Academia

So it is about that time again; where the academic calender is calling my name.  This year of course its especially loud as the job market proves to have no love for me.  Thus it brings me back to my eternal quest to get into and funded at a PhD program.  I thought for sure last year would have bore fruit.  But it didn't.  I cut my academic nose off to spite my occupation.  It seemed like a great idea at the time, stay in the New York area to be closer to Occupy.  But I overestimated my capacity within the power and strength of the advice I was getting from others in the know about my PhD applications.  I was surrounded by people that knew and fabulously supported me.  I felt like I'd get in everywhere!  But admissions department's don't know you like your friends and colleagues do.  I got overconfident I suppose, and applied most;y to the most sought after programs in the country.  It didn't work out as I got in to one place with too little funding and wait-listed at my top choice.  A couple hundred plus applicants for two spots.  I was in the top ten it seems, but I didn't get in.  Most of the advice I got from friends and family at the time was to give up, walk away, and find a new career option.  How many years to you keep trying before you realize they may just not be interested in my application?


So I put my efforts into Occupy and finding work in the non-profit and/or international development sectors.  It hasn't worked thus far.  My resume seems to not get me far in these communities and today's economic climate.  Not to mention that, as always, I find myself yearning for intellectual discourse, to be able to focus, to just sit and learn and analyze and try to come to new alternative ways of doing and contemplating things.  I always come back to it.  My passion will always lie in this type of work. I just need to find the best outlet for it.


So I've been looking into how to go about this in academia again.  What lessons have I learned from the last several application processes?  What can be changed?  What in fact should I be studying?  I've started formulating some prospective concepts in my mind over the last few months, and reached out to some people that I trust and have helped me throughout.  I feel like this past year and the people that I've found myself involved with has really honed some of my thoughts/perspectives, especially in formulating this concept.  A year on the ground as a part of a social movement brings a lot of concrete insights that are tough for those outside of it to replicate.  Combining this ground level Occupy stuff with my previous work has really broadened my context and critique of society.


In my head this summer I have been musing about writing a book about some things that make a lot of sense in terms of a PhD project as well.  I keep thinking about the meaning of the systemic, institutional, and successful suppression of the Occupy movement.  The main question that came into my head when thinking about American democracy and society as a whole was the question: "when do you give up on America?"  If Occupy can so easily be suppressed and marginalized, what hope do we have?  As I've been conceptualizing this thought, it centers around the systemic suppression of this open and democratic movement using the private media, the use of "legitimate" power in the form of the police, FBI, homeland security, etc, and a myriad of other tools to sway public opinion in unfavorable directions regarding the movement and the use of free democratic speech as well.


The point of it to me though is not to make another report on the suppression of another movement, but to focus on what this means for our society as a whole and our interest/ability to bring about change.  The main premise is that while "America" believes itself to be so many great things, it is in fact statistically falling far behind much of the industrialized world, and that the suppression of this movement (one envisioned to exactly address these issues and to do it with basis of free speech, economic and social justice, and a more inclusive society) tells me that the country could be on the brink of being lost to real change.  Is our society so systematically controlled as to stifle the exact cure of our ills?  Have the individual people (I know loaded and generalized statement) have become so entrenched in the system that they can no longer assess and critique the system?  It seems that we as a society are forced into a steadfast maintenance of daily life and survival, and that we perhaps blindly trust media and the state to the point of ignorance.  Hence what seems like an easy and slow transition from empathy towards the Occupy movement, to an eventual siding by many people with the "law and order" and the state/corporate message, as opposed to freedom of speech, expression, and the fight for economic and social justice/true democracy that we are taught America is about.  Basically, what does it mean for American society to have had a movement aiming to care for and give voice to all people be so resoundingly squelched by the establishment, and for this to seemingly be accepted by the general public as ok. 


I think these are very important issues to be addressed, and which stretch well beyond NYC and the US.  Even to the global issues and Africa work that matter so much to me easily play into it.  When contextualized through a global light, there is a systematic repression of justice movements throughout the world using the same tactics and weapons used here in the US and that all fall within the framework of neoliberal systems.  The police, media, state resources, the corporate control and influence over global political and economic systems.  The pictures and tactics from around the world are all the same.  Police forces and intelligence services being used as tools of capitalist and authoritarian regimes, all in the name of local or international order.  Public money being spent for police to guard private property.  These images even bridge the international political science discourse on liberal/democratic peace theory that I've done work on in the past with domestic issues of democratic voice and internal conflict/force. 

Obviously this global framework would be an important part of understanding the broader issues affecting things here on the ground in the US regarding democratic voice and the Occupy movement in an interconnected world.  But for me in these purposes, Occupy and the US would be a specific research focus to investigate the systemic issues inherent within the neo-liberal system, what the past year means about the strength of this system, and what "its" hold on power and social control is.  I wrote something touching a bit on some of these issues in a really short piece for the MetrOccupied newspaper.

That article brought me to some very poignant research questions that I feel should be asked regarding the media. While there was a wealth of coverage in the beginning by countless media outlets, what happened after the park was lost and the media coverage slowly dwindled away?  Was the media coverage suppressed?  Was it just the news cycle and fickle nature of private media?  Why did the mainstream coverage eventually seem to solely show negative clashes with the police rather than the movement's outputs?  And what of the alternative media that still covers the movement to this day?  What differentiates these media outlets?  I made some decent friends in the media over this past year and my conversations with them only raised more concerns and questions I'd love to ask.

