Matthew Wolf-Meyer Professionalization

The Ethnographic Clinic, Part 1: Presenting the Case

William Cheselden giving an anatomical demonstration to six spectators in the anatomy-theatre of the Barber-Surgeons' Company, London. Oil painting, ca. 1730/1740.

Ethnographic writing is composed of cases. Ethnographers don’t always think that way about their research, but what they are collecting are descriptions of events, processes, and interactions; interviews with individuals or conversations with groups; and reflections on experiences based on participant-observation. Cases can be singular, e.g., a specific, one-off event, or processual, e.g., a series of interactions with someone over time. The trick in ethnographic writing is to clearly isolate cases as cases and then to scale up from an individual case to an analysis that demonstrates the representativeness (or exceptionality) of a case.

I come to this characterization of ethnographic cases because of my time in a teaching hospital, where clinicians and clinical residents presented thorny cases to their shared department in the hopes that they could come to some collective understanding of the case. Often, they presented the department staff with just the facts: what a patient’s symptoms were, what the social context of the patient was, and how the patient had been treated previously and to what effect. Rarely, cases were presented with an anticipated interpretation or resolution; instead, interpretation was something that was solicited from the group.

In that context, I’ve begun to wonder whether a similar approach to ethnographic writing might work: instead of expecting interpretation to come through isolated, scholarly attention to one’s ethnographic research, might collective rumination about other people’s ethnographic cases open up interpretive possibilities and aid in the writing process? Over this and two other posts, I articulate the Ethnographic Clinic as an experiment in ethnographic writing. This post lays out the first stage of this process: identifying and writing up a case (which echoes an earlier post about the 5-Page Dissertation); the second stage scales up from the individual case to contextualize it; and the third stage elaborates how to make an analytic turn to do the interpretive work that ethnographic writing requires.

Step One: Tell a Thorny Story

Every ethnographer has experiences during their fieldwork that stick with them and that they continue to think about without neat resolution. These experiences can be interviews, events or interactions, or observations of practices and processes. For the purpose of the Ethnographic Clinic, choose one thorny story and describe it in as much detail as possible. Withhold analysis. It can be as short or long as needed, with the aim of conveying to the audience only what they need to know to understand the case. Who was involved? Where in the world is it occurring? How do things unfold? The case, to the degree that it’s possible, should have a beginning and an ending, but what that consists of should be determined by the case itself.

The story should be temporally limited. That is, if there is a re-occurrence of the event or interaction, limit yourself to just one occurrence. If it is an interview, it shouldn’t be the whole interview, but only the parts that are key to the case.

Refuse analysis. If you’re tempted to start to explain anything, either contextually or analytically, stop. The aim is just to describe the case. Any analysis will disrupt the next step, so be sure to keep the case as empirically-focused as possible. If you need to, have someone else edit out any analytic or contextualizing work you do.

Step Two: Present the Case

Find a clinic. What that entails is bringing together several other ethnographers who are also working on cases that they can present to a shared audience (that they should also be part of). When you present the case, stick to the text. Then, spend time addressing audience questions and allowing the audience to reflect on the case. It may be useful to have someone else keep notes of this conversation and to audio record it as well. What contextual questions do people have? What do you need to tell them that they haven’t already learned from the case in order for the case to make sense? What kinds of theoretical connections are they making? How are they interpreting the case and to what end? What it is as case of, as far as they understand it, either within your work, their work, or the work of other scholars? Be sure to spend ample time with each case–maybe 30-40 minutes–and to not rush to ready conclusions, but to let the audience respond to the case and provoke your further reflection on the case.

Step Three: Outline Next Steps

From the clinical presentation, you should have a list of contextualizing information that your audience needs, theoretical points of connection and frameworks, and a growing sense of the other research you have done that this case connects to. Organize this as an outline with those three headings: contextualization needed, theoretical connections, and additional research. In the next stage, you’ll focus on the first and third of these elements in order to flesh out this first case. Approaching this outline as an enumerated list of what needs to be done is the most robust approach, as it will help guide you through the next stage of the writing process.

Stage two proceeds from here.

Matthew Wolf-Meyer Meta-Academia

Introversion in the Age of Relentless Academic Self-Promotion

I am, by all accounts, a bit of an introvert. I’m awkward at groupings of more than four people and dislike parties of any size. I’ve made a career out of feeling more comfortable around books than people. And, in terms of my career, I’m nervous about every first day of class and don’t like talking about my research and writing in contexts larger than a group dinner (and even then constantly worry about talking too much). I can be comfortable — sort of — in the role of lecturing, giving a colloquium talk, or doing fieldwork, where it’s not about me or I have a performative frame that I’m comfortable with. Even writing this is difficult; if you look at the archives of what I’ve written about in the past, even the personal stuff is pretty clinical in its detachment.

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That’s a beaver hiding in a lodge. I’ve borrowed this from Cheryl Reynolds and Martinez Beavers.

