Subject: Re: this kind of thing
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 18:55:30 -0400


Hi Geoff--

You wrote:

> The second thing that interests me here is the strange belief that
academic
> cultural capital is powerfilled. I'd have to say that, in a range of cases
> in Britain for example, the exchange of the capital accrued in
universities
> into ANY other sort of capital (into economic capital or into more general
> forms of cultural capital - the kinds that bear weight on television, for
> example) is pretty difficult. Crudely, more arguments are won and won fast
> by saying 'I'm not an academic' than by saying 'I'm Professor B from the
> American University in Paris'.

I think the issue is one of context (field).  When compared to independent
scholars, who are attempting to play within the same field as people with
faculty positions, the latter have quite a lot of cultural, social,
institutional and economic capital.  Professors usually have much better
salaries (and sometimes better benefits), they have many expenses and needs
paid by the college/university (e.g. some conference support), they have
access to libraries (in the U.S., many academic libraries deny privileges to
outsiders), they have time to focus on research, they have more
opportunities to make connections with other scholars and better chances of
publication, they can influence the field through teaching, they receive
much higher respect and credibility from other scholars and from the society
at large ... well, I'm sure you get the point.  In that context, arguments
within the field can indeed be won by saying "I'm a professor, you're not"
(and when at social occasions, a professor asks me my department, he/she
usually loses interest when I say I'm not a professor, I'm a librarian).
All this, despite the reasonable possibility that the independent scholar's
skills and knowledge may equal those of any professor.  So the belief has a
real basis, within scholarship as a sociocultural field.

That said, in most online discussions I think the issue is a red herring.
We don't always know who has what affiliation, and I would guess that most
participants read the text but ignore the "signature" (if there is one).
That offers much more equality than "real life."

Thanks,

Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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