There are also an equal number of questions to be raised in terms of the physical suppression of the movement by law enforcement.  This has drawn a great deal of attention in alternative and liberal circles and there are a number of projects on going that point out the inequities and illegalities throughout both this movement and others.  These studies would provide a solid foundation for a more expansive inquiry/analysis into the nature and legality of physical suppression by "legal" actors. 

That line of thought brings me to the crux of my interest:  the contradiction and conflict within America's national identity - based so profoundly on different types of freedoms - that I feel that the Occupy movement has shown.  From political voice, to assembly and free speech, to economic and social freedoms, civil liberties, property rights, and everything else in between, there is a devout contradiction here as despite this American self-image of being exceptionally free, the violent suppression of the Occupy movement (and others before it) shows that the country is in fact as repressive as many other countries from whom we like to differentiate ourselves.  The question then becomes where do these contradictions and conflicts come from.  What can the Occupy movement show us regarding this contradiction?  What is the "individual American's" role in this?  Do people uncritically accept their circumstances?  How does the concept of law and order and the "legitimate" use of force factor in?  To what extent does the media's telling of this tale factor into people's opinions, their social critique, and an American concept of "freedom"?  What does it mean to believe the media's representations?  And what would a critique of this "America" look like if it should exist?

The contradictions of course go well beyond just the media, police, and public perception.  They are shaped by state actions and their interactions with corporate interests and messages.  Do the police merely protect the interests of the corporate state and state-like corporations?  What is the outcome of this physical repression on the general public's sense of freedom and democracy?  And what of the possible "repression" of information by both state and private institutions?  Does it actually exist and if so under what context?

This inquiry also requires much more than just an interrogation of whether "America" has allowed the Occupy movement to by pushed a side, but what role did the Occupy movement itself play in its suppression?  How does Occupy's general choice not to engage with electoral politics play in?  How does the strong influence of anarchist ideology/principles factor in to the movement's appearance from the outside give current and historical constructs/prejudices?  Realistically, the media came out in droves early, and in many ways provided the support and interest in Occupy (and its related issues/messages) that allowed the movement to explode into a global movement.  So how and why did that change and what was Occupies role in that?  There is a lot of work to be done analyzing media content and frequency, and Occupy's role in framing this coverage, just as there is to discussing Occupy's reactions to the policing and suppression of the movement throughout the multiple levels of the US's social and political fabric.


Ultimately, this project takes me personally so far in the right directions.  It is a long way from Sierra Leone yes, but it tugs at the heart of my larger interests and interdisciplinary soul that will resonate further than "capitalist expropriation in Africa" - which is not a new topic to academia.  This project with Occupy, which has grown within me while having been on the ground with OWS for the whole year, puts me in a very advantageous position.  I mean how many applicants could say that they were living in the park, organizing daily, getting pushed by the police, being both propped up and stifled by the media, facilitating large discussion group every day and turning that into research outputs?  Nevermind maintaining an involvement?  How many applicants would have the background I do and would be applying for PhD's in the same places?  I the parlance of my neighborhood, I've got knowledge and street cred here.  And I've earned it.  I want to use that knowledge and leverage to get to the next level and to provide a proper break down and analysis of both what's happening here and its meaning.

Wooo.....  right, but where do I do this study?  I had been applying mostly in Anthropology over the ast couple years; a discipline that is great at accessing individual agency, power, national cultural images, and critiques of the media, but I've done a lot of work in Sociology as well, a discipline that is really strong on Social Movements.  I also already have a masters degree in history and could piggy back off that; assess the movement through the historical suppression of social movements and of social change in general and in American ideals.  There is also the legal aspect to it all.  There are law schools out there tied to interdisciplinary initiatives that could be very interested in this work.  I personally usually think in interdisciplinary terms as it usually bridges my interests well - giving the the best of many worlds.  But it also has its limits in the depth of analysis.  Those programs are also hard to locate.

I think the key for me is going to be to find progressive/critical mentors, academics and programs that are going to work with me, understanding that I am not just an academic, but an activist, a protester, a dyslexic football player... an all-together different sort of fellow.  So how widely do I apply?  And how do I afford the application fees?  If I am going to do it, I need to get it done this year and i need to get the applications done early.  I need all my ducks in a row, to do lots of research, and make some really astute choices to get in to the right schools.  We'll see.  Time to get reading so I can frame the study in the right way, reach out to the right people, and try to make things happen... Oh yeah, and try to figure out where to sleep next week, whether I'll have enough food, and what to do for the next year until a program would start - if I was to get in!  lol.  What I wouldn't give for a job!!  ;)

A Real Occupy Think Tank

So Friday I met with a Think Tanker about moving things to the next level.  We have been thinking for months (really since its inception for me) about creating a true research institution surrounding the work and issues we are focusing on at Occupy.  We met about trying to make this happen.  There are three of us that may really be interested in working on it.  We don't really have plans as much as guidelines.  But it is a good thing to move forward with.  The general concept was free-written as such:

