importance of the field of study "cultural studies"

[zepetnek]

i have sent several times notes to members of citizendum's editors that it would be advantageous to include "cultural studies" as one of the fields of scholarship in the humanities. i see that this was not taken up and so would like to discuss, then, the reason why i think cultural studies ought to be a field: basically, cultural studies is a field of much prominence in he humanities today and to omit it from the fields of study in the humanities at citizendum would be a serious oversight..... thanks and best,

steven totosy de zepetnek
http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/totosycv(complete).html
8 sunset road, winchester, MA 01890 USA
steven.totosy@comcast.net / 781-729-1680
prof.dr., media and culture studies, university of halle-wittenberg
mansfeld str. 56, D-06108 halle, germany
steven.totosy@medienkomm.uni-halle.de
editor, clcweb: comparative literature and culture
http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu / clcweb@purdue.edu
series editor, purdue books in comparative cultural studies
http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/compstudies.asp
& http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html

[Larry Sanger]

The obvious question to you, or to anyone who proposes another field of study, is how this field is importantly different from other fields that are listed.  Here's a good way to look at it: we are producing workgroups in order to assign collective management of articles to groups of experts.  Now, what encyclopedia articles would you want to assign to the field of cultural studies that is not apt to be included here under, for example, media, anthropology, philosophy, or some other field?  Just give me some good examples.

[kalital]

The obvious question to you, or to anyone who proposes another field of study, is how this field is importantly different from other fields that are listed.  Here's a good way to look at it: we are producing workgroups in order to assign collective management of articles to groups of experts.  Now, what encyclopedia articles would you want to assign to the field of cultural studies that is not apt to be included here under, for example, media, anthropology, philosophy, or some other field?  Just give me some good examples.

You're asking the wrong question here, Larry.  The question is not "what articles fall under cultural studies" (or any individual discipline), but "what can this discipline contribute to an article"? Many, many articles will fall outside the purview of a single discipline. For example, sociologists, neurologists, anthropologists, psychologists and cultural studies scholars will all have useful things to say about "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."  Historians, religious studies scholars, political scientists, and cultural studies scholars will all have useful things to add to articles about "Holocaust."  For many articles we'll need to develop clusters of experts drawn from different disciplines.

Here is an excellent short backgrounder in the contours of the field of cultural studies: http://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/what_is/what_is.html.  What cultural studies -- and no other field -- does is focus primarily on the ways in which power is created, distributed, managed, opposed, and enforced in human societies, usually through the lenses of race, gender and class. As in other disciplines, there is no single method that everyone in the field accepts, and interpretive structures range from the psychoanalytic (Foucault) to the Marxist (Williams). Cultural studies evolved because other disciplines looked at power structures in a limited fashion -- only as it related to their larger focus.  No other discipline takes power structures as its main focus, and none has come close to developing such sophisticated, holistic methods of analysis of those structures.  That's what makes CS uniquely important.  Not more important than the fields on which it draws -- but important enough, in its own right, to deserve a place.

I think you're looking at disciplines in a less than useful fashion.  Disciplines are not designed to protect "turf" ("these articles belong here and not there!").  Disciplines are windows on the world, and scholars organize themselves into disciplines based on their decisions about what's most important to them as intellectuals.  A rose is a rose is a rose, but if you want a truly neutral article on what "a rose" is, you'll need to let the biologists play ball with the literary critics and the historians (and with every other discipline that has some stake in defining "a rose"). As a student of semiotics, you are doubtless aware that every article title carries a chain of meaning, multiple and complex. The truly neutral article will attempt to represent all those meanings as clearly and accurately as possible.

Excluding a lively and thriving discipline because you don't see what makes it special is a decision based on bias and not on neutral judgement. It's becoming clear to me that you you see some disciplines as legitimate and others as trendy or political. But I would argue that it's not your place to judge these things, since you are no expert in the areas against which you demonstrate prejudice.  I would say that it's best to let scholars sort out our own disciplinary affiliations, since we are the experts you purportedly trust.  You may not be comfortable with or understand all our decisions, but I believe that they are our decisions to make and not yours.  Micromanaging what people call themselves and which groups they identify with is never a good idea. You can't know or understand everything -- you can just set up a system in which reputable and qualified people make decisions based on their areas of expertise.

You've laid down a lot of basic principles with which participants need to agree.  And I do agree with those you state in the foundation document.  But telling me and others that the disciplines within which we work are not distinct enough (to you), or are too "political" to deserve categorization (as wholes, not as fragments like "African American Literature", sub-field of Literature) was not on that list. If you're making this a new rule, I won't be able to participate and, I'm sure, neither will many other valuable experts who could otherwise have contributed a great deal to making CZ truly representative, comprehensive and neutral.

Best,
Kali Tal

[Larry Sanger]

Kali,

I'm still thinking about all this.

