Cindy’s not the only one not blogging.  Here are a few things I’m not writing about:

1)Transparency. Mark wanted me to write about it ages ago, and I’ve thought about it, and don’t know what to say. Part of what troubles me about HTS is the overt lack of transparency (does that make them transparently opaque?), in the name of national security. Is this just a question of degree? Because, really, none of us who do or who have done research among our fellow human beings are completely open books. I have yet to post my undiluted field notes for all and sundry to see. I did, however, file a human subjects protocol, and I wonder if one could look it up at the office at my PhD-granting institution if one wanted to. I like to think that being forced to think bureaucratically (that is, having to file paperwork certifying that you have thought about it) about risk, and harm, and doing thoughtful research, is one of the best ways to try to ensure, as a discipline, that such thoughtful and responsible research is carried out. Sort of like, if you think someone is watching, you might behave better.

So at what point does the difference in the degree of transparency, between the run-of-the-mill anthropologist (moi), and the HTS practitioner (not-moi), become a difference in kind?

2)How damn hard it is to write when you are not in graduate school anymore. And have kids. And work a little bit. And want to have time to fart around on the internet, go for walks, and occasionally interact in meaningful ways with spouse, friends, family. No one speaks of this while you are in graduate school! Maybe they did, and I wasn’t listening. This sounds like whining, but I really do have a point: in graduate school, all you have to do is read and write. The whole setup is supposed to facilitate that. So those people who were doing grad school at the same time they had other obligations have a leg-up on those of us slackers who Just Did Grad School. Now, in my ostensibly grown-up life post-graduate school, I’d like to write a bit, and read some intellectual stuff that’s not just what I’m making my students responsible for, but the energy and inclination is not there. I’d have to form an infrastructure from whole cloth. Find writing partners. Schedule time for “writing.” Schedule time for “research.” And carve that time out of the rest of my existence. This sounds like a very sorry-ass-tiny-first-world-problem, I’m sure, but part of what I want to point out is that there is no systemic anything that gives young academics in the non-tenure-track workforce support to write. I suspect the non-tenure track thing might also be key, because there are infrastructures in place to facilitate tenured faculty writing. The rest of us are On Our Own.

In graduate school, the motivational structure around productivity is external. Outside of graduate school, and in the absence of tenure requirements, the motivational structure needs to be internal. Clearly, I am finding these conditions challenging.

3) The fact that Barack Obama’s mom was an anthropologist. Ruth Behar has already written movingly about this, so I don’t have to, but I’ve been pondering anthropological thoughts throughout the campaign, and even after the election, and wish that there had been some sort of Anthropologists for the Anthropologist’s Son group around, pushing us as a discipline into some kind of spotlight. Surely, his mother’s passion for anthropology, the one that led her to eventually settle and build a family in Indonesia (among other places), informs the choices that the President-Elect makes/will make about how to move through the world? About his approach to his own racial identity? About his perspective on the role of government in society?

There’s another blog entry waiting to happen, and clearly it is not coming from me.

Yes, I know. I rant about the AAA and yet I still download the PDF of the conference program. I wonder why we all do things like that? It’s not like I’m looking to change the stance of the AAA or the stance of people that get hysterical over anthropologists working in the military or intel communities. To me, those are all done deals, my mind is not going to change (at least not by the arguments presented so far) and I am not going to change someone else’s. Everyone may as well go to their separate corners and be done with it. But yet I still feel the need to raise a voice from time to time. Not to change peoples’ minds, but perhaps to let other people (students?) know that anthropology can be much more than what (I believe) a small group of people have been trying to limit it to. Political ideology and political correctness are not substitutes for doing the work and analysis in order to get to the clearest answers and insights… it’s not about hunting for a way to prove the other person right or wrong, or at least it shouldn’t be. Maybe you do harbor a secret desire to work for the CIA or NSA. Sure, given the oppressive political environment some anthropologists want to create, you may not want to advertise that fact, but know that there are others out there like you but they might not have the title “anthropologist.” It’s not news that I am ethically fine with people that have anthropology training working in all areas of the military and intel communities, not just contributing to the stabilization and community building kind of work that people we partner with are engaged in. Hell, I am fine if people want to use their skills to move forward the political agenda they are most passionate about. But use your skills and don’t just lay down in front of the agenda laid out for you. How many anthropologists that were against the invasion of Iraq actually used their skills, expertise and training as anthropologists to prevent or shorten the escapade? Lets count the hands up… anyone, anyone? Sorry, scribbling a poster to hold up as an anonymous face at a rally is not using your advanced training to change the direction of government and neither is a signed statement of protest. Use your skills to do fieldwork, use the fieldwork to generate insights, us those insight to create plans of action and recommendations. The reason why corporations and the military have been working with anthropologists for years is that they get value from the anthropologists doing what they are trained to do. Why is it when anthro’s decide to protest something they don’t bother doing any of that same work to further their own agendas? Creating real change requires doing real work.

Students: There is good and honorable work out there in non-profits, political groups, all levels of national, state and local governments, military, corporations, and more, no matter what your convictions but rarely is it called anthropology and would benefit greatly from the mind set of an anthropologist. Anthropologists have a lot of opportunities for a seat at these tables, they just have to be willing to get off the high horse and take it.

I just received this from the EPIC folks!