We would structure this research institute under different auspices and governance structures than found in typical institutions.  We would incorporate a horizontal decision making structure into a managerial structure sharing input throughout ll levels of the institute and its research process.  Focusing on horizontal ideals while still working to maximize efficiency and expertise.  The research process would be facilitated by trained intellectuals doing research and working to guide projects on specific areas of interest and expertise.  These individuals would work within their main areas of inquiry or subject matter, but would largely be responsible for managing information and what would mostly be crowd sourced research supplemented/done by the general public.  The teams would be open and charged with briding public participation in reaserch and ideas while working with the scientifically valid research methods.  The idea would create a think tank that was far broader than a few PhD's sitting in stuffy rooms reading books, but for qualified intellectuals to act as  facilitators and discussion/project leaders aiming at producing a research process that includes and brings to the fore the public's voices and ideas both in terms of subjects and as researchers. 

From a methodological perspective, the research process would include at least four areas of data collection:

1. The general public on the ground. Open discussions, town hall style roundtables, community lead research/questions. This would take the form of individuals going out into public/private spaces (in cooperation with local community groups), asking questions, and engaging in public dialog with citizens and local communities.
2. An expansive web presence that would act as an idea/information conduit and repository that would open information and research to the public and researchers.
3. There would still be standard academic styled research and discourse.
4. Survey or phone based sampling to try to include everyday citizens into the dialog. This could be part of number 1.

The key component to this think tank would be a foundation based on open/crowd sourcing of the research, and teams of researchers that could be anyone and everyone from throughout the process.  At every level of society you can have a conversation with people with profound ideas and initiative; from CEO's to carpenters, there is intellect everywhere.  All the researching, writing, editing, and decision making would be done by and for us - the people.  With a large focus on engaging the general public both in the process of learning and engaging with their voices while coming to outcomes, options, and policy suggestions.  We believe that this will put individuals and groups that have traditionally been on the periphery, or marginalized throughout the whole process of intellectual creation, at the forefront of understanding and recreating their own social, political, and economic outcomes.  

The research focus itself would be within Occupy's principles and interests of political, economic, and social justice.  The research would however not inherently be done on the Occupy movement itself, but focused on doing research that viewed the world through the prism of an occupied lens and used this as its analytical and thematic point of departure. The institute would be designed to become the nexus for the ideas, research, and actions surrounding and produced by the Occupy movement.

Sustainable Occupy Concept

Sustainable Occupy One Page Concept

Occupy is a movement about change and creating another world. To that end, the Occupy Wall St. Think Tank will be undertaking an in-depth research and solution oriented study aimed at compiling, assessing, and creating sustainable models for the Occupy movement to work with moving forward.

• The Think Tank will work to find a way to sustain individual socio-political engagement, occupiers, and the occupy movement itself. Our aim is to create ways for both individuals and communities to be more focused and dedicated as social and political actors, a structured yet flexible working and communications network, and the creation of longer term ethical environments to live, work and grow within.
  
• We also want to provide a sustainable example for general society. That we can live within moral and ethical frameworks and still partake in the rest of society. That we can still have iphones, watch TV, have decent clothes, see family and friends, go places, make things, achieve great things, and enjoy our lives – but to do it through a more inclusive and rewarding way of engaging with social, economic, and political interactions.
  
• Another world is possible - and there are countless examples from brazil to china, AD to BCE. Let’s learn from them all, create possible alternatives, engage with them, experiment with them till we find the best way of all!. Figure out what it could be, set it up, and lead by example!

Our principles: We will do whatever it takes to answer these questions and provide a solution. This project requires people with questions, no presumptive answers, and an ability to leave their ideologies at the door. While well versed in social scientific methodology, we will not be handcuffed by the rigidity of categorical methods of inquiry. We’ll read novels, plays, historical materials, newspaper articles; conduct street surveys and informal discussions; engage in participant observation, crunch numbers and paint pictures; and anything else or to whatever extent, that we see as a potential tool in learning, understanding and doing. Most importantly though, we’ll do it everywhere, and everything is on the table!

We will operate in an atmosphere of joyful exploration and mutual respect where every idea is valued.

Consider a few questions: What is the meaning of work? We can explore this question by engaging in physical production (sewing, carpentry, cooking), by reading novels about communes or academic works on the transition from manufacturing to service economies, or even have discussion groups with members of alternative living communities from abroad. Or how about nourishment? How do we understand our food and how we would want it to be produced and consumed. Or the nourishment we receive from art and music, or that a child receives growing up in a liberating environment? Stability, security, food, shelter, community, wants, needs, love, respect; how do we gain all of these for both our selves and others?

We will address these questions and countless more. We will learn from historical examples and doing, connect with small and large experiments around the world, and engage with the everyday lives of people and their ideas. We have a problem: “the world” is not working for most people. We must both create and envision a new one – in no particular order.

Sustainable Occupy

This is a project that the think tank will be undertaking and that I will be a big part of.

