It's worth reading about what is happening to the British tertiary education system through Crooked Timber. A sample quote:
If you see universities overwhelmingly through the optic of access to labour-market advantage and you think that social justice is about opportunities for this, then a scheme that loads the costs onto the direct beneficiaries can start to look plausible. In my view, a conception of social justice that confines itself to equalizing opportunties to get a better position in a system of radically unequal outcome is a radically deficient conception. A scheme where higher educatation conferred fewer differential benefits because fewer such benefits existed would be a superior one.
Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts
Friday, December 10, 2010
Friday, May 15, 2009
You Wanna See My Positionality?
An interesting little exercise in my Ethnographic Research class on Tuesday. This week's student seminar was on reflexivity, summed up as the careful and deliberate examination of the relationship between a work of ethnography, its producer, and the process by which it is produced. In any other science, you might just call this 'being transparent about one's methods'.
My classmate who was giving the seminar asked us to write down ten things about ourselves -- personal, political, demographic, academic or philosophical, that give an idea of who we are and where we come from, and that could influence how we carry out our research.
I found it surprisingly easy to scribble things down, and had filled up an A4 page within four or five minutes. A couple of my classmates who read out their jottings focused on things that would directly affect the particular research project they had planned. But it seems I interpreted it as a chance to come clean about my what drives me in general. I wrote it down quickly, in what was pretty close to a stream of consciousness. Apart from a couple of grammatical tidy-ups, the below is almost exactly what I jotted down on the sheet of paper.
1. I'm very analytic but also like to see connections or analogies between things and put them into a system.
2. I'm generally shy and introverted, but sometimes switch over to another side of my personality and become domineering. I have to have my say, and can be a poor listener.
3. I tend to become very obsessed with particular topics, and have to know all the details about them.
4. I have a background in philosophy (itself driven by the personality traits above). I've since moved on to a more empirical interest in human affairs, but the philosophy always finds a way back in.
5. I love stories -- anything is better when told as a narrative, especially written, but also filmed. My driving ambition is to be a good writer myself.
6. I'm male, European, hetrosexual and middle class, but have always felt detached from the supposed position of power that puts me in (being clumsy, nervous and geekish always seemed to easily override any inherent social advantage). It's only as I've got older that I've noticed the subtle ways in which my path is smoothed.
7. I was brought up as a Catholic, but with a Kantian / humanist morality that emphasized principles, responsibility, and treating people as ends in themselves.
8. I'm very interested in Latin America for reasons I can't fully explain. Although I have quite a bit of experience there, my connections are overwhelmingly with the mestizo middle class, which could lead me to overestimate my insight.
9. I love the outdoors, but am also very attached to certain comforts, notably hot showers, coffee, and a good night's sleep.
10. Politically, I'm a social democrat by default, with flirtatious leanings toward left-libertarianism. I'm prevented from crossing over fully by a suspicion that oppressive systems don't come close to explaining the sum total of human nastiness. In that sense, I'm also probably hiding a streak of 'small c' conservatism.
OK, so there you go. Readers, how about a similar contribution? You don't have to do ten; five or even three would be a good start...
My classmate who was giving the seminar asked us to write down ten things about ourselves -- personal, political, demographic, academic or philosophical, that give an idea of who we are and where we come from, and that could influence how we carry out our research.
I found it surprisingly easy to scribble things down, and had filled up an A4 page within four or five minutes. A couple of my classmates who read out their jottings focused on things that would directly affect the particular research project they had planned. But it seems I interpreted it as a chance to come clean about my what drives me in general. I wrote it down quickly, in what was pretty close to a stream of consciousness. Apart from a couple of grammatical tidy-ups, the below is almost exactly what I jotted down on the sheet of paper.
1. I'm very analytic but also like to see connections or analogies between things and put them into a system.
2. I'm generally shy and introverted, but sometimes switch over to another side of my personality and become domineering. I have to have my say, and can be a poor listener.
3. I tend to become very obsessed with particular topics, and have to know all the details about them.
4. I have a background in philosophy (itself driven by the personality traits above). I've since moved on to a more empirical interest in human affairs, but the philosophy always finds a way back in.
5. I love stories -- anything is better when told as a narrative, especially written, but also filmed. My driving ambition is to be a good writer myself.