Scholarships Announcement 2008 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference

We [EPIC, not ethnography.com] are pleased to announce 3-5 scholarships for the EPIC conference in Copenhagen, 15-18 October 2008. Any student (undergraduate, master’s, Ph.D.) can apply! Scholarship recipients will receive free registration, in exchange for working 12-16 hours before or during the conference.

Deadline for applications: 25 July 2008

Application process: Please submit a curriculum vitae and a cover letter to scholarships@epic2008.com. In your cover letter, indicate whether you will be presenting a paper or organizing a workshop. Also, explain how you will benefit from attending the conference. Thirdly, we want to make sure that the scholarship recipients carry out their conference tasks in a responsible and effective manner, so you should describe any relevant experience of this type.

Scholarship recipients will be chosen by 4 August. Priority will be given to

• Those who are presenting a paper or organizing a workshop
• Those whom the conference would benefit the most
• Those who seem most likely to be responsible and effective in their work for the conference

Questions? Contact Christina Wasson, Scholarships Committee Chair, at cwasson@unt.edu.

I didn’t say it was a happy one, but it is a perspective. Of course there were the expected strident calls of moral outrage over anthropologists in the military. Then it got worse when a voice vote was taken and passed that “no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied.” (from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Blog http://chronicle.com/news/article/3532/anthropologists-vote-to-clamp-down-on-secret-scholarship ). To be clear, this does explicitly include the kinds of proprietary research I do for my clients.

Well, there we go… apparently when that resolution passes next year (I have no doubt it will) my industry brethren and I will once again be non-anthropologist anthropologists and the rest of the field will return to the comfy tower without fear of getting its collective hands dirty. I am not renewing my membership that expired last Thursday. It’s not some form of protest, but more of why bother? I went into the AAA meetings feeling like people were having arguments that are nearly 50 years old, and already rolling my eyes. But now I’ve stopped rolling them.

I’ve realized that being annoyed at the American Anthropological Association and the more vocal members of the organization is like being annoyed at an old doddering relative. You know the one I mean, not quite crazy enough to lock up in the attic, but still likely to blurt out embarrassing anachronistic statements during holiday meals like “We may have lost the war, but I’ll be damned if I recognize missou-ra!” Also like the AAA, the effect on my life and career other than the occasionally embarrassing statement, is exactly zero.

The only function of the association is to hold a meeting once a year, distribute info about open positions in academia and issue statements about ideology. Other than that, I don’t see much. You can’t make someone stop being an anthropologist. No one can reach into my brain and remove the knowledge. Never in my career has anyone asked if I am a member of the AAA, I don’t even know if it’s a requirement of an academic department to be a member.

I don’t claim to do classical ethnography, that’s why many of us in my end of the field prefer the term Design Ethnography or Design Anthropology because it is a sub-field that is different from the long-term studies others do and used for different ends. Its not better or worse, it’s different.

So, I’m still an anthropologist but one that places academic and professional freedom above being in an Association that is trying to keep us all in a box.

Introduction

Status is the posturing we do in order to be a member of a desirable group. Status in turn has implications for how valued resources such as money, prestige, power, and honor are distributed. In an ideal world, labor economists tell us that the more productive labor is, the more money, prestige, power, and honor will be acquired via the blind mechanisms of a marketplace that knows only productivity. But this ideology belies what many of us intuitively know. Status is not only dependent on productivity, but is obtained through who you associate with. These associations may be through family connections, club memberships, school networks, fraternity membership, or what college you attend. None of these connections are blindly entered into, irrespective of their utility in the marketplace.

Universities are at the intersection of this status paradox, between a market which sees only productivity, and a social world tuned into status distinctions based on relationships. As labor economists (and university administrators) assure us, what is learned at the university makes labor more productive in the marketplace. But, this is not the whole story. Because, universities are not only about the acquisition of skills valued in the marketplace. Attendance at a particular university is as a status marker determining how money, prestige, power, and honor are distributed irrespective of what skills an individual acquires. Were this not the case, no university administrator, parent, high school student, college counselor, or anyone else would pay any attention to the college status rankings published by US News and World Report. And for this reason, it is interesting to think of what implications this annual ritual has on how we inside America’s colleges and universities view each other. For example, people teaching and learning at dominant universities like UC Berkeley view their privileges and advantages as being the just reward in a blind competition in which their true honor is recognized. Those of us who teach at lower-ranked universities (in my case Chico State) disagree. We think our own honor is unjustly hidden.

Why Chico State Is Better than UC Berkeley: A Brief Rant
I will be blunt. When it comes to undergraduate education I think Chico State does a better job than UC Berkeley. Berkeley’s classroom teachers or what they call “discussion leaders” are often inexperienced graduate students, and not the big name (and well-paid) research professors who may be famous, but often are poor undergraduate teachers. Berkeley also asks less class attendance of students. For example, Berkeley’s Introductory Sociology course in Spring 2007 had 286 students who were lectured to for two hours per week, and a smaller graduate student-led discussion section which was one hour per week. Students received four hours credit for these three hours of instruction In contrast, Chico’s Introductory Sociology classes were three hours per week of lecture with 40 students, and Chico students received only three hours credit for this. As for Berkeley’s undergraduate students, they themselves are among the smartest and hardest working high school students in California. And, at the end of four years at (continued on Page 2)