Sounding Out!

Playin’ Native and Other Iterations of Sonic Brownface in Hollywood Representations of Dolores Del Río

Mexican actress Dolores Del Río is admired for her ability to break ground; her dance skills allowed her to portray roles not offered to many women of color early in the 20th Century. One of her most popular roles was in the movie Ramona (1928), directed by Edwin Carewe. Her presence in the movie made me think about sonic representations of mestizaje and indigeneity through the characters portrayed by Del Río. According to  Priscilla Ovalle, in Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex and Stardom (2010), Dolores del Río was representative of Mexican nationhood while she was a rising star in Hollywood. Did her portrayals reinforce ways of hearing and viewing mestizos and First Nation people in the American imaginary? Is it sacrilegious to examine the Mexican starlet through sonic brownface? I explore these questions through two films, Ramona and Bird of Paradise (1932, directed by King Vidor), where Dolores del Río plays a mestiza and a Polynesian princess, respectively, to understand the deeper impact she had in Hollywood through expressions of sonic brownface.

Before I delve into analysis of these films and the importance of Ramona the novel and film adaptions, I wish to revisit the concept of sonic brownface I introduced here in SO! in 2013. Back then, I argued that the movie Nacho Libre and Jack Black’s characterization of “Nacho” is sonic brownface: an aural performativity of Mexicanness as imagined by non-Mexicans. Jennifer Stoever, in The Sonic Color Line (2017), postulates that how we listen to particular body(ies) are influenced by how we see them. The notion of sonic brownface facilitates a deeper examination of how ethnic and racialized bodies are not just seen but heard.

Picture of Del Rio as Luana in BIRDS OF PARADISE, available in the public domain.

Through my class lectures this past year, I realized there is more happening in the case of Dolores del Río, in that sonic brownface can also be heard in the impersonation of ethnic roles she portrayed. In the case of Dolores del Río, though Mexicana, her whiteness helps Hollywood directors to continue portraying mestizos and native people in ways that they already hear them while asserting that her portrayal helps lend authenticity due to her nationality. In the two films I discuss here, Dolores del Río helps facilitate these sonic imaginings by non-Mexicans, in this case the directors and agent who encouraged her to take on such roles. Although a case can be made that she had no choice, I imagine that she was quite astute and savvy to promote her Spanish heritage, which she credits for her alabaster skin. This also opens up other discussions about colorism prevalent within Latin America.

First, let us focus on the appeal of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884), as it is here that the cohabitation of Scots, Spanish, Mestizos, and Native people are first introduced to the American public in the late 19th century. According to Evelyn I. Banning, in 1973’s Helen Hunt Jackson, the author wanted to write a novel that brought attention to the plight of Native Americans. The novel highlights the new frontier of California shortly after the Mexican American War. Though the novel was critically acclaimed, many folks were more intrigued with “… the charm of the southern California setting and the romance between a half-breed girl raised by an aristocratic Spanish family and an Indian forced off his tribal lands by white encroachers.” A year after Ramona was published, Jackson died and a variety of Ramona inspired projects that further romanticized Southern California history and its “Spanish” past surged. For example, currently in Hemet, California there is the longest running outdoor “Ramona” play performed since 1923. Hollywood was not far behind as it produced two silent-era films, starring Mary Pickford and Dolores del Río.

The charm of the novel Ramona is that it reinforces a familiar narrative of conquest with the possibility of all people co-existing together. As Philip Deloria reminds us in Playing Indian (1999), “The nineteenth-century quest for a self-identifying national literature … [spoke] the simultaneous languages of cultural fusion and violent appropriation” (5). The nation’s westward expansion and Jackson’s own life reflected the mobility and encounters settlers experienced in these territories. Though Helen Hunt Jackson had intended to bring more attention to the mistreatment of native people in the West, particularly the abuse of indigenous people by the California Missions, the fascination of the Spanish speaking people also predominated the American imaginary. To this day we still see in Southern California the preference of celebrating the regions Spanish past and subduing the native presence of the Chumash and Tongva. Underlying Jackson’s novel and other works like Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton The Squatter and the Don (1885) is their critique of the U.S. and their involvement with the Mexican American War. An outcome of that war is that people of Mexican descent were classified as white due to the signing of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and were treated as a class apart. (See Michael Olivas’ anthology, Colored Men and Hombres Aqui from 2006 and Ignacio M. García, White but not Equal from 2008). These novels and films reflect the larger dominant narrative of whiteness and its relationship to nation building. Through Pickford’s and del Río’s portrayals of Ramona they reinforce the whiteness of mestizaje.

Screenshot from RAMONA (1910). Here, Ramona (played by Mary Pickford) finds out that she has “Indian blood.”

In 1910, Mary Pickford starred in D.W. Griffith’s short film adaptation of Ramona as the titular orphan of Spanish heritage. Henry B. Walthall played Alessandro, the Native American, in brownface to mimic physical attributes of the native Chumash of Southern California. Griffith also wanted to add authenticity by filming in Camulas, Ventura County, the land of the Chumash and where Jackson based her novel. The short is a sixteen-minute film that takes viewers through the encounter between Alessandro and Ramona and their forbidden love, as she was to be wedded to Felipe, a Californio. There is a moment in the movie when Ramona is told she has “Indian blood”. Exalted, Mary Pickford says “I’m so happy” (6:44-6:58). Their short union celebrates love of self and indigeneity that reiterates Jackson’s compassionate plea of the plight of native people. In the end, Alessandro dies fighting for his homeland, and Ramona ends up with Felipe. Alessandro, Ramona, and Felipe represent the archetypes in the Westward expansion. None had truly the power but if mestizaje is to survive best it serve whiteness.

