Dear all,

just some thoughts that came to my mind while reading some parts of
this interesting debate.
In the following I react to just some parts of what I've been reading
in these days (letting falling a part some of the discussion strictly
related to ranking):

It’s not just a linguistic question - in my opinion is more a matter
of the hegemonic structures and the whole “system” behind the use of a
certain language.

In many countries we are asked to be more international, this is to
say to publish on high impact journals owned by specialised academic
publishers that are ranked on some special list and that also will own
the right to reproduce what we have written. It happens that these
journals are mainly written in English and that they are the
expression of the so called “academic capitalism".
However, taking part in this "system" does not only means nourishing
academic capitalism. It means also disciplining our writing and
thinking style according to a protocol. Eg: (Part of) the protocol
this model dictates wants our papers to be written as such: Intro -
theory - method - discussion - conclusion. This is already debatable!
But in France, for instance, the structure of an essay would take
quite another form! And I bet there's thousands of other narrative
structures for translating scientific research into a written form!!!
Then the stress of being analytical... Some geo-cultural academic
traditions would prize you for being descriptive instead...
Then again, once writing for a so called high impact international
journal I shall think about who I am quoting/referencing. As long as I
do not quote those big names such as Gramsci or Negri and alike I’ll
have to skip contributions from Italian scholars if they have not been
published in English. On the contrary I can quote an article written
about Italy or by an Italian scholar as long as it is translated in
English, no matter its quality.

Another issue is the variety of systems of evaluation of scientific
research and the way through which we can communicate it. Eg.: I need
to write in my own language and to publish on certain Italian ranked
journals if I want to be known and get legitimised by my national
scientific community (and civil society). Consider that some national
communities do not even
recognise the value of some high impact international journals in
public competitions... while national journals (or better, journals
that are written in a language which is not English) are generally not
considered in international competitions.
So, many researchers that are not based in an “anglo-centric” academic
system have to be schizophrenic in publishing according to at least
two different systems (the one recognised by their national community
and the international
one, if they are passionate enough to do it).

What else?

I was in a RC21 conference three years ago and I attended the “how to
get published” panel. The name should have been "how to get published
and recruited in an anglo-centric academia". There were a US-based
American scholar, a UK-based British scholar, and a French scholar who
is known for publishing also in English. The three of them  ended up
in disagreeing whether it was better to write a monoraphy, or a set of
articles to find a job in their future. Then a researcher
form Jordania raised her hand and underlined that, beyond these two
options, the system of recruiting in her country worked in a totally
different way, and accordingly different was the strategy to be
adopted in getting published. I also raised my hand
questioning the “ethnocentricity” of the way the debate was conducted
by those persons. Two of them were disappointed by this critique,
while one was curious enough to debate it further. In the audience,
the scholars based in an anglo-centric country felt puzzled while
those from mediterranean countries thanked me for the intervention.

I was puzzled either. I do not see easy solutions two the problems we
are debating or raising (eg. introducing 2/3 languages as compulsory
in a Phd) but I praise our international and internationalist
community for a bigger commitment and critical
attitude on the problem of centre/periphery in Academia and the
implications of the hegemony of English in academic capitalism.

This email has been a sort of flows of consciousness, I happy to
continue debating in in a more formal way shall somebody be
interested.