6. I'm male, European, hetrosexual and middle class, but have always felt detached from the supposed position of power that puts me in (being clumsy, nervous and geekish always seemed to easily override any inherent social advantage). It's only as I've got older that I've noticed the subtle ways in which my path is smoothed.
7. I was brought up as a Catholic, but with a Kantian / humanist morality that emphasized principles, responsibility, and treating people as ends in themselves.
8. I'm very interested in Latin America for reasons I can't fully explain. Although I have quite a bit of experience there, my connections are overwhelmingly with the mestizo middle class, which could lead me to overestimate my insight.
9. I love the outdoors, but am also very attached to certain comforts, notably hot showers, coffee, and a good night's sleep.
10. Politically, I'm a social democrat by default, with flirtatious leanings toward left-libertarianism. I'm prevented from crossing over fully by a suspicion that oppressive systems don't come close to explaining the sum total of human nastiness. In that sense, I'm also probably hiding a streak of 'small c' conservatism.
OK, so there you go. Readers, how about a similar contribution? You don't have to do ten; five or even three would be a good start...
Monday, January 19, 2009
Hell Is Other People
To clarify: I don't mean that. This post is actually about how, despite what Jean Paul Sartre might have thought, and despite their irritating qualities, you can't really do without other people at all.
If you're not a mathematical genius, a gifted artist, or one of the few novelists whose intense introversion actually speaks to the human condition, communicating and getting along with other people is vital to achieving most anything useful.
The older you get and the more you learn, the more you realise how partial is any knowledge, how limited is any talent, how weak and qualified is 'being right'. Even where you might have been ahead of the game in having an insight or drawing a conclusion, it's not worth much unless you can communicate it to other people in a way that makes sense to them. Even then, you probably stole most of it off someone else without realising it.
This all might seem painfully obvious, but for me, last year was a learning curve in a number of ways. I suppose the lessons were there before, but I wasn't mature enough to notice them.
Theory provided small revelations. In development studies, it became clearer than ever that there was no best political or economic system that would solve everyone's problems. The wisest philosopher kings have generally failed to drag the majority along with them. Societies that have managed to achieve material prosperity and a degree of freedom for their citizens have done so by making or doing things that appeal to other people ('markets'), or organising their affairs in a way that the majority -- not just the enlightened few-- find moderately fair and reasonable ('good government').
[We leave aside the useful ability to overwhelm others by superior force, although even that requires teamwork.]
Modern theories on development also give a lot of credence to 'institutions', that mish mash of rules, conventions, and processes, and their observance by groups ranging from school boards to small claims courts to select committees. [How could I have known, when the dark mysteries of world poverty and inequality pushed me towards development studies, that the secret to progress lay in well-run meetings with an agreed agenda?]
Meanwhile, in real life I had occasion to take minor leadership roles in a couple of areas, and was a little taken aback by the experience. I have always favoured getting on with ones's own work as the best way to make a contribution, and been mildly scornful of the 'relationship management skills' that make an appearance in most job descriptions. But the year's experiences forced me to reassess this view.
On the one hand, there are always people smarter and more experienced than you are. When you have spurned the limiting dedication to a single trade, profession or discipline in favour of a cultivated dilettantism, you can be sure that in any field you operate you will always need to relate to those who have greater expertise.
On the other hand, in social and political contexts -- the only ones where I'm likely to be working in the immediate future -- things get done not by people who are 'right' but by those who can persuade others to agree with them.
At work, the project-like effort for which I received the most praise was generally seen as having been more valuable for the process and for the range of people that participated, than for its actual content or conclusions. I had to acknowledge the frightening reality that my most significant achievement was getting people to come to a meeting.
At university, I had an interesting experience of group work. In the past, I'd smugly shunned working in groups, as my instinctive revulsion at writing by committee was backed up by studies which showed that at many tasks, the best individuals consistently outperform most teams. However, development policy is if nothing else about the interaction of groups of people, so I had to acknowledge the raison d'etre.