But I started thinking about my introverted tendencies lately because I found myself writing about myself in two book manuscripts in ways that I hadn’t previously. The first, about neurological disorders, had me brushing up my personal history with dementia and sensory and speech impairments. The second, about speculative fiction and social theory, had me dipping into my past to think about what I was reading, where I was reading it, and why it made sense in its moment. Those experiences, in turn, got me thinking about the intimacy of getting to know an author through the written word, a relationship that’s uneven, but something that I have enjoyed as a reader throughout my life. In the age of social media, that relationship-building seems more apparent on Twitter than it does in books and articles, as the demands of neoliberal self-presentation heighten self-promotion in one medium and performed objectivity in the other.

Around the same time, I was watching an academic friend using social media to promote a forthcoming book. He tweeted several times each day, on and off the topic of the book, and garnered tons of likes and DMs. Knowing him personally, I knew he was more like me than not — a bit of an introvert, but more seasoned through decades of experience. He was able to overcome those introversion tendencies to engage — at least unidirectionally — with interested readers. I bought the book — and I’m sure a lot of his other followers and friends did too — but I’m not sure that I would have pre-ordered it if it hadn’t been for his relentless use of social media leading up to its publication…

Which, in turn, had me thinking back to a conversation with a publicist when my first book came out. She recommended that I open a Twitter account, set up a Facebook author page, and tweet five times each day and post on the Facebook page once daily. I think I managed that for about a week or two before I couldn’t bear to do it anymore. It took me years to not feel bad about failing my publicist in that way, and years more to feel comfortable using blogging as a substitute for the publicity machine that she suggested.

Part of my being okay with my failure at self-promotion is that — like so many academics — I’m not in it for book sales. But I am in the profession for the conversation (and, since I’m what psychologists call “disagreeable,” the arguments too, but those seem harder to find). So when I find myself drawn to self-promotion (usually through Twitter, since self-promotion seems to be 50% of the medium and we’ve collectively agreed to that), it’s usually because I so want to have a conversation about something I’ve just published.

After six months of thinking about this post, I finally committed to write it — not because I felt like I had profound insights into my introverted self and how to manage an ethical and sensible web-presence, but because I didn’t. (The one tiny bit of advice I’ll share, and this is from Jean Langford, is to “pick your fidget” — if you’re going to fidget during a presentation or while teaching because it relieves stress, just pick one thing to fidget with. I empty my pockets and get rid of any easy distractions just in case, which means my fidgeting is usually confined to moving my feet in particular ways.) But I know I’m not alone. So many people are drawn to academic work precisely because they’re introverted, and based on what I can tell from the internet, they seem to deal with the same challenges that I do, albeit with variations. On some level, it’s possible to succeed being an introvert in the academy (since, it seems in a world of introverts, being able to manage one’s introversion is a real asset). On another level, maybe it goes to show how in a world of relatively introverted professionals, a little performed extroversion goes a long way.

That said, whenever I do the obligatory self-promotion that comes with an article, a  colloquium talk, a conference presentation, a book, a podcast — whatever — I still struggle with being uncomfortable about talking about any success, however marginal. Part of that discomfort is based on a deep knowledge of the contingency of any success — from growing up relatively privileged, to the luck of the draw with peer reviewers working out for me, and everything in-between. There’s no mitigating those benefits, other than through their subversion wherever and however I can.

I’ve also come to realize that building intimacy between authors and readers is not just a mechanism for selling books and driving downloads of an article, but also a necessary political praxis. So often it is women, people of color, and minorities who are compelled to give an account of themselves, and white, heterosexual men sit silently by. I have always been interested in the institutional ethnography of the US academy, which this blog has represented, but I’m increasingly interested in the affective qualities of the institution and how it shapes people (hence a new little book about peer review [which, I guess the mention of is a little self-promotional]).

I’m still struggling with wanting to delete this whole post. I’m going to accept that as an indication that I should do the opposite.

Matthew Wolf-Meyer Professionalization

Let’s Fund Every Graduate Student for 7 Years

Several years ago, I had an incidental conversation with a senior colleague, Ken George, who was at the time the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He had come up with an idea to fund graduate students for seven years, and not through some enormous endowment, but through state funded education. It’s been a decade, and to my knowledge, no university has tried out a scheme similar to what George devised. So I want to put this idea out into the world and see if any institution will take me up on it — it’s a worthy experiment, and one that might radically change the way we train graduate students, how students experience graduate study, and the integration of undergraduates and graduate students on the contemporary campus.

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My memory of the conversation with George was that he reasoned that the average time to Ph.D. for an Anthropology student was seven years. So, to be a competitive program, Madison would need to fund all of its incoming students for at least that long. The kernel of the idea he pitched to me was that students would receive teaching  or research assistantships for years 1-3, then receive a fourth year that was fully funded — so they could conduct research unfettered and without the need of securing external funding — and then return to the university for years five-seven, during which they would serve as primary instructors for their own classes. The funding they would receive in years five through seven would be reduced to pay the university back for the research year. There were probably more details to the plan, but these are the parts that have stuck with me — including George’s mention that he had discussed the plan with a university financial officer who told him it was feasible. And, after almost a decade of teaching at state universities, I think it might be the necessary future to address many of the concerns faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates face.

