[ANPPOM-Lista] [etnomusicologiabr] The Chronicle of Higher Education: How to Live Less Anxiously in Academe

[Carlos Sandroni]

Genial, Carlos!
Obrigado por postar.
Sandroni

On Sun, Oct 2, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Carlos Palombini cpalombini em gmail.com
[etnomusicologiabr] <etnomusicologiabr em yahoogrupos.com.br> wrote:

>
>
> Artigo de *The Chronicle of Higher Education* (Washington, D.C.)
> compartilhado por uma amiga que trocou uma universidade britânica por uma
> faculdade particular na Tijuca.
>
> How to Live Less Anxiously in Academe:4 steps toward an alternative
> academic career
>
> If it is still true that a university job is about teaching and writing,
> then in this age of market fundamentalism, those two faculty roles have
> attained a distinct nature. Successful researchers are what Christopher
> Hitchens once called "micro-megalomaniacs." They have carved out a small
> and distinct place for themselves, over which they rule uninhibitedly.
> Their writing is unreadable as well as unread, neither of which is a
> disadvantage, because, as Russell Jacoby reminds us, "if your work is
> readable and is read and therefore considered journalistic — then that’s a
> curse." And, he added: "If no one reads it, it’s certainly not held against
> you."
>
> The same goes for teaching. At least where we teach — in Britain and
> Sweden — being a disengaged teacher is nothing to be ashamed of at a
> research university. In that institutional sector, a yardstick for academic
> success is the distance you can maintain between yourself and the students.
> We’ve both received advice over the years to spend our time and effort on
> research, not teaching.
>
> Meanwhile, teaching or service aspirations — say, teaching something that
> actually engages students, or writing something that is actually read — are
> not rewarded.
>
> But we already know this, and we know that this situation is not going to
> change all of a sudden. So for those of you who have grown tired of this
> futile moaning and wish to do something about it, we will suggest four
> steps toward an alternative academic career.
>
> These steps are not fast-track routes to scholarly excellence, but neither
> are they suicidal, careerwise. We’re both living examples. True, we may not
> be singled out as role models in our institutions; for starters, our
> publication records are too short and too nonacademic in orientation. Yet
> we’re largely left alone to pursue our broader interests, which is all we
> ask for.
>
> *Step No. 1: Kill your institutional aspirations.* There has always been
> a tension between intellectual aspirations and institutional demands.
>
> While aspiring intellectuals, such as ourselves, may never be entirely
> free to do what we want to do, we can nonetheless develop a particular
> orientation toward our university employers. Instead of becoming part of an
> institution — filling in reports, sitting on committees, golfing with deans
> — we can regard ourselves as merely residing in an institution, doing no
> more bureaucratic work than what is required. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the
> liberties that come with having relatively safe employment, with actual
> weekends and holidays, which is something that has become an unattainable
> luxury to the freelancer. As Mark Greif has put it in a 2015 essay on
> public intellectuals
> <http://www.chronicle.com/article/Whats-Wrong-With-Public/189921> in
> these pages, "One must simultaneously differentiate oneself from the
> university spiritually and embed oneself within it financially."
>
> The trick is to navigate that fine line. Once you get an academic job, you
> may want to keep a low profile, and just live up to the basic expectations.
> Smile and nod, but don’t overdo it. Then gradually — without giving the
> game away — cultivate an indifference and apathy toward institutional
> demands. Little by little, you should distance yourself from the spirit of
> the professional university.
>
> What we suggest here is not new or revolutionary. In a letter to his
> imaginary friend Tovarich, C. Wright Mills wrote that he was a "Wobbly"
> professor. He lived, as he put it, "outside the whale" of academe.
