OAC FIRST BIRTHDAY
Tomorrow OAC will be a one year'old child starting to walk. With 3400 members, the question is how many are really active and contributing to the discussions and blogs. Maybe we have to propose some new general lines , for example to close some groups that have not any activity in the last 6 months. Just a thought. Waiting for more opinions.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on -
Just a couple of points:
It seems that, every so often, this bit of the page becomes a venue for people to vent their feelings - 'such and such has not happened in the way that I want!'. This occurred before with people who don't currently contribute to the site. It will happen again with other people. These disputes have nothing to do with anthropology (except as evidence for some obvious principles of social psychology); but they are a, hopefully therapeutic, offshoot of having to exchange with folk known only through typed text.
Occasionally we need to remind ourselves that the ability to listen to other people carefully is a far rarer and more complex skill than holding to (and insisting on) an opinion - anyone who can produce words can opine (often quite plausibly), but understanding what other people intend with their words and figures of speech requires thought and patience. Adding something that will allow another person to say something interesting (allow them to exit their personal monologue and to join an actual conversation) is an even rarer and more commendable skill.
This is what Ranjan said:
For the frustation of M, I would say, here we have many layers of knowledge, for example, honestly saying I do care the OAC, but I am just learner here, I do receive more than to give. Thanks OAC! Live long! Happy Buddha Full Moon Day!
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Permalink Reply by John McCreery on
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Occasionally we need to remind ourselves that the ability to listen to other people carefully is a far rarer and more complex skill than holding to (and insisting on) an opinion - anyone who can produce words can opine (often quite plausibly), but understanding what other people intend with their words and figures of speech requires thought and patience. Adding something that will allow another person to say something interesting (allow them to exit their personal monologue and to join an actual conversation) is an even rarer and more commendable skill.
Truth is beauty, beauty truth, and this is simply beautiful.
My colleagues and I have put too much into this project to allow it to be hi-jacked by a personal crusade. Having failed to elicit moderation, we must now impose it.
A nice demonstration of why we have governments and why governing is hard. Thank you.
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Permalink Reply by ryan anderson on
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Keith,
I find this whole thread thoroughly depressing. I can't imagine a quicker way of putting off the majority of existing members and casual visitors to the OAC than to find some of our regular contributors squabbling repetitively on the home page.
I think this thread illustrates some of the difficulties of this sort of project. And while it may be frustrating, I don't find it particularly depressing. There is a need for participation, and there is a need for respectful interaction and communication. These things aren't exactly easy to control in this sort of format--but this is a common issue on many group sites like this.
M Izabel has a point of view which she has certainly made sure we are aware of, by dominating the blogs section, arguing ad nauseam there and entering most other Forum posts in a confrontational way.
M Izabel has a lot of energy, a lot of ideas, and a lot of motivation--which I think is great. One thing that I am having a hard time understanding is this consistently confrontational way of interacting. I can understand the fact that there is a certain level of frustration with anthropology or this site, but at some point we all have to learn how to disagree without taking things personally. There is certainly no need for everyone to see things in the same way. What fun would that be?
Whatever the justification for the attitudes taken, the overall effect is a disgrace. If you all set out to speed up a shift to a managed home page, you could not have contrived it better. I do not want the public image of our network to be that of an introverted bickering clique.
I don't think there is anything intentional about this. And I do not think that anyone is trying to speed up changes or management of the home page. I think this is what happens when the volume of contribution increases without basic guidelines or rules about sharing public space. This is the way that these things work out in online forums, IMO. Especially when certain members of the community are more interested in expressing their views than listening to anyone else. Maybe someone needs to write an online version of the Tragedy of the Commons.
The Admins team is in the process of refashioning the home page, having recruited Nathan Dobson, a journalist and anthropologist to assist in that task.
Now that sounds like a great idea. I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
In the meantime, please show some self-restraint. This applies principally to M Izabel, but also to her antagonists who at one stage took on the appearance of a pack egging each other on.
I think there are some formal and informal rules about group blogging that might be useful here. Some sites, like the Daily Kos (sorry to keep using this example) only allow members to post one blog a day. This helps to mitigate some of the kinds of issues that have been happening here, and it also encourages people to think through their posts a bit more. Other group sites have a more informal rule, basically encouraging people to share the site as a whole and to leave room for other views and contributions. A little restraint goes a long way. So does taking the time to actually listen to what others have to say, even if they strongly disagree.
My colleagues and I have put too much into this project to allow it to be hi-jacked by a personal crusade. Having failed to elicit moderation, we must now impose it.
This whole thing is a learning process. Not too long ago the main page was absolutely dead. Now there are some issues with sharing public space, and also with the type and amount of content that members are posting. This is a BETTER problem than a dead page, if you ask me. I think that a few basic guidelines along with positive examples of what CAN be done with this site will go a long way.