Sustainable Occupy Research Project Concept Draft

The Occupy Wall St. Think Tank will be undertaking an in-depth research and solution oriented study aimed at compiling, assessing, and creating sustainable models for the Occupy movement to work with moving forward. In its initial stages Occupy was an amazing systemic critique and protest of the current socio-economic climate via both dialog and message and through a prefigurative social apparatus diagramming another way of organizing social interaction. However, upon losing Liberty park the movement was forced into transition and to undergo change on many levels. Throughout the initial stages of the occupation, numerous individuals came to the park and were afforded the ability to sustain their lives through the community there while working towards the movement’s and their own activist goals. Since the eviction of the park, many people have been forced to scramble independently for their own livelihoods, leaving their capacity to engage within the Occupy movement more tenuous. There are a tremendous number of people that have “fallen off the edges” as they had to get jobs, moved back out of the city, or simply have not been able to handle the lack of cohesion and/or transitional nature of the movement’s current situation. We need to not only find a way to bring these people back, but to generate a sustainable pathway forward for the people willing to become full time activists. This would allow the movement itself to stably maintain and promote itself and also be more coherent and welcoming to new individuals and groups.

Obviously, the need for a public space and a nostalgia for the consistent visible protest has been evident through the numerous, yet often ill conceived, attempts at reoccupation since the original eviction. I think most people within the movement are interested in consistency, a stable work space, as well as a location from which to expand the movement as it moves forward. How this is to be done though is the key question. Yes, there has been talk of this from the very beginning of the occupation. There are countless groups and individuals that have spent a great deal of time trying to find spaces/buildings, create revenue, get donations, feed and house individuals, etc. But they are not still working directly on this to my knowledge. The movement turned to more single day actions, organizing individuals, and focusing on singular issues since the turn of the year. We are planning good direct actions, yet to me, there is not enough work on outreach/base building and on creating a sustainable future. I am certain that this is not due to lack of will, but lack of time and stability for those deeply involved in the movement.

What we are proposing right now is to bring together a group of people to create a researc project that will lead to an exhaustible investigation and understanding of the context, factors, and history of the options available to move forward with The outcome would then be possible comprehensive suggestions at ways forward for both the movement and everyone invovled. What the think tank hopes to achieve in methodology and practice is a synthesis of Occupy styled horizontality and open mindedness, and social science research methodology. But this will be solution driven as opposed to simply research. We will be creating sustainable ways forward for the movement and its individuals. What these will be we do not yet know, nor is this about testing hypothesis or existing models through research. It is about finding several possible solutions amidst the sea of ideas, opinions, and solutions that people have previously come to the table with and/or exist in the world (from Brazil’s landless movement, to coops in park slope). We plan to bring together one large network of individuals and ideas and focus them on answer the very specific question: How does Occupy create a sustainable way forward that allows it to meet its activist’s basic needs, allows for the expansion and dissemination of its ideas and messages, and establishes exemplary and prefigurative models of social engagement while stably existing throughout the transitional process of change as society transforms to a more idealic social composition (or while simultaneously providing a relatively stable transitional process for itself as society transforms to a more idealic social composition, or…). This question would be the first thing to be addressed by the research unit. What does it mean to move forward and what is the question we need to answer.

For illustration purposes only, I will sketch a possible scenario, but I would advise anyone reading this to look beyond the illustration and to the questions that they are trying to address: We live in a capitalist world were certain parameters are necessary for stable involvement WITHIN the system. Housing, food, interaction and communication, all require things to obtain them – relationships, money, jobs, etc. We need to find an alternative way to structure our lives, while at the same time engaging with the old way enough to transition to something new. Inhabiting the gray areas. The research needs to be open, allowing every possible option on the table, and to methodically dismiss and add things through our principled research.

Sample concept:
Imagine if ten years from now Occupy controlled an old hotel structure in Brooklyn that it had fixed up, and was housing several hundred individuals, office and meeting spaces, and allowed itself the ability to sustain and feed both the facility and its people. That the location was a local hub in a national and global network of prefigurative Occupy principled entities that supported both the facility and the larger network through multiple ways such as revenue generation and also showed the general public a different way of producing goods and interacting with the economy. This network would be made up of many different hubs and entities bringing in revenue streams ranging from fundraising to guild-like entities to hybrid styled non-profit companies to perhaps something new. The housing situation would be cooperative and communal in some way shape or form and allocated and maintained by horizontal principles. The entire facility would function as a launching point for the movement’s ideas, work, messaging, etc.

Sample revenue generating entity:
Perhaps “Choccupy” is a full part of this network and sells chocolates and deserts (sale or donation) to the general public in a non-profit cooperative structure. It works from either the hotel structure’s industrial kitchen or from another production facility within the network. It produces chocolates and then sells them vendor and retail style throughout the city. It also maintains locations and relationships throughout the country for recipe sharing and localized production and distribution. All materials and ingredients are ethically sourced, as local as possible, and using principled methods akin to Occupy’s values such as GMO free, non-expropriative labor practices, economically and socially just, etc. Revenue would come in either through sales or donations, and would be used to maintain itself, its facilities, and occupiers. It would be run, managed, and controlled by a cooperative styled entity made up of a number of individuals working horizontally, with all proceeds going directly back into the entity/facility and the movement and its goals. It also could be an affiliate endeavor, meaning it gives a certain amount or percentage of its proceeds to Occupy (or however it is that this arrangement is set up).

