Categoria: academic life – living in academia

Not the Time to Say Good-Bye

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

January 15th, looking back over the many years, one may even say: over an entire era that seems to be behind us, overcome – looking back to the 15th of January 1919 shows so clear that an era ended but this end is far from being the end of history.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, most consequent members of the German left, fundamentally opposing against militarism not only by words but also by their political action had been killed on that day – after a trial: briefly pretending that everything would be dealt with according to the rules of the proverbial German law and order they had been stabbed and thrown in the river, showing to which extent the German law and order had been ready to bend the law in favour of ‘order’. It had been the order or normality – the mad normality. The 3rd commandment (see comments for correction) – here from the Exodus-version

Though shalt have no other gods before me

– had been translated by German law and order politics into the sovereignty of the state, disjoined from the people, disjoined from truth, opening the way to any arbitrary ruling within an illusionary world of rational-legal authority. It had not been by accident that one of the most pronounced analysis of the development of different systems of authority, ruling and governance had been presented by the German sociologist MaxWeber, not least pointing out the complex contradictions, highlighting the dangers of a development towards an iron cage in which we may be easily trapped; law and order – the seedbed and fruit of an authoritarian personality as analysed by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford (1950), the dangers “eclipsed by the light of reason“.

It is true:

With the finest leaders of the German Communist movement murdered, the gates of rising German facism opened unhindered.

And it is equally true that shooting people, throwing them into a river as it happened to Rosa and Karl, is not the only way of killing. The Silent Revolution which Ronald Inglehart had in mind after wrapping everything into figures surely shows something as all statistics say something. But it easily lets us forget its companion: the silent killing – performed on the catwalk, in the statistical offices, and the careless orientations on an alleged elitism…, and the hesitant agreement with critical voices: remaining on the surface level or limited to agreement behind the closed doors …. all this should makes us think of the two and what happened to the world after they had been silenced.

It may sound distant – but it may sound obvious and challenging at the same time, not least for working in academia: we have to be brave, looking for powerful points even if they are not obvious, not matching the powerpoint-format.

Yes, it is time to look back – not in order to say good-bye, but in order to move forward.

The Moor Back on Stage

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation

The Moor has done his work – the Moor may go!

Reference to this sentence from Schiller’s tragedy Fiesco, or the Genoese Conspiracy had been made on a recent occasion, raising concerns over the ongoing validity of the Europea Anthem. But one may also say that with the supposed post-modern era all this doesn’t play a role – borders of spaces blurred: we live in Ireland, in Europe, in our workplaces and various leisuretime venues; we are ‘present’ everywhere and any time, GPS: globally positioned, systematically; time is time of presence, doesn’t know history and thus doesn’t have to think about future and …

…, well, and it ends with consequently loosing actuality, being reduced to pure immediate presence.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright

We write about middle of January – it it not long time ago and many had been singing these lines from a poem, written in 1816 by the Austrian priest Joseph Mohr. The background of the lyrics is somewhat interesting – you my read it yourself, following the link. Summarising it: routines lost, the usual distraction not availabe leding to the need of considered means, approproating the situation: appropriating it by utilising the given means, doing things in an appropriate way.

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After recent debates concerning the public statement of the president of University College Cork, the following effort by the School of Applied Social Studies at the same University to defend numbers and also to defend the disadvantaged and their achivements in a letter sent – as open letter – to Mr Murphy, the accused defended himself, writing himself a letter, also as open letter to the members of the ‘university community’, stating serval things.

First, little bit reminding at the reaction of the little son of a friend of mine, frequently smirking ‘It wasn’t me’. In Mr. Murphy’s version (may be a practice test for a political carreer):

my speech to the Chamber of Commerce was mischievously reported, at best, in the local media.

Well, may be I like the gripe and should juyst ignore it – Sill, being far less ‘public’ then Mr. M, and being surely less exposed to such misreporting (actually media occasionally like to quote exactly what I say, thinking that this is offensive agsinst myself and positions I represent, they are thinking what I say is in itself undermining my reputation – and others quote it literally as they really like what I say), I (or groups I represent[ed]) would immediately ask for public apology and rectification,’offering’ in particular in such ‘mischievous cases’ just one alternative: a nice meeting, venue: court; topic: defamation, reputational damage … – Seems I missed that one by the president – or it had been forgotten to mention this in his answer (Ah, politicians are so forgetful when it comes to certain things …).

There had been some mails sent after the ‘university community’ received the mischeievous reply – at the end only very few; most of these not going even a quarter of an inch beyond number crunching, looking for better statistics and ‘clarifiaction of evidence’. As if all this would be a matter of penal relevance like a traffic incidence: Speeding, 20 miles or 25 miles too fast, looking for the exact ways of dealing with technicalities. But little could be heard about truly driving on the wrong side of the road let alone asking if we should change means of transport. – Not penality law is the matter in case: it is about questions of fundamental rights: ‘law of nations’ if you want …, and if you are ready to take it as law of people, as matter of rather fundamental rights.

One really intersting, valuable and serious exception of the mails circulated after Mr. Murphy’s statement had been issued – it had been a mail that unfortunately only sent to colleagues of the department (somewhat sympotmatically for today’s debates on such issues not just in Cork I think). It had been sent only to this illustrious circle – and so I will refrain from making it public. Nevertheless, I want to point at least on some aspects of the mail and also adding my reply, including some additional remarks.

Mr. M’s reply is indeed something we should be grateful for, enlightening in its own terms. If in fairness we

accept that sometimes words can be misinterpreted particularly if arguments are ambiguously phrased
(from the said mail sent in reaction to the president’s reply to the members of the department)

and we surely should do that, we should read the reply in this light: a statement, carefully worded, and making the point of … elitism even clearer. I actually hesitate to use the term elitism as it is in my eyes much worse; and much more complicated.

_______________

So second then on the content of what never had been said – and not been publicly denounced as imputation: We are coming to the really crucial point – in need of discussion indeed much beyond the recent quarrel, much beyond Cork. I remember one of the mails, sent while discussing the School’s letter as reaction to the speech, saying that this would be a particularly important issue as the remarks made in the speech would very much concern the corporate image and indentity (sorry, I do not have the mail available, cannot quote it literally). So lt me have a brief look at the corporate socaial identity (surely a responsible one I ghuess). Part of this question is then surley the question of accessibility. Analytically there are different moments to this

  • emphasising the need of support for especially gifted students is one thing
  • ‘balancing’ this with with general educational requirement is another moment
  • and again different is the matter of accessibility for ‘people from disadvantaged background’.

