Re: everyone is doing it?

From: Nate Schmolze (vygotsky@home.com)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 19:36:28 PDT


They say its 65 square miles surrounded by reality.

I have no university affiliation and anything like that but as you pointed out I think there is lots of lip surface. Funny, my last semester at UW I had this list of about 20 schools I had to do a data analysis on and "most" (except ucsd) had some kind of community program broadcasted on their web page (politically popular - necessary for some big east coast schools in inner city neighborhoods). I found the UCSD aspect kind of ironic since I of course was familiar with your work and the 5th D. I assumed as with the other web pages 5th D would be broadcasted all over the UCSD webpage.

I seems to me this is a case in point of what my message was directed at - pressure comes from a variety of forces. UW being a land grand and all has always had strong political support to connect research to practical research. Towns as small as 20,000 have a university presence (annex's). Also there are continual partnerships and a strong emphasis locally and globally on action research.

I know before I left the new Chancellor was coming up with interdisciplinary programs which was directly connected with tenure. Those that had research interests that connected with the community (practical) and was interdisciplinary were in a much better position in this new environment to receive tenure and / or research money. It was this kind of pressure I was thinking of.

Mike, I also mainly read MCA and most of that seems connected to practical research. Are you telling me I shouldn't use MCA to generalize about the research community in general. What kind of other research is there - no not that naive :)

But as I said, Madison is 65 square miles surrounded by reality.

Nate

At 10:16 AM 6/4/01, you wrote:

>Nate! What world are you inhabiting?
>
>You wrote: Ok practical concrete research is in now - everyone is doing it
>
>AT my university, and here i think I can easily include all branches of
>UC although I know my own local circumstances, not only is everyone not
>doing it, those who are doing it are at risk for getting fired for lack
>of scholarship.
>
>A central struggle, and I don't think only here, among social scientists
>is to make clear the legitimate RESEARCH/THEORY necessity of ingaging
>in practical research.
>
>Could those who live in other realities of the sort described by Nate
>speak up so those of us living in institutions where laboratory-style
>positivism continue to reign get a better field for why we are not in the
>mainstream?
>mike

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