Actually, I think I asked exactly the right question, and it's a serious problem if no answer is forthcoming.  There's one whole problem here, namely, we do have an interest in keeping the purviews of groups relatively separate and non-overlapping.  Why?  Because this would create (again--institutionally) the potential for some serious "turf wars."  One should not discount the fact that such conflicts could be potentially crippling.  Interdisciplinary fields place an overlay of management--often transparently ideological management--on top of existing management.  How do they settle intragroup disputes?  And who, frankly, wants to go head-to-head with a whole group of people who define their membership by their ideological methods rather than their topic focuses?

I am seriously conflicted about the need to get people on board in the groups you favor, and what strikes me as in obvious tension with an established principle, namely, neutrality.  Don't you see that, Kali?  If a group is set up not in order to study a particular subject, but instead to apply a certain bias to a grab-bag of subjects, it seems pretty obvious to me that that group will essentially act as a pressure group, i.e., an inherently or essentially biasing influence.  If members of that group are instead spread into previously existing groups, which are distinguished not by methodological approach but instead by topic, the result will be a more balanced group of editors who will not have influence to make whole sets of articles biased.  If an editor is not willing to work in this way with people who do not share his or her biases, then frankly, I'm not sure we want them on board, because the person is likely (no matter what they say) not actually to be a supporter of the neutrality policy.  I'm no fool, Kali--I know very well many people will be willing to pay lip service to it while trying to change articles to reflect their biases.  It is my job to ensure that that is as difficult as possible.  And we will not achieve neutrality by encouraging turf warfare.  Instead, the loudest group will probably win out, driving away a lot of people who do not share their biases.  No, our participants must support the neutrality policy; it isn't enough that we have a wide assortment of approaches.

So what's more important: avoiding the real potential of predictable and indeed institutionalized disruption of the neutrality policy, or getting more people on board who, given their avowedly ideological approach, are not likely to agree with the neutrality policy anyway?

Kali, here's a reductio: why shouldn't a Marxist Studies workgroup exist?  It's yet another group that has self-awareness, and such that its members might not want to participate if it weren't specially recognized...

These aren't conclusions, though--I really haven't begun thinking seriously about this, and I want to consider your other messages very carefully.

--Larry

[Zachary Pruckowski]

Many, many articles will fall outside the purview of a single discipline. For example, sociologists, neurologists, anthropologists, psychologists and cultural studies scholars will all have useful things to say about "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."  Historians, religious studies scholars, political scientists, and cultural studies scholars will all have useful things to add to articles about "Holocaust."  For many articles we'll need to develop clusters of experts drawn from different disciplines.

This is the easier half of the problem - we simply have multiple sections to the article.  The Neurologists and Psychologists can write some section on it (since it's in the Diagnostic Manual or whatever), and then we can add the sociological causes or impacts in a separate section.  We'll simply say that many different fields offer different explainations for the disorder, or cover it from the perspective that has the most to say, and then let everyone else have a paragraph or two.

[kalital]

Hi, Larry,

I did give you an answer to your question. I defined Cultural Studies' specific area of focus (power relations), and distinguished it from all other disciplines. I explained that people in Cultural Studies are not ideological united, but often ideologically opposed (Marxism vs. psychoanalytic method, etc.), just as Sociology has a specific area of focus (patterns of social interaction) but represents similarly conflicting ideological viewpoints. And, finally, I explained how I think a division of articles into the "turf" of multiple work-groups could be made.

Dividing articles up and handing them to single workgroups is fine in a certain number of clear-cut cases, but not fine in the many fuzzier cases.  In the latter, handing them to one group instead of another will create turf battles, whereas cooperation between groups will solve those conflicts. Additionally, as I said, the largest segment of scholars studying African American literature will define themselves as belonging to the field of African American Studies, so you're probably not going to see "turf battles" at all, or at least very few. Most likely, if you leave out Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies and discourage the scholars whose primary association is in those fields, you will simply have large gaps in your knowledge compendium because there will be no one left to write the articles on those topics. (This is the case in most mainstream knowledge compendia.)

What's disturbing is that you think that people who organize themselves as African Americanists or Gender Studies scholars can't support the principles of neutrality that Citizendium espouses. I am a feminist, a Marxist, and an African Americanist scholar, and I am a HUGE supporter of neutrality. This is why I'm pushing so hard -- I believe that your view is less neutral in this particular regard than mine.  Despite the fact that I don't define myself or my work within a single discipline (or even see it as divisible into traditional disciplines), I am sure I can represent the current scholarship on topics within my area of expertise without bringing my particular individual biases to bear.  And isn't this what you expect of all CZ editors?  We all come to CZ with our personal biases, but we are expected to rise above them and be as objective and neutral as possible when writing. So making a special case of Ethnic and Gender studies scholars is an exercise in distrust and prejudice on your part:  you suspect we're less capable of neutrality than scholars who place themselves wholly within traditional disciplines.

