[Air-L] Landrushes and Interdisciplinarity

[Holly Kruse]

Nancy wrote:

> I haven't seen the evidence of a landrush mentality in which
> disciplines are pitted against one another in internet studies or the
> study of social network sites and the WP article didn't provide any
> to support that claim.

and:

> What I generally observed in a decade of working to move internet
> studies forward as a solid and legitimate field of study is people in
> every field feeling like internet studies was/is on the margins of
> their own discipline and therefore seeking connection across borders.

As someone who was heavily involved in popular music studies and belonged to
the International Association for the Study of Popular Music for many years
and loved those conferences and conversations, I see real parallels between
the two interdisciplines (for lack of a better word) of internet studies and
popular music studies.  (And I think others who have been involved with both
areas and even organizations might agree.)  Both areas include a variety of
interesting people from different fields and backgrounds who feel most
comfortable in their interdisciplinary home, where other people "get" what
they do, and much interesting and supportive discussion takes place.  I have
never seen people in these kinds of groups scurrying to be the big important
people studying the most sexy topic, although I imagine that happens from
time to time.  Mostly I find people becoming interested in what people are
doing in other areas of the interdiscipline and making connections with
those people.  Organizations like AoIR and, at least when I was involved,
IASPM, strike me as more inclusive and supportive, and not as cutthroat as
many disciplinary groups.  I like to think that we're a group of
semi-outsiders who find great camaraderie in our annual gathering, on our
email lists, and so on as we continue to work in our -- we hope --
overlapping, expansive, and academically, socially, and culturally relevant
and important areas of interest.


Holly

-- 
Holly Kruse
Faculty of Communication
The University of Tulsa
600 S. College Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74104
918-631-3845
holly-kruse at utulsa.edu or holly.kruse at gmail.com
(holly at aoir.org for air-l questions or problems
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~holly-kruse