It turned out that my background and experience made me one our group's natural leaders. I was keen that there would be no hierarchies but that open and constructive debate would trump wishy-washy consensus. However, I was a little taken aback to find that I'm not actually that good at being challenged or taking constructive criticism. Although I had lots of ideas, and some of them were good, they weren't always the best or the only ones. Yet I found I was stuck in contrarian, argumentative mode, what my father used to call 'having to have the last word'.
Worse, I rediscovered a latent tendency towards micromanagement. When tasks have to be to spread around, it doesn't matter whether you know exactly how everything should go (which as we've agreed, you probably don't); you have to trust in other people's ability to play their part in their own style. Sadly, I found that the facile corporatese edict to 'empower those around you' was sometimes a bridge too far.
When we had our anonymised written peer assessments, some adjectives that appeared in mine more than once (admittedly amidst mostly positive feedback) included 'dictatorial' and 'dominating', and I had to acknowledge they were fair.
By the end of 2008, I had to come to the conclusion that, like it or not, 'relating to other people' is a specific and valuable skill that needs to be worked at.
Having said all that, people have tendencies, and mine is that I'll generally behavely awkwardly in groups and will struggle to be a good team player. And the realisation that relatively harmonious collaboration is a desirable goal doesn't have to make it the starting point. Working my way through David S Landes' epic The Wealth and Poverty of Nations in the holidays (review to come), I found a defense of grumpy individualism.
Landes argues that the competitive desire to improve on and outdo one's contemporaries was part of what drove the scientific and industrial revolutions in Europe. Even prior to that period, the existence of many competing political entities in Europe, and the development of cities, provided individuals the option of migration, thus putting a ceiling on political tyranny and allowing the survival of new ideas. Meanwhile, the Chinese Middle Kingdom (technologically far ahead at the start of the Middle Ages) quietly ossified, as any individual genius that threatened the harmony and order of the whole was quietly tucked away or repressed.
There's affirmation there for those of us that are naturally repelled by the stifling conformity -- especially prevalent in the teaching, nursing and management professions as well as in most large organisations -- that is slyly enforced through a rhetoric of team spirit and rears its head most distastefully at 'planning days' or 'retreats'. The lesson from history is that there needs to be room to say: 'this is lame; I'm gonna make a face and opt out'.
And of course, the great irony of cooperation and teamwork is that the strongest and most cohesive team is the one that has just kicked somone else's ass.
If you're not a mathematical genius, a gifted artist, or one of the few novelists whose intense introversion actually speaks to the human condition, communicating and getting along with other people is vital to achieving most anything useful.
The older you get and the more you learn, the more you realise how partial is any knowledge, how limited is any talent, how weak and qualified is 'being right'. Even where you might have been ahead of the game in having an insight or drawing a conclusion, it's not worth much unless you can communicate it to other people in a way that makes sense to them. Even then, you probably stole most of it off someone else without realising it.
This all might seem painfully obvious, but for me, last year was a learning curve in a number of ways. I suppose the lessons were there before, but I wasn't mature enough to notice them.
Theory provided small revelations. In development studies, it became clearer than ever that there was no best political or economic system that would solve everyone's problems. The wisest philosopher kings have generally failed to drag the majority along with them. Societies that have managed to achieve material prosperity and a degree of freedom for their citizens have done so by making or doing things that appeal to other people ('markets'), or organising their affairs in a way that the majority -- not just the enlightened few-- find moderately fair and reasonable ('good government').
[We leave aside the useful ability to overwhelm others by superior force, although even that requires teamwork.]
Modern theories on development also give a lot of credence to 'institutions', that mish mash of rules, conventions, and processes, and their observance by groups ranging from school boards to small claims courts to select committees. [How could I have known, when the dark mysteries of world poverty and inequality pushed me towards development studies, that the secret to progress lay in well-run meetings with an agreed agenda?]
Meanwhile, in real life I had occasion to take minor leadership roles in a couple of areas, and was a little taken aback by the experience. I have always favoured getting on with ones's own work as the best way to make a contribution, and been mildly scornful of the 'relationship management skills' that make an appearance in most job descriptions. But the year's experiences forced me to reassess this view.
On the one hand, there are always people smarter and more experienced than you are. When you have spurned the limiting dedication to a single trade, profession or discipline in favour of a cultivated dilettantism, you can be sure that in any field you operate you will always need to relate to those who have greater expertise.