Oh, holy trinity of academia: All this considers the existing ground pattern of education and of science as valid rather than being open for a more fundamental critique – questioning the Janus -faced holy Grail. This ommission however limits the debate on ‘mediocrity’ versus ‘excellence’, leaving the question ‘mediocrity’ versus ‘excellence’ of what outside of the equation, thus taking it as invariable.

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With this a third point shows up – and indeed it is an issue we – people who are lecturing, doing research, working in academia – frequently complain about it: the …, yes mediocrity of students, of publishing … . We sometimes complain about students not being ready to read, not being critical, not engaging in debates, focussing their work on the exams. Complaining about publications, hastily made, providing new ‘evidence’ for old ideas and concepts barely bringing forward new ideas – or complaining about publications not being made: holding new ideas back until they are completely matured, avoiding making them public at an early stage as this would allow others to exploit them for their own benefit (yes, I have to admit: seeing others taking off with own ideas is sad, depressing). The statement which had been the bone of contention made the ‘social question’ of access the core issue for mediocrity, suggested it as reason behind it: assisting people rather than challenging them beng proposed by Mr. M. as root of all evil. – Rings a bell? This is the other way round a notion of current employment policy, suggesting that people should be challenged rather than being assisted (known from the new ‘social democrats’ to the consersatives – or the other way round?).

I think when it comes to reasons for mediocrity a more important point than access is actually ‘standing’: the social position, the question where we locate academia. Coming to the speech in question then we learn that the reason for mediocrity is consequence of

expansion and democratisation of higher education

We should actually hesitate; the immediate rejection of the apparent rejection of

expansion and democratisation of higher education

may need further calrification. We should ask decisively: What kind of expansion and democratisation did we actually see? Is it just about numbers? Easing access and taking in more people? Let us be serious and hopefully sufficiently provocative in the formulation: the real problem is expansion and ‘opening the doors’. Content of teaching, subjects and the syllabus of many courses is not following the interest as it emerges from academic insight, it is not based on the ‘rational being’ as it had been envisaged by great thinkers of enlightenment and Sturm und Drang: Kant, Voltaire, Descartes, Humboldt, Schiller, Paine …; let alone that it is following the ‘need of people and society’. It is part of a larger hegemonic system: bureaucracies, economic interests and also self-elected professional ‘peers’ acting as gatekeepers not over access of students but holding the key for the ‘golden gates’ which opens the door for what actually may be said in our lectures, part of research and gets the acceptance in the race for excellence-research. Sure, McCarthy is dead, the West-German Berufsverbots-law discontinued. But thi sis not the end of various mechanisms securing hegemonic power, guiding us to the wrong demoi of money, growth, skills rather than knowlege … – such a wide field for later anthropological reasearch of tribe leaders of the early 22st century and the role of te fetish.

_______________

Fourth, then: I asked for including a paragraph on the science shops in the letter of the School – the science shop, an initiative of the School of Applied Social Studies, and going back on more or less radical efforts to change academias agenda and curricula. Especially in its very notion, the science shop idea had been obsessed by the idea of developing a rdaical shift towards an understanding of science for the people, enabling the people to make use of science in their very own interest. This is quite different to the simplistic idea of opening academic institutions for the, ar at least for more people, right? It is a core moment as we can now come to the very moement of democratisation, Yes, I would say: Mediocracy had been and is a problem of expansion. But only because most of the expansion had been taking the wrong demos as point of reference: the demos of capitalist expansion, of growth, orienting academia on a partnership with growth policies.

To compete in a knowledge intensive world the majority of the population must enjoy a high quality third level education …

… these words evoke the same chill as the words of the 2000-Lisbon strategy, striving for ‘making Europe the most competitive ….‘ Can intelligent people not grasp the importance, the only valid standard of cooperation, of open systems, striving in permanent debates with the people for improving society. Competitiveness of countries, enterprises, universities … will fail: countries may see themselves ending in gravel of competitive wars and crusades, enterprises undermine the means of their own existence and universities loose their universality ….

Opening doors, expansion is only then a matter od democratisation if the demos is not a demon.

_______________

Fifth and finally expanding on the statement from the speech in question, suggesting

To compete in a knowledge intensive world the majority of the population must enjoy a high quality third level education and a substantial minority must embrace 4th level education delivered by institutions performing to world beating standards.

This seems to be nothing else than frothing [would be such a nice play with words in German – if you translate the German for frothing literally it is ‘beating froth’ ;-)] Even standard economists as Joe Stiglitz learned in the meantime that growth of GDP is not all, competitiveness has to be about something else (though it sadly seems that such trivialtiy and pragmatism is sufficient for gaining reputation.* But people who make reference to

the ephemera of the Celtic Tiger

fail to see that it is not about restoring economic prominence. We are searching something we may still not be able to define in proper terms. But not knowing exactly the question is surely no excuse for hastily giving an answer.

_______________

Coming to a preliminary end, much of the debate seems to go a wrong way, looking for privileges for all rather than a way towards a society of which the real privilege is that, indeed, we all are living in a society as outlined by Marx in the German Ideology, a society

where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

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In the beginning of this note I wrote:

time is time of presence, doesn’t know history and thus doesn’t have to think about future and ……, well, and it ends with consequently loosing actuality, being reduced to pure immediate presence.

So there seems to be no reason for starting with silence, and consideration. ‘Statistics‘, ‘evidence’ successfully flattening the argument in advance – simplicity of countering an unfettered financial market by some more or less loose regulatory strings, preaching against hectic and meaningless hassle and bustle, putting forward the call for a good life – libraries filled with books that simplify complex analysis by telling us nothingness about positive thinking, blogging appeals to quit and to do it now – like the idealist, illusionist proposal to meet the concept of a smart economy by proposing a smart society:

All is calm, all is bright

And from here, it seems, we lean back – all seems good

Silent night, holy night

Postmodernism allows apparently everything – even the celebration of refusing to accept evidence by providing evidence for the lack of its relevance. So it may be a good thing that people in Cork get these days an invitation to a lecture titled:

Professional work and the interference of evidence: Why evidence-based practice is not really a good idea.