Poster of 1928’s RAMONA, under fair use

Edwin Carewe’s rendition of Ramona in 1928 was United Artists’ first film release with synchronized sound and score. Similar to the Jazz Singer in 1927, are pivotal in our understanding of sonic brownface. Through the use of synchronized scored music, Hollywood’s foray into sound allowed itself creative license to people of color and sonically match it to their imaginary of whiteness. As I mentioned in my 2013 post, the era of silent cinema allowed Mexicans in particular, to be “desirable and allowed audiences to fantasize about the man or woman on the screen because they could not hear them speak.” Ramona was also the first feature film for a 23-year-old Dolores del Río, whose beauty captivated audiences. There was much as stake for her and Carewe. Curiously, both are mestizos, and yet the Press Releases do not make mention of this, inadvertently reinforcing the whiteness of mestizaje: Del Río was lauded for her Spanish heritage (not for being Mexican), and Carewe’s Chickasaw ancestry was not highlighted. Nevertheless, the film was critically acclaimed with favorable reviews such as Mordaunt Hall’s piece in the New York Times published May 15, 1928. He writes, “This current offering is an extraordinarily beautiful production, intelligently directed and, with the exception of a few instances, splendidly acted.” The film had been lost and was found in Prague in 2005. The Library of Congress has restored it and is now celebrated as a historic film, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary on May 20th.

In Ramona, Dolores del Río shows her versatility as an actor, which garners her critical acclaim as the first Mexicana to play a starring role in Hollywood. Though Ramona is not considered a talkie, the synchronized sound comes through in the music. Carewe commissioned a song written by L. Wolfe Gillbert with music by Mabel Wayne, that was also produced as an album. The song itself was recorded as an instrumental ballad by two other musicians, topping the charts in 1928.

In the movie, Ramona sings to Allessandro. As you will read in the lyrics, it is odd that it is not her co-star Warner Baxter who sings, as the song calls out to Ramona. Del Río sounds angelic as the music creates high falsettos. The lyrics emphasize English vernacular with the use of “o’er” and “yonder” in the opening verse. There are moments in the song where it is audible that Del Río is not yet fluent speaking, let alone singing in English. This is due to the high notes, particularly in the third verse, which is repeated again after the instrumental interlude.

I dread the dawn
When I awake to find you gone
Ramona, I need you, my own

Each time she sings “Ramona” and other areas of the song where there is an “r”, she adds emphasis with a rolling “r,” as would be the case when speaking Spanish. Through the song it reinforces aspects of sonic brownface with the inaudible English words, and emphasis on the rolling “rrrr.” In some ways, the song attempts to highlight the mestiza aspects of the character. The new language of English spoken now in the region that was once a Spanish territory lends authenticity through Dolores del Río’s portrayal. Though Ramona is to be Scottish and Native, she was raised by a Spanish family named Moreno, which translates to brown or darker skin. Yes, you see the irony too.

United Artists Studio Film Still, under Fair Use

Following Del Río’s career, she plays characters from different parts of the world, usually native or Latin American. As Dolores del Río gained more popularity in Hollywood she co-starred in several movies such as Bird of Paradise (1932), directed by King Vidor, in which she plays a Polynesian Princess. Bird of Paradise focuses on the love affair between the sailor, played by Joel McCrea, and herself. The movie was controversial as it was the first time we see a kiss between a white male protagonist with a non-Anglo female, and some more skin, which caught the eye of The Motion Picture Code commission. Though I believe the writers attempted to write in Samoan, or some other language of the Polynesian islands, I find that her speech may be another articulation of sonic brownface. Beginning with the “talkies,” Hollywood continued to reiterate stereotypical representations though inaccurate music or spoken languages.

In the first encounter between the protagonists, Johnny and Luana, she greets him as if inviting him to dance. He understands her. He is so taken by her beauty that he “rescues” her to live a life together on a remote island. Though they do not speak the same language at first it does not matter because their love is enough. This begins with the first kiss. When she points to her lips emphasizing kisses, which he gives her more of. The movie follows their journey to create a life together but cannot be fully realized as she knows the sacrifice she must pay to Pele.

I do not negate the ground breaking work that Dolores del Río accomplished while in Hollywood. It led her to be an even greater star when she returned to Mexico. However, even her star role as Maria Candelaria bares some examination through sonic brownface. It is vital to examine how the media reinforces the imaginary of native people as not well spoken or inarticulate, and call out the whiteness of mestizaje as it inadvertently eliminates the presence of indigeneity and leaves us listening to sonic brownface.

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reina alejandra prado saldivar is an art historian, curator, and adjunct lecturer in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and Liberal Studies Department at CSULA and in the Critical Studies Program at CALArts. As a cultural activist, she focused her earlier research on Chicano cultural production and the visual arts. Prado is also a poet and performance artist known for her interactive durational work Take a Piece of my Heart as the character Santa Perversa (www.santaperversa.com) and is currently working on her first solo performance entitled Whipped!

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Featured image: Screenshot from “Ramona (1928) – Brunswick Hour Orchestra”

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Afecto Caribeño / Caribbean Affect in Desi Arnaz’s “Babalú Aye” – reina alejandra prado saldivar 

SO! Amplifies: Shizu Saldamando’s OUROBOROS–Jennifer Stoever

SO! Reads: Dolores Inés Casillas’s ¡Sounds of Belonging! – Monica de la Torre

Sounding Out!

