Studying anthropology on-line is like studying oceanography through watching an aquarium (from the outside)...
...............................Cédric BAYLOCQAnthropologue/AnthropologistChargéde mission/Special advisor, Paris, FranceChercheurassocié/Associate research au LAM, IEPde Bordeaux

      De : "Stewart, Michael" <[log in to unmask]>
À : [log in to unmask] 
Envoyé le : Mardi 20 juin 2017 0h18
 Objet : Re: Online Courses Anthropology
   
Well.. one might take a different view of these things….

I have no doubt that those who studied Anthropology in the 1960s, when in the UK there were 4-6 students a year in any one department’s Ug education programme and who each had access to hours of direct contact with Mr Leach, Ms Douglas. Mr Fortes etc much lamented the huge reduction in intellectual value of courses in the late 1970 when - horror on horror - an institution like the LSE or UCL would dare to take on 18 or even 20 students in a single year. And no doubt these Cassndras of the old order noted that these popularising and commercialising departments did not even care if all of their intake were capable of becoming professional anthropologists at the end of their studies.

If we go back a little further we will remember that even the 1960s laissez-faire regrind Ug education represented a huge moral decline from the time when, as EE-P famously argued, anthropology should only be studies at PGT or PGR level — since it was not a subject that could be taught to those without a rigorous autonomous intellectual dicsicpine - it really was only for the elite of the elite.

As for now - when UCL has 70+ students in its first year Ug intake, well the democratic floodgates have been opened and what cretin would argue to debase the great science further by the use of mass dissemination tools like the internet?

Well - it is not so simple… You can combine the brilliance of online with the intensity of in-person in all kinds of ways to raise the standard of University provision. This is not rocket science. We use books in much the same way!

Personally I am saddened and surprised that there in all this is a deep affinity of the old who had it ‘so good’ (if you believe them, sitting at the feet of the masters of l’ancien regime - and just look up the data on what it was like if you are working class and had to try to sip sherry with Sir - once a night is quite enough - Edmund Leach - and I rather doubt that le grand maitre was much different in this respect) and a small section of 'the young' who - in order to represent all change as part of some nefarious “neoliberal” (sic!) regime - are willing to represent one of the great democratising opportunities of tour time (online tutorials) as if it is an assault on the status of knowledge.

When BBC Radio started broadcasting in the 1920s there were many voices that denounced the way the massifiaction of culture would destroy the very substance of artistic culture itself. The great cultural pessimist of the right, TS Eliot, comes to mind -

The weird thing is that in the 1930s and 1940s those voices came mostly from the far right.. Today they come from people who think of themselves on the left or far left….

How very strange and sad that is.

It is banally true that any one service provider on the internet may be less than adequate, but it is not the medium but their abilities and delivery that makes them so.

At Ucl the most interesting and innovative degrees - my own included - use the provision of online tutorials and lectures as an additional means to get students access to great inspiration and education.

Academia used to be full of people who were full of excitement for the present and the potential it contained - what happened to that?


Michael Stewart



On 19 Jun 2017, at 19:22, Mariya Ivancheva <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

dear all,

as an anthropologist studying this process i can't help but notice that it
goes far beyond debilitating anthropology and hits the core of what the
university degree means these days. under the mild and obscure term
'unbundling' universities are increasingly disaggregating traditional
degrees and outsourcing even bits of their teaching and learning provision
to private partners. a good short text on the subject (again, not focusing
on anthropology) can be found here
<https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/higher-education-is-not-a-mixtape/384845/>
...

best,
mariya

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