On the other hand, the student culture in Germany is far more confrontational than that in the United States. Students are used to reading difficult texts, and ask me more difficult questions than I get in the US. They are also more likely to call a student strike/demonstration and be politically active. THe student demonstrations last semester were over the high student fees in the state of Niedersachsen, which are about $650 per semester. During the year I have been here, several national level politicians have given speeches/campaigned on campus.

In terms of administrative procedures, one of the of the peculiar things for me here in Germany is getting used to the idea that the grades I assigned are not “final” until approved by an external administrative office, the “Prüfung Amt.” Students can appeal my classroom procedures and grading policies by going there. I am also restricted in how many assignments I make and grade during the semester (the answer is usually zero–grades are typically based on a single exam or final paper).

My one point: Not every good academic paper needs to have a solution, or even a problem.

A lot of academic papers are the equivalent of chopping wood. Not all of them are good, though.

Since we are on the subject of world leaders, one of Germany’s leaders (probably Helmut Schmidt) once complained about the Americans something along the lines of “The problem is that you Americans think every problem has a solution.” This difference of view meant that President Bush got the US entangled in Iraq in order to “do something” about the problem of Saddam Hussein in 2003, while the Germans stepped aside.

For what it is worth, good thick description is not necessarily pragmatic. And indeed, much of what is good anthropology is thick description that despite Churchill’s protestations do not fit on one page. Indeed, if Churchill had read a little thick description rather than a one page memo before invading Gallipoli, maybe things would have turned out different!

My one point: Not every good academic paper needs to have a solution, or even a problem. It takes all kinds, and some cultures/languages/disciplines do it differently.

Also, way to clearly signpost your point in that entry there Kerim 🙂

I agree–how we tell the story matters. I also think you’re right that too much reliance on signposting is what can lead to writing that’s about as interesting to read as an appliance manual.

I can’t tell if Rex is just being deliberately provocative, but I don’t see how someone goes from “trust the author to provide just the right amount of information, in just the right doses” to “find out at the end that someone died.” Perhaps my post made it seem like too much of an either-or choice, but the point was that signposting is too often a crutch for bad writing and that there are often ways to solve the problem other than simply signposting. Many anthropologists (and quite a few who have reputations as good writers) start with a story and then provide an exegesis after. Not at the end, but after the story. My point was that too often the problem being solved by signposting could often be solved by better storytelling. It is harder to do, but often more rewarding.

At least in the case of Japan you are right that the pattern holds in a broader context than academic writing. I first became sharply aware of this pattern in advertising pitches in which I participated while working for a Japanese advertising agency. There, however, the issue was not trust, or at least not trust as we are likely to think of it—a relationship of confidence in one God, one friend, one author. The author/presenter is conceived as being in a hierarchically inferior position to the reader/customer/client, where the underlying premise is captured in the phrase Okyakusama ha kamisama da (The customer is a god). In this context, it would be presumptuous to assert that only a single proposition is valid, then build a case to support that claim. Instead a variety of offerings are presented, from which the presenter hopes, the customer/god will choose one that the customer/god prefers. Starting indirectly and providing information that might be useful in making the choice is a sign of proper deference.

I should also note, however, that the last couple of decades have seen a shift to more Western style presentations, largely under pressure from international clients whose executives present themselves as busy people who want to cut to the chase and choose to emulate Winston Churchill, who is said to have insisted during WWII that no strategy be presented to him on more than a single sheet of paper.

This makes me suggest the hypothesis it may be a very good thing that we expect signposts instead of “trusting” the author to wrap things up.

Suspense is great in pleasure reading. If I’m digging in to a novel for the experience of the story, then I enjoy letting the writer lead me along, moments of “oh, so that’s why that happened back there!”, etc. But I’m not reading academic writing for pleasure — I’m reading it to extract information, either substantive information about the topic of the research, and/or contextual information about the state of the field (theoretical approaches and methodologies being used, etc). I want to know up front exactly what to expect, so that I can decide quickly how much time to devote to this article and what things to be on the lookout for because they’re relevant to my interests. I’ve read too many articles — including ones by the “leading lights” in my field — that just ramble on for 20 pages then slap a conclusion on the end for me to be willing to just trust *any* author. And I find in my own writing that signposting is a good way to cure myself of the tendency to write that way.

In English: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, show them what you told them, and finally tell you what you told them.” Or in everyday language: “Look how smart I am, “now I’m showing your how smart I am, and finally, “Look how smart I was.” I think that is why good signposts are important.

Not sure how that works in German, but the point of the essay is also to explain how smart the writer is. And if the reader can’t figure that out–it must mean that they are not that smart!