SO! Podcast #67: Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Claire Cooley)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Claire Cooley)

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Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! and interview authors to get a sense of what they were thinking as they wrote their essays. In this episode Tlsty and Bahssin interview the amazing Claire Cooley discussing her SO! piece from October 2017, “Gender and the First Sound Films in 1930s Bombay”

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James Tlsty is a Junior studying English and Philosophy, Politics and Law (PPL) at Binghamton University. James draws from literature and philosophy for pragmatic applications in social policy and activism. James is an active champion of the arts, as evidenced by his work with on-campus art initiative OPEN, a hybrid art gallery and open mic. He is also the resident Pop Music Department Director and an E-Board member at WHRW, where he is a registered radio engineer and programmer.

Shauna Bahssin is a junior double-majoring in English and art history. She currently serves as the managing editor for Binghamton University’s student newspaper, Pipe Dream, after maintaining the position of copy desk chief for three semesters. Outside of the paper, she helps supervise student fundraising initiatives through the Binghamton Telefund, and she hopes to work within the field of arts advancement after she graduates.

Claire Cooley is a PhD student in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests center on overlapping Middle East and South Asia film histories. Claire’s dissertation project traces connections between Egyptian, Iranian, and Indian cinemas with a focus on the 1930s-1960s, and uses sound as a framework to capture the dynamics of cinematic circulations across this contiguous region. In 2010, she received her BA from Tufts University, and from 2010-2013 she lived in Cairo, Egypt where she pursued a project translating, mapping, and blogging about graffiti during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Claire also teaches Persian and Arabic.

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tape reelREWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

SO! Podcast #66: Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Marlen Rios) — James Tlsty and Shauna Bahssin

Sounding Out! Podcast #65: Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Jenny Stoever) – James Tlsty and Shauna Bahssin

Sounding Out! Podcast #13: Sounding Shakespeare in S(e)oul – Brooke A. Carlson

Janneke Adema

Abdou Moumouni Dioffo (1929-1991). Le précurseur nigérien de l’énergie solaire

Auteur : Sous la direction de Frédéric Caille

Date de parution : 7 avril 2018 (lancement à Niamey)

En cas de problème d’accès, écrire à info@editionscienceetbiencommun.org.

Résumé :

Issu du livre Du soleil pour tous. L’énergie solaire au Sénégal : un droit, des droits, une histoire (2018), cet ouvrage est un hommage au travail du professeur Abdou Moumouni Dioffo, dont la portée et le caractère précurseur sont plus sensibles que jamais. Promouvoir les usages multiformes et le développement immédiat de l’énergie solaire en Afrique, perfectionner les procédés de conversion et les matériels, défendre la priorité des investissements de recherche et de formation : tels furent les trois grands axes de l’action pionnière du physicien nigérien Abdou Moumouni Dioffo, premier grand spécialiste internationalement reconnu de l’énergie solaire issu du continent le plus ensoleillé de la planète.

Ce livre contient :

  • une réédition des deux articles d’Abdou Moumouni Dioffo « L’énergie solaire dans les pays africains » (1964) et « L’éducation scientifique et technique dans ses rapports avec le développement en Afrique » (1969).
  • une reprise de deux textes d’Albert-Michel Wright, ingénieur héliotechnicien et ancien collaborateur d’Abdou Moumouni Dioffo qui fut son successeur à la direction de l’Office Nigérien de l’Énergie Solaire (ONERSOL).
  • un portfolio d’une trentaine de photographies inédites de Marc Jacquet-Pierroulet, ancien Volontaire Français du Progrès au laboratoire d’Abdou Moumouni Dioffo à Niamey de 1970 à 1972.
  • un texte de Salamatou Doudou sur la vie d’Abdou Moumouni Dioffo.

Puissent les jeunes d’Afrique et d’ailleurs être nombreux à suivre son exemple !

Illustration de couverture : design de Kate McDonnell, pour la collection Mémoires des Suds

  • ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-48-2
  • ISBN du livre imprimé : : 978-2-924661-46-8

Pour acheter le livre en France ou au Canada, par chèque ou virement bancaire : écrire à info@editionscienceetbiencommun.org.

Pour le commander en ligne (des frais de port de 9 $ s’ajouteront) :

Sounding Out!

SO! Amplifies: Basilica Hudson’s 24-HOUR DRONE

 
SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig.  You’re welcome!
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Twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sound: this was the auditory aspiration of Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone–co-founders of Basilica Hudson–and their houseguest, Bob van Heur, co-founder of Le Guess Who? festival in the Netherlands. Basilica Hudson, a nonprofit artistic collective in downstate New York, has a proven history of adventurous projects that stretch the limits of the audience’s expectations. From noon on April 28, 2018 to noon on April 29, they will be producing a project that’s become something of a classic for the group to kick off their season: a 24-hour sound drone.

“It’s a really singular event, and you really come out of it being transformed,” said Kate Hewett, the program marketing and communications manager for Basilica Hudson. “It’s so unusual to be surrounded by sound in a long-form situation like that. It’s rare that you get to experience the interplay between different kind of artists and performances … it’s one of our favorite events.”

This is the third year that Basilica Hudson had compiled artists from the drone, and each year the lineup is changed. The project is sourced to both local and international sound artists, via a process that includes both an open call submissions period as well as staff reaching out to composers and collectives individually. The product is an experience that is both sonic and tactile; while the drone roves through the space and fills the converted factory with sound, participants are encouraged to bring in mats or chairs and stay through the entire 24-hour period. Some of the artists who will be played through the drone include Bill Brovold and the Mystical Miniature Orchestra, Hudson Boys Club and New London Drone Orchestra.

