Aug 31
A single article explaining much of what motivates me to work on reform in scholarly communications and academic publishing, including why I resist the corporate enclosure of society publishing programs in my fields, can be found in this very lively and accessible article in The Guardian by George Monbiot.
The Associated Press and various news outlets reported yesterday how “Private companies will take over five public schools in Gary and Indianapolis.” This is a consequence of an assessment by the Indiana State Board of Education that the target schools are in “various stages of dire situations.” The students in these five schools surely deserve more educational opportunity that they have been getting, but it is also crucial to note what else is going on here. Two large and one small for-profit corporations are being handed five pieces of the former public realm and no one should expect to see these schools handed back to their communities. In keeping with the spirit of the age, corporations have allies in government willing to take public resources and responsibilities away from citizens and local communities and hand them over to private interest, for-profit corporations. The public realm shrinks and the private realm grows through processes of enclosure. The children of Indianapolis and Gary are now revenue-generating assets for Edison Learning, Inc., Charter Schools USA, and EdPower. Indianapolis parents who would rather not have their children turned into corporate beings have a choice–private parochial (Christian or Islamic) schools, which Indiana is also now subsidizing with tax funds via its new voucher program. Voucher-eligible, Christian options in Gary only go to grade 8, so parents at Gary Roosevelt High School will have to stick with Edison Learning, Inc. Those retrograde folks who still believe in community-driven, public interest activity will just have to get with the program and accept their new corporate overlords.
Aug 26
This is a shout-out. I have boundless respect and admiration for my senior colleague Hasan El-Shamy. Dr. El-Shamy is continuing to make crucial contributions to the social sciences and humanities, especially in his beloved field of folklore studies. He is a leader in considering the mutual implications of psychology and folklore studies. He is a world renowned scholar of Middle Eastern expressive culture and belief systems. He has advanced comparative methods and theories in folklore studies, adapting them for the current century. He has argued persuasively for the importance of recognizing vernacular theorizing on the human condition and he has an uncanny ability to recognize the lay social theories expressed in the most humble of expressive genres and folk beliefs and to connect these to the longterm concerns of psychological, social and cultural theory in the academic mode. At another end of the continuum, he is in dialogue with literary scholars as a consequence of his detailed studies of a key canonical text in world literature—The Thousand and One Nights. The glowing reviews that his works receive and the global community of admirers in dialogue with his studies speak to his centrality and influence to our field.
In the past several years, Dr. El-Shamy has published numerous important books, including Tales Arab Women Tell (IU Press, 1999), Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2002), Types of the Folktale in the Arab World (IU Press, 2004), Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature (Sharpe, 2005), A Motif Index of The Thousand and One Nights (IU Press, 2006), and Religion Among the Folk in Egypt (Praeger, 2008). In one of countless high profile recognitions that he has received, this year he was recognized with the honor of being the “Great China Lecturer” at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He was the 94th internationally recognized scholar to be accorded this distinction.
Dr. El-Shamy is on a well-deserved research leave this semester and I wish him well in his continuing research endeavors.
White City Streets continues to report from the field in Tel Aviv where the multifaceted protests continue to unfold. Anthropologi.info offers a rich post remixing these reports with news accounts and additional reflections.
Jun 6
I am honored to have learned that my post “Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps” will be included in the edited book version of Hacking the Academy. The essay focuses on resistance to commercial enclosure in scholarly publishing. Thanks to everyone involved in the ongoing effort.
My review of Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights by former NEA Chairman (and AFS President) Bill Ivey was recently published in JFRR (Journal of Folklore Research Reviews). JFRR is an open access fork of the established toll access folklore journal Journal of Folklore Research. JFRR publishes reviews of diverse media in folklore studies and circulates the reviews via email. They are also available in search-able form online at http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/reviewsearch.php.
My review can be found online here: http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=715
Anthropologist and science studies scholar Kim Fortun has written an essay discussing the Open Folklore project for Anthropology News. Her piece is currently accessible (toll free) via the AAA website. Kim is the outgoing co-editor of Cultural Anthropology and a thoughtful advocate for rethinking scholarly communication work in anthropology.
Jan 29
Why you should listen to librarians about copyright.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/2011/01/why-you-should-listen-to-librarians-about-copyright.html
Barbara Fister is a consistently wonderful voice on scholarly communications and libraries issues. I strongly recommend her discussion of the recently published interview with Derek Haank, former chairman of Elsevier Science and current head of Springer. I read the interview via Richard Poynder’s blog Open and Shut (the full interview is linked to from that site) and learned of it from someone’s recent tweet. Without getting frustrated and spending a lot of extra words on it, I will just say that I think that the disbelief among librarians is justified and that this articulate voice from commercial scholarly publishing makes clear why I oppose commercial scholarly publishing as we have known it and we now still experience it.
My wife Amy was so frustrated when she heard Sarah Palin’s now widely discussed blood libel remark that she immediately felt compelled to capture her feelings in written words. She authored this piece and circulated it to family and friends before reading the flood of other commentaries that have since appeared. I feel that it is a unique reaction that deserves to be more widely read and I share it here with her permission.
I just read something this morning, which has impacted me to the core. It is a quote from Sarah Palin, which carries with it so much intense power (at least for me). Here is a link to her quote:
Palin has chosen to use the expression “blood libel” to refer to journalists who would draw a line between incendiary political speech and action (namely hers) and what has happened in Arizona to Rep. Giffords and to the others who so tragically lost their lives or were wounded by the shooter. Here is a link to some basic information on this term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Her use of this term is either demonstration of extreme ignorance (ignorance of the dangerous kind) or monumental manipulation – or both. That she would use this expression specifically in the case of a targeted shooting of Representative Giffords – WHO IS JEWISH – makes it ironic and painful. But what is most painful to me is the misappropriation of this expression (knowingly or unknowingly). The blood libel was a heinous false accusation that was (and in some cases is still) foundational thought in the violent persecution of Jews for centuries. To misappropriate this term and remove it from its historical context is to weaken or destroy its meaning.
I truly believe that there are words and symbols that hold so much historical power that it is egregious to use them in other contexts. To use them in such a way makes them de-legitimate, and weakens or denies the cultural and historical memory of those who have been so wounded by them. I believe that it is only by continuing to connect these types of words and symbols to their history that we have any hope of learning from the past and educating future generations about what is good, and right and just in the world.
It is true that some words and symbols have been hijacked by history – the swastika is the example that most quickly comes to mind. Although a symbol of beauty and strength found in ancient and some modern cultures around the world, I believe that the Nazi use has made it irrevocably connected to genocide, at least within a Western context. I am saddened that the symbol, which had such beautiful connotation in non Western cultures, has become taboo in much of the world. But I believe that it is right that this symbol no longer be used in a Western context except in reference to the atrocities of WWII. It has become a mark of hatred and evil – which must be remembered as such. When the symbol no longer causes a pained emotional and physical response in people (again, in a Western context), it will sadly signify that the history of the Holocaust is no longer relevant.
My heart breaks for what has happened in Arizona; and it aches that in the aftermath of this tragedy a term with such horrific and history-specific meaning would be tossed around with such disregard. Sarah Palin has now single-handedly introduced this term to millions of people who will never before have heard of it. The majority of these people will infer a general (and incorrect) meaning, and will not bother with investigatory research. It will simply become an expression that enters public consciousness and gets mindlessly regurgitated by the masses. And as such, it will begin to lose the very power needed to keep alive the memory of centuries of religious persecution. She has violated the humanity of us all.
Shreds and Patches 