I think you don't understand how offensive it is when you label Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies scholars as people with an "avowedly ideological approach, [who] are not likely to agree with the neutrality policy anyway."  I'd put a lot of money down on a wager that you don't know very much about either Ethnic Studies or Gender Studies as disciplines. If you did, you would understand that scholars in these areas are no more "ideological" in approach than any other scholars (you and the rest of the CZ editors have ideologies too).  These are complex fields where there is agreement only on the topics under discussion (as Sociology and Anthropology and Biology agree on the topics under discussion).  There is, however, no ideological consensus at work in these fields. Rather, they are contested sites -- like all disciplines -- in which meaning is continually debated, created, contradicted and interpreted.  You may be surprised to know that there are both feminists and antifeminists involved in Women's Studies and that the debates in the field signal ideological conflict, just as the debates in History and Literature do. Similarly, African Americanists are divided on such basic issues as the definition of race and racism, the role of nationalism, the question of whether race is essential or constructed, etc.  And we're just as capable as you are of stepping above and standing outside the circle of internal debate in our disciplines and representing them in a neutral fashion.

You fear we will disrupt your neutrality policy.  But that's your fear, and not the reality. African Americanists and Gender Studies scholars will not push our agendas any harder than Sociologists or Physicists.  The great majority of us are trained in the same intellectual traditions that you are, and are just as much the children of the Enlightenment.  We may even be more legitimately children of Reason, since a continuing trend in both area studies has been to hold those who are allegedly neutral and who are allegedly following Enlightenment principles to account when your actions (as in this case) do not match your rhetoric. One reason many of us are fond of Enlightenment principles is that, properly administered and followed, they guarantee members of minority groups the same freedoms possessed by the white, male majority.  By welcoming us as a legitimate and essential part of your endeavour you're living UP to your principles, not violating them.

As for why (though I'm a Marxist) I'm not clamoring for a top-level Marxist Studies group, it's because I feel comfortable placing "Marxism" as a topic under Political Science and possibly under Economics, depending on the specific article.  Every major university in the U.S. does NOT have a Marxist Studies department, and Marxist historians, literary critics, etc. are employing Marxist theory and ideology as they work within other disciplines. Marxist Theory has not yet (and I doubt it will ever) rise to the position of top-level category because although it represents a unique ideology, it doesn't represent a unique subject area.  Ethnic Studies does represent a unique subject area, and so do Gender Studies and Cultural Studies -- and they all do so by employing competing ideologies in the examination of a clearly defined subject of study.

Best,
Kali

[Profrap]

I'd like to agree with everything Kali Tal said. Reminds me of the good old days of the Technoculture listserv!

But, back to Larry and others who are anxious about disciplinary boundaries, I think CZ is actually a great place to, when appropriate, do some interdisciplinary work, exactly because we *don't* have all these institutional strictures.

There are some topics that are happy within  their boundaries, but there are many which can only find a breatheable airspace outside them.  It's not just the fuzzy topics, but topics which have resonance and relevance in many fields.  The study of Arctic exploration, for instance, involves geography, history, biography, anthropology, and (I would argue) postcolonial theory -- if a conversation on that topic was limited only to the Geography workgroup, it would have much less chance of robust contributions from the full array of disciplines.

Most of own work, for instance, falls under cultural studies -- early television, radio and surrealism, hip-hop music, Victorian optical apparati, Anglo-Irish writers, ideologies of Arctic exploration -- there's no one place for me to work on all these.  For  the time being, I've signed in as an "Editor" only in the "Literature" workgroup, and as an "Author" in things like Media and Geography where I imagine I might do more writing rather than editing.  But who knows? I could easily change my focus here to another area of my own work and find that I'd have to re-think all my category memberships, switch Author and Editor hats, and pop in and out of different forums.  But I'd much rather have a Cultural Studies workgroup where I would readily find any number of congenial editors and authors, and perhaps get enough of a 'critical mass' to get discussion & thought going.  I've tried to do so in Literature, but there are only 3 of us there, it's not quite enough to get much momentum, and momentum is what I think this project needs just now.

R U S S E L L

[zepetnek]

i agree with russell's suggestion to include cultural studies as a field/work group in citizendom, the more as he appears to support my asking to do so in the first place.... as to an earlier comment what i would/could contribute, here is one example, available online: Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "From Comparative Literature Today toward Comparative Cultural Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.3 (1999): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>.

best, steven totosy

[Stephen Ewen]

I think the easiest solution is to allow interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary editors concurrent membership in several workgroups.

[Larry Sanger]

I think the easiest solution is to allow interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary editors concurrent membership in several workgroups.

That's already the case.  That's what Bernie and I have been doing in making assignments.