“The open call submissions period is really key to making the 24-HOUR DRONE happen,” Hewett said. The vision behind it is to always access new artist who haven’t played here previously, maybe artists who haven’t played in the Hudson Valley before as well as being able to showcase the incredible local talent that is offered in the region … from there, it’s really a case of weaving together a multidisciplinary lineup. The aim is to cross genres and be able to showcase lots of different kinds of artists who are all working within the rough framework of drone.”

While no live performances fit the bill of the event, there are 24-hour projects that happen in tandem with the drone. For one, a weaver will sit in Basilica’s space and use the loom for 24 hours. In another example, healers will enter the premises to perform 24-hour reiki.

“People are free to come and go as they wish — you don’t have to commit to the full 24 hours. But a lot of people do come, bring a yoga mat, and camp out for the whole time,” Hewett said. “The enjoyment and the really immersive experience is what it’s about, and what’s most important.”

Basilica Hudson is located in a solar-powered reclaimed 1880s industrial factory on the waterfront of upstate New York city of Hudson.

This season, the 24-HOUR DRONE will not be the only sound-related exhibition at Basilica Hudson. From Sept. 14 to 16, the collective will host Basilica Soundscape, a weekend of live music and art. The lineup has yet to be announced.

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All images courtesy of Basilica Hudson

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Shauna Bahssin is a junior at Binghamton University who double-majors in English and art history. She currently serves as managing for the student newspaper, Pipe Dream, and has written for its news and arts and culture sections in the past. Outside of the paper, she is involved with the university’s fundraising initiatives through the Binghamton Telefund, and she hopes to work within the field of arts development and advancement after she graduates.

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SO! Amplifies: Feminatronic

Janneke Adema

Appel : Non-violence et politique : un compagnon pédagogique

Projet d’une anthologie sur la non-violence et la politique, sous la direction éditoriale de Cécile Dubernet (pour la version francophone) et de Justin Scherer (pour la version anglophone) de l’Institut catholique de Paris. Des versions dans d’autres langues sont également envisagées.

Ce projet vise à construire un outil unique, multilingue à terme, regroupant des analyses d’écrits connus et moins connus, afin d’éclairer les relations complexes entre politique et non-violence qui sont trop souvent négligées en science politique. Il vise également à mobiliser les chercheurs et chercheuses (universitaires ou non) qui s’intéressent au sujet, mais qui sont souvent dispersés sur différentes disciplines et différents continents.

Le livre s’adressera à des enseignant.e.s, des enseignant.e.s-chercheur.e.s, des formateurs et formatrices qui souhaitent explorer les interfaces et les interactions entre la non-violence et la politique avec leurs étudiant.e.s. Il aura également pour audience des étudiant.e.s qui s’intéressent à la non-violence et se demandent pourquoi le sujet est si rarement abordé en salle de classe ou en séminaire universitaire. Enfin, les responsables espèrent que cette collection de textes permettra aux activistes non-violents d’explorer les racines conceptuelles et historiques de leur pratique, voire de leur art.

Calendrier

Les propositions de contribution à ce projet sont attendues pour le 30 juillet 2018 en français ou en anglais. D’un maximum de 5000 caractères, chaque proposition présentera brièvement un document (extrait de livre, transcription de discours, production pamphlétaire, etc..), son/ses auteur.e.s, l’importance historique de ce document et l’intérêt qu’il y aurait à en inclure une analyse dans une anthologie sur la non-violence et la politique. Il est possible de proposer plusieurs contributions (textes). Un bref CV de l’auteur.e de la proposition est également attendu.

Si une telle collection de textes ne peut faire l’impasse d’auteurs classiques sur le sujet (Gandhi, King, Havel, Sharp etc.), les propositions concernant des écrits/auteur.e.s peu connus seront examinés avec grand intérêt. De même, des textes en langues minoritaires, mais qui permettent de mieux comprendre comment ces thèmes se déclinent localement, sont les bienvenus. Enfin des propositions de cas d’études (courtes analyses d’événements politiques non violents) peuvent également être déposées auprès des éditeurs :

Cécile Dubernet c.dubernet@icp.fr

Justin Scherer justin.k.scherer@gmail.com

Un retour sera fait aux auteur.e.s fin octobre 2018. Les contributions finales d’un maximum de 15000 caractères, incluant les citations et extraits du texte étudié (8000 caractères pour les cas d’étude) sont attendues pour fin janvier 2019 en vue d’une publication dans le courant de l’été 2019.

Les valeurs et le projet éditorial des Éditions science et bien commun

Merci de les lire attentivement sur cette page.

Les consignes d’écriture sont sur cette page.

Argumentaire détaillé

La non-violence ne fait généralement pas partie des programmes scolaires ou universitaires en sciences sociales, et ce pour plusieurs raisons : tout d’abord c’est un sujet transdisciplinaire puisant dans des champs aussi divers que l’éducation, la sociologie, la science politique, la psychologie, l’histoire, la théologie. C’est donc un thème qui s’insère mal dans un monde de spécialistes, monde dans lequel le savoir est découpé en disciplines. Deuxièmement, ses racines et ses liens forts avec les pensées religieuses et spirituelles en font un sujet d’enseignement délicat, incitant les enseignants à se cantonner à des exemples historiques. Troisièmement, le fait qu’en politique la non-violence soit communément associée à des leaders hauts en couleurs (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, le Dalai Lama..) encourage une histoire quelque peu mythifiée car centrée sur ces personnages historiques (et sympathiques !) plutôt que sur des processus politiques. Enfin, il faut aussi reconnaître que la Science politique elle-même est jeune et cherche parfois encore sa place entre les disciplines majeures dont elle est issue : le droit, la sociologie, la philosophie et l’histoire comme laboratoire. Pour exister en tant que discipline, la science politique s’est structurée autour de l’étude du pouvoir et surtout de l’État. Or l’accent mis sur l’État et sa construction repose sur l’axiome de la centralité de la violence, de son efficacité au moins sur le court ou moyen terme, de l’importance de son monopole etc. L’étude de processus sciemment non-violents reste donc marginale dans la discipline.