The goal would be to construct a prospective structure of autonomous affiliate entities (and locales) that met certain requirements to be a part of the network. They would work together, be horizontal, local, and work for the movement. These revenue generating entities would allow for individuals to work and to collectively show prefigurative ways of life. These entities could come in many shapes or forms based on the research and local initiative: services, retail, cofftea shops, production, agriculture, whatever. Anyway that individuals, businesses, or new entities felt they could structure society and socio-economic interaction amongst themselves, for sale for barter, for donation… Whatever could fit in the mind – a localized conglomerate cooperative fair/trade model with a horizontal leadership structure. How knows!

Sample housing entity:
Could be set up cooperatively as seen to best fit by the research and Occupy principles. There would obviously be a million questions about access, and decision making – tough questions that would get into gray areas about the movement’s inclusivity – but that would be the purpose of the research study, to thoroughly research and find multiple options that could work. The principle goal could be to find a way that say 200 people could live together in a multiple occupancy structure and wake up in the morning and get to work together. Communally spending time on maintaining the housing situation, on revenue generation, and on broadening and working for the movement. All equally shouldered by individual’s both living and not living there. How this would be done and structured would all be part of the research outcome. Just as how the space would be obtained. Squating perhaps is the first thing to come to mind, but is that viable? Wouldn’t the NYPD shut it down straight away? So a lengthy research into legal issues and structures would be order for ways to allow stability on a legal level.

While those are just a few sample concepts to stir the imagination, whatever structures and entities emerge, the purpose of them would be to provide stable spaces from which Occupy would organize and structure its messages and actions. This would allow more consistent and concerted targeting of specific issues and actions with a more transparent, inclusive, and cohesive structural point of origin. In my opinion it is only from a stable foundation that we can have the security to go to work each day and be as productive as possible in working towards changing the world – both as a prefigurative message of protest and as an information generating and disseminating awareness machine.

On the whole: there are countless issues to address and research here, many of which wouldn’t be known until the research showed them. The economics of anything of this sort would be incredibly complex. Where do you get a building from? Donation, lease, friendly lease and if so, how do you cover the costs of getting it, maintaining it? How do you start up those business like entities? They require start up funds, management expertise, planning, etc. Horizontal housing structures? We’ve tried that… how can it work? How has it worked? How is it that we could consense on the parameters of our principles? How big is that gray area that our collective principles will allow us to work within?

What we are talking about is planning to institute an entirely new socio-economic structure within the current one, under the watchful eye of capital and governmental forces bent on stopping us, within a horizontal consensus structure and movement, with little money, little time, and in our spare time. It is a HUGE undertaking that will take years and decades to see through. But this to me, is exactly what Occupy is about. This type of project would create structural alternatives for transition allowing Occupy to straddle mainstream socio-economic society and an alternative new pathway while maintaining the same activist and awareness raising work we are currently doing To find a legal way to maintain a space while creating a structure of interaction that was work-like and sustainable in a way that the general public could both respect and even desire. We could be laying the ground work for an alternative way forward while providing a stable place to do outreach, create media, do research, live, eat, etc.

And while yes, it seems daunting, sooooo much work has already been done. So many experiments and so much research has already been done both outside and inside Occupy. We just have to bring it together and find one or several practical usages and ways forward that we can contextually implement. This will again, not be easy. Most people would probably be quite reticent to give up their current lives and the “necessities” of it: individualism, ipods, cars, whatever. The process will have multiple levels and ways to allow individuals to partake in the transition (the project).

I would say this transition will take generations and require an entire new social construct. But it will be one that will have to happen through hard work on creating evolution on a revolutionary level as opposed to a singular revolt that could be seen to put something upon people as opposed to allowing them to come to it themselves. Mindsets takes generations to change collectively. We are on the right track.

Schools

Originally written 4/2, rewritten/updated 5/6

So there I sat, it was April 15th, a day with little significance to most everyone outside of PhD application circles.  I of course was in that circle and desperately waiting for word on what my future would entail.  I had been waiting for months and the past couple weeks had become agonizing.  I had been rejected from all of the viable options with funding except one.  Rutgers.  I was on the wait list there.  200 plus applicants and there was only two spots for socio-cultural anthropologists.  I didn't know where I was on the waiting list, but knew it was a small list and only two offers had gone out.

I had been working towards this for almost a decade.  Now it was down to final week of waiting.  It was agonizing, but not as agonizing as getting final notice that I was not accepted anywhere.  So please bare with me in this novelesque post as this is going to be a hard one for me to write.

I have put a lot of effort into "school" over the last ten years.  In 2002 when I went back to the US from Prague I went with the idea of going to business school for sports management.  I wanted to capitalize on the work I'd done with American Football in Europe.  I very quickly decided though that while I loved the work with football, developing the game, and working with kids in such a multicultural setting, it wasn't what I really wanted out of life.  I had for a long time been intrigued by the Peace Corps and instead chose to work towards that.  I went through the application process and was nominated to go to Central Asia, but with about a month to go I backed out for what I thought at the time could have been the love of my life.  I had planned to go back to school after the PC and was eyeing up international studies programs, sociology and anything really focusing on systematized inequality.  So I decided to move my studies up while giving that relationship a chance (two plus years in the hills of Central Asia doesn't make for much hope in a relationship!). 