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Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on
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Ryan,
I don't blame you for what happened. You have been consistently constructive in this Forum. Nor am I particularly pleased with my own outburst. We will shortly be reshaping the page with more emphasis on news and a more selective approach to featuring posts. But people will still be free to post what and when they like. And I agree that M Izabel and one or two others less prominently have added life to what was not long ago pretty moribund. Yes we learn as we go. It isn't easy to hit upon the golden mean.
ryan anderson said:Keith,
I think this thread illustrates some of the difficulties of this sort of project. This whole thing is a learning process. Not too long ago the main page was absolutely dead. Now there are some issues with sharing public space, and also with the type and amount of content that members are posting. This is a BETTER problem than a dead page, if you ask me. I think that a few basic guidelines along with positive examples of what CAN be done with this site will go a long way.
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Permalink Reply by ryan anderson on
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Huon,
It will happen again with other people. These disputes have nothing to do with anthropology (except as evidence for some obvious principles of social psychology); but they are a, hopefully therapeutic, offshoot of having to exchange with folk known only through typed text.
I think they DO have something to do with anthropology--or at least the communication and dissemination of anthropology to different audiences. Some of this is a clash/debate over how to actually use this medium in effective, interesting, and equitable ways. It's pretty much a work in progress with tons of potential.
Occasionally we need to remind ourselves that the ability to listen to other people carefully is a far rarer and more complex skill than holding to (and insisting on) an opinion - anyone who can produce words can opine (often quite plausibly), but understanding what other people intend with their words and figures of speech requires thought and patience. Adding something that will allow another person to say something interesting (allow them to exit their personal monologue and to join an actual conversation) is an even rarer and more commendable skill.
That's really well stated. I totally agree with you, and I think this is something that everyone should be reminded of now and again.
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Permalink Reply by ryan anderson on
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I think I have been defensive and fiery because my intial baptism on OAC was through wall and fire--I wish they were actual rituals, but they were actually typical attitudes in exclusivist anthropology.
Well, you certainly came out swinging, so to speak--and that's not a bad thing. I definitely think anthropology could use a little more spark. Here the thing though. I think that you actually have a lot more people who agree with you about exclusionary academia (and other issues) than you might think. Sometimes it just matters how discussions are framed.
I should have begun on a low note. I would not have been labeled as nauseating if I started patronizing, positing, and toeing the line.
Nah, I don't think there is any need for toeing the line. And there is certainly no need to adopt a patronizing position. Not at all. In fact, there isn't even a need for people on here to AGREE. All that we need is the ability to disagree respectfully. If we all agreed on everything then there would be no point in any of this.
If we cannot change the debilitating conventions in anthropology, who will?
Great point. And I think that a lot of people here are very interested in this same question, myself included.
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Permalink Reply by Philip Swift on
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I like to think that I give a fair amount of thought before I offer my own contributions to the OAC, because - well, I like to think, and the OAC can be a great forum for thought. One of my own occasional frustrations with some anthropological work, and with some academic work more generally, is that thinking is thought to be so easy. But trying to understand human beings, and the worlds we all make for ourselves, is something that requires a good deal of effort.
M says (if I've understood the point correctly) that excessive piety paid towards thinkers (Foucault, Bourdieu, etc) or name-checking to no discernible purpose, is a move that deadens discussions, and I absolutely agree. But I also think that it is important to take ideas seriously because without the efforts of Turner, without Geertz, without Bourdieu (the list is long) anthropology wouldn't really be anything at all. Hence, I like to discuss theory; plus, I'm not an especially pious person.
But M also mentions the importance of people. This is surely critical - anthropology, as Ingold says somewhere, is philosophy with the people in. It is, after all, people and the particular problems they attempt to solve, that are our problem, as anthropologists.
I happen to think that anthropology is primarily an academic activity. This is just my view; but then, I'm not an academic. I'm just a guy who works on a market stall in London. But rather than being a singular discipline, anthropology is anarchically plural. Anthropology's openness allows for multiple permutations and possibilities, and the OAC reflects it and contributes to it. Long let the openness of the OAC continue!
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Philip Swift said:anthropology, as Ingold says somewhere, is philosophy with the people in. It is, after all, people and the particular problems they attempt to solve, that are our problem, as anthropologists.
I happen to think that anthropology is primarily an academic activity. But rather than being a singular discipline, anthropology is anarchically plural.
I am a classicist by training and temperament. I believe that I am part of long conversation about making a better world (5,000 years old at least) in which some individuals made a big and lasting difference to how we think. I study them, in the originals, if possible. Few of my main influences were "anthropologists". The leading authors cited in the index of one of my books were Locke, Marx, Keynes, Mauss and Weber. Academic disciplines create their own retrospective intellectual genealogies which are largely spurious when it comes to the actual history of ideas.
An anthropology is any systematic approach to studying human beings. That means putting people first, but also remaining open to the predicament of humanity as a whole. The ethnographic turn of the twentieth century was good at the first and bad at the second. It also gave priority to representation and meaning, when, as Philip implies, we might be better served by adopting a pragmatic approach to knowledge.
