mentioning of the Social Science Research Network represents another possible solution that anthropologists should investigate more actively [see Adam Leeds' comment about SSRN here on Savage Minds a while back]. I have not yet given it the attention that it deserves as a possible option for anthropologists.

The biggest factor driving green OA are funder and especially institutional OA mandates (touched upon above). Those who are most eager to promote OA in anthropology can work locally to establish mandates in their home institutions. When a university such as Kansas or California or a college such as Oberlin, or when (hypothetically) a research institute, applied anthropology agency or museum, establish a green OA mandate, this has the almost immediate effect of educating the entire research community at such an institution about the issues that we have been talking about, above and beyond the obvious direct benefit of bringing a large portion of that institution’s research output into the OA domain. Such mandates can be established at the school or department level in instances where an institution-wide mandate cannot yet be achieved. The most prominent and persistent advocate for green OA and for green OA mandates is cognitive scientist Steven Harnad, who makes the case consistently and forcefully, on the basis of much evidence, at his website Open Access Archivangelism.

Read the rest on Savage Minds, here.

Quote of the week: John Hawks

From John Hawks' latest post about publishing and open access:

"Seems to me that integrating online discussion into the academic literature would be done most simply by exploiting the system most widely used for citation tracking in the literature itself -- and that many blogs (including mine) already track. However, adding DOI to content turns out to involve an expensive membership to a cartel run by publishers."

 Read the rest, here.

Barbara Fister on Tending the "Walled Gardens"

Here's the conclusion of Barbara Fister's recent piece "Where There is no Vision, We Publish and Perish."  The last three paragraphs are so good I had to include them all:

An old King James Bible line just came to me, which happens if you're old enough and were taught by nuns: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Turns out there’s another piece to that proverb that complicates the meaning a bit: “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Proverbs, 29:18) It doesn’t sound as classy in the NRSV: “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint, but happy are those who keep the law.” 

It seems to me the law we should follow is that old fashioned notion that the truth will set us free, and our job as scholars is to seek the truth and share it as widely as we can. We’re letting self-interest - in furthering our careers, boosting our institutional reputations, and protecting our disciplinary territory – divert us from that fundamental law. And I, for one, am not happy. 

It’ll cost money. It’ll take some serious work to hammer out the agreements, just as it took a lot of work for JSTOR to get publishers on board in the first place. But we need to do more for the world than tend our little walled gardens. We can do better. Where's that visionary thinking that started the whole thing? 

Take the time to read the rest, here.

Anthropology: Open Access & Academic Publishing Reading List

There have been a lot of recent posts and discussions about the state of affairs in academic publishing, and other important issues such as open access.  Here's a compilation of a few of the more recent posts:

Jason Baird Jackson:

The AAA/Wiley is already a Green OA Publisher

How Enclosed by Large For-Profit Publishers is the Anthropology Journal Literature?

On “Academic Publishers Make Murdoch Look like a Socialist”

Page Proofs ≠ Post-Prints; Websites ≠ Repositories

Christopher Kelty:

Where your money and your articles meet 

How Not to Run a University Press (or How Sausage is Made)

Alex Golub:

Big Content runs 66% of our journals, but the Open Access shortfall is our fault

Open access anthropology needs a civil service

Peter Suber:

Open Access Overview

George Monbiot:

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist

Barbara Fister:

Where There Is No Vision, We Publish and Perish 

Lorenz:

"Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist": A call for action

Matt Thompson: "Let public anthropology be fast, cheap, and out of control."

Matt Thompson just wrote a fantastic post over at SM.  Here's the end of it:

What I’m trying to say is don’t sit around waiting for the next Margaret Mead. And anthropology doesn’t become more relevant to Jose Six-pack once we cross Marshall Sahlins with Marshall Mathers. We can all be public intellectuals of a local, non-celebrity sort. Find something where you are, some way to play a role however small and do it. It doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to write a grant. Just share what you know and what you do with the people around you. Let public anthropology be fast, cheap, and out of control.

 Now, go read the beginning and middle, here.