But first things first, I have gone through an incredible evolution intellectually and personally here.  I started at West Virginia wanting to be an exercise physiologist and athletic trainer, I ended up studying sociology - reading people like Karl Marx and Max Weber, working on race relations and economic and social justice issues.  I was never presented with anything like that in high school and became incredibly intrigued by critical theory - especially critiques of Capitalism.  After graduation and a bit of time in corporate America I moved to Prague.  The two years I spent in there from 2000-02 really opened up the former socialist areas of the world to me and the in-depth intrigues of different ways of life.  I also had a keen interest in History and specifically Genghis Khan so I was brought closer to Central Asia and the parts of its socialist past and present.  I decided I wanted to study socialist transition, both to and from, as well as all in between (it still makes me nostalgic and curious even in this moment as I'm writing).  I applied to the University of Manchester in England for an Masters program in Economic and Social History.  I was going to study Central Asia the socio-economic transitions there as i found the racial and ethnic composition fascinating.  All the while I just wanted to learn different ways of systematized life throughout history.  How is it that societies structure themselves and people emerge as cultural entities.  With all of this understanding perhaps we could work towards new alternatives.

The British education system was a culture shock to me.  It was more of a self study environment than I was used to.  At the time I complained: "I went to school to be taught, not to be in a self study program!!"  But as it was, it was a great thing for me, and one I cherish now.  Of course though, my research changed tremendously.  Not on purpose mind you, but because the person I applied to work with on Central Asia went on sabbatical.  So as I had lived in Prague and spoke some Czech, I became an expert on the post conflict reconstruction of Eastern Europe and Czechoslovakia after World War II and debates on multilateral versus unilateral aid/development.  I focused on UNRRA and the united nation's involvement in reconstruction at that time.  It played heavily into cold war politics, sovereignty, and power politics.  It was right around the time the shooting in Iraq was slowing down and the world was starting to argue over the who would be involved in the reconstruction.  I loved the work.  I loved the learning, the analysis, the writing.  I spent over 6 weeks in the UN's archives in New York City and met some amazing people.  I then did my writing up in Boston while selling running shoes!  It left me yearning for more.

I had applied straight to the PhD program at Manchester and been accepted, but without funding.  The Master's degree had cost me a lot of money living in England for that year, and three to four more would have easily required at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in student loans at that time.

Instead, I decided to go to China and learn what life was like there.  you'll see this pattern throughout this post.  constantly reaching for something, getting teased by it, and then finding another outlet for my curiosities - as always, interested in how different people and places function.  I have always had a very keen interest in many things Chinese so going there tied a lot of things together for me.  But the friend I went to China with decided not to go through on his plans to start a school there (I was going to help him set it up).  I quickly found myself back in Prague looking to apply properly for PhD's throughout Europe.  However, I found a job through a friend doing research, writing, and development work for an organization working in Iraq and Afghanistan on reconstruction issues.  I figured, hey, this is what I'd be going to school for and would be doing after!  So why not now!?

I'll leave that experience for another story (I actually started writing a book about it as it was so complex and mortifying!).  But anyway, two years later I was desperate to get back to academia and away from what I considered war profiteers.  I had spent a lot of time looking at European schools and questioned how to fund it, so I turned my attention to US schools not realizing I had missed the deadlines.  Rather than keep treading water, I applied to Central European University for another MA (this time in Sociology and Anthropology) while I waited to apply again the next year.  I was still studying reconstruction and development.  I'd started expanding into Africa from my Eastern European and Central Asian roots.  I loved what I was learning in Budapest, but didn't mesh well with the system and faculty there.  I "was a bit more of a revolutionary than an academic" I was told at one point by a professor.  He also said I was one of the most original students he'd ever had (and was very encouraging), but continued to say that the faculty was somewhat threatened by both that and my bold approach.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to say that I'm dyslexic.  I don't read as quickly as most apparently, spell like a drunk foreigner, and process information "differently".  All this translated at the time into a bit of a rebellious approach and a need for deadline extensions.  The issue at the time though was that while I went into Manchester somewhat subconsciously "timid" given my "disability", I went into CEU empowered by actually having a diagnosis of dyslexia and ways to deal with it.  I used to think everyone else was smart and I just had work hard and try to get there.  Now, I had been told that my ideas were not wrong, just that I saw things differently and that I should stand up for them and be firm in my analysis.  This however backfired a bit as I took it tool literally.  Anyway, I worked myself into the ground in many ways.  I have issues with allergies and something called Fybromialgia and it caught up to me.  I got sick and had to get extensions on my work.  This of course lead me back to NY as my work/student visa's for Europe all ran out.  While I was able to get some coursework done back in the US, eventually the realities of life got in the way and I had to focus on living, housing, food, etc. I never finished the degree.

This was really disappointing as I really liked the direction my work was going in.  I had started wholly interested in sociology but started to really get much more indepthly into Anthropology.  I got closer to the type of globally focused work on individuals and their agency within systems of economic, social, and political power.  Economic development, social transition, etc.  It was very interesting stuff.  I had started working on Sierra Leone and the concept of the individual.  How "liberalism" with its emphasis on individual and personal rights, private property, human rights, free markets and such, create and individualized society based on competition and conflict.  My work was on Liberal peace (liberal democracy), which is basically the theory that two countries that are both democracies would not go to war with each other because their two populaces would theoretically never actively choose to go to war with each other - that liberalism created less war and conflict.  My work was specifically showing the opposite of this that individuals acting solely out of self interest end u being inherently competitive, which of course more readily leads to conflict and perhaps even war.  