Leaving aside that fact that this should be well known by now [many years ago and in various discussions many of us gave evidence for this, discussing the seemingly hot topic of evidence based practice as another means of frothing ;-)] one thing lets me hesitate to full-heartedly welcome this invitation. The presenter is somebody from a School of Education, somewhere abroad. Although I surely like to see the crossing of borders, welcoming people who are coming from abroad I am not sure why somebody has to cross this border, why somebody has to cross the border at this point: from education to all other social science. The abstract, sent with the invitation, promises the need to

focus on assumptions about the nature of professional action and the role of knowledge and values in this, on assumptions about the relationship between knowledge and action, on the different ways in which research can be of practical use, and on what might be required to make things ‘work’ in the domain of human action and interaction

But for this we surely do not need primarily educationists but … – those who are looking for education, those who do not want to cross the border into the elitist system but who want remove the walls, and claim a new practice, as I asked for on another occasion: a practice that does not occupy but liberates from occupants. This is surely different from postmodern arbitrariness, a step to decisive commitment.

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* I have to add a personal note: this remark sounds disrespectful. However, I have to admit that I have huge respect for the work of another member of the Commission, namely Amartya Sen who had been its advisor. Though I surely do not entirely agree with Amartya on different aspects and criticised his work also in some publications, again, I respect his circumspect approach and openness to debate …, and I am grateful not least for the personal warmth and respect I experienced in our encounters.

some old new stuff

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, social quality

Forgot to mention: some lectures are again available on the web as video files – these are giving some insight into the social quality approach. As advisor of the Foundation on Social Quality I had been invited to give these lectures while I worked in 2010 as visiting fellow at the Cairns Institute of the James Cook University in Australia.

that’s mad … – sure, but what?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Greetings from the ivory tower of academia 😉
Off now to theatre: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ – Leaving ivory tower to see the real world

Of course, it had been meant to be a joke when I wrote in an e-mail, before leaving office yesterday.
And being there in Munich’s Volkstheater, sitting next to the director, I read the short text accompanying the program, written by Manfred Lütz – only a few sentences and paragraphs being reproduced here in translation:

Watching as psychiatrist and therapist the evening news, one is frequently irritated. You hear about war mongerors, terrorists, murderers, white collar criminals,  stone-cold accountants and bare-faced egomaniacs – and nobody is treating them. Well, such guys are even considered as completely normal. Thinking then about those people I am the entire day dealing with, touching dementia sufferers, sensitive addicts, highly sensitive psychotics, harrowing depressive people, thrilling maniacs I am often caught by the a suspicion. We are looking afer the wrong people! Our problem are not those who a considered as mad – our problem are the normal people.

Oiginally I thought about reproducing Lütz’s entire text, on a few pages bringing back to mind all the experiences, the work, the protests …., all the things from the time way back, when I worked in a psychiatric hospital. Following the excellent performance I thought how much changed over the many years: open wards, community care, modern therapeutic approaches rather than a psychiatric clinic with about 2,000 patients, two therapists, many psychiatrist and ball-rollers end one key, for every door. – We, a few of the people working there, had been fighting, in the spirit and at the side of Basaglia, Laing …, fighting like Don Quixote against windmills, but also having some success: some clear successes and some that are more on the dubious (just the day before I discussed with a colleague here in the institute over lunch the huge difficulties we have [had] in Sweden: opening doors is not establishing social spaces).
Sure, there is still tremendous maltreatment, ignorance and breach of human rights in particular in psychiatric hospitals and also in the way of non-integration of people in ordinary every day’s life.

But what may be more worrying is how uncontested we have to state the truth of something else Manfred Lütz highlights, writing about the ‘normal madness’ and not least the ‘madly normal’, those who are obsessed by normality:

No wonder then that everything that does not comply with the norm is a terrible nuisance for this extraordinary normal people. Sure, nobody dares disrespecting the norm against those who are at the top, being a small grey mouse. So every furious feeling against those at the top turns easily to aggression against those at the bottom.

Sure,  we see ‘occupants’, can nearly celebrate an increasing protest in different veins – globally. But we are equally witnessing increasing nationalism, xenophobia and narrow-minded elitism, going hand in hand with number-crunching in search for evidence.

We need more though: not opening doors, but demolishing walls. We do not need a tamed capitalism, but a thorough analysis of what this new capitalism actually is about: the shift from accumulation to appropriation; the replacing of capitalist accumulation on grounds of the metabolism between human beings and nature, the relationality with the four dimensions of

  • auto-relation
  • group-relation (as general sociability)
  • ‘other’-relation (as ‘institutionalised and ‘defined’ socialbility – including class relationships etc.) and
  • environmental (‘organic nature’) relations,

moving to a new mode of production, generating value on grounds of the dominance of abstract processes in the sphere of distribution and circulation. The organic whole, Marx had been talking about in the Grundrisse is … – is it dissolved? Turned on its head?

Only then, with a clear analysis, we will be able not restricting ourselves on another interpretation of the world’s surface but on finding a way to change the world’s essence.

– Presidents should rethink what they are doing. Rather then talking to chamber members about the loss of elitism the Mister Murphys should talk to people who gained their expertise from life and it’s anomalies. Normality is dangerous as long as it is the normality of accepting what temporarily may (have) work(ed).

Well, there is occasionally indeed more realism in theaters than we can find in ivory towers, being the heavy oak furniture of today’s high level officers. We only have to bring it from ‘Luhmann’sche’ background noise’ to the main speech on the stage. not by radicalist action, but by truly radical analysis.

Sir …. – Yes, Milord ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

And one surely could enter with this a more or less exciting excursion on the use of the different salutations, the hierachies and also the ways in which forms or substance is carried over different eras. Don’t we all know the landlord? And don’t we all appreciate the awareness of the home as the castle? (and if it is the case, don’t we all appreciate our status as client, protected and looked after by the patron, hoping for the lord being our servant?)
Sure, plays with words; and nevertheless not only a matter of play in the sense of Schiller’s ascendence to a state of freedom, the elevation from the blunt realm of need, reaching the realm of insight, and foresight and re-sight …, ops: the sight is here spectation, the term is then respect.
It is beyond this play also a matter of the rules of disguise, the permanent crossing of borders and at the end the loss of ground. The world is a stage – and occasionally we may loose out of sight if we are moving in the real world or on a stage, or if the world is actually truly not more than a stage.

Frequently this had been an issue for me not least in reflections on the current changes of the economic system – in its very fundamental patterns, going far beyond neoliberalism and austerity policies etc. – for instance when reflecting on the Ode of Joy and the Tragedy of Europe

The difficulty of fully understanding what is going on in the political-economic development, the social policy and the emergence of new mechanisms of governing ad governance – mechanisms that emerge in front of our eyes as New Princedoms is not least one of being ‘tempted by disguise’.
Capitalism today is at least not hesitating in any way to step into any saucer standing in the way in order to allow the impression that this capitalism is not capitalism anymore but the renaissance of politics dominating the economy, accumulating power rather than capital – and actually not accumulating it but appropriating it by the means of violence and sham.