Cheers,

Chiara

2016-03-12 22:42 GMT+01:00 simone tulumello <[log in to unmask]>:
> well, the issue of language is a bith tricky.
> While the existence of linguae francae is indeed useful and necessary, there
> will never be ONE lingua franca (in Matrix, maybe?). There are several
> "international" languages, in the present world (English, Spanish,
> Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, French at least), each of them necessary to
> study certain places and issues.
> In social sciences, and especially "geography", the capacity to read, talk
> and write in more than one of those languages is probably the only way to
> consider oneself part of an "international" academia. I mean, both for
> theoretical (there is a world beyond English translations) and empirical
> (field-study) purposes, being able to manage one single language reduced
> dramaticaly one's possibilities - policy documents in non Anglophone
> countries are not in English, no etnographic work can be made without
> knowing the local language, and so on and so forth.
> Moreover, it's not by chance that, often, the most interesting and
> innovative ideas are created at the margins of global discussions: most core
> concepts "critical" scholars use were not created in English (Marx, Gramsci,
> Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, Agamben...) - I've once shared the PiHG article
> by Juliet Fall and Claudio Minca making this case for one book by Giuseppe
> Dematteis, but see also Leonie Sandercock (1995, JPER) on the "borderlands"
> of urban theory (while in that case the issue of language is mixed with
> issues of power disciplinary areas).
>
> This is to say, in practice, what if we start thinking of the need, in
> course and PhDs in geography and related fields, to include the knowledge of
> at least 2/3 international languages as core skills?
> I am sure we would, in the medium term, dramatically improve the global
> state of academic research.
>
> S.
>
>
>
>
> 2016-03-12 11:22 GMT-06:00 <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>> Chinese may be the world's commonest language by mother tongue but if
>> China wants to trade with India it's a fair bet the common language will be
>> - English.  Ditto Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, any other large economy.
>> Spanish comes in at a good second behind English (and catching up due to
>> differential birth rates) - on the subject of birth rates, Chinese isn't
>> exactly helped there either.
>>
>> I rather like what The Economist predicted would be the global lingua
>> franca in centuries to come - "English but not as we know it". From 1776
>> onwards the small island where English originated began to lose control of
>> their language - and maybe I don't mean the island of Britain but the
>> Frisian Islands, which is actually where English came from, the Frisian
>> tongue, a close cousin to Dutch.
>>
>> As Churchill said to Roosevelt "Well we invented English", to which
>> Roosevelt replied "Yes but we perfected it".
>>
>> Ok history lesson over. My guess is the global lingua franca will be
>> something like Hispanglish, still calling itself English but barely more
>> comprehensible to our grandparents than Chaucerian English is to us. Or
>> there's always Esperanto......
>>
>>
>> Dr Hillary J. Shaw
>> Director and Senior Research Consultant
>> Shaw Food Solutions
>> Newport
>> Shropshire
>> TF10 8QE
>> www.fooddeserts.org
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Allen J. Scott <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:44
>> Subject: Re: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial
>> academia
>>
>> I am deeply sympathetic to academics whose language is other than English
>> and who feel left out in the cold not only by various university rankings,
>> but also by the predominance of English in scholarly publication,
>> conferences, e-mail exchanges, etc., etc. I frequently feel embarrassed by
>> the evident failure of so many of my Anglophone colleagues to master even
>> the rudiments of a foreign language.  Yet even if all native Anglophone
>> academics were completely fluent in one or two languages other than English
>> the problem would still remain.  In a globalizing multi-multi-lingual world
>> there has to be a lingua franca to facilitate academic exchange. For better
>> or worse, this common language is English. In the not-too-distant future it
>> may well be Chinese.  No matter what the lingua franca may be, each of us
>> faces positive and negative payoffs. As things now stand, the positive
>> payoff for native English speakers is obvious; the negative payoff is the
>> intellectual impoverishment that comes from an inability to penetrate the
>> many hidden riches of other languages and cultures. For those whose native
>> language is not English the negative payoff is equally obvious; the positive
>> payoff is the ease with which they can operate in at least two linguistic
>> registers and reap the practical benefits and cultural consolations of both.
>> Now, what about those appalling and profoundly biased university rankings?
>> Of course, we probably have no option but to live with them.  Like the
>> dreaded departmental evaluation systems that now run rife in a number of
>> different countries they are beyond our control in the immediate short run.
>> That said, there is now a growing chorus of critique and complaint around
>> the world about these humiliating instruments of social control and biased
>> decision-making. We must keep up this critique until all or at least most of
>> our colleagues (even in business schools) are made conscious of what is at
>> stake. Until a majority of academics themselves become persuaded of these
>> irrationalities in our professional lives we will have to live with the
>> consequences.
>>
>> Allen J. Scott,
>> UCLA.
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
>> [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of simone tulumello
>> [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 7:29 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial
>> academia
>>
>> Hi all and thanks for the discussion.
>> Fiona, you're right, it's more an English centric than UK centric system -
>> to start with, all publications in languages other than English are not
>> considered!
>> Holly and HIllary, who benefits? Of course the makers of the rankings, and
>> maybe some students - those who can claim in their CVs they've been in a top
>> university. In general, I'd say it's the "centre" grabbing from the
>> "periphery" - good old uneven development (of knowledge).
>> Francis, the connection between rankings and behaviours is interesting -
>> in fact, I'm more concerned with the way the "periphery" accepts to be as
>> such than by the fact the "centre" claims itself to be the centre...
>>  Bests!
>> S.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2016-03-10 15:57 GMT-06:00 Holly Randell-Moon
>> <[log in to unmask]>:
>>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> At my university, we are told quite frequently by the Vice-Chancellor
>>> that these rankings matter to students and which universities they choose to
>>> go to. Not sure if this is true or not, but they have a powerful ideological
>>> effect on the internal organisation and prioritisation of teaching and
>>> research.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Holly.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/03/2016, at 9:50 AM, Francis Collins <[log in to unmask]>
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Not a UK-based perspective – but hopefully the following adds to debates
>>> nonetheless…
>>> Rankings are obviously one of the most pervasive dimensions of higher
>>> education today. If its not THE or QS or another international ranking
>>> exercise its the domestic rankings that intersect and diverge from them, the
>>> internal ranking of departments and schools in terms of student income,
>>> research revenue or international reputation. Rankings are everywhere and a
>>> lot of the time ‘we’ have a conflicted kind of relationship with them – we
>>> recognise what they do to us and our institutions but we also accept or
>>> sometimes even use them to our own ends, or what we think is our own ends.
>>>
>>> There is a lot of literature, of varying perspectives and insight, on
>>> rankings in the field of higher education. One of the issues that emerges
>>> there is the way in which ranking really alters existing forms of reputation
>>> and entices institutions and individuals to be more performance oriented but
>>> also oriented towards those things that are being measured, so we not only
>>> recognise the power of rankings but also work towards achieving higher
>>> performance even as we know the problems associated with this. Higher
>>> education and academic work has long been tied up with performance and
>>> distinction of course but the governing by numbers that rankings induce is
>>> particularly pernicious.
>>>
>>> WHO are the beneficiaries of such rankings? Well in the first instance it
>>> is those who do the ranking – QS, THE in the international ranking systems
>>> but also of course a whole range of other actors and institutions. An
>>> interesting example that diverges a bit from classic rankings is I-graduate,
>>> which surveys international students and provides internal but nonetheless
>>> significant and influential metrics to universities that allow them to
>>> supposedly better tailor their offerings and services to fee paying
>>> international students. The contracts for this type of work are huge and the
>>> impact of the results are substantial as anyone who has sat on a university
>>> international committee will know.
>>>
>>> With a a few colleagues in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia and
>>> New Zealand we’ve been doing some work around rankings and in particular the
>>> way in which these metrics generate rank-seeking behaviour in universities.
>>> We speak to institutional leaders in East Asia for example who provide
>>> sophisticated critiques of the ways that rankings are flawed and biased
>>> towards Anglophone institutions but then talk about the ways in which they
>>> have reshaped institutional practices to achieve higher rankings,
>>> effectively normalising the flaws and biases in these systems. Domestic
>>> reputations get turned upside down by this, corporatisation or
>>> corporate-style university behaviour tends to lead to better results, and
>>> all sorts of incentives are entered into the day to day life of the
>>> university that alter what is expected of academics, students and other
>>> people in the university. Of course, this is not a one way story and we’ve
>>> come across instances where domestic student groups in particular have
>>> articulated collective positions against the emphasis on ranking – some
>>> staging protests in Korea for example on the timing of domestic ranking
>>> releases. The students’ claims are that these rankings measure the wrong
>>> things, undermine diversity in universities and are increasing the level of
>>> tuition fees because of the costs involved in participation.
>>>
>>> Some of this is covered in this recent publication:
>>> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-015-9941-3; or behind the
>>> paywall here:
>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282753947_Ranking_and_the_Multiplication_of_Reputation_reflections_from_the_frontier_of_globalizing_higher_education
>>>
>>> It would be great to here more of how rankings shape our behaviour as
>>> well as that of our institutions – both in the UK but also around the world.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Francis
>>>
>>> --
>>> Francis L. Collins
>>> Senior Lecturer, Geography
>>> Rutherford Discovery Fellow
>>> University of Auckland
>>>
>>> Nation and Migration: population mobilities, desires and state practices
>>> in 21st century New Zealand
>>> https://www.facebook.com/NationandMigration
>>>
>>> https://twitter.com/Moving_Futures
>>>
>>> Publications:
>>> http://auckland.academia.edu/FrancisCollins
>>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis_Collins
>>>
>>> From: "[log in to unmask]"
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Reply-To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Date: Friday, 11 March 2016 6:13 am
>>> To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: Re: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial
>>> academia
>>>
>>> I've also wondered, 'WHO is served by such rankings'. Surely not academic
>>> staff - I can't imagine a lecturer or reader saying to themsleves, 'OK I
>>> find I'm working at institutution rank #234 but I really want to go and work
>>> at institution #5 (which happens to be 250 miles from where I live and would
>>> involve massive upheaval in my life, family etc) (and assuming institution
>>> #5 happens to have a vacancy that suits me just now) (and I will get that
>>> vacancy)'. Maybe these rankings are useful to students who have more
>>> geographical flexibiloity in where they apply. Maybe to HEFCE here in the UK
>>> or its equivalents in other countries, although surely they know the
>>> rankings anyway. Maybe to competitive VCs. .....
>>>
>>> Anyway surely an overall ranking masks massive differences in
>>> departments. Its conceivable that institution #234 has a brilliant law
>>> department, perhaps better than the law department at #5 say, because #234
>>> specialises in the humanities but #5 excels in the physical sciences,
>>>
>>> Just asking, who mainly uses / benefits from these rankings?
>>>
>>> Dr Hillary J. Shaw
>>> Director and Senior Research Consultant
>>> Shaw Food Solutions
>>> Newport
>>> Shropshire
>>> TF10 8QE
>>> www.fooddeserts.org
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: simone tulumello <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:17
>>> Subject: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial academia
>>>
>>> Hi critters,
>>> I've been in this list for some time, and there's an issue that has not
>>> got a lot of attention - and I guess why. While we hve been debating a lot
>>> of privatization, corporatization (and so forth) of academia and,
>>> especially, the publishing system, I don't remember a lot of talks about the
>>> "rankings".
>>> THE has just released the European 2016 best universities ranking.
>>> Guess what, 4 out of 5 best universities are in the UK, and 6 out of 10
>>> best.
>>>
>>> Shall we talk about the inconsitencies of such "rankings"? To make an
>>> example, my university (University of Lisbon) is not listed, while there's
>>> one of its schools (Instituto Superior Tecnico)!
>>> Roars, an Italian based group of researchers, has been making a huge work
>>> in showing how unscientific are this and other rankings (here, for example).
>>>
>>> To me, it is not surprising that UK-based organizations make rankings
>>> that would favor the UK. I am astonished by the fact that "we", the
>>> international academic community, accept such rankings as "international",
>>> just because... they are in English!
>>>
>>> Well, I'd love to hear some comments from UK-based academics...
>>> :)
>>>
>>> Best wishes, and... congrats to people in the top ten!
>>> Simone
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Simone Tulumello
>>> Post-doc research fellow, ULisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais
>>> Fulbright visiting scholar, University of Memphis, Department City and
>>> Regional Planning
>>>
>>> latest publications:
>>> Tulumello S. (2015), Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From
>>> Theory to Practice, Planning Practice & Research, 30(5), 477-496. Doi:
>>> 10.1080/02697459.2015.1025677
>>> Seixas J., Tulumello S., Corvelo S., Drago A. (2015). Dinâmicas
>>> sociogeográficas e políticas na Área Metropolitana de LIsboa em tempos de
>>> crise e austeridade. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(34), 371-399. Doi
>>> 10.1590/2236-9996.2015-3404
>>>
>>> webpage / blog / academia.edu / flickr / twitter
>>>
>>>
>>> Dr. Holly Randell-Moon
>>> Department of Media, Film and Communication
>>> 6th Floor Richardson Building
>>> Central Campus
>>> University of Otago
>>> Dunedin 9016
>>> New Zealand
>>>
>>> Area Chair, Religion
>>> Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand, PopCAANZ
>>>
>>> Religion after Secularization in Australia
>>>
>>> Space, Race, Bodies
>>>
>>> ------
>>> "Replace us with the things that do the job better. Replace us with the
>>> things that do the job better" - Hot Chip
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Simone Tulumello
>> Post-doc research fellow, ULisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais
>> Fulbright visiting scholar, University of Memphis, Department City and
>> Regional Planning
>>
>> latest publications:
>> Tulumello S. (2015), Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From
>> Theory to Practice, Planning Practice & Research, 30(5), 477-496. Doi:
>> 10.1080/02697459.2015.1025677
>> Seixas J., Tulumello S., Corvelo S., Drago A. (2015). Dinâmicas
>> sociogeográficas e políticas na Área Metropolitana de LIsboa em tempos de
>> crise e austeridade. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(34), 371-399. Doi
>> 10.1590/2236-9996.2015-3404
>>
>> webpage / blog / academia.edu / flickr / twitter
>
>
>
>
> --
> Simone Tulumello
> Post-doc research fellow, ULisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais
> Fulbright visiting scholar, University of Memphis, Department City and
> Regional Planning
>
> latest publications:
> Tulumello S. (2015), Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From Theory
> to Practice, Planning Practice & Research, 30(5), 477-496. Doi:
> 10.1080/02697459.2015.1025677
> Seixas J., Tulumello S., Corvelo S., Drago A. (2015). Dinâmicas
> sociogeográficas e políticas na Área Metropolitana de LIsboa em tempos de
> crise e austeridade. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(34), 371-399. Doi
> 10.1590/2236-9996.2015-3404
>
> webpage / blog / academia.edu / flickr / twitter