The Moderate Menace: Patricia Cohen at the New York Times writes about the graying of 60’s era radical American faculty and the new generation of politically heterogeneous (but altogether moderate) professors. The article considers whether the shift in faculty values is the result of a pure generational shift or the increase in corporatization of the university forcing junior faculty to be more career-oriented.
UC Press Only Gets Better with Age: UC Press is moving aggressively into the wine publishing market, releasing six wine books in 2008 alone. Could an ethnography of wine culture be far off?
The Death of Life-Writing: Some may consider it the antithesis of ethnography, but this Guardian article on the academic, literary, and market troubles facing biography proves an interesting commentary on the ups and downs of a non-fiction genre.
Slot Machines Destroy Your Mind: No kidding? Lorenz at antropologi.info comments on Natasha Dow Schull’s piece in the Washington Post warning readers about the antisocial effects of slot machines.
You Too Can Edit an Open Access Journal: L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters published the spam letter she received inviting her to be the editor-in-chief of “The Open Demography Journal.” One little problem. Wynn isn’t a demographer. For more on Bentham Science, publishers, the organization that sent Wynn the email, read this interview.
“Vintages and Traditions” by Robert Ulin is a great ethnography of wine cultivators that has already been written 😛
Hey,
just to let you know, the article appears in the Washington Post, not the Washington TImes 🙂
The last link was really interesting to me, because I’ve been working at a place that is very similar to Bentham for the past year. (Please excuse me for posting using a fake name and a throwaway e-mail address.) My organization focuses much more on engineering and its main business is putting on conferences (although a new set of open access-author pays journals are a top priority right now).
Although I can’t say much about Bentham, in my organization’s case, there is little doubt in my mind that it is nothing more than an attempt to cash in on academics desperate for publications and editorial positions, as well as on third-world scholars who want to present in ‘first-world’ conferences. The main, and often only method of promotion, is mass e-mail, usually to lists that have been created from faculty lists on university websites and authors from recent journals and conference proceedings. The terrible quality of the services provided and the exploitation of researchers and students at every step of the process is evident, but the continued participation of a significant (albeit dwindling) number of senior scholars at respected institutions continues to surprise me.
My experience here has been quite awful at times, but it has done a lot to expose me to the hidden ecology of academia. I wish I could write about it, and I might, after I quit this place..
Thanks, fyi, for catching that.
fyi George and Sharon Gmelch are working on a book on wine culture and wine tourism in Napa.
Dear Barry A.,
I would be very interested to hear more about the company you work for, and its activities.