Indeed, have a look: he is a chip of the old block.

But still, there is one thing that deserves further thought: arts in the olden times had been more a matter of showing monetary wealth and ‘investing’ excess money. Today it is not least a means of making money.

The analysis still needs to be completed. Not least as it would be much too easy to look at it out of context. Rather, this just a tiny piece of a jigsaw. Another piece can be seen in something that is at first sight rather distant: a new law, currently initiated by the Geman government. It is about empowering private security firms to protect ships sailing under German flag – not such a new thing as private security firms are alreaday since some time employed with matters that had been strictly defined as state duty.  This new advance is not about anything more or less than the transport of such ‘liberalisation’ into ‘international realms’: Like the self-elected currency watchdogs of IMF and World Bank we find now the erosion of state sovereignty in a different realm.

But again not a simple thing to assess. At first glance it is of course something that has to be rejected. However, we may also ask: why should the military forces continue participating in ‘private wars’. Finally we have to recognise that acts of priacy against the merchant fleet is … a private matter. So in any case we are facing a dilemma. This dilemma is about the very principle of sovreignty which is in the ‘modern’ state itself deeply engraved by an irresolvable contradiction: the people as supposed sovreign is governed by the state … which is (a) sovreign. Even in a ‘perfect democracy’ this cannot work without problem. – Even more so, it is doomed to fail in the light of another move across borders: one of the supoosed achievements of modernity is the separation of powers as we usually see it based in the ideas of Montesquieu. But looking at his ‘ideal state’ of balanced control we have to acknowledge two other important moments: Montesquieu himself had been equally important in his emphasis of the ‘new individualism’ – he had not been thinking of a state as people but a state of people. And not less important is the fact that he errected his vision on the ideas of Bodin who outlined a little bit earlier (1576) in his Six Livre de la République the state (république en Franch and Commonwealth in the English translation [I cannot access the Latin version now – could be interesting]) being the sovreign over both what would be the civil society Hegel had been talking about (i.e. the bourgeois economy) and also the ‘private realm’ or what we name civil society in the spirit for instance of Tocqueville. Remember, for Jean Bodin the state is characterised by centralisation of teh structures of decision, th bureaucratisation of the channels of decision and the emergence of a structured legal order – in particular the latter being a point of reference for Montesquieu.

Be it as it is – and that means: be it something that needs to be further explored in depth, we should be aware of what is centrally development before our eyes: it is not primarily about the scandals, it is not so much about the obvious impoverishment or the elitism of particular systems – well designed by the new nobility and badly defended by self-nominated noblemen who think they can cure educational systems with a sclapel. It is about the fundamental change of the mode of production. Naming and shaming this as neoliberalism and austerity policies would, I am afraid, be garment dyeing.

– And some scepticism may be allowed when new Robin Hoods claim to serve as rescuers.

The World is a Stage or Felix Krull Enlightening the View on Capitalism Today

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, joys - what we usually take for it, thoughts on life and its philosophy

And frequently it is suggested that the sociologist Erving Goffman coined this phrase. Without disregard: what my great colleague Erving did, is nothing more than sociologising what William Shakespeare outlined already around 1600 in his comedy As you like it, (first published in 1623).

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women, meerely Players;
They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time playes many parts,

And before Erving Goffman presented his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (published in 1959), Thomas Mann dedicated time to this topic, writing the Confessions of Felix Krull (the genesis of this unfinished novel spans between 1905 and the middle of the 1950s).

In some respect one may say, it is all one topic: the roles we play, the images we present – a reality that is fictive by presenting its reality in certain images as much as it is real to the extent to which it is a combination of fictions, stories we tell and combine in different ways. Own stories and our stories, interweaving with the narratives told by others.

The Seven Ages to which Shakespeare refers, in 1838 depicted by William Mulready; the confidence, which is a misleading English translation of imposture about Thomas Mann, is actually talking: the mendacity of a time that at the first instance moved towards WWI, and later, when Mann took up the work again, lost itself in the emerging German post-WWII economic miracle; everyday life Erving Goffman has in mind when analysing a society that suggests its own modernity in Rostowian sense as archetype of development’s ultimate goal.

All the Same – All Being New.

The Basic Rules of Capitalism in a World of Change are surely not a novel or a play for the stage of any theatre let alone a comedy.
Nevertheless, the supposed fictive character that seems to provide the foundation of today’s economy shows exactly the withdrawal not into an illusionary world but on the contrary the establishment of a real world that follows entirely different rules: the rules not of a fictive accumulation but the rules of a real appropriation.
The theory becoming a material power (as Marx mentioned it in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from 1843/1844) can only merge into this new realm if it fully acknowledges this seemingly small difference between accumulation and appropriation.

________________

Bastian Kraft staged his version of Felix Krull in Munich’s Volkstheater in a masterful way, showing exactly this difference. Felix – the ‘three Felix’ – appear smart like today’s economy, likable and handsome – and they do it to such an extent that some kind of participation offers immediate conciliation. And only leaning back allows to recognise that all the camouflage is a seductive play, not allowing us to escape or forcing us to abscond completely.

There is not much that has to be added to Michael Weiser’s critique in the Kukturvollzug, a digital feuilleton for Munich:

It is Felix Self-Threesome, a Krull-trinity, that orders power onto the stage: one may say Mühlenhardt, Fritzen and Fligg embody different facets of Krull’s real character. The three do not agree in their respective version of their own history; again and again they interrupt each other and repeat scenes of the story of imposture. … . What is the essence, the true character of the human being? This is the question one poses again in the next story which probably again doesn’t lead anywhere. It may be already revealed that at the end the three show real intuition before Felix Krull’s imposture ends in a complete crash.

(Here the German original text)

Es ist ein Felix Selbdritt, eine Krullsche Dreifaltigkeit, die Kraft auf die Bühne beordert: Mühlenhardt, Fritzen und Fligg verkörpern quasi verschiedene Facetten des Krullschen Wesens. In den Variationen ihrer Geschichte sind sich die Drei durchaus nicht einig, immer wieder fallen sie sich ins Wort und spielen zur Selbstvergewisserung Szenen jener Hochstaplergeschichte nach. … . Was ist des Menschen Kern? Das fragt man sich und ist schon wieder in der nächsten Geschichte, die vermutlich wieder nirgendwo hin führt. Im Finale, so viel sei verraten, beweisen die furiosen Drei nochmals richtig Fingerspitzengefühl, bevor Felix Krulls Lügengebäude einstürzt.

