When did they first know they would teach, people ask; others, how did you choose your major? I, as we know, point out that for various reasons having to do with the realities of professions I might do well to have another, and that I know what that would be; I have noted before that everywhere but in the United States, where speaking foreign languages leads to the study of literature, people take me for a qualitative social scientist. But before all that, how did I choose what I chose?
Well, there was third grade, when we went to Madrid and I said, this is what I like; let us live in the city and speak Spanish. Next there was sixth grade, where we studied the history of Latin America and wrote research papers. I said: Latin America is my field, research and writing are my métiers, Peru is my country. Then came freshman year and a course on prosody; I dissected a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo and said poetry is my genre, and poetics is the landscape of my mind. Those are all the elements that went into it and I was not eighteen yet.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I knew my area of research long before I knew my subject. While at school, I wrote an article during a riot in the country — about how the idea of India we have been taught is a myth, and how such a deeply diverse collective could never be a ‘nation’ the way our Civics textbook defined ‘nation’.
At college, I once wrote a paper on fantasy worlds, exploring the interaction of competing institutions from competing cultures in multicultural and multispecies (fantasy, after all) worlds, and the characteristics of formal state institutions that tried to govern them with a uniform code.
It’s only recently that I’ve realised I don’t really have a ‘subject’. All my interest is drawn to a political economy meets institutional behaviour space, which is probably why I shuttled between disciplines, never quite satisfied anywhere. So it always makes me very happy to read about people who knew what they wanted at a very young age — reassures me, I think, of the possibility of me finding a home department like that someday.
Response post here:
http://priyankanandy.com/2011/09/21/research-history/
Thanks for putting this in my head. Something about being out of academia has been bothering me, and it was good to write it out 🙂
It sounds as though you do know what you want. It’s just hard to locate because it’s not a single object of study, it’s a kind of movement or a phenomenon.
Actually in US some kind of area studies program might be an umbrella under which you could do it. In Latin American Studies, for instance, which is cross disciplinary, you could have a traditional discipline as your base field and a region as your research area, but then also draw on work from other departments.
Note: Area Studies (and similarly grouped social sciences) in a US setting–the CIA/US government was involved in the founding, and is still very “involved.” That is, one is still meant to be working with the government/US corporate interests at heart.
One small example here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Minerva_research_initiative
I understand that not everyone cares about this sort of thing or is working from a US setting. Anyway, feel free to delete this if it is too off topic.
When the first Latin American telenovelas reached my country, I realized that there was this entire huge Spanish-speaking civilization that was fascinating and that we knew absolutely nothing about in my part of the world. So I set out to discover all I could about it and it brought me across the world. 🙂
@ redactora, yes. There is and has long been a lot of discussion on how to not serve those interests and so on. I’m not trying to get Priyanka to join MINERVA and I am presupposing that people know about these kinds of things. Priyanka has been in Economics, apparently, where there is a huge amount of questionable funding, and it is a discipline which has been used to very questionable ends.
There’s a lot of DoD and other government and corporate funding to other science and social science disciplines as well. Foreign language departments have a lot of people on FLAS and other DoD related funding, and the Latin American library at Tulane was originally the library of the United Fruit Company. It doesn’t mean there aren’t great people doing great work in these same places.
“I’m not trying to get Priyanka to join MINERVA.”
I did not suppose you were. But I was also not just thinking of Priyanka.
“I am presupposing that people know about these kinds of things.”
Well, I suppose it would be fair to say I was a very naive and trusting seventeen year old* but when I went into a similar social science field I wanted to “learn about the world,” not assist corporations or the US government in overthrowing governments/crushing social movements. And the expected career path was straight into “private consulting,” the DoD, the DHS, or the State Department.
“Latin American library at Tulane was originally the library of the United Fruit Company” Well, that is a very typical sort of thing but if that was decades ago, and they have since broken off the association it is really not what I mean.
“It doesn’t mean there aren’t great people doing great work in these same places.” No, it doesn’t, but you could say that to a lesser extent about the military and major corporations and so on as well. I knew a lot of “great people” who went on to work for the DoD and the State Department. I also knew a lot of “great people” in the ROTC, Navy, and the Marines.
