Subject: Re: Crucial Questions on Life..Little at stake? eating?
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 101 13:45:44 Turkey


The situation is much worse in Turkish universities; the deteriorating economic 
structure and marketization has significant impact on the academic system. The 
university administrators promote more and more relationship with private 
sector like projects for corporations seminars for the financial employees or 
studies directly related to the pragmatics of market. This marketization of the 
university system is an ongoing process for at least 10 years and created 
an "academic type" called "project maker". This process paved the way to a more 
dangerous tendency; underrating the disciplines which are not in close contact 
with the market. So in a way thinking about "crucial questions" which are not 
suitable for "pragmatic applications" are seen as less valuable.
     When it comes to the established cliques the situation is even worse. 
Especially in state universities some academic disciplines are controlled by 
old proffesors. The mental structure is still linking university with the 
presence of the State (an unfortunate legacy of Ottoman Ulema system which 
still sees scientific practice as an integral part of the presence of the 
state). With a couple of exceptions in most of the universities it is still 
dangerous to write something against established ideology of the state. 
Actually this ideology differs from university to university; If you are in an 
established state university in a metropol (Izmir, Istanbul or Ankara) it takes 
a form of Statist Kemalism with strong emphasis on authoritarian modernizm 
excluding different identities or the paradoxical character of modernization. 
If you are studying in a new state univesity in a small city (especially 
eastern part of the country) the ideological supervision takes the form of pan-
turkism. Dangerous branchs are sociology, history and political science since 
those areas are the central ones those ideologies invested. So in a way 
Kissinger is not right here. If you are Marxist scholar doing class analysis, 
you sure have something to loose in this debate.

Best to all
Ozgur
 










> Kent Strock wrote:
> 
> >Thom,
> >While I ideally agree with you and wish it were more possible, but there is
> >much at stake. At the risk of sounding melodramatic or stating the obvious,
> >the political economy of academic production and its abuse of grad students
> >does bring stakes into play. As universities accept more and more cheap
> >labor (grad students) to teach classes for profs and also must given the
> >growth of the productivity of the mode of production (computers) fewer jobs
> >are availaible for new Phds.  As of 4 years ago only 1 of 4 new Phds in
> >Anthropology were able to find positions capable of sustaining a life. The
> >accumulation of 3 of 4 grad students every year does make it neccessary that
> >we try to accumulate sympolic capital, which in an increasingly capitalized
> >univerisity system,less concerned with the Soc sciences or liberalarts,
> >requires more extreme interchanges and systems of distinction-independent of
> >the intentions or desires of the players.  I know far too many very
> >intelligent, cutting edge phd students have given up looking for a job
> >because their thought has pushed their thought beyond the traditional
> >academic structure still controlled by older white males with the power to
> >determine discourse.
> 
> This is an interesting issue which concerns many of the list members, I
> presume (at least me!): what happens to the surplus production of Ph.D.s,
> seen from a collective and from an individual perspective? In Denmark
> (where there are only state universities) the policy in the nineties has
> been to produce many more Ph.D.s than before, in order to have a number of
> applicants for tenure and tenure track positions to choose between. Which
> means that a number of these Ph.D.s must be superfluous, and, since they
> are often in their thirties due to the difficulties getting a Ph.D. grant,
> they also most often too old to enter the extra-university job market.
> Comparable problems exist in France (see an article in Bourdieu's Actes de
> la recherche en sciences sociales, in the issue on "Nouvelles formes de
> domination dans le travail" a few years ago) and in Germany where they are
> sometimes even worse because of the extraordinary length of the career
> neccessary to get a tenured position. -- Does any list members have ideas
> on what to do in this situation, other than getting depressed to a smaller
> or greater extent?
> hopes for the future!
> Carsten Sestoft
> University of Copenhagen
> 
> 
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