Public Anthropology – 10 Years from Researchpages to Closer (1999/2000 – 2009/2010)

Introduction: a fantastic, time-consuming, idea
In 1999, when I just had started my Ph.D project in Gouda, I had a fantastic idea. An idea so fantastic that in the next 10 years I would dedicate a huge amount of time to sustaining and developing it. Too much time perhaps because sometimes it destroyed my time to sleep. The idea was that I would launch a website about and for my research and that also dealt with all kinds of issues related to it. Certainly not the first anthropology site (that is as far as I know CSAC Ethnographics Gallery) but I do think it was one of the first of an individual anthropologist and the first Dutch anthropologist website. It started out as a ‘normal’ website called Researchpages. It does not exist anymore and I lost a copy because of a recent computercrash. It took me until April 2001 to have a real website and although not updated anymore it is still working.

In the course of 2002 and 2003 I developed a weblog that initially was only one of the parts of the whole website. Since March 2004 the weblog is hosted at Religionresearch.org, an initiative set up with several colleagues from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (note to myself…this also means that Religionresearch.org has a five year anniversary): Peter, Marten and Johan. After 2006 the weblog became the most important part of the site and i decided not to update the other parts anymore but to include more and more in the weblog. Furthermore the site had changed from a linkdump to a mix between linkdump, research reports and personal accounts and early attempts to analyze particular developments, themes and issues.

C L O S E R
Why the name Closer? One of my colleagues at ISIM said at one point that the name suggest (physical) intimicacy. And she was spot on. Because when you ethnographic research (and in particular in the way of my PhD research) you become quite intimate with people and you have a look in their daily private lives, thoughts and acts. It also suggests a closer look at issues and developments we do not immediately understand.

In the beginning Closer was somewhat out of mainstream blogosphere and also out of the anthropology blogosphere. From 2008 onwards but (after a break for which I’m still not going to tell you the reasons behind it) in particular from March 2009 I have tried to link up with the growing anthropology blogging community. In particular Open Anthropology, Media Anthropology and Antropologi.info provide interesting and thought-provoking entries I often link to.

What do I want with Closer? Closer can be seen as my contribution (with all the strong and weak points that come with it) to a public anthropology. Public anthropology is not easily to define but let me refer to Robert Borofsky, quoted on Zero Anthropology:
What is Public Anthropology? « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Public anthropology engages issues and audiences beyond today’s self-imposed disciplinary boundaries. The focus is on conversations with broad audiences about broad concerns. Although some anthropologists already engage today’s big questions regarding rights, health, violence, governance and justice, many refine narrow (and narrower) problems that concern few (and fewer) people outside the discipline. Public anthropology seeks to address broad critical concerns in ways that others beyond the discipline are able to understand what anthropologists can offer to the re-framing and easing–if not necessarily always resolving–of present-day dilemmas. The hope is that by invigorating public conversations with anthropological insights, public anthropology can re-frame and reinvigorate the discipline.

There are two main principles of public anthropology (that also distinguishes it from applied anthropology):

1. Public accountability
2. Attempting to understand the structures that frame and restrict solutions to problems

Craig Calhoun in a recent essay poses two important questions for public social science (H/T ZeroAnthropology and Sexuality and Society):
Public Sphere Forum » Blog Archive » Calhoun

First, what is the relationship between effective participation in public discourse and the maintenance of more or less autonomous academic fields with their own standards of judgment and intellectual agendas? Second, what is the relationship between “public intellectual” work, informing broad discussions among citizens, and “policy intellectual” work informing business or government decision makers?

As Calhoun explains it is not only about reaching a broader public. It is not only about spreading your knowledge which would amount to ‘showing off’ with little bearing on public issues. It is about producing ‘better social science’ that addresses public issues, tests particular social science hypothesis and informs both scientific and public debates. Social scientists should therefore engage with issues that are part of the public debate at that moment (what Calhoun calls ‘real time social science’) based upon reseach already done in the past (even before it came to be a public issue) or by collecting new research material in which the public debate taking place is incorporated. This is important and researchers should not shy away from it (as happens now sometimes, also by me) but there is a risk of course that the public debate and policy concerns determine the research agenda. It would compromise the neutral position of researchers (certainly when dealing with Muslims and Islam which is a highly politicized topic) but it would also compromise one of the great advantages of doing scientific research: the ability to work on particular topics for a long time. Combining both, Calhoun explains:
Public Sphere Forum » Blog Archive » Calhoun

They may be studied in more immediate ways related to current policy dilemmas or in terms of larger and longer lasting patterns. Social science produces public knowledge when it provides historical or comparative context to grasping particular configurations of such issues as well as when it evaluates the results of particular policies.

Calhoun continues by stating that public science and addressing public issues is not just giving answers to questions the public has. It is as much, or even more, about questioning why particular issues are addressed in the way they are addressed by particular people and what the consequences of that are. How are particular issues and the way they are debated related to (changing) historical and cultural contexts, what is taken-for-granted and what does it mean? In my opinion this is (or at least should) should be the focus of this blog and has informed the change from my website Researchpages to Closer. In this sense public anthropology is not the same as applied anthropology.