En science politique, la non-violence est donc abordée à la marge, de biais, à travers des reformulations ou des concepts plus précis ou spécialisés. Quand on en parle, l’accent est mis sur certaines dimensions : la grève de la faim, la résistance civile, l’histoire de Martin Luther King ou du Tibet. Si l’on trouve d’excellentes études philosophiques, historiques ou sociologiques, il n’existe pas à ce jour d’anthologie francophone combinant textes historiques, analyses scientifiques et cas d’études. Plus rares encore sont les livres associant lectures et réflexions à des exercices, voire à des méditations. Cette absence s’entend car il est difficile pour tout chercheur de faire d’un concept transversal et qui porte la marque de l’utopie son objet de recherche et de transmission. Personne ne veut du label ‘rêveur’ et encore moins du label ‘activiste’ en Science politique. Ce sont des obstacles majeurs à toute quête d’insertion dans une communauté scientifique universitaire très compétitive.

Pourtant, en ce début de 21ième siècle, nous avons de bonnes raisons d’étudier sérieusement la non-violence et son rapport au politique. La cohérence théorique du concept, tel que formulé par ses précurseurs et concepteurs (tels La Boétie, Gandhi, Havel, Sharp ou encore Suu Kyi) est remarquable. Par ailleurs, c’est une des forces historiques les plus puissantes que nous ayons connues depuis plus un siècle (Semelin 2011, Chenoweth et Stephan 2011). De plus, la non-violence a été utilisée sous de multiples formes et dans des contextes très variés avec des conséquences très variables (Roberts et Ash, 2011). Elle n’est ni de l’est, ni de l’ouest, ni spécifiquement du nord ou particulièrement du sud ; elle a été utilisée tant par des hommes que par des femmes, par les pauvres comme par les riches. Elle est au cœur de certains des moments les plus inspirants de l’histoire du monde tels le mouvement Greenbelt, la chute du mur de Berlin ou celle de Milosevic en Serbie en 2000. Mais si le concept est puissant, il est aussi complexe et, trop simplifié, peut participer de catastrophes humaines comme récemment au Yémen ou en Syrie. C’est donc une approche de la vie politique qui mérite discussions, études et réflexion. Et ce d’autant plus que l’idée fascine et qu’il est donc important de la démythifier. Contrairement à l’image d’Épinal que l’on en a parfois, l’indépendance de l’Inde a été un été un événement d’une brutalité extrême.

Il est souvent rétorqué que le terme non-violence, défini négativement, ne peut être un objet d’étude scientifique cohérent. Mais tous les grands concepts politiques, de la violence à la démocratie en passant par le pouvoir sont complexes et difficile à cerner. Leurs définitions et domaines d’application restent âprement débattus. Certains même portent en eux une part de rêve (démocratie, égalité, liberté) qui les rend plus complexes encore et parfois explosifs de par leur puissance d’appel. Ceci n’empêche ni les colloques, ni les publications scientifiques, bien au contraire. Si l’on prend le temps d’enseigner les concepts utopiques de liberté ou de démocratie, il n’y a pas de raison scientifique valable d’ignorer le terme non-violence. Et comprendre les utopies sociales, c’est essentiel. Spinoza le soulignait, nous vivons de peur et d’espoir et les deux sont indissociables. Or nous prenons le temps d’enseigner la guerre, d’étudier de près les cycles de la peur, mais nous négligeons trop souvent les logiques de l’espoir.

La non-violence, même si elle se pose négativement, même si elle relève de l’horizon, est un mot au cœur de la vie dans la cité, au même titre que violence, démocratie, anarchisme, indépendance, autonomie, révolution etc. Cet ouvrage poursuit l’intuition qu’elle est un concept encore méconnu mais à-venir. Les auteurs font également le pari de ne pas perdre l’équilibre entre exigences analytique et synthétique, entre théorie et pratique, entre les disciplines et les auteurs. Son ambition est de tracer et de proposer des chemins pédagogiques qui allient les narrations des acteurs à celles des analystes et, par là, d’encourager le lecteur dans la recherche de ses propres voies (ou voix!). Il s’agit d’écouter les leaders sans les mythifier afin de mieux saisir les échos qu’ils provoquent dans l’histoire. Il s’agit mettre en contexte des cas d’étude, sans pour autant les mettre en boite. Bref, il s’agit d’analyser sans dépecer, d’aborder le sujet avec curiosité, intérêt, bienveillance mais sans complaisance.

