[WS:] Sadly, honing this skill is rather important for one's academic career if that career happens to be in a field where attracting research grants is not a very promising option. Many schools go to great lengths to invent courses or even subject areas that offer both faculty and student an opportunity to show their erudition without the need of doing empirical research, which is costly. I once overheard a prominent faculty member at a prominent academic institutions frankly admitting that as reasons of his academic career choices.
To be sure, it is not that academics are ego-driven stuffed shirts (although many of them undoubtedly are), but the sorry effect of the neo-liberal transformation of the knowledge production during in the past twenty five or so years. The big beneficiaries of this transformation are bio-tech, medical or engineering departments that could either patent the results of their research themselves or to benefit from research grants from private firms that could, or even those departments, such as poli-sci or economics, that could provide needed conclusions to monied interest groups. However, liberal arts and social sciences lacking proper political credentials (e.g sociology) which have no access to this gravy train have to scramble for resources by selling intellectual commodity with sex appeal to broad audiences, be it books on sexy topics or exotic college courses that can attract tuition paying students.
Wojtek
On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:08 AM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/17/2011 8:49 AM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>> Also, other people keep insisting that anarchists can't organize, but
>>> here they've been largely responsible for starting what many call the most
>>> vibrant movement in the U.S. in decades. Why the need to keep saying people
>>> don't understand and do things they are understanding and doing at that very
>>> moment? It's very odd.
>>
>>
>>
>>>> The idea that anarchists are claiming ownership of OWS is odd.
>
> There are plenty of real disagreements on this list, but lately for some
> reason the trend has been to make up fake disagreements for the purpose of
> starting pointless fights.
>
> Exhibit A, the mind-numbing Corey Robin critique. Corey is surely
> critiquable, but this one reminded me of interminable grad school seminars
> filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk.
>
> "Miller et. al. discuss 'tastes great' and 'less filling' as if these were
> two separate things, which overlooks the complex ways in which notions of
> flavor have been used to police the boundaries of fillingness as shown by De
> Certau's concept of 'amuse-bouche'....[blows brains out]."
>
> SA
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>