This crash, its charcter and cause, are important. It is the crash of a tower, erected in a sensible way by putting block on block, changed in a seemingly reasonable way: taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top … and, yes: towers, societies and economies are not established in a way that they can survive without the foundation they stand on ….

And the performance had been nothing of a crash – and exciting adventure, the music by Arthur Fussy adding to an experience of a sociological didactic play that makes for a most pleasant …, learning.

_________

Coming briefly back to the title of Erving Goffman’s book: The Presentation of Self ….

The Presentation, living in a world of presentation is as such not the problem. The real problem is the presentation of presentation, the duplication of the process.

And as much this is a matter of the economic development, it is also a matter of academic life today: the thinking in models, the suggesiton of blueprints as reality …. –

– … the European model worked, until it distructed its own foundation …; the liberal economy suceeded as long (well: as short) as it could claim to a reasonable extent its liberalism …; finance capitalism could maintain its profitability as long as it managed to pretend to have its foundation in the real economy ….

But fiction remains fiction – even if it develops by griping the masses.

The President and the Dairymaid

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, works, projects, publications

At least in the German language there is the saying of a calculation undertaken by a dairymaid, suggesting  a calculation is extremely simplified and important variable are left out. Sure, this extremely unjust as these people, as long as they don’t loose their common sense, are well able to take things right, much better than people who refer to a so-called academic qualification and …

– … and get things wrong even they may actually have received the most prestigious awards.

Have a look at this – it is not a laureate text but one that is so typical for today’s academic world.

The next summit of the 20 industrialised and emerging countries (G20) will take place on 3rd and 4th November next. These 20 countries represent 85% of the world’s economy and 2/3 of its population. The declared goal is to discuss the world’s economic situation and to come with joint responses. What can we expect of this?

Fondation Robert Schuman. European Interview N. 41, 31st October 2011: Editorial Introductory remark to an Interview with Jean-Paul Betbèze.

But where is the president now? Well, actually this present epistle is indeed not about the economic question (though I will briefly come back to it) but indeed about the president. And in this case, the president is Mister Murphy, current president of University College Cork, Ireland. He disrobed himself recently, talking about academia and universities today. There is only one hope (though it is not likely anything more than hope, here meaning illusion: that it had been a badly uninformed story in the Irish Examiner, reporting on the 21st of December under the title

Pressure on college resources sees flight of talent.

It is very much the usual lament – some quotes may confirm this:

UCC president Dr Michael Murphy said the price of widening third-level access was the inability of colleges to provide the best education for top students.

The UCC president said opportunities were created for the brightest students through scholarships when resources were scarce in the past. But the universities’ ability to maximise the talents of the intellectually gifted has diminished as expanding higher education has brought weaker students who need more academic support from fewer staff.

And he is directly quoted with the words

“The ICT age, the space age, the nuclear age, the Hollywood age, all were mostly sparked by those in the top 2% to 5% of academic performers, who attended schools and universities that met their needs in innovative ways.

Under the leadership of people like Mr. Murphy there is a new age coming up, indeed: a social ice age, featuring ignorance about what academia is about.

________

Let me shortly reflect on this in a different perspective – taking a sentence written by Theodor Mommsen, taken from his Correspondence with Wiliamowitz. It is the letter 393, dated on the 25th of February 1894. Mentioning the date is of special importance. Reading always means considering some basic facts of the context as for instance the date, i.e. time of writing; and in this case it is of special importance for another reason: the German original tells immediately that this is not written in today’s words. My exiguous translation will not tell immediately – so first the German, then the translation:

Unser Universitätsregiment ist freilich ein schlimmes Ding. Das Willkürregiment einerseits und der Mangel an innerlichem Zusammenhalten der Kollegen andererseits sind in stetigem Steigen, und beiden gegenüber ist der Einzelne machtlos. Wohl ist noch manches zu erreichen […]. Aber es ist ein drückendes Gefühl, von solcher Favoritenwirtschaft auch nur in diesem Sinn zu profitieren. . Du wirst dieselbe Erfahrung machen, Althoff wird, soweit er es kann (seine Macht zum Guten ist sehr viel geringer als sein Wille), Dir in solchen Dingen entgegenkommen, aber Freude wirst Du davon nicht haben, liebes Kind zu sein.

Now the translation:

Of course, the regime of our universities is a really nasty thing. The arbitrary regiment on the one hand and the lack of inner coherence and solidarity amongst the colleagues on the other hand are permanently increasing, and both cannot be changed by the individual. Sure, there is still something we can achieve […]. But it is an onerous feeling to profit from such red tape even in this way. You will experience this yourself, Althoff will, as far as possible (his power to do good is much more limited than his will to do good), to accommodate you in such things, but you will not be able to enjoy this by being a good boy.

I do not want to discuss Mommsen here. Nor do I want to discuss the exclusive, elitist and strangulating system of the ‘good old times’ of academia – something that never existed. Reading many (auto)biographies, looking into issues of sociology and history of science eclipsed much of the golden gleam for me. There is, however, a point one should not forget. Leaving many things aside that are not of importance here, the understanding of academic work had been substantially different to what Mr. Murphy suggests. The freedom had not been primarily defined by the narrow stance of a micro-administrative framing – the article refers to such perspective, stating:

Dr Murphy said universities needed greater freedom on how to spend limited resources and called for an end to stifling Government micro-management.

On the contrary, grant schemes had been generous in the sense of allowing for developing wide perspectives of managing tasks as they developed from the practical developments, from real life and the opportunities it can open. Let us face it, the most known, most progressive, most advanced results of science did not come from bright individuals as suggested by UCC’s president. It had not been

those in the top 2% to 5% of academic performers, who attended schools and universities that met their needs in innovative ways

as it is quoted. Rather, the noblest advances are characterised in particular by the following:

* These colleagues had been bright, indeed – real scientists by way of coming from wide and broad approaches to reality. – Try to locate Albert Einstein, Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, Bertrand Russell, Norbert Elias or today Amartya Sen, Zsuzsa Ferge, Laurent van der Maesen, Hans Zacher, Andrey Korotayev, Leonid Grinin …, and clearly classify them as …, yes, what? Surely academics, but then? Mathematicians? Philosophers? Economists? Moralists? Sociologists? Lawyers? Historians? Anthropologists?  ????

