[Air-l] Re: What is a discipline - role of AoIR. (Nancy Baym)

[Wendy Robinson]

Wonderfully considered and lucid post from Nancy.  Concerns us all.  Thank you.

I just joined a new campus and the CIO was asked about this kind of thing 
(specifically does Blackboard pedagogical activity "count") at a faculty 
open house.  He bypassed the question by saying it was the old issue of 
teaching and research and service and the risk of doing work in emerging 
areas (implicitly, therefore, the answer was no, a syllabus is a syllabus 
is a syllabus, online or off, and doesn't "count" any more than any 
syllabus does).  Yes, you're welcomed as new blood, thanks for the 
contribution and help with pulling along the late adopters, but expect to 
pay your dues like everyone else before you.

So: Is work in Net studies like other emerging areas?  Can we learn from 
the battles fought by women's and environmental studies, for instance?  Or 
cultural studies?  Are the issues different, perhaps, among other reasons, 
because of the corporate-supported IT grants and other soft money not 
available to other disciplines (e.g., these being tough times for the 
humanities)?  Net-supported research seems to have enjoyed much greater 
cross-campus and global support than other areas, even though there are 
unlikely to be departments of Internet Studies as Nancy pointed out.  What 
we do has seeped through and become mainstream remarkably quickly.

I wanted to keep Nancy's thread alive, but I don't have As to her Qs 
either.  I strongly agree that these are concerns we need to address going 
forward if the AoIR is to provide practical support to our careers, as well 
as to subjectively nourish relationships that are, nonetheless, predicated 
on common research and avocational (we aren't all academics on the AoIR 
list) interests.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wendy Robinson                       wgrobin at uc.edu
Asst Prof, Dept of Comm              wgrobin at fuse.net
Univ of Cincinnati                           homepages.uc.edu/~robinswg
620C Teachers College                        tel: 513-556-4468
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0184                    fax: 513-556-0899
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 12:01 PM 11/8/02 -0500, you wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 11:18:24 -0600
>To: air-l at aoir.org
>From: Nancy Baym <nbaym at ku.edu>
>Subject: Re: [Air-l] What is a discipline - role of AoIR.
>Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
>
>I of course can't help but think about all of this quite specifically
>in terms of the role of AoIR in Internet Studies and what our lofty
>goals should be, and I wanted to pose some of the questions this
>discussion raises for me. I start from the premise that while AoIR
>may be many members' favorite affiliation and conference, we are not
>likely to be conducting academic careers in an institutionally
>recognized department of Internet Studies. So one goal may be to
>provide a form of institutional credibility so that members' work
>will be recognized by tenure and promotion committees that want
>evidence of outside review. This is of course one of the major
>functions of well known academic associations, usually in the form of
>peer review association journals and conferences.

[snip]

>How important is it that AoIR provide credibility? How do
>we apply standards? What kinds of structures could we build through
>which to apply them? How do we maintain and nurture a kind and
>stimulating ethos? How do we discipline and nurture one another in a
>way that does its best to speak to all the home disciplines and
>traditions in which members make careers?
>
>I don't have a good answer to any of these questions. I see a lot of
>challenges and balancing acts ahead. My hope is that the right
>answers will emerge as we continue to discuss these and related
>issues together.