Jason Baird Jackson on Anthropology & Academic Publishing

Following some recent discussions on Savage Minds, Jason Baird Jackson has a new post that explores the enclosure of anthropological journal literature by for-profit publishers.  This is definitely well worth a read.  Here's the intro:

It is early fall and that means that it is the season for anthropologists to think out loud about the publishing ecology characterizing their field. As American anthropologists await final confirmation that their national association has renewed its publishing agreement with Wiley-Blackwell, the annual conversation has been renewed at Savage Minds [here] and [here] and elsewhere. Anthropologists have been reading and circulating George Monblot’s essay in The Guardian “Academic Publishers Make Murdock Look Like a Socialist” and the essay has, it seems, awoken some new interest in the anthropology publishing debates that have have been ongoing for many years now.

Read the rest, here.

the search for anthropology in public, part II

Whenever I go into a bookstore, I always check out the anthropology section (see part I here).  A curious habit, or custom, or something like that.  What can I say?  I have my routines.  I like to see what happens to be on the shelves and compare that to my own understandings of what contemporary anthropology is all about.  I imagine that this is some sort of litmus test that tells us something about the state of anthropology in the public sphere.  Maybe, maybe not.  More about that shortly.  So, the last time I did this informal empirical investigation, the results were similar to past experiences: not phenomenal.  The most "anthropological" books included:

1. Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson

2. The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

3. 1491 by Charles Mann

4. Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna

Bateson's was the only book I saw that was written by an actual anthropologist.  How it is that only one anthropologist happens to be in the anthropology section is beyond me.  This was a particularly skewed sample, I'll admit--usually there's at least a Wade Davis, Margaret Mead, or even Sir James Frazier in the mix.  Not this time.  The rest of the section was incredibly eclectic, and included everything from books by Drew Pinsky to one by Maira Kalman (which does look pretty cool, though not what I would define as anthropology).  Some of this eclectic-ness had to be due to some restocking malfunctions, undoubtedly, but overall the section on anthropology was, as is often the case, a strange and somewhat askew reflection of the discipline.  Yes, that is an opinion.  And now, it's time for some questions...

Read the rest on Savage Minds, here.

Wasting away again in Grantlandia

...searching for my lost book by Bernard.  Ya, that title needs to be read with the underlying melody of a certain Jimmy Buffet song, which is always good to hear when you are mired in the depths of the purgatory that is academic grant writing.  That's where I happen to be trapped at present.  Please feel free to send me a postcard, or say hi if you happen to be down here too.  If you know the way out, at least leave some bread crumbs to mark the path.  Seriously.

Moving on to the heart of the matter: I am in that special stage of graduate school where I spend the majority of my time attempting to create the perfect little document that will help me get that BIG, IMPORTANT GRANT so that I can actually go into the field and move on with my research.  For some reason that perfect little document remains elusive.  It is more than likely my own fault, rather than some macro-structural issue. There is definitely a learning curve when it comes to making appeals to that complex funding machine that few people truly understand.  When it comes to getting that BIG, IMPORTANT GRANT, I happen to be zero for two at this point.  So if this were a baseball game, I would be in literal and metaphorical trouble.  But, I could always get inspiration from one of the all-time great hitters like Rod Carew, and pull off a clutch ninth inning hit.  That means money.  End of metaphor.

Anyway, I happen to find grant writing incredibly excruciating on numerous levels.  From what I hear around the halls of academia, I am definitely not alone.  On the flip side, I can't imagine having to spend hours and hours reading one grant after another about the "complexities" or "nuances" of this or that particular social conundrum.  Imagine that!  The whole grant writing process is filled with real people--and that's a good thing to keep in mind.  Let's not dehumanize the process, folks.  We're all just people, trying to find our way in this world.  Insert moody, yet pensive background music that makes us rethink our life priorities.

Enough pensiveness.  Let's talk about the trials and travails of grant writing.  I'll start, with some thoughts, questions, and observations that I have learned along the way.  Then hopefully some of your will chime in and give me your two or three cents about the matter.  Keep in mind the fact that I am not currently a grant writing MASTER, and realize that I am in the middle of working through all of this out too.  I may never figure it out!  If you are in the same fix, read along and join in.  If you are not quite at this stage and terrified of the whole process, read along and join in.  If you are in fact a grant writing master, read along and join in.  If you are currently sitting on piles of grant money that you don't know what do to with...WHAT??!  HOW?!?  Just kidding.  Please read along, everyone, and let's see if we can make that special place known as Grantlandia just a bit sunnier--or at least less horrifyingly stressful.