* Many of these colleagues had been or are as personalities and academics very much part of the political and social life of their time, i.e. part of real soci(et)al life. This meant very different things – and would mean even more different things if we look at others. And some of them had been surely hugely questionable when it comes to the political practice. But still … – the conservative Weber, claiming ‘value freedom’ of research, was nevertheless only able to do what he did by standing in the middle of the political movements and by committing himself to values and taking positions (there is much confusion when it comes to the debate on value freedom and we should revisit Weber, Sombart and Schmoller on this and later also Popper and Adorno for the ‘second round’ of the ‘Werturteilsstreit’ [still useful in this context mot least the work on Materialism and Empiriocriticism]; Einstein, first contributing to the disaster due to his involvement in politics, working at the end on contributing to the development of nuclear bomb, showed how he learned from his mistakes, advancing to a most engaged figure of the peace movement, condemning all nuclear weapons …

* Although we usually look at these individuals, at their high intellectual performances and excellence indeed, we should not forget that many of them had been ‘managers’, working in groups, being intellectually stimulated by disputes with others – managers who in some cases surely worked out things in egoistic ways, utilising the work individually for themselves – nevertheless not being guided by administering stuff or staff.

These colleagues mentioned above, without holding back with criticising them where appropriate, are colleagues I truly like to see as colleagues. And I am proud and humbled by knowing some of them personally. Sure, they may never bring it to such fame as Mr. Murphy, entering the history books as one of the main promoters of the social ice age. But they are surely more distinguished, more aware of what they are saying, more respectful even in the conservatism which some of them represent.

The following has to be added – though surely this short note does not in any way cover things in full nor does it want doing so. Nevertheless, the following is the most important when it comes to the self-designated applicant for the position of a president of the new ice age.

* Our universities have to face the challenge to regain openness. Specialisation, striving for excellence and dividing staff by permanent evaluation and ‘the notion of distinction’ is one of the coffin nails of academia. Real academia can only be reached by openness, a wide mind is a bright mind. – Well, that a cobbler should stick to his last is widely accepted. And cum grano salis, for medical doctors the same should apply

* Political and soci(et)al engagement is a most crucial nourishment of academic development. Many of the colleagues especially in the first half of the previous century distinguished themselves by such engagement – and many did so by engaging on the side of the ruling classes. True opening today has to consider this in a complex way: ‘Opening academia’, launching and maintaining access-project cannot be about just opening doors. It has to be about opening the way of academic thinking, making it possible to think about the real challenges we are facing today. And these are not technical by nature. They need a more fundamental shift of our thinking – Social Quality, Big History, World Systems Theory may be candidates, and I admit I only mention these because of my own specific involvement. But I could well move on, just making these days the most exciting experiences by meeting and communicating with colleagues from Kurdistan, Turkey, India, South Africa, Chile/Mapuche and Bolivia – and though many of them are academics, we meet as people. And these encounters allow me to meet myself – as stranger in my own countries (sorry, not able to speak in singular). And this is the point I want to make: All this is not about the traditional academic debates but about what we lived through, each in his/her place and each deprived in one or another way from it. Full of contradictions. Surely not easy – but not a fight, a pool of inconceivable richness, real experience of a globalising self, breathing the fresh air of different life, and inhaling the toxic elements where they are. Surely not easy – but not simplifying as the journeys of those travellers who are globalising the other, blinding the other by the dust that is dispersed by the carriers of their palanquins. Surely not easy – but more honest than the mendacity of a administered quasi-academic elite. And again, this is the point I want to make: we should be open to the huge pool of experience out there, ready to change ourselves rather than aiming on braking their will, subordinating them under the law of the ‘imagined 85’ (see below).

We need strangers – you may want to read what Georg Simmel wrote on this topic of The Stranger.

And we equally need to allow ourselves to be strangers in our own country [You may want to red what I wrote on this but for this you have to by a book ;-)].

* And we should open internally too: creating for a for collaboration rather than presentation of excellence, engaging in disputes rather than preaching from the pulpit of a new historical school of administration. – Sure, the historical school of economics did have a role to play at its time – but we should not forget that it failed in preventing two world wars. The new economic school of administration may well fail to prevent the emergence of a social ice age.

Leaving the polemical undertone for a moment aside, having stated ‘and we equally need to allow ourselves to be strangers in our own country’ is far-reaching and more meaningful than what we usually discuss and hat we usually are actually ready, able to see. the question at stake is one of ontological and epistemological in its very nature. So I actually have also some doubts when it comes to access programs, science shops, participatory research etc., but coming from another angle, suggesting that they are far too tame. Looking at the UCC’s current strategic plan (probably we find very similar plans elsewhere) we see its emphasis on ‘contributing to society’. It is surely a problem that the link between universities and society (it sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? – It is bizarre that this actually is an issue!) had been unobserved, for so many years, pushing our critique from many years ago aside, emerging as playing field in ivory towers and on silicon valleys. But the latter is the point: The link had never been rally broken – the link that really had been broken has to be seen as the link between academia and peoples’ societies. Establishing such a link is not about working for society, but in society; it is not about ranking and excellence but about real life and its contradictions. It is about the beauty of development and the power of the ordinary rather than the streamlined and purified forms.

– Let us be brave, let us for instance have a look at ‘Die Bruecke’, the path opened for the ‘Blue Rider’ (alluding to the two groups of expressionist arts in the beginning of the last century), let us have a look at the deconstruction of Cubism that allowed new construction rather then following simply the baroque – the latter surely great in working with a descant, able to elevate from there; but not able to fundamentally overcome the path defined by this descant. That elevation had been nothing more than the last judgement: like a god dividing between good and evil. What we need is the readiness to work on something new, going beyond a smart society, walking as minor partner of a smart economy. What we need is a fundamental answer to the Guernica that smartness of the 85-2/3 society produces every day.

________

Well, Mr. Murphy, anecdotes …. – as we learn from the article

“There is extensive anecdotal evidence of many of our brightest students emigrating after completing Leaving Certificate for overseas education and never returning,” he said.

Anecdotes …, isn’t that about story telling, our great Irish tradition?

It may be that another anecdote will be told one day, a fairy tale.

Once upon a time there had been president, a good administrator, looking for excellence but not really knowing what he meant by it, believing just in figures – like a little journalist. Reading for instance something like this:

… These 20 countries represent 85% of the world’s economy and 2/3 of its population. …

he could not even think about the triviality of a pyramid turned with its head down: these 85% and 2/3, historically able to stand for some time on the shoulders of the minority 15 and 1/3 would surely collapse sooner or later.