>
> But crucial here: Remaining spiritually outside academe does not mean we
> should all recline on a couch, sleep through the days with our office-doors
> locked, and cash in a regular salary. We should just use the time
> differently. Spend it on meaningful intellectual activities. Which is what
> the sociologist Gary T. Marx did after his rise and fall from professional
> grace in the late 1960s. In a 1990 confessional essay
> <http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/success.html>, he describes how he started
> off as an academic supernova. But as he climbed the institutional ladder,
> the responsibilities expanded and got heavier. He was offered editorial
> positions, invited to give keynote speeches, and asked to take on senior
> administrative roles. The paradox of academic success, Marx wrote, is that
> it "brings less time to do the very thing for which you are now being
> recognized."
>
> Things started to go awry for Marx — "the sweet smell of success" he had
> initially scented "turned slightly rancid." He grew disillusioned and
> angry, no longer knowing what he was doing in academe. Eventually he was
> denied tenure, and had to start over. So to avoid the same fate as Gary
> Marx, kill your institutional aspirations.
>
> *Step No. 2: Be an amateur.* When you’ve rid yourself of all
> institutional aspirations you are ready to say it out loud: "I’m an
> amateur."
>
> Both of us are amateurs. We were never trained to write; never trained to
> teach. Well, one of us was forced into a term-long, teacher-training course
> with a management consultant — which was about as helpful as a
> mixed-martial-arts course run by a peace activist.
>
> Being an amateur is nothing to be ashamed of. Edward Said embraced the
> term
> <http://shifter-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/said-professionals-and-amateurs-copy.pdf>.
> For him it was the mode of the intellectual. Amateurism, he said, is "the
> desire to be moved not by profit or reward, but by love for an unquenchable
> interest in the larger picture." It is a desire, he continued, that lies
> "in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for ideas and values
> despite the restrictions of a profession."
>
> As an amateur you are naturally anti-instrumental. You’re largely
> indifferent to extrinsic rewards or status. When doing research, you’re not
> interested in gaining an elevated position among your immediate academic
> peers. You’re just interested in keeping your job, making sure not to get
> fired.
>
> After Gary Marx’s career crashed, he restyled himself as an academic with
> broad intellectual interests and minimal professional aspirations. Of
> course, that didn’t impress those who had "their hands on the reward
> levers." He never made employee of the month. Even so, Marx notes, this
> orientation "is likely to enhance the quality of the intellectual product"
> and it "feels good and helps keep one fresh."
>
> Embracing the spirit of the amateur is a reminder that, while you can call
> yourself an academic, you aren’t the only person who can talk and write
> about sociological matters. Mills was early to point out that journalists,
> filmmakers, authors, and artists are doing social science, too. And their
> work is by no means inferior. If you’ve ever watched *The Wire,* or read
> Barbara Ehrenreich’s books, you know what we mean.
>
> As amateurs we need to be open. And we need to experiment with different
> outlets, and work on how we get our ideas across. Which brings us to ...
>
> *Step No. 3: Stop writing badly.* Academics publish more today than ever
> before. But the problem is not the volume. It’s the quality. With its
> jargon and passive phrases, our academic articles are rarely a pleasure to
> read. But who cares? Bad prose is not necessarily a disadvantage when
> making an academic career. Strange as it may seem, we are actively
> encouraged to write poorly, as Michael Billig explains in *Learn to Write
> Badly.*
>
> Sure, writing well is hard and takes time, and most of us will never
> become great writers. But we can all try to stop writing badly. Or at least
> stop actively trying to write badly. There are several useful guides out
> there, which can help you on the way — such as Stephen King’s *On Writing*
> and William Zinsser’s *On Writing Well.*
>
> But as much as we need to ask *how* we write, we need to ask *what* we
> write. Are we writing about topics worth caring about? Topics that move us?
> Topics that move other people? All too often we seem to write about topics
> that move no one and have no resonance to anyone, anywhere. Take Patricia
> Wilner’s damning 1985 investigation into *The American Sociological
> Review.* In "The Main Drift of Sociology Between 1936 and 1982," she
> looked at the subjects covered by the journal during those years and found
> that key social and political events were largely neglected. Up until the
> mid-1950s, only a handful of articles (around 1 percent) dealt with the
> Cold War and the McCarthy witch-hunts.