(in no particular order of importance)

1. Style.  I am finding the question of style to be a little difficult at times.  As you can see, I tend to be a little on the narrative side, but there just isn't a lot of space to GET NARRATIVE.  So word choices need the Hemingway method, which is all about getting straight to the point.  Hemingway is probably too wordy, but you get the point.  Be concise.

2. Style, part II: On the other end of the spectrum, there is what I call the "citation dumping" issue.  This is where you make a claim and then proceed to fill the next six lines with citations, like this: (Anderson 1977, 2009, 2011a, 20011b, 2012; Parsons 1919; Boas 1899; Kroeber 1945; Mead 1921; Farmer 2004; Malinowski 1928; Davis 1990; 2002; Low 2005, 2009..and so on).  When is it enough?  When is it going completely overboard?  Does it depend on the actual grant in question?  Does it depend on the point being raised?  For me, this particular stylistic move is particularly unreadable, but I understand that it has a certain utility.  I'd be interested to see what some others have to say about this.

3. Preparation.  I read an essay by Michael Watts about writing grants called "The Holy Grail: In Pursuit of the PhD Proposal."  Here is what he had to say: "One of the great curiosities of academia is that the art of writing a research proposal--arguably one of the most difficult and demanding tasks confronting any research student--is so weakly institutionalized."  The essay is online here, along with some other great resources for proposal writing (thanks, UC Berkeley, for putting that online).  Considering the difficulty and importance of this process, it seems like grant writing should be more integrated into the whole grad school process.  Right?  So why isn't this the case?  Or is it actually the case, just not everywhere?  Inquiring minds would like to know.

4. Eye strain.  It's a good idea to look away from your computer screen every 20-30 minutes, at least for about 20 seconds.  This decreases the need to utilize this stuff.

5. Reality check: So what happens when students don't get these grants?  The what?  Should they sit around for years on end waiting until they do get one, or find some other way to get themselves into the field?  When is it time to either change the field site or the topic?  This is a big question, and a huge problem in the overall political economy of grad school these days.  If the money isn't there--or the research just isn't appealing to funding institutions--what should a grad student do?

6. The F-Word.  No, not that f-word.  I am talking about Foucault, and more generally about some of the issues with relying too heavily on THE BIG THINKERS THAT EVERYONE CITES YEAR AFTER YEAR.  I learned this lesson the hard way the first time around, and then got some strategic advice about using THE BIG THINKERS.  Use them wisely, and concisely.  Also, keep in mind the fact that reviewers come from different theoretical camps: don't beat them over the head with your favorite BIG THINKER, because it might work against you.  This was some of the best advice I received: If the reviewer is already on board with your particular theoretical camp, then it doesn't take much to let them know where you stand.  The strategy comes into play when you learn how to put just enough so that it works on all fronts.  I am still working on this, by the way.

7. Harry Wolcott said this: "For the most part, the research that gets attended to is research on topics that attracts money and status, political factors beyond the control researchers themselves." (In The Art of Fieldwork, 2005: 135).  Do you agree or disagree with this statement?  Does it all come down to politics?  A bigger issue to keep in mind.

8. Remember the massive economic crisis of 2008?  Ya, that's not over yet.  So this means that funding is pretty constrained these days.  Which makes it all the more imperative to really think about your budget.  You don't want to be dismissed outright because you asked for 19 grand when you only *really* needed about three.  Be realistic.

9. Follow the grant directions closely.  Don't get disqualified on a technicality.  Make sure that you actually answer the questions that the proposal guidelines ask, or that you have all of the required sections where they should be.

10. Question: What's the difference between a grant proposal and the actual research on the ground?  What happens when all of those theories and methodological frameworks--written up for a grant competition to sound innovative and appealing--run into the messy realities of actual fieldwork?  This leads to another question: Is grant writing really a good way to conceptualize an actual research plan?  Is there a difference between creating a research plan and writing a competitive grant proposal?  Should there be a difference?

11. Rejection.  Look, don't take it personally, and be sure to really look at what the reviewers said--even if you disagree with them.  You're going to face the same process again, and will need to defend your stance.  Oftentimes, you get some pretty good ideas/feedback from those reviews,a and it can help you as you learn to navigate these kinds of processes.  Learn from the experience, and keep going forward.