Well, this president had been standing well and safe and he tried to gather with his companions, giving them tid-bits, feeding them like the old lady fed the little boy in one of Grimm’s fairy tales (Hansel and Gretel) and presenting them with golden tiaras, bracelets and earrings. Only with the time all these jesters of the new ice age found themselves drawn to ground by the heavy chains that glimmered so tempting and promising. They found themselves freezing in their fur coats that only provided warmth for a short time. And the president himself, looking more and more like an old man, calling all people to meetings to measure if their fingers had been fattened had to acknowledge one day: the brightest of the people around …, they apparently disappeared, looking for new shores, for open seas to see, rather than for narrow-minded channels. And he did not live happily ever after. You want to know why? The 15 and 1/3 on which they stood looked into the mirror and saw: actually they had been the 85 and together with the many who had minor positions in the excellence centres and who really worked for excellence. Those who lost their golden chains and who now claimed the right to live in paradise – a paradise of real knowledge production rather than gathering and improving skills; a paradise …

where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critique.

a paradise just as it is mentioned in part 1 of the German Ideology, a piece of excellence written in 1845.

___________

Sure, a fairy tale – but still, the old man did not succeed.

What remains to be said at the end?

Sorry, Mr. Murphy – there may be some points that had been misrepresented in the Examiner, there may be some points that you would qualify yourself. And there are surely also some points in what I wrote that need further elaboration, qualification and …, yes, and discussion. But at least one should be very careful in such a position as yours when it comes to speaking to

business leaders at a Cork Chamber breakfast

And another point may be added – just allow me to quote one of the great academics of history though he is more known as a writer and perhaps also pictorial artist. This great and contestable mind once said

However, we all, old Europeans, are more or less cordially evil. Our conditions are too artificial and complicated, our feeling, our way of life against nature, our social relationships lack love and benevolence. Each is fine, friendly, but no one has the courage to be honest and true, so that an honest man, with natural tendencies and emotions, ends to feel quite badly.

And of course, this ‘honest man’ may well be the dairymaid, who academia has to encourage to have the courage to be honest and true.

Taming of the Screw*

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

Taming of the Screw*

Mapu ñuke – Mother Earth

Mapu ñuke, mapu ñuke
tami rewkvleci jawe
coyvmkey kom puh ka kom antv
fvxa kuifi kakerume fvh,
wefkey bewfv reke
ka dewkey pehoykvleci xayen,
alofkvleci wagvben keciley,
dewmalekenmu, coyvlekenmu
fij kuyfike kekerumeci folil.

Mapu ñuke, mapu ñuke
mi pu pvxa jeqkey pu mapuce,
amuleci hegvmvwvnmu
naqvn antv meu ka pu liwen

Lelfvn mew ka mawida mew,
xiwe, peweh ka foye
leliwvlnieygvn ta kaifvwenu,
wixapvray tami pu toki
mi kisu gvnewam ka mi rumekagenuam
ka tami poyeatew ka ayvatew
mapu ñuke

**

Mother earth,
in your undulating body
the eternal germs
pullulate at day and night.
like rivers they debouch
and outpour in cascades
of enigmatic stars
sprouting, burgeoning –
the roots of the ancestors.

Mother earth,
in permanent change
elevating from dusk and daybreak
your inmost bears Mapuces.

In the valleys, in the mountains
Rewes, Pewenes and Canelos are standing
the countenance directed to the sky,
raise the Tokis
to liberate you, to protect you
to love you fondly.
Mother Earth

(Rayen Kvyeh; translation P.H.)

*****

A study trip – officially it came to its end on Friday night, when UCC’s Higher Diploma Course in Social Policy went together for dinner, returning to Cork then on Saturday lunchtime. For my part, I could not join, some work still needs to be done.
And as part of this I date the end of the study trip on Sunday afternoon – Orhan Akman, deputy of Die Linke in the city council in Munich, whom the student group met on Friday morning in the town hall, is again my host. This time it is in the building of the Trade Union – and it is on an entirely different occasion. The title of the event is

Struggle for Freedom, self determination and human dignity by Kurds and Mapuche.

While I go there I read Frigga Haug’s Die Vier-in-Einem-Perspektive. Politik von Frauen für eine Neue Linke (Four-in-One-Perspective. Politics by Women for a New Left). The book is a plea for recognising the need to approach different facets: employment, reproduction, politics and culture as organic whole.

Orhan welcomes me – as I am arrived before the official beginning I have the opportunity to talk a little bit with him. And also with Rayen Kvyeh, the writer, poet and activist of the Mapuche.
It is such a difference: the meetings during the week, all in their own way highly political, the reading of Frigga’s book – surely radical but nevertheless very much so much dealing with the reality as we know it from our daily experience – and now the confrontation with an apparently entirely different array. After Orhan’s general opening remarks – the personal welcomes of some participants and the speakers, after giving an outline of the event: the presentations, the open discussion and the ‘cultural event’ at the end – he gives a brief introduction into the topic, namely ….

Chile under Fire
…., the student movement, the massive protests against an educational system which is by its high costs extremely exclusive, not allowing ordinary people to access it … – and the fact that the students are expressing their solidarity with the Mapuche. But who did ever hear about the Mapuche, who knows that it is a minority living to a large extent in Chile, having been dispelled from their own land, resisting and asking to be recognised as ethnic group, claiming as such the recognition of their own rights. A people who resisted the conquest – first by Christobal Colón who arrived by a navigation error in 1492 in the Americas rather than in India, the subsequent ‘import of capitalism’. They resisted and continue to resist not least by maintaining collective property and sustainable economic development.
A people of the moon rather than the sun – the first being female, the second being male; a people not knowing pyramids – triangular, hierarchical constructions – but maintaining ‘levelled structures’ of collective governance. As such their resistance is not least geared against the establishment of reservations aiming on reocupación – re-occupation. – Rings a bell?

Something they have in common with the Kurds …, they have in common like the

Luna of Ashes
The eyes, blinded with a black bandage
the air compressed into a meter by a meter
captivated, tormented silence
between cables, bashes and blood

My comprehension goes astray
in endless labyrinths
made of the raw realities and its dark imaginations

Sweating cold, rage shivering
my skin
spans across the flayed skeleton
it begins leaving is life behind itself
in slow, pertinacious agony

My children are calling for me
under the chime they call
immersing my eyes, engrossing in drifty flood
my body purifying, laving in the warmth
my moribund thoughts

step by step, a small step
my blinded eyes stride
the narrow paths of my soil

Aside the loom
my grandmother gins the maize
a kiss from the auricaria, you are collecting
pignolias,
sweating in the oven
you shed tears
the streets conquered by the military forces

A forest of affection strikes roots
deep
in my body
and gives raise
to a rebellious fruit.