During their instructor years, I’m assuming that graduate students are teaching two to three classes per year (probably three), basically a reduced tenure-track teaching load and not-totally-abusive adjuncting teaching load. Like faculty, most of the graduate student’s commitment during the school year would be to teaching, but he or she would also have time to write up the research from year four — and work on other professionalization matters. More importantly, they would receive a living wage, which would support them for three years and also provide them with security of employment so they could spend their summers writing and not seeking a new job.

I don’t want to be evasive, but I also don’t know the math. I’ve tried to puzzle out how this all might work, but every institution is different and what they pay instructors who are ABD vs. Ph.D. varies, as well as the cost of health benefits. But the basic idea is this: income should be consistent over the 7 year period, adjusting for inflation. So whatever one is paid in year four — the research year — should be the same as what one is paid in year five. It’s probably not going to be great — it might be the equivalent of $20,000 each year — but it should be reliable.

But if you just want some numbers to think about, consider that it might cost a university $40,000 per year per graduate student (including stipend and benefits), and that three, 20-student classes generate about $60,000 per year (assuming students pay a relatively cheap $1000 per class). Now, most graduate students don’t cost that much, and most undergrads pay more than that per class, so even if the margins are tight, the university would still be operating with a profit, which can go towards facilities, administrators, and all the other gears that need to be greased to make a university run.

One thing I’m always asked when I bring this proposal up is: what does a department do about a student who takes the fourth year funds and then never returns? Again, I don’t know that there’s one universal bureaucratic right answer, but basically the funds would be converted into a tuition fee and the student would need to pay it back. Likewise, if a student decided not to stay for the full seven years — say she or he gets a tenure track job somewhere — she or he could pay the prorated remaining balance from year four off. So, if a student takes a job at the end of year six, she would need to pay one year’s worth of the forward funding back to the university for year four (about $7,000). Students could also decline the research year and just proceed to the instructorship or pay off the research year with an external grant. It shouldn’t be a form of entrapment, but rather the kind of security that provides at least partial liberation from base anxieties (like paying rent and buying groceries).

The big challenge I see is having classes for the returning graduate students to teach. Given a modest graduate program of six graduate students, this would mean that during any given year (not adjusting for attrition), the department would have 18 instructors teaching a total of 54 new classes. Some of these courses might be in the major, but most of them would need to be channeled elsewhere. And this is the crux of the proposition as I see it — where does all this labor go?

My best guess is to create a new requirement for every major on campus, namely a two part writing or communication class that’s major-specific and taken during year one or two of an undergraduate career. For example, in an anthropology department, majors would be required to take a two term sequence in Reading Anthropology and Writing Anthropology. The first would teach them how to identify theses, supporting arguments, the use of evidence, basic genres of social scientific writing, etc. The second course would focus more squarely on getting students to write as novice anthropologists, with all of the expected generic conventions in place. Both of the courses would help them in their major, and benefit them overall with more intensive critical reading and writing training that could be applied in other courses they take, in and out of their major.

There’s another basic math problem, which is that the number of graduate students in any particular program might be out of proportion to the number of undergraduates enrolled in the department’s major. One way to handle this would be to have graduate students from cognate programs teach at the undergraduate level in departments with excessive majors. So, for example, biological anthropology Ph.D. students might teach the Reading and Writing Biology courses in the Biology department, freeing up graduate students there to do the laboratory work they are needed for by faculty in Biology.

The tougher question is what to do about majors like Computer Science, where conventions of communication vary significantly from other disciplines. But courses could be offered to train graduate students in the necessary skills, and there might be significant monetary incentives to lure them into teaching in these programs. Each institution would need to figure out what the roadblocks are and address them with local resources — or, potentially, start new interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs to meet the needs produced by new requirements.

In any case, the course content should be determined by the instructor to reflect her or his areas of confidence and strength, but assignments across iterations of the same class should be similar so as to ensure that standards are being met. Teaching critical reading and writing skills to undergraduates also benefits instructors, whose own reading and writing skills tend to further develop through teaching. And such intensive teaching helps graduate students gain confidence and skills in one of the primary skills they’ll need in their future as educators.

There are some significant reputation dividends to be gained with a program like this for departments and universities: the university can brand itself as especially dedicated to undergraduate reading and writing skills, and in a landscape where graduate training seems precarious if not exploitative, the university can cast itself as ethical and intensely focused on the professional development and economic security of its graduate students.

If you convince your department or dean to experiment with a 7-year funding plan, let me know. And if you can think of any thing I missed, let me know that too…