Dissertation frustration

[sebastienne]

Six weeks 'til the dissertation is due in, and I have 5,000 words. In retrospect, this was a foolish topic to choose; full of the insidious little bits of oppression that make people say, "aren't you making a fuss over nothing?" until you can see the effects of all the little bits together. So it's hard to disentangle it into any actual findings, and I'm particularly having trouble finding academic literature to back up certain points which my supervisor finds contentious, but which I just think of as obvious parts of oppression theory; things like "editorial boards made up entirely of people from the US and UK will have an idea of "global significance" which is skewed by their own cultural situations". Anyone got any tips for "Kyriarchy 101" which I can throw around to give these points a bit more legitimacy?

Why did I pick something which will make me feel so angry and powerless? Where the eventual conclusion will be, in part, "well the world is just fucked up and it's Imperialism's fault but the colonisers and settler colonies like their "developed" position too much to do anything beyond help "developing" countries become more like their obviously superior nation states. Can we fix it? No, it's fucked." Ick ick ick.

And my nice holiday - intended to give me a bit of distance from the project so that I can come back refreshed and with a bit more distance for editing and perfecting - will have to be full of panicking and writing and frustration instead.

But - positivity! I may just have a new favourite band.. David Devant & His Spirit Wife. In case you needed telling, they're a glam-rock outfit with synths, an androgynous frontman in eyeliner, and a vaudevillian / audience-participation bent. (Why yes, I have a type. But it's always served me well in the past.) These guys have an additional 90s indie-rock twist to things, that inexplicably makes me think of girls with very matte lipstick..

I saw them last night, and it was one of the most emotionally involving gigs I've ever been to - on a par with the first Borderville gigs when I understood for the first time what this "live music" malarkey is all about. Recordings cannot do justice to the energy, joy, freedom-beauty-truth-and-love of seeing this band live. But I'm going to embed a song for you anyway.

And I even went to Camden with crouchinglynx and bought an evil villainess collar to complete my costume. The world is good to me, I have so many lovely things, and the very worst that can happen is that I screw up the dissertation and leave with a Postgraduate Certificate instead of an MSc. This is hardly, to borrow an excellent phrase from my flist, bloody Basra.

Comments

[queerpup.livejournal.com]

Have you only just discovered David Devant?! Oh my word!

They're wonderful. Thankyou, that is all.

[grignoter.livejournal.com]

My sis the anthropologist reckons she can probably find you a source saying the above but wants to know what area you're writing about as it might be good to have something specific to your area?

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I'm writing about 'the scientific community', specifically with regard to scholarly publishing. In theory I'm focussing on the work of INASP, who work to facilitate research and publication in lots of African countries, Bangladesh, Nepal, & Vietnam.. but there's a fair bit of literature about Latin America slipping in as well.

Thank your sister very much for me!

[grignoter.livejournal.com]

Sis asks do you want something general re: culture affecting viewpoints or something relating to this particular field?

She can give you references that essentially just say "someone's culture affects their worldview" but she feels that the way you have phrased yourself above implies that there is a specific study that proves that in relation to your area, which she is not sure if there is.

Possibly this is what your supervisor is objecting to? Perhaps rephrasing to something like "Culture affects the way we see the world, so it is likely that editorial boards made up entirely of people from the US and UK will have an idea of "global significance" which is skewed by their own cultural situations" might be OK?

[grignoter.livejournal.com]

Also when you say "scientific community"...

Do you mean you are writing about how the scientific community controls what does and doesn't get published, e.g. how literature is filtered by our unseen "review panels" etc?

And thus that the culture and personalities of those on review panels controls what information is made generally available and therefore colours what schools teach and journalists report, etc?

We were not quite clear what you mean so I wanted to clarify so we have more of an idea of what sort of area we are thinking about.

In terms of my prevous comment, I guess then we're asking: do you need a reference that says "culture makes a difference to your thinking" or one that says "US/UK scientific publishers have been shown to publish mostly articles by white american researchers" or similar. The former we can help with, the latter we may not be able to.

If the latter, could you do a simply study yourself - search pubmed or similar for random words and count the percentage of the top 50 results which are from outside the USA/UK? Or go through an issue of Nature and count, or something. Not aiming to produce world-changing results, just to illustrate your point.

Hope that makes sense.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

The latter point you mention there is mostly what my dissertation is about; investigating the mechanisms which maintain the US/European domination of scientific thought. In order to carry out, for example, discourse analysis on journals' selection criteria, I really need to establish that "universal importance" is not an easy criterion to apply when your editorial board is not particularly representative of plurality of experience. My supervisor seems to think I'm accusing editors of being careless or blinkered (if not consciously prejudiced) but I'm really not - I'm just saying that we all have contexts. That's not really a thing that could be changed or even should be changed - it just is! But apparently I need evidence for it...

[grignoter.livejournal.com]

From sis:

"The article I was talking about is called "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man" (in the book "The Interpretation of Cultures) by Clifford Geertz.

It sprung to mind because it's a pretty basic justification of the anthropological approach. Geertz argues that culture is an intrinsic part of human nature and that it is untenable to study one without the other.

However, the Geertz article doesn't really talk about cultural bias per se, it just stresses how fundamental culture is to our nature.

I'm not sure whether your friend was looking for something more specific to globalisation and scientific discourse? There's absolutely loads out there but I can't remember anything off the top of my head. Sorry!

x x x"

She says this is kind of the introduction-to-anthropology text that explains that culture is important to the way we all see the world, so might be quite good as a ref for this kind of general point?

It's bizzarre that she wants more jutification when essentially it sounds like your whole dissertation IS the justification, but hopefully the above might be useful.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Oh, general is absolutely fine - all I'm looking for is evidence for statements like "We must be aware of the fact that all our science – like all our statements about the world – take place in a context, and that this context is defined by our life experience."