Most practising intellectuals, certainly in the western world, are now locked up in the universities. These in turn were well-adapted to the national capitalism of the twentieth century, but are in deep trouble now. Academic anthropology is a holding company for people to study what they like and call it "anthropology". This is more than "anarchically plural": it can be a shambles. In any case we need to walk on two legs, with one foot in the academic bureaucracy and one foot outside it, shifting balance in response to contingencies as we move along.
There is a passage towards the end of Foucault's The Order of Things (1966) where he asks why "ethnology" and psychoanalysis occupy a privileged position in our knowledge and have been able to energize the human sciences, a collective project that he believed was coming to an end.
“…because, on the confines of all the branches of knowledge investigating man, they form a treasure-hoard of experiences and concepts, and above all a perpetual principle of dissatisfaction, of calling into question…what may seem, in other respects, to be established...[They] are not so much two human sciences among others, but they span the entire domain of those sciences, they animate its whole surface…[They] are ‘counter-sciences’; which does not mean that they are less ‘rational’ or ‘objective’ than the others, but that they flow in the opposite direction, that they lead them back to their epistemological basis, and that they ceaselessly ‘unmake’ that very man who is creating and re-creating his positivity in the human sciences."
Foucault attributed anthropology’s originality to its being both “traditionally the knowledge we have of the peoples without histories” and “situated in the dimension of historicity”, by which he meant “within the historical sovereignty of European thought and the relation that can bring it face to face with all other cultures as well as with itself". He was sure the human sciences had reached their limit and this was doubly true of a discipline whose premises were being undermined by the collapse of European empire.
Given the disappearance of the traditional object of anthropology, we have to find not only a new one, but also a theory and method appropriate to it. This means identifying the historicity of our own moment, as well as complementing ethnographic fieldwork with world history and humanist philosophy.
We can't afford to turn our backs on academic anthropology, but equally we should not retreat behind its walls. I like to think there is another sense of "anthropology" that is fed by the academic version, but goes beyond it. This would be the aspiration to discover what we need to know about humanity as a whole in order to make a better world society. Some of those who think of themselves as "anthropologists" would be joined by historians, sociologists, philosophers, political economists, geographers, students of literature and film, indeed anyone for whom such an intellectual project is meaningful.
The Open Anthropology Cooperative is for me a potential vehicle for that project, but I am also aware that the vast majority of our members are likely to be indifferent to it. That's how I want it to be.
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Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on
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It is about the organic dynamism of an idea that evolves from simple to complex and from one issue to multiple issues. I also like how Joel intervenes. Instead of using the halting "no", his comments usually open windows for further inquiries and extend terms for analyses. The beauty of a collective construction of knowledge is that it does not stop since everyone can endlessly continue to add layers, angles, and structures to the original idea.
So everyone is agreed on what is being aimed at and the appropriate mode of interaction. Happy birthday OAC.
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Permalink Reply by Martin Walsh on
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I thought we were lurking, not larking!
NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS said:So, if I cought the anarchic meaning of the 2010 anthropology, the fact that there are 3200 larking members in OAC is a part of the game and this fact can be also positive. It's seems a little surrealistic but probably it's correct.
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Permalink Reply by Ranjan Lekhy on
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Thanks, M, for your opinion and I agree with you. I am from Nepal and doing my fieldwork in Nepal. From my department, at the University of Hyderabad, none has done any work on Panchayati Raj, but from the Department of Political Science some students are doing, and I am aware of their works.
Sure, we must expect that OAC should provide some useful stuffs for the students like me. However, I don't think that the French philsophies cannot help us to understand Poverty. From Rousseau to Foucoult tried to understand the social problems, and we must take advantage from their understadings and misunderstadings. I am happy that I'm learning from others and you as well, and it's because of the OAC. So please carry on writing and blogging.
M Izabel said:Ranjan, I don't think postmodernism can dissect poverty. Since you are in India, maybe in the future you can share about NREGA, India's rural labor policy, National Rural Health Mission, Panhayati Raj, Right to Information Act in relation to poverty. I think those are more informative, interesting, and useful, as far as I am concerned, than the philosophies of the French. I am hoping OAC will be the avenue for those texts straight from the field free of theoretical influences. Isn't it good that anthropology students in the future can browse OAC to find stuff they can research or work on? Foucault is already known and taught even in philosophy 101 but most still do not know how India is revitalizing its rural economy.
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Yes, Nikos, let's open our hearts and minds! We are the problems and we are the solution!
NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS said:Since today is the OAC birthday and also the Buddha's full moon day, I propose TO SEARCH for the Buddhist approach of the golden mean and it's possible application in OAC. Who knows about that, can comment.
About the Greek notion of METRON ( golden mean ) that was applied in the harmonic construction of Parthenon once, I frankly cannot see how it could be applIed here in OAC.
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