On the other hand, in social and political contexts -- the only ones where I'm likely to be working in the immediate future -- things get done not by people who are 'right' but by those who can persuade others to agree with them.
At work, the project-like effort for which I received the most praise was generally seen as having been more valuable for the process and for the range of people that participated, than for its actual content or conclusions. I had to acknowledge the frightening reality that my most significant achievement was getting people to come to a meeting.
At university, I had an interesting experience of group work. In the past, I'd smugly shunned working in groups, as my instinctive revulsion at writing by committee was backed up by studies which showed that at many tasks, the best individuals consistently outperform most teams. However, development policy is if nothing else about the interaction of groups of people, so I had to acknowledge the raison d'etre.
It turned out that my background and experience made me one our group's natural leaders. I was keen that there would be no hierarchies but that open and constructive debate would trump wishy-washy consensus. However, I was a little taken aback to find that I'm not actually that good at being challenged or taking constructive criticism. Although I had lots of ideas, and some of them were good, they weren't always the best or the only ones. Yet I found I was stuck in contrarian, argumentative mode, what my father used to call 'having to have the last word'.
Worse, I rediscovered a latent tendency towards micromanagement. When tasks have to be to spread around, it doesn't matter whether you know exactly how everything should go (which as we've agreed, you probably don't); you have to trust in other people's ability to play their part in their own style. Sadly, I found that the facile corporatese edict to 'empower those around you' was sometimes a bridge too far.
When we had our anonymised written peer assessments, some adjectives that appeared in mine more than once (admittedly amidst mostly positive feedback) included 'dictatorial' and 'dominating', and I had to acknowledge they were fair.
By the end of 2008, I had to come to the conclusion that, like it or not, 'relating to other people' is a specific and valuable skill that needs to be worked at.
Having said all that, people have tendencies, and mine is that I'll generally behavely awkwardly in groups and will struggle to be a good team player. And the realisation that relatively harmonious collaboration is a desirable goal doesn't have to make it the starting point. Working my way through David S Landes' epic The Wealth and Poverty of Nations in the holidays (review to come), I found a defense of grumpy individualism.
Landes argues that the competitive desire to improve on and outdo one's contemporaries was part of what drove the scientific and industrial revolutions in Europe. Even prior to that period, the existence of many competing political entities in Europe, and the development of cities, provided individuals the option of migration, thus putting a ceiling on political tyranny and allowing the survival of new ideas. Meanwhile, the Chinese Middle Kingdom (technologically far ahead at the start of the Middle Ages) quietly ossified, as any individual genius that threatened the harmony and order of the whole was quietly tucked away or repressed.
There's affirmation there for those of us that are naturally repelled by the stifling conformity -- especially prevalent in the teaching, nursing and management professions as well as in most large organisations -- that is slyly enforced through a rhetoric of team spirit and rears its head most distastefully at 'planning days' or 'retreats'. The lesson from history is that there needs to be room to say: 'this is lame; I'm gonna make a face and opt out'.
And of course, the great irony of cooperation and teamwork is that the strongest and most cohesive team is the one that has just kicked somone else's ass.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Notes from Academia
I'm putting up some of my university work this year on the Andean Observer website. So far, I have an essay on Latin America and dependency theory (some brief background here), and a literature review on 'Poverty and anti-poverty strategies in Peru'. They're both pretty short given the weight of the topics, but that's because of the approach taken to the development studies course: none of our assignments had more than a 2,500-word limit. This means that some serious questions are skimmed over pretty lightly. On the other hand, it may make some dry material a bit more readable.
If nothing else, there's a reasonable set of references, many hyperlinked, for anyone interested in the topics.
Although it's probably a bad idea to recommend something still half-finished, I'll still put in a plug for the images pages of the Andean Observer site. The 'Arequipa' and 'Cuzco' pages are pretty much there, and I'm working on tidying up the rest. Comments are welcome.
If nothing else, there's a reasonable set of references, many hyperlinked, for anyone interested in the topics.
Although it's probably a bad idea to recommend something still half-finished, I'll still put in a plug for the images pages of the Andean Observer site. The 'Arequipa' and 'Cuzco' pages are pretty much there, and I'm working on tidying up the rest. Comments are welcome.
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