The Scholarly Study of International Communication
I know I said I wasn't going to any more conferences, but I can't believe that the International Communication Association has their annual conference in Dresden with Manuel Castells and Jurgen Habermas - which I could attend for only 100$.
My mind has gone into a spin. I want to go!
I'm a lapsed member of the ICA whose purpose is "to advance the scholarly study of human communication and to facilitate the implementation of such study so as to be of maximum benefit to humankind" through "encouraging the systematic study of theories, processes and skills of human communication".
In principle that's what I think I'm doing. But in practice I have some problems fitting in with ICA events and identifying with the academic community around them. I think my problems are:
1. To me it looks like the labels on everyone else's life are so tidy. You are a "grad student" (in the US sense) or not. Or you a "Professor" or not. Your identity is neatly labelled by your affiliation or your title. Mine isn't.
2. Everyone else seems to find it quite normal to stay in a hotel, go out for meals, take taxis etc. But a few days of doing that in Germany and my month's salary would be gone. I have to look for networking opportunities while sleeping on the floor of FOAFs and eating sandwiches in a café.
So, that's decided. I'm not going. My identity is too messy to join the ICA scholarly study of human communication and of finding ways for it to benefit humankind.
A moment of self-doubt as I resolve to get back to writing my thesis.
Tags: identity, internationalcommunicationassociation, PhD
My mind has gone into a spin. I want to go!
I'm a lapsed member of the ICA whose purpose is "to advance the scholarly study of human communication and to facilitate the implementation of such study so as to be of maximum benefit to humankind" through "encouraging the systematic study of theories, processes and skills of human communication".
In principle that's what I think I'm doing. But in practice I have some problems fitting in with ICA events and identifying with the academic community around them. I think my problems are:
1. To me it looks like the labels on everyone else's life are so tidy. You are a "grad student" (in the US sense) or not. Or you a "Professor" or not. Your identity is neatly labelled by your affiliation or your title. Mine isn't.
2. Everyone else seems to find it quite normal to stay in a hotel, go out for meals, take taxis etc. But a few days of doing that in Germany and my month's salary would be gone. I have to look for networking opportunities while sleeping on the floor of FOAFs and eating sandwiches in a café.
So, that's decided. I'm not going. My identity is too messy to join the ICA scholarly study of human communication and of finding ways for it to benefit humankind.
A moment of self-doubt as I resolve to get back to writing my thesis.
Tags: identity, internationalcommunicationassociation, PhD
posted by bev trayner at 1/26/2006 11:45:00 AM
1 Comments:
Excellent post. Your predictions are very much in line with what we are expecting to see in the near future.
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