*I went to a good public school, but it wasn’t that good. (now kids, after we get through chapter eight, let’s discuss the moral issues surrounding all the majors you might want to choose from in college).
OK, sorry I’m so jaded. Yes, area studies is tainted! But you have to watch out since Ag can lead to biotech, etc. and in general there are a lot of nice sounding majors that lead to bad things.
I know I sound impatient, it’s just that relation of LAS and government is such a huge topic and is so much discussed, and Priyanka’s all grown up. Yes and all, but it’s an actually existing rubric that can be used for a variety of things. There are all kinds of terrible relationships between universities, corporations, and governments and these things are getting worse.
I get a lot of questions like gosh, you speak Spanish, have you ever heard of Garcia Lorca, and gosh, you’re in Latin American Studies, have you ever heard of its dark side, etc. For me these are old, not new topics. What to do about them is something I work on at work-work, not on a personal weblog. I would refer you to all the literature, all the discussion re curriculum and research around this, in the professional journals.
I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s just not something I’m able to get upset about in a fresh horror of first discovery, and also there are so many academic fields that are “tainted” in this way that there’s not a field or department I’d advise people away from on that kind of broad moral and political grounds at this point – I’d just advise away from certain kinds of projects.
I wasn’t expecting you to do anything or put on some sort of mawkish display. I am hardly assuming that you have not thought of these things, or trying to make you do work work on your blog.
You gave Priyanka some advice, and since this seemed like a relatively open discussion, I also put out some advice, for Priyanka and whoever else might be reading.
“I get a lot of questions like gosh, you speak Spanish, have you ever heard of Garcia Lorca, and gosh, you’re in Latin American Studies, have you ever heard of its dark side, etc.”
Isn’t it good then that I asked you nothing, said nothing of the sort, and get questions like that all the time as well. Certain U.S. types can be rather thick and dull.
“I would refer you to all the literature, all the discussion re curriculum and research around this, in the professional journals.”
I have already, to the extent that a non-academic has access to these sort of things.
And yes, I am aware you are speaking of this “for grownups” that is people looking into/have masters and PhDs, but I was just putting out one example of how one could “not know this already.”
Here’s David Horowitz’ classic piece on this from Ramparts, from 1969 before he went right wing. http://www.cia-on-campus.org/internat/sinews.html
The stuff is deep. But the question is, in what program could Priyanka conceivably do her project? Has to be umbrella that will fit more than 1 social science department and let her do qualitative work.
I really was not trying to say don’t go into area studies. Like you say, there appear to few departments that could count themselves as “clean”* but there are gradations and when I saw area studies (which is really the major I had, with a different name/slightly different focus) being discussed I just had to say something–when I should have just kept it to myself.
And that whole site is very good, yes, and I have read a few journal articles on the topic from the late sixties.
*Except possibly lit, how much harm could it really do to the state of world affairs?
“I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s just not something I’m able to get upset about in a fresh horror of first discovery, and also there are so many academic fields that are “tainted” in this way that there’s not a field or department I’d advise people away from on that kind of broad moral and political grounds at this point”
I couldn’t possibly agree more. If I decided to avoid disciplines with tainted moral histories on ethical grounds, I couldn’t possibly have allowed myself an education in English, to begin with. And that would have been impossible in contemporary India, so what would I have done? Slipped into deep existential crisis?
La redactora — I appreciate your efforts very much. Thank you. I am, as Z says, all grown up now, but at 18 I did a fair amount of Area Studies too, but ours was oriented towards finding contrasts and connections with other areas in similar third-world, post-colonial straits. The same discipline can have multiple ideologies. But your point is well taken.
@Redactora I do understand about having been young and not known, etc.; there are a lot of things I wasn’t told or was told wrong and that I am irritated about to this day.
But on area studies – in many institutions those people are the only ones who think anything not in US or Europe is worth considering at all, for one thing; also remember Said/Orientalism, Asian Studies as colonialist discipline.
Here is a much more chilling set of career possibilities in social sciences – much more chilling than simply doing a PhD in an area studies program. US DoS, and you’ve got to know they are mostly evil!
Click to access FF-PD_2011-SEPT-16.pdf