Comme l’indique le schéma ci-contre, ce livre sera circulaire dans le sens où il peut être commencé presque n’importe où, à chacun des quatre thèmes d’étude : principes, histoires, personnes et actions, thèmes qui renvoient les uns aux autres. L’ouvrage sera également circulaire dans le sens ou chaque sujet est abordé en un chemin fait de lectures et de réflexions, d’études de cas, et d’exercices appelant de nouvelles lectures. En un sens, si l’ouvrage part des textes, c’est à l’aide de différents exercices et cas d’études que ces derniers prennent sens et que la connaissance peut s’approfondir. Les exercices font donc partie intégrante des parcours pédagogiques proposés; les références et suggestions ouvrent des portes vers de nouvelles pistes de recherche et permettent de s’orienter dans une mer de ressources en ligne très dispersées. Cette anthologie offre ainsi une dynamique pédagogique souple reposant sur l’idée que l’on apprend pas de la même manière par la répétition et par l’expérience, dans un cours et dans un café, en petit groupe sur un projet ou seul face à une citation, mais que tous ces chemins sont complémentaires.

Plan provisionnel de l’ouvrage

Ce livre est une anthologie en 4 parties, 4 espaces d’interaction entre non-violence et politique :

1) Principes (De quoi parle-t-on ?)

2) Histoires (Quand ? Quelles circonstances ? Quels contextes ?)

3) Personnes (Qui ? Quels groupes ? Quelles identités ? Quelles relations ?)

4) Actions (Comment ? Quels processus ? Quelles stratégies ? Quelles techniques et quelles limites ?)

Ces quatre espaces correspondent aux regards et catégories d’analyse proposés par les disciplines sous-jacentes de la science politique : philosophie, histoire, sociologie, droit/administration publique. Mais, au-delà des disciplines, il s’agit également de croiser les perspectives en mettant des textes d’acteurs et d’analystes en dialogue (tout en respectant les ordres de publication pour ouvrir à des analyses intertextuelles) et en les confrontant à du réel (à travers quelques cas d’études).

Janneke Adema

Interview: Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Open Scholarship, Humanities Commons, and more.

We are thrilled to feature this interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick as the second installment in our new interview series—in which we ask researchers and librarians about their work in, and thinking about, open access in media studies. Fitzpatrick hardly needs an introduction, given her seminal role in a variety of open access and scholarly communication projects. Last year she joined Michigan State as Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English. Before, she served as Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, where she helped shepherd the open access, open source network Humanities Commons. She co-founded the innovative scholarly communication initiative MediaCommons, and is author of Planned Obsolescence (2011) and The Anxiety of Obsolescence (2006). Follow her thoughts at @kfitz and her website.

OAMS: For years you have been an active participant in the movement for open scholarship. With all your work for MLA Commons, Media Commons and now Humanities Commons—and writings like Planned Obsolescence—you’ve made a tremendous contribution to the debate on how we should move to openness in the humanities. Despite those efforts, it’s arguably true that the transition to open access in the humanities is taking longer than we want. What do you think are the main barriers and challenges for the humanities and the route toward open access in the next five years? 

KF: There are a number of different challenges, and I worry that one has not only absorbed most of our focus but in fact distracted us from the far greater importance of the others. That one that has loomed so large is sustainability — or, perhaps more accurately, business model: how to make open-access publishing financially viable. For not-for-profit publishers like many scholarly societies and university presses, this remains a pressing issue; they simply cannot pay the professionals required to do the work and continue to break even, given the actual availability of article- and book-processing fees in the humanities and social sciences. There are organizations in the U.S. that are working on new approaches to this problem, including a coalition formed by the Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of University Presses, but the challenge remains.

But this question of business model winds up overshadowing at least two other challenges to the widespread adoption of open access in the humanities that I tend to think are vastly more important. In focusing on the sustainability of the publishing process, we run the risk of overlooking the question of its equity: do all scholars, in all fields, at all kinds of institutions, in all areas of the world, have the same ability to publish? For some fairly obvious reasons, the early emphasis of the open access movement was on equity in consumption, ensuring that any interested reader or researcher could get ahold of work that they might learn from. But having learned from that work, can those readers and researchers now contribute to these conversations? True equity requires us to think about ways of opening up the entirety of the scholarly conversation to all participants, wherever in the world they are, wherever they work.

And the other challenge may be even more daunting: ensuring that publishing in open-access venues is a researcher priority. This one is all about ensuring that academic practices are in line with the best of academic values, and it involves both changing individual researcher behavior and changing the institutional reward systems that underpin it. And neither is easy, but both are crucial. The deepest goals of open access simply cannot be reached without those transformations, and all our concerns with how we’re going to pay for it—which are real and substantial, don’t get me wrong — don’t begin to make a dent in these larger questions of equity and values.

OAMS: What are your thoughts about the current model of humanities publishing, particularly monographs? What, in your view, needs to change in the university system, academic publishing, or both, to quicken the transition to open access?

KF: So, this might sound a bit as though it contradicts the answer to the last question, but one of the things that needs to change is the economic model under which university press publishing operates. University presses, at least in the United States, were originally founded in order to distribute the work done at their institutions, precisely because it was apparent that there was no market for that work within conventional publishing channels. These campus-based presses shared the work they published with institutions around the country, knowing that other presses would do the same. But over the course of the twentieth century, university presses professionalized; they saw that there was revenue to be earned from at least some of the titles they published, and they argued with their institutions that such revenue should be returned to the press to support its operations. In other words, they turned themselves into businesses operating on university campuses, and the expectation that they would be self-supporting quickly grew.

The university press, in other words, needs to be understood as providing a service to the intellectual community rather than as a revenue center.

If we are to transform monograph publishing, we have to begin with a reconsideration of the university’s responsibility for the dissemination of the scholarship that is produced by its faculty, as well as the importance for the integrity of the scholarship itself that it be permitted to develop outside of market pressures. The university press, in other words, needs to be understood as providing a service to the intellectual community rather than as a revenue center.

