Blogging and Conferences

I got back from the political science conference yesterday, had a few glasses of wine, and slept the sleep of the just. Well, the sleep of someone who was really glad to be back in her own bed. I'm turning into an old fart and can't sleep in hotel beds anymore.

The conference went well. We had about 50 people at the politics of blogs panel, which is good for this sort of thing. My presentation went fine. It helped that I was talking about blogs and was in a major comfort zone. The chair provides us with some helpful suggestions, and we fielded excellent questions from the audience.

Here's the paper It's about single interest bloggers and their unique angle on blogging.

I was a bit disappointed about the lack of awareness among academics about blogs. Very few political scientists blog. Well, who can blame them? The professional risks are high, the time commitment is huge, and many are sensibly adverse to dealing with the wingnut element (not you, of course). I still think that there are advantages to academic blogging -- testing out ideas, networking, and acting as a bridge between academia and the public. There's a way of flying under the radar (having a clunky website and forgettable title), which keeps the readership high quality and at a managable level. It's possible to do it in the spare minutes of a day. Maybe we should have a panel on that at the next APSA.

It was also a bit disappointing to learn that few academics are reading the blogs. They don't see the relevance of blogs and don't even know about some very excellent, non A-list blogs. Even ones that are directly relevant to their research. There's been some amazing online discussions in the past few years that have been completed missed by academics and the media. Somebody should probably be writing this stuff up and giving proper credit to online sources.

On Friday night, I tagged along to a dinner with a friend and her colleagues. I had some first rate fish and first rate chats with some new people. Two other women and I discussed how terrifying it is to attend APSA as a young, female graduate student. The profession is so overwhelmingly male, dressed in conservative dark suits and ties. There's no way to blend as a woman. And clothes is such a big issue. Guys have their uniforms that give them credibility and respect. For women, there's just so many ways to go wrong. Some either go too butch or too femme. Many just don't have the money to spend on good conference clothes. All three of us commiserated and shared our secrets.

I caught up with some friends, though I missed more than I saw, because I was only around for a short time. I talked with my dad's publishers. I missed my kids.

So, this is a long post for a holiday weekend, when absolutely nobody is on the Internet. I'll be back on Tuesday, when there's more folks about.

Comments

[harry b]

Can't get at the paper for some reason. IS that supposed to be a direct link?

Clothes: I often think about that. Philosophy is just as bad as PS in gender balance (worse, perhaps) but has the upside that philosophers are sartotially shabby, so women ca get away with less thought about clothing. Still, what you say is right "there are so many ways to go wrong". I am the most inelegant male around, and have given less thought to my clothing in my life than I have spent drinking alcohol (for everyone other than Laura, I'm the one who's never been drunk that she mentioned a couple of months ago), but I blend in at large conferences, whereas women really have to work to blend in. Here's a rule of thumb: however much effort men have to put into their dress, women have to put in 5 times as much.

Academics ignoring blogs: isn't this just an instance of a general phenomenon of academics (int he social sciences, anyway) ignoring what non-academics (and other academics whom they think beneath them) have to say about things, which is why a lot of academic work in the social sciences seems like very clever ways of saying the obvious, or very clever ways of ignoring the obvious? Hate to say it, but I've learned more about how to think about family life from reading various blogs than from my (pretty extensive) reading in the social sciences. And a lot of what I've learned from the academic reading I've only really understood by discussing it on blogs.

[Cari]

Hi Laura, I was on the panel with you. I enjoyed your presentation, and since you mentioned that you have a blog, I decided to check it out. I think one of the reasons that academics don't take blogs seriously is that they think they are "overrated," that they don't really have much influence, so who cares? They spend so much time lamenting the decline of the public sphere, and yet when they see citizens discussing ideas online, they seem to look for ways to discount blogs, or to ridicule them. Maybe it's an elitist thing. But as researchers, I think we should be thrilled at the wealth of material that blogs provide. We have political discussions that take place between hundreds of people, every day for years, and every word is recorded.

And, as a young, female, terrified graduate student (it was my first conference) -- I totally understand the clothing issue. It took me three shopping trips to find an outfit. Still, multiple people remarked that I looked "young" during the weekend.

[Laura]

This was your first conference, Cari??!! It didn't show. You looked like a seasoned pro to me. I think I wore jeans to my first APSA conference and people openly mocked me. I think that the women at APSA should do a better job of ganging together and helping each other through this thing.

There's been marvelous discussions about the politics of family and motherhood on the Internet, right Harry? I think we've been going on at a higher level than some of the academic discussions on this topic. We've got to publish some of this stuff.

And yeah, Cari, I think it's foolish to ignore this vast body of online discussion on the blogs. Most academics have no idea. I think that we should have some sort of Blogs for Beginners session at the next APSA. But also lots of Academics are threatened by the "public" writing, which pisses me off to no end. Hubby and I were just talking about how we think that one condition for getting tenure should be one publication in a mainstream newspaper or journal.

[Jacob T. Levy]

Philosophy is just as bad as PS in gender balance (worse, perhaps)

Worse. Political Science is plenty bad, but the gender ratio at the APSA meeting is, I'll guess, 7:5 or so. At APA it looks like at least 3:1. And the women skew even younger at APA than at APSA, which is to say that they're much more likely to be grad students, amplifying all kinds of power dynamics.

Laura, sorry I missed you...

[Laura]

When my husband and I were chatting about the gender inbalance at conferences yesterday, we thought that philosophy was better than PS and economics was worse than PS. Wrong, I guess.

Sorry we missed each other, too.

[Scott Lemieux]

Hope you had a great time in Philly! Sorry to have missed out on all the cool blogging-related program activities...