>
> It doesn’t seem a lot better in our field of business management.
> According to Dennis Tourish, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of
> London, none of the leading journals in the field have published "a
> substantive paper dealing with the 2008 banking meltdown."
>
> *Step No. 4: Start teaching well. *Academics often don’t want to admit
> it, but as teachers, we actually enjoy a considerable degree of freedom.
> And, no, the students aren’t as utilitarian as we like to think. Believe it
> or not, they often want an education. A few years ago, we interviewed about
> 40 juniors at a business school. You know what irritated them the most?
> When teachers talked about them in the future tense, as tomorrow’s business
> leaders and entrepreneurs, as though that was a dream they all shared. Not
> only did they have other dreams; they also knew that — given the vast
> numbers of business majors — not all of them could end up as managers.
>
> For aspiring intellectuals, teaching offers a unique opportunity. When
> writing for academic journals, you’re lucky to be read by more than a
> handful of people. With teaching, however, it’s different. Not only can we
> reach many more, but, as Russell Jacoby wrote in* The Last Intellectuals,*
> we "have students who pass through and on to other things." And with
> students passing through the university each year, you might have an impact
> after all.
>
> As an unapologetic amateur you should like to experiment with form. You’re
> not scornful about television series and box sets or even commercials
> because you understand and appreciate the craft behind those productions;
> and you know, as Gerald Graff wrote in *Clueless in Academe: How
> Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind:* "If educational institutions
> hope to compete with the media for students’ attention … they need to
> devote at least as much serious thought to how they organize their
> representations as do the media managers who produce a ninety-second TV
> commercial."
>
> No, that doesn’t mean dumb things down or adopt an infantilized tone. Just
> put in the same amount of care and attention as though we were working in
> other media, such as television or radio.
>
> Maybe we shouldn’t separate writing from teaching. They’re both forms of
> productions, like a documentary film. The Italian philosopher Gianni
> Vattimo says that, for him, "there is no difference between what I do when
> I am teaching in the university, and what I do when I write a column for a
> newspaper."
>
> The same goes for Georg Simmel, the early 20th-century sociologist. For
> him, teaching was the perfect way to test new ideas, which he would later
> develop into books. His lectures became so popular that German newspapers
> started to report on them. But he wasn’t born a public intellectual. He
> gradually turned into one. Prior to 1900, 50 percent of his writings ended
> up in scholarly journals, the other half in nonscholarly publications.
> After 1900, 28 percent of his publications ended up in scholarly
> publications, 72 percent in nonacademic ones.
>
> But Simmel’s chosen career teaches us a sober lesson. His rejection of
> professional orthodoxy sent him to the lowest ranks of the German academy.
> He remained a tutor throughout his life, only reaching the heights of
> full-fledged professor for a few years at the very end of his career.
>
> He is by no means the only academic who’s been professionally marginalized
> on account of writing and teaching for larger audiences. Many aspiring
> intellectuals have put their professional careers at risk in favor of
> something more meaningful. They’ve cared less about their careers — and
> more about the world. Which, we think, is laudable. Remember Franz Kafka’s
> words: "In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world."
>
> Carl Cederström is an associate professor of organization theory at
> Stockholm University’s business school and Michael Marinetto is a lecturer
> in business ethics at Cardiff University’s business school.
>
> https://goo.gl/wgj9ss
> --
> carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)
> professor de musicologia ufmg
> professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
> www.proibidao.org
> ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
> www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
> scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
>
> __._,_.___
> ------------------------------
> Enviado por: Carlos Palombini <cpalombini em gmail.com>
> ------------------------------
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-- 
Carlos Sandroni
Departamento de Música, UFPE
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia, UFPE
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Música, UFPB
Telefones:
(81) 2126 8596 / 8597 (UFPE)
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