(Rayen Kvyeh; translation P.H.)

A song concludes the first presentation – the sounds of Victor Jara.

****

Songül Karabulut, member of the board of the Kurdish National Congress, presents: the history of the Kurds, making the point that a people living according to their origins cannot be easily erased. As people of freedom they first contributed – during the Ottoman wars and the dissolution of the Empire between 1908 and 1918 – to the liberation of Turkey. However, it meant laying the ground for their own oppression by the new Turkish regime, the fate they shared with the communists. Genocide, psycho-genocide, assimilation – the traditions of the divide et impera – against the Mesopotamian people who stood at the crèche of civilisation.

***

On the way back I remember Frigga’s book, her reference to Marx’ Grundrisse, where he states that it is finally the economy of time that is at the core of all economy. She argues against glorifying the past, rebukes the neglects of developing the productive forces.

However, the oppression of women, structurally linked to the dominance of increasing profit as Leitmotif has to be limited in favour of “goals of quality of life”. (116)

***

It had been a long day – the conclusion of the study trip in its own way. Surely the end of a week with diverse impressions:

  • A quick overview over four-hundred year’s of Western arts: the development of Western culture in a nutshell: From Duerer’s Four Apostles to the work by Chamberlain.
  • The confrontation with the most barbarian derailing which may be the most pronounced culmination of the ambiguity of a modernism which turned a people of thinkers and poets into a people of judges and hangmen (a Volk of Dichter und Denker wurde zum Volk der Richter und Henker)
  • The various impressions of The Taming of the Screw*: the well-ordered system, its success peaking in the fact that Lenin described by saying that there surely will not be a revolution starting n Germany as the German’s will first buy a ticket for the Platform before they conquer the railway lines
  • And the insights in silent revolutions – germs of resistance, confessions and the adaption of rational rules in order to change …

A circle coming to a close – on a personal level: Monday it will come to a close, providing a stage for new steps. Not as means of strangulation but as point allowing a new departure: The collaboration on Human Rights I started with Mehmet from ODTUe some time ago; this Monday’s meeting with Lorena from the MPI, hoping that we develop cooperation on this topic and linking it to her country: Bolivia. Drawing a bow between the three of us – and in some way brought together by the activists: Rayen and Orhan.
Many facets, laboriously and playfully coming together like the different individual bars and melodies in a symphony. A process of relational appropriation – it may be a machine of alienation and oppression but it also may evolve as an artful symphony which allows individuals to develop with their own timbre, merging to a gorgeous masterpiece of humanism.

There is a good reason for thinking more about what taming may mean.

***************

by any means we should erase any negative undertone when talking of a screw, highlight instead the independence and resistance.

Academic Strangulation – or …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, works, projects, publications

… what is the parallel between modern academic life and fox hunting?

Much had been written on the effect of bureaucratisation, the emergence of an ‘iron cage’, contributing to the ‘specialist without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of humanity (Menschentums) never before achieved’ as Max Weber developed it in his work on the protestant ethics. A process of rationalisation, entering into all pores of life. As such this bureaucracy is not much more than the political-administrative complement of what Karl Marx analysed as the penetration of daily life by the complete commodification of the capitalist economy- the hegemonic system with the two firm legs.
And in academic life we complain frequently about managerialisation as principle that brings these two legs as crutches into the university. We complain about the administrative burden and also about the requirements defined by cost-efficiency of research and the need of applicability of research results.
Surely, there are good reasons to ask researchers to show that what they are doing is ‘good’, is useful for society and not the waste of money in ivory towers.

But most part of the weeks work here in Barcelona – on PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society) – overall surely an exciting enterprise, not least due to a highly committed team that runs the overall project – showed a dimension we do not take sufficiently into account, we easily forget by the more or less short-term orientation of the complains: the shift to ‘project’ financing of academic work and research is not just an administrative burden and a permanent threat – for many an existential threat. Beyond that – and reaching much deeper – is the adaptation of a narrowed thinking, not really reaching much beyond the three (or the like) project circle and instead even looking for ‘real questions’. Action plans instead of research plans – accountable and calculable … action research rather than search for sound social practice. Researchers being more politicians than anything else.
But politicians not in the sense of generalists with spirit, activists led by their heart; but like politicians of the mainstream ‘democracies’ of Western shape: hunting success measured in lack of substance: sentences written in figures and letters forced into calculations.

Thinking in particular about young colleagues, growing up in the environment of good-will hunting: projects – at least a desk for some time, some kind of title …. – and …
… it reminds me a little bit of the life in the part of the world where I live, where fox hunting is still alive. In these hierarchies every member of the community has  a place. And everybody knows about the place: its opportunities and limitations …. – and as long as there is a fox we can hunt everybody is ‘better off’.
It is a little bit like researching about social exclusion: as long as we, the researchers know the terms and (claim to) define them we are better off. So it keeps all us busy, running like the fox: hoping for the ditch where we can hide, knowing that it will allow us only minutes of rest; hiding behind the next tree, allowing us to avoid for short times at least to face the barrel of the hunter, fleeing into a kennel, forgetting about the pack of hounds waiting for us at the exit.

When will we learn how to run together …? And when will as well younger colleagues learn again that are asked to do research and not write sentences rather then filling in forms …

… – at the end the experience of the week’s work shows: it is surely not a question of age and it is not true that all is and all are the same. There are even bright lights, also making shadows more visible.

Perhaps that made it especially enjoyable to visit before all this work started the Liceau, listening  to Scenes from Goethe’s Faust. Isn’t most important who is the last to break out in joyful Mephistophelean laughter?

Globalisation – Dissolution or consolidation of a Global Social Policy (and Security).

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, works, projects, publications

The following outlines a new teaching unit, organised for December at the University of Eastern Finland. The title reads as follows

Globalisation – Dissolution or consolidation of a Global Social Policy (and Security).

The unit continues from the lecture in Wismar* and is divided into four arrays of thought.

* First it will look at very basic issues not least of social policy, outlining the economic mechanisms behind the global division of labour. This is not least about the very core issues of learning about value theory.

* Second, an outline of globalisation will be provided, using the world systems theory as point of reference.

* Third, against this backdrop it will be explored what these emerging patterns mean for social policy beyond and possibly without nation states as main framework.

* Fourth, it will be explored which implications this has for law as means of regulation of social policy. Part of this is also the ventilating on some new approaches to human rights (the latter as part of work in progress together with Mehmet Okyayuz [Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi, Ankara]).

______________________

* Participation in the Weimar lecture, held in September 2011 is not condition for participating in the Finland-lectures