I've been acting as a moderator for a post-grad online discussion group for the past 3 weeks. I need to pull together some of the discussion threads and construct a summary of the main issues raised as a means of taking the group forward. The group was initially conceptualised as an online conversation sitting parallel to its parent face-to-face seminar - now it seems it has developed an identity all of its own and needs to be ushered into the world to stand on its own little legs.
Its interesting how people are - at conferences, seminars, online forums...some are outspoken, some draw attention to themselves, others love the 'network' buzz, while others try to hang out with the 'famous' and 'exciting' participants, others sit quietly in the background, careful not to draw any attention to themselves, then there are the enthusiastic and optimistic ones - able to see the positive and interesting angles in the most banal and uninspiring presentations and comments, others just want to defy the norms, conventions - so pitch up without a powerpoint, or arrive with a super duper prezzi creations, or simply read their paper to the stunned audience, then there are the cliques - yes the South Africans all sitting in a group, or the ethnographers, or academic literacies bunch, the Bernsteinians or the Bourdieu or critical realistic devotees who can only see the world through their theoretical rose tinted glasses - and so separate themselves out from everyone else.
I've just realised how hard it is to be an academic wading through all of this 'nonsense' and wondering what is our job really? Its partly the 'stuff' we are researching and the other bits are about projecting ourselves to the world in very particular ways. At the Lancaster conference I chatted to a retired sociologist lecturer who suggested how interesting it might be to do an ethnography on academic conferences. I'll be keen to read that paper any day. Might help me to make sense of it all and be less cynical about it all.
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