12. If at all possible, find some time to take a break every now and again.  Grants matter, yes.  And they are incredibly stressful to prepare.  But, taking a short break can do wonders for mental clarity and creativity.  Go outside, look at some trees, stare at the ocean for a while--whatever.  It helps.

Cross-posted on Savage Minds

Daniel Lende: "You can read this blog for free"

Daniel Lende over at Neuroanthropology has a new post about some of the possibilities for anthropology. He talks about some of the recent PR controversies that took place within the field, and how this is illustrative of some of the primary issues and challenges that anthropologists face these days. We are, it seems, at a bit of a crossroads. And it's probably about time to move away from some of the old models and explore new ways of not only doing anthropology, but also publishing and disseminating anthropology. My favorite part of the post is when Lende talks about the contrast between old school publishing models (which lock up information behind expensive subscriptions) and some of the new possibilities:

The Nature commentary by Adam Kuper and Jonathan Marks is behind a paywall. It costs $32 to buy, unless you have institutional access. Ulf Hannerz’s article in American Anthropologist, which Greg drew on extensively in writing about diversity as anthropology’s brand, is available either through institutional access or by joining the American Anthropological Association. The cheapest AAA membership costs $70. You can read this blog for free (my emphasis).

That last line is a beauty. The point, as I see it, isn't to do away with journals, but instead to realize that the publication models are severely limiting. If we are all about the dissemination of anthropological analysis, concepts, and ideas to wider audiences, how is that supposed to happen if all of the latest research sits behind a subscription wall? The irony of course is that there is still a fairly skeptical view among THE ACADEMY about online publishing. Many question whether or not REAL RESEARCH can be published online. I mean, is it possible? However, I have recently run a complex experiment and come to the conclusion that yes, all 26 letters of the English alphabet do show up on screen, so it is indeed possible to publish real, valuable, and important work online. The only thing stopping this is a lack of either interest or desire. So it goes. As Lende points out:

A negative view of writing online (i.e., blogging) and a closed view of knowledge production (i.e., through institutional access or society membership) is still predominant in anthropology.

It's funny, when you think about. Or, at least, when I think about it. Anthropologists are doing all sorts of cutting edge, timely, and fascinating research. So why is our publishing model and ideology so....well...stale? The good thing is that people like Lende, Greg Downey, the folks at the OAC (Open Anthropology Cooperative), Max Forte, the Savage Minds crew, John Hawks, John Postill, Colleen Morgan, and a slew of others are indeed messing with the boundaries. Who knows? Maybe, at some point, more people outside of the academic world will actually know what anthropologists are up to.

Here's another good section from Lende's post:

Online media, not just writing, is an incredible way to reach the public. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist who became interested in new media and teaching after doing his doctoral work in Papua New Guinea, work with his students to create a video, A Vision of Students Today. It has been viewed 4,136,850 times. That is an incredible impact.

And open access? Take PLoS One. It was founded in 2006, and covers research in science and medicine. In five years, it became the world’s largest journal. That is incredible success. One of its more technical journals, PLoS Biology, was founded in 2003, the first of the PLoS journals. It has been the highest impact journal in biology, as ranked by the Institute for Scientific Information. Open access isn’t just viable – it is the way to reach the broadest possible audience and have the greatest scholarly impact.

On Amazon, which came to fame and financial success by selling books online, its #1 product is its Kindle e-reader. Books themselves are going digital. And not just books. Amazon recently launched Kindle Singles, which presents “a compelling idea–well researched, well argued, and well illustrated–expressed at its natural length.” Apple’s iPad offers ways to integrate multi-media features with traditional text. Digital innovation in how we present scholarly material is already happening, and will continue to grow extremely rapidly.

Anthropologists need to go digital – blogging, collaborating, creating, sharing, and disseminating the field online. Blogs, the integration of new media with text, e-publications, and open-access publishing need to be part of how we keep our borderlands discipline healthy and vibrant.

To do otherwise, is to make the field into a marginal borderland, rather than the key meeting place and vibrant area of production the anthropology is today and can be even more so in the future.

Agreed. No need to remain on the borderlands any longer. Time to go push the boundaries and go digital. What's stopping us?

UPDATE: Check out Michael E. Smith's response to this issue: "Anthropologists Urged to Unite Behind Archaic Policies and Technology."