During that year in Budapest I had applied to seven schools in the US for Doctoral studies.  I had done extensive analysis of PhD programs in sociology that included an exhaustive excel spread sheet with personalized rankings and measures for each school based on school and departmental rankings, courses, faculty, ideology, collaboration, etc.  I very hastily applied as well to a few anthropology programs.  Sadly though, I did not get in anywhere.

This of course made returning to the US bittersweet in so many ways.  I had started writing a book on "the death of an idealist" a few years back and it all seemed so close at that time.  It was about how difficult it was for a person of principle of incredible ethical standards and fortitude to find a place in our world.  No matter what you were doing it seemed that working towards the common good was such a foreign concept.  I so desperately wanted to be doing this type of work.   

So as it was, while my academic interests were very important to me, I now had to sort out a life without it for a foreseeable future.  I applied everywhere with no luck, but managed to get random jobs and tried to start random businesses/non-profits.  One kept my intellectual interests alive.  It was a website that would be the precursor to the Occupy Think Tank of today.  Alternativeideas.org, an online platform where people could put ideas and where issues and the ideas related to them could be worked thorough in workshops aimed at creating new policy options.  The principle was that technocrats, academics, and political types held a monopoly on the information used to generate policy, and that a grassroots groundswell of ideas could be used to supplement this decision making process.  I didn't get far with it though as I didn't get funding to build a proper website.

I pressed on with looking for work in my field, but when I didn't find much of anything in my areas of interest, I threw everything into the trip to Africa that is discussed within this blog.  I had been looking to study and/or get development jobs in Africa, but had never been.  So I just went.  I planned, fundraised, and undertook an awareness raising and educational trip to Sierra Leone.  It was transformative for me.  But one thing that was not lost on me was that I wanted to be sure that there was an intellectual research and writing aspect surrounding any work I did in development. 

I came back determined to get back into academia - as always it now seems.  But I knew that finding the right school and supervisors was paramount given my experience.  I had to find the right person to work with.  I of course used the same excel statistical methodology as before.  I started with 176 schools in the US and Canada.  I narrowed that down to 74 with similar interests, and then to 12 definites and another 8 maybes.  This was in August.  I started sending out emails and getting books for all the professors I as interested in.  I was working with disabled people at this time, but spending all my spare time reading and thinking about projects, about Africa, about mineral rights in Sierra Leone, about liberalism, whatever....

Then of course, Occupy happened.  My whole world changed.  The well mapped out strategy for the next year: school apps through January, Africa work in the spring, and then finishing writing a book in the summer before school all went to pot.  I was certain that this time around I was ready.  I had done a lot of personal work on my self, gotten much further into meditation and chi gung, and had really come to peace within myself and with what I wanted to do.  I felt really ready to settle in and get a PhD done.  I thought as it went on, that occupy was going to help the application process.  I was making a difference, I had started this great working group that had attracted anthropologist after anthropologist, while meeting all sorts of occupy and academic types.  I was getting really positive feedback.  I was doing everything I wanted to do!  But it seems that it wasn't what the programs wanted to see.  I put together my applications quickly in December with some fabulous help, but alas, I was still rejected from everywhere.  Actually that is not entirely true.  I was accepted to the MA program at the New School.  I was offered a 25% scholarship towards tuition!  Which meant I still had to pay $24,000 on tuition AND whatever living in NYC cost.  Which is not even remotely worth it having talked to a number of students there.  I already have a masters and their program doesn't guarantee a place in the PhD program.  I could get a PhD in England in 3-4 years and pay less.

But... I did get really close this time.  In January I went to an open house at Rutgers and "fell for it".  They have a great program in "engaged" anthropology that was a lot like the work I'd been doing in Africa and Occupy.  Using anthropology not just as a learning tool, but to instigate change as well.  The faculty was great, I even got to guest speak in a class on Occupy that day.  But close isn't good enough.  Rutgers didn't have to go to their waiting list.  I had to wait till that last day to find out, April 15th.  I found out that Sunday at 7:30 in the evening.   I wasn't consciously as crushed as I thought I would be.  I'd been prepared emotionally.  But physically I felt my body react.  I was hurt.

Overall it was a rough application process.  My one recommender from Budapest (who thought I was so original and a revolutionary) only sent the recommendation to one school - even though he assured me he'd done it for all.  He then disappeared.  Prick.  I know it affected my chances.  Not only was it my most recent work and the most relevant, but I didn't finish the program.  There was a lot to say.  A lot of questions to answer.  If he didn't believe in me enough he could have at least had the balls to tell me he wasn't going to do it so I could ask someone else.  Don Kalb....  WTF!!!  I know at one school the incomplete application excluded me from funding and th regular admissions process.