But I think there’s another change that has more to do with the ways that the university values and rewards the products of scholarly research, and this change has two components, neither of which can take place without the other. One component is that scholars need to consider whether everything that they’re currently producing in book-form really needs to be a book; perhaps there are other ways of cultivating the audience for research that might in many cases be more productive and less subject to the constraints of book publishing’s current economic model. And the other component is that institutions need to transform their systems of evaluation — particularly what in the U.S. manifest as policies and procedures for tenure and promotion reviews — to recognize that highly important scholarship can be produced in a wide variety of forms, and thus to stop overvaluing that one particular form. Those two changes have to happen hand-in-hand: scholars won’t change their ways of working unless they’re convinced that their institutions will appropriately value work produced in new ways, and institutions see no call to transform their evaluation systems unless their faculty members are demanding such transformation.

OAMS: Academic libraries and librarians have taken a more active role in scholarly communication, through subsidies and even in-house publishing. What role do you see libraries playing in a future, more open publishing ecosystem?

KF: I’ve long argued that libraries have a key role to play in the transitions that I describe above, not least because of their position in knowledge development and dissemination within universities. The conventionally understood library has long gathered the world’s knowledge for use by researchers and students on campus, but as the processes of research and scholarly communication become increasingly intertwined, libraries become hubs for a range of knowledge-development activities rather than just the repositories of information they’re often imagined to be.

The library is ideally positioned not just to bring the world’s knowledge to campus, but to bring the campus’s knowledge to the world.

As a result, the library is ideally positioned not just to bring the world’s knowledge to campus, but to bring the campus’s knowledge to the world. And we see that happening more and more,  both with a range of library-centered publishing initiatives as well as with the growing number of university presses that bear some organizational relationship to university libraries. Those relationships are key, I think, as presses can bring some crucial experience to library publishing initiatives — not least the development of publications and the building of audiences — but libraries likewise bring crucial skills and commitments to presses. And key among those is a commitment to the public good.

OAMS: Some recent scholarly-publishing initiatives have stressed that they are “scholar-run”, or have some formalized input from scholars beyond the review process. How important is the active involvement of scholars in humanities publishing going forward?

KF: I strongly believe that such active involvement is crucial to scholarly communication in the humanities, both to ensure that the venues and platforms through which we publish take scholars’ own values as their motivating forces, and to ensure that scholars take full responsibility for the ways that their work circulates in the world. That involvement might take a range of different forms, some more hands-on than others, but governance is crucial: scholars should not be willing to hand over their work to organizations whose business practices aren’t operating in the general interest of the scholarly community, and the best way of ensuring that alignment is participating in the governance of those organizations.

OAMS: Humanities Commons has positioned itself as a nonprofit alternative to the venture funded academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Is HC gaining purchase in the humanities? Are there plans to expand the network/repository beyond the humanities disciplines? What would success look like for HC and other nonprofit initiatives like ScholarlyHub?

giftcard_image-300x157KF: Humanities Commons is indeed gaining purchase, as scholars are increasingly recognizing that while their accounts on for-profit networks might be “free,” there are hidden costs to the academic community as a whole. These networks are not transparent in their operations or their values, and they often have egregious, predatory data-sharing and intellectual property policies written into their terms of service.

Humanities Commons is governed by its member societies, which are in turn governed by their members, and so the network and its policies are answerable to scholars and their interests.

Humanities Commons is governed by its member societies, which are in turn governed by their members, and so the network and its policies are answerable to scholars and their interests. And we have since the beginning prioritized transparency in our policies on privacy and intellectual property. Not to mention that Humanities Commons provides many other benefits as well! So many humanities scholars have recently moved away from those other networks to join us, and are encouraging their colleagues to do so as well.

We started the network with a focus on the humanities primarily because humanities fields have long been underserved by new platforms for scholarly communication. But that focus was also strategic: it’s hard to build an engaged community by simply throwing open the doors and inviting everyone. I recognize that this is a somewhat risky example right now, but people often forget that Facebook didn’t begin in a completely open fashion, but instead built local networks that were restricted to particular college campuses; students were motivated to join because their accounts enabled them to reach people they already wanted to communicate with. As more people got on board, those smaller circles were connected, and then once there was a critical mass of participation, the entire thing was opened up to everyone.

We don’t want to be Facebook, by any stretch—see what I said before about transparency, privacy, and so forth—but we recognize the importance of beginning a network by linking known communities, and then by interconnecting those communities and enabling them to open outward. We began our work with scholarly societies, because the members of those societies are already engaged in working together; we then opened up to the humanities as a whole, because humanities scholars are motivated to share their work with one another. We’d like to reach beyond the humanities, to connect the humanities with the social sciences and the sciences, to enable researchers anywhere to reach their audiences through our platform — but we recognize the importance of starting with existing communities of practice, and supporting them as fully as possible as they grow.

OAMS: In recent years, the broader open scholarship community has taken up the “open data” cause. Do you see the the notion of data—sometimes characterized as discrete, quantitative, and machine-readable—as inclusive of humanities scholarship?

KF: The notion of data is not one that a fair number of humanities scholars recognize themselves in, particularly when the quantitative is included in the definition, and yet when we expand our notion of data to encompass any information gathered in the research process, the relationship starts to become apparent. Understanding research data as including the primary and secondary texts we study and the excerpts we glean from and images we record of them, the notes we gather in field research, the transcripts of interviews, the responses to surveys—all of this begins to make evident the importance of preserving and (subject to proper privacy protocols) making humanities data as openly available as possible.