Who is the public?
One important question to ask, is this blog anthropology in public or public anthropology? Both I hope. And judging by the list of my frequent readers the public of this blog is very mixed: anthropologists, policy-makers, journalists, students, fellow bloggers and (for me very important – see principle 1) my research subjects. This blog, as are other means of publication, provides a channel for dialogue with the social science community but also with other publics for social science knowledge consisting of journalists, policy-makers, politicians, researchgroups, students, movements’ activists, and others (cf. Calhoun).

It is in particular the input provided by research subjects that has proven to be valuable and opening up your research to the people you study, is an important part of doing research. Rex asks at Savage Minds:
Is it unethical to say something about someone that they cannot understand? | Savage Minds

Do anthropologists have a moral obligation to make their work accessible to the people they are writing about? The answer, to me, is an obvious ‘yes’.
[…]
So: is it ethical in principle to say things about people that they cannot understand (technical work) or that is written in a genre they don’t care for or ‘get’ (disciplinarily-defined beauty)?

I fully agree with him. If we do not make our work accessible to the people we write about, we might as well lock or ourselves in our ivory tower and throw away the key. This means that anthropoligists should write better: clear and accessibly. Furthermore, when you do research among a group in a society in which you live yourself and the topic most likely will lead to some headlines in the newspaper, it is foolish to think that you can avoid the group about who you write. If you do not engage with them, they will engage with you and your research in the comments sections of newspapers, blogs and online communities. Many people in my current research project have read my PhD thesis, there have been discussions about it in chatrooms in which I present for my current research and several people emailed me, contacted me in the chatrooms and on MSN wanting to discuss my book and the publicity about it. Opening up your research in fact already begins at the initial stage when you have to explain to your informants what you are doing and why you are there where they are. In my experience, the conversations that follow from this are not a good a way of improving your ‘translation’ skills but also provide relevant input for your research. The same can be said about the questions people asked after reading my book and articles.

As good public science indeed can produce better social science because the public is allowed to question and test the hypothesis of the researcher and even the significance of the whole research. For a very good example see Brigt Dale at the Occational Blog featuring the debates at other blogs based upon interviews with six anthropologists at antropologi.info. This is also the reason why I have chosen not to delete the sometimes very hostile, vile and rude comments on particular posts because I believe also those comments to represent an important take on the issues I address.

Most Commented

1. Politiek en Rap: Salah Edin en Appa
2. apas-stsbyhtbs & Geenstijl III – Gefeliciteerd u staat op Closer
3. Against pornofication and sexualization – scratching the surface because you have to start somewhere

Other noteworthy posts in this category include:

1. Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics (without a doubt the number one hit for this year, addressing one of the important anxieties many people share: the fear for an Islamic takeover)
2. Coming soon…Fitna V Analysing political propaganda

The last one is number five in a series about Fitna, the movie by Dutch politician Geert Wilders and serves as the basis for three articles I will write (two of them will be published in 2010 I hope). These two entries also score very well in the most viewed ranking:

Most Viewed

1. Against pornofication and sexualization – scratching the surface because you have to begin somewhere
2. Zoeken naar een ‘zuivere’ islam. Religieuze beleving en identiteitsvorming van Marokkaans-Nederlandse moslims
3. Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
4. Coming soon…Fitna V Analysing political propaganda
5. Politiek en Rap: Salah Edin en Appa

As you can see in both lists Dutch and English language contributions are part of this blog. Public anthropology involves, as said, asking who is the public? For anthropologists outside the English speaking world, they also have to ask, is my public native (in my case Dutch) or international? I have chosen to combine both since some Dutch issues are relevant for a wider, international public and because writing in English would mean that my blog would be less accessible for Dutch speaking people. The current development in social sciences that only writing in Anglo-Saxon journals is valued above anything else (or better, the rest doesn’t matter) could lead I’m afraid to a situation in which social sciences are not relevant anymore for native, non-English publics and render the cause for a public anthropology futile or even ridiculous.

Closing statement
This blog is a (modest) attempt to make anthropology publicly relevant and to improve anthropological research. At the same time it is on ongoing experiment to find out what public anthropology actually is and to explore it. Why would I do this? As Maximilian Forte explains very well:
Not Radical Enough: Disengaged Anthropology (1.5) « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Some might object that anthropology does not need to be publicly engaged, does not need mass audiences, and thus eschew the common goals of both Bunzl and Besteman-Gusterson. I disagree. Anthropology will not reside safely in peace, ensconced in the Ivory Tower, because there too it is suffering from increased marginalization, and that’s in the cases of universities that actually have an anthropology program of some sort. Moreover, any discipline whose purchase covers a wide range of publicly relevant, directly relevant, issues should say something in public. There is no point being a mute bystander as public debates rage about race, the family, violence, religion, and thus act like some dog in the manger

In that blog entry he refers to a discussion in American Anthropologist (2008, vol. 110, no. 1). In November 2009 these articles are open for the public:
The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls – Matti Bunzl

In this essay, I critique the currently dominant mode of American sociocultural anthropology. Through a historical reading of canonical texts from the 1970s to the 1990s, I trace some of contemporary anthropology’s limitations and probe their implications for the possibility of a publicly engaged discipline. I focus my critique on the demand for ever-increasing complexity, identifying it as an implicit form of positivism that renders the results of anthropological inquiries increasingly irrelevant to the big questions of the day. Epistemologically speaking, contemporary anthropology is thus not radical enough. In conclusion, I mobilize the Weberian–Boasian tradition as the most viable alternative to sociocultural anthropology’s status quo.