But hey, not that the blame should be put anywhere but on me.  I went to West Virginia University to play football, I got a 3.1 GPA there, I have crappy GRE scores and refuse to take them again on principle, it is my responsibility to pick good recommenders.  Still....  !@$%#%.  It sucks.  I understand that I am a different type of candidate.  I understand that I don't have all the good schools, all the good names, all the great grades and such behind me.  But I have experiences, I have an analytical lens, and apparently an incredibly unique view of things and way of doing things.  These are apparently things that I value but that programs do not.  I didn't get great grades in High School, I didn't blow college out of the water, and I haven't followed the typical career ladder for an academic.  BUT THAT IS WHY ACADEMIA SHOULD BE INTERESTED!!  I am different, and that is what academia needs!!  Or at least that's what I think.  It is however, just another institution of the capitalist vanguard. 

So as it is, this has been a very disappointing stretch.  I have put so much into academia and towards getting into a PhD program as my preferred method for both understanding and bringing about change.  Perhaps I'll never be able to separate myself from the dyslexic football player that has bounced around the world learning and doing various things in various atypical ways though.  But should I?  I study the individual and competition because I know what it is like to be called "the most competitive person I've every coached", I study the economics of post-conflict areas because I have seen first hand the horrors of working in that industry and walked through one, I know how to rebuild after a disaster in a foreign country because I have physically knocked down and rebuilt walls in Eastern Europe, and I apparently come to it all through different ways of thought because my brain is somehow constructed differently.  Yeah, I can read, but I've never learned nearly as much from reading as I have from living.      

The issue now though is what does this mean for me today.  It would seem that for now, I guess it means that the dream of spending my days learning and getting paid to do it aren't happening.  Yes, it is disappointing.  But it was the Buddha that said that life itself was about suffering.  Perhaps he was on to something?  Perhaps... but I think at this point it really could be about opportunity.  Just as in the other times I've applied and not gotten in or funding, I now have every door open to me.  I am in a very different position in life.  I am in NYC surrounded by and enmeshed within some solid networks.  I have gotten some great advice and had some wonderful things pop up this week that have allowed me to think of things in very different lights as well.  Perhaps it is time to focus on carving out my own niche, reinventing myself, and following my heart.  It is no coincidence that every stop along my academic career both others and myself have felt I am atypical and march to a different beat.  While I thought there should be a place for that in Academia, it may not be so.  As such, while what beat I will be marching to is yet to be found, I know where my passions lay, and I am excited at the opportunity to follow them (even if it means more struggle).  Of course, I will always want to be doing intellectual/academic type work - engaging in that type of thought process - but perhaps that isn't the right road for me.  I have to find a new path, one that isn't marked yet.  A trail isn't yet a trail if it goes off trail....

Unfamiliar Bedfellows

Written 3/21/2012

For years now since my undergraduate days and on through my graduate work as well as in life in general I have been trained and/or socialized in what is proving to be a very certain direction.  Much of this training has come from academic classes in the social sciences and research training in support there in.  I have taken all sorts of things from participant observation to archival research to (the dreaded) quantitative methods, but the approaches that have resonated with me most have been centered in, about, and around ethnographic styled encounters and methods.  I have realized something in the last few days regarding this though: ethnography and sales do not work well together!

At work, I am tasked with selling and fundraising.  Short sweet, controlled conversations with a very pointed and desired outcome.  Ethnographic styled interaction on the other hand is about sitting, listening, and engaging in subtle ways that do not control much of anything.  You are a participant, you are observing, but you are not imposing your will or your cultural paradigms, or anything else onto the situation anymore than is unavoidable. 

Its no wonder why I seem to suck at sales/fundraising!!  You are taught NOT to listen, to hear objections and to brush them off, to mostly ignore what people say (unless of course it helps lead you towards your objective).  In this "game", it doesn't matter if you actually want to empathize with people or their stories, you have to let it go.  They tell you to work on the pretense that what you are asking for is inherently in "their" best interests as well as yours and society's.  In short, to assume that you know what is best for "them" - whoever "they" are.  This is of course exactly the opposite of any participant observation/ethnographic endeavor.  Participate, observe, denote, and analyze later from the confines of seclusion and through other similar works or analysis.  How does one switch up speeds so quickly?

This has been one of my issues here at this job.  I have been tasked with switching up years of training, and in fact an entire way of life, overnight.  Its not coming easily.  Not to mention the fact that I actually care about these stories, I actually want to engage with them in dialog, learn and get to know the people on the other end.  But sales isn't about people, it is about money, and the only thing you need to learn is how to make more of it. 

Struggles?

I just came across a new study that shows Sierra Leone as about the ninth worst national in the world in terms of poverty.  The Multidimensional Poverty Index is a very interesting study that gets beyond dollars and cents, and into what people actually have and how they live.  There is a brief country report on Sierra Leone right here.

If I am reading it correctly in skimming through it, the main areas effecting poverty the most in Sierra Leone come in the living standard part - electricity, sanitation, water, cooking fuel, floors, personal assets - but also in deficient schooling and child mortality.  According to this study 81% of Sierra Leoneans are in poverty - 4.4 million people.  That is the population of the Greater Boston area.  Imagine if the entire Boston metropolitan area was in the deepest depths of poverty.

Boylston Street?

Boston Harbor...  tea anyone?

A villa in Lexington or Concord?

The view from Plymouth Rock?

Paul Revere getting ready for a midnight ride?

This would never be stood for in the United States, yet across the ocean, we let it slide...