OAMS: What role, if any, should the bundle of fields that study media and communication play in the open access discussion?

KF: Personally, I’d argue that these fields need to be leading the way. If the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election has revealed nothing else, it’s definitely made clear the vital public importance of research and scholarship examining the channels and platforms through which we communicate today. But we have to make the work as publicly accessible as possible if it’s going to have the impact we all need. Engaging the public directly in thinking critically about the impact of the media in our daily lives will require more of us — starting real conversations, listening to people’s concerns, participating in collaborative projects—but making the work we’re already doing openly available is a crucial place to start.

This interview was conducted together with Jeff Pooley.

Image header: courtesy of Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Janneke Adema

Du soleil pour tous. L’énergie solaire au Sénégal: un droit, des droits, une histoire

Auteur : Sous la direction de Frédéric Caille

Date de parution : 19 avril 2018

En cas de problème d’accès, écrire à info@editionscienceetbiencommun.org.

Résumé :

L’énergie solaire est une promesse de développement et de prospérité pour l’Afrique. Elle a été annoncée et expérimentée sur le continent dans un esprit de science ouverte et de « communs » technologiques et énergétiques il y a déjà près de soixante ans. Séchoirs et chauffe-eaux, pompes solaires et centrales électriques thermodynamiques : des pionniers ont développé et installé, dès la fin des années 1950, des techniques et des matériels en Afrique de l’Ouest et en particulier au Sénégal.

Le présent ouvrage, issu de deux journées d’études organisées à Dakar en mai 2016, rend compte pour la première fois, de manière particulièrement symbolique, de cette histoire et du futur de l’énergie solaire en Afrique. Il rassemble, dans une première partie, des témoignages d’acteurs et une mise en perspective sociohistorique large des politiques de l’énergie solaire en Afrique de l’Ouest sur un demi-siècle. Ce regard est complété par la réédition d’un texte de référence du professeur Abdou Moumouni Dioffo, pionnier nigérien de l’énergie solaire dès 1964.

Dans une seconde partie, cet ouvrage interroge également les prolongements actuels de l’énergie solaire en France et au Sénégal, en particulier son encadrement juridique et réglementaire. L’énergie solaire peut-elle ou doit-elle être considérée comme un « commun » ou un droit humain fondamental? Quels sont aujourd’hui les droits associés à l’énergie solaire au Sénégal? Quels enseignements tirer d’une comparaison avec le corpus juridique en la matière tel qu’il existe en France?

Associant juristes français et sénégalais, et spécialistes de la sociologie et des politiques de l’énergie, cet ouvrage se veut au final une invitation et un outil pour poursuivre les recherches sur l’histoire et le droit de l’énergie solaire en Afrique.

Illustration de couverture : design de Kate McDonnell, photographie d’Alexandre Mouthon

Imprimé à Chambéry, Dakar et Québec, 1er trimestre 2018, ce livre est sous licence Creative Commons CC-BY 4-0.

  • ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-34-5
  • ISBN du livre imprimé : 978-2-924661-38-3

Pour acheter une version imprimée du livre en France ou au Canada par chèque ou virement bancaire : écrire à inf0@editionscienceetbiencommun.org.

Pour le commander en ligne (des frais de port de 9 $ s’ajouteront) :

Janneke Adema

The Radical Open Access Collective: Community, Resilience, Collaboration

An Open Insights interview with Janneke Adema and Sam Moore

Reblogged from: https://www.openlibhums.org/news/278/

Interviewed by James Smith (OLH)

Janneke Adema and Sam Moore are the authors of a March 2018 UKSG Insights essay entitled Collectivity and collaboration: imagining new forms of communality to create resilience in scholar-led publishing. Today we explore the context behind the Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC), and their thoughts on the complexities of scholar-led open access publishing.

The ROAC is holding the Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care conference at Coventry University from 26-27 June 2018.

OLH: Hi Janneke and Sam, thanks for talking to us! To start, how would you summarise the core philosophy of the ROAC?

JA & SM: Thanks for the invitation! We feel that the core philosophy behind the collective is about returning control of publishing to the scholarly community. While the member presses do not represent a unified or homogeneous set of values or practices, they are each interested in practicing a vision of open access that is accountable to (and reflective of) their various communities. This affords experimentation, critique, collaboration and a range of other practices that traditional publishing currently prohibits to a lesser or greater extent. The collective ultimately hopes to offer a mutually supportive, non-hierarchical environment for exploring the futures of open publishing practices.

The collective ultimately hopes to offer a mutually supportive, non-hierarchical environment for exploring the futures of open publishing practices.

Taking this into consideration, some keywords that come to mind with respect to the ROAC’s philosophy are: collaboration, non-competitive, not-for-profit, horizontal (non-hierarchical), scholar-led, ethics of care, diversity, community, experimenting, global justice, affirmative creative critique, performative, progressive, radical, mutually-supportive, mutual reliance, multi-polar, resilience, communality, inclusivity.

OLH: What ethical principles does the ROAC seek to normalise, and what challenges does it face in doing so?

JA & SM: We are not sure “normalise” is the right word here, given the implicit normativity this word brings with it. Ethics, many of us feel, is not something that can be defined in advance or that can be predetermined, we cannot resort to moral criteria or predefined values or truths when it comes to publishing, scholarly communication or openness, for example. A responsible ethical approach to openness, to publishing, to the book, would not presume to know what these are, nore what ethics is, in advance. If anything we feel ethics is, or should be, non-normative: its meaning cannot be predetermined. We also do not follow any set “principles” in this respect; however, our ethics is not relativistic either