A Response to Matti Bunzl: Public Anthropology, Pragmatism, and Pundits

Discussing only two out of 11 chapters, Matti Bunzl argues that Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005) embodies an excessively deconstructive approach that undermines public anthropology by opposing all generalization. In fact, the contributors to the Pundits volume come from a variety of intellectual positions, some unfriendly to deconstructionism. In a book that is deliberately jargon free, the contributors are unified not by postmodernism but by pragmatism. They oppose generalizations that are manifestly ideological and untrue, not all generalizations. The point of the book is not to nitpick generalizations but to unmask media apologetics for neoliberalism and neoconservatism that misuse core terms (e.g., culture, ethnicity, human nature, gender) from the anthropological lexicon. We advocate a revitalized public anthropology based on grounded research, translation of sophisticated anthropological knowledge into accessible English, and a passionate concern for the well-being of those at the sharp end of neoliberal globalization.

A Reply to Besteman and Gusterson: Swinging the Pendulum

In this rejoinder to Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, I clarify that my essay “The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls” is not primarily a critique of their volume Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005). Instead, I maintain that it takes issue with the current state of sociocultural anthropology and its inability to communicate with a larger public sphere. In conclusion, I reflect on the historical location of my argument, likening my position to advocacy for a swing in the discipline’s epistemological pendulum and finding additional cause for such action in the realities of the current political moment.

The debate is relevant, as Forte shows, for addressing several features of anthropology (such as the critique on generalizations, the tendency to increase ‘complexity’ and sophistication, the problem of othering, the institutional structures, and so on) that influence public anthropology. An issue that I did see addressed anywhere yet, is what happens when you speak out as an anthropoligist on topics that are part of a fierce public and political debate. Two recent cases from the Netherlands are exemplary here. First of all the dismissal of Tariq Ramadan in Rotterdam and the subsequent statement of social scientists from the University of Amsterdam (later followed by the Free University of Amsterdam) stating that Tariq Ramadan should be offered a position in Amsterdam. The people who wrote a public letter about this, were accused in several ways of being a traiter, islamic co-conspirator, leftists and so on. Another, even more striking case, is the report of the Volkskrant newspaper about a report for the Ministry of Home Affairs, in which Geert Wilders appears as a far right extremist. Three researchers are named and after the publication of the newspaper a whole debate came about. Anti-Wilders groups and politicians applauding the conclusion, pro-Wilders groups launching a personal attack against the three researchers. Interesting thing is that the report is not published yet because it is not finished. Therefore, no report but debates about the researchers anyway (or because of it). That is striking in itself, but also tells us something about the climate in which researchers have to work and which I think pose a challenge to public anthropology and the attempt to make anthropology matter. The same happened to me when I blogged about someone in Amsterdam who scratched a commercial posters that depicted women in a abusive way (see the above list of most viewed posts, nummer 1). I don’t know how to deal with it, but I think it is an important issue to reflect about and I will try to publish a series of blog entries about it next year.

All these problems should not lead us to conclusion that it is better to refrain from making anthropology public and retreat in our academic ivory tower. I think I have made clear why. There are several ways in which anthropologists can make their knowledge easily available for a wider audience and receive feedbak about it. A blog is a very good, works for me. Another way is working with journalists as Nancy Scheper-Hughes (certainly an example for me) shows in an issue of Anthropology Today, quoted at Lorenzo’s Antropologi.info. In her view this can help not only responding to public issues, but also making issues public issues as she tried to do with the Organs Watch Project. All of this is a lot of work because it means to work double time; not only responding to teaching obligations and the academic ‘publish or perish’ structure but also for example as I did giving a lecture at one o’clock at night on some obscure chat room that people only care about if they call for jihad or to respond to all of the vile and sometimes threatening comments here in a personal manner trying to find out what the person wants to say.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes: Public anthropology through collaboration with journalists

Paraphrasing Hortense Powdermaker: you want to be a public anthropologist – then do it! I always did. But don’t expect to be rewarded for it. Instead, consider it a precious right and a privilege. Be grateful that, despite the tendency of bureaucratic intuitions toward social con servatism, we can still ‘do what we want and get away with it too!’

Together with my colleague Henk Driessen from Radboud University I’m planning to organizing an international workshop on anthropology and publicity in 2010, I will keep you updated on that. Let me finish by saying thank you to my readers, commenters, colleagues, my informants and all others who have helped me with my weblog and research. And beware: I’m planning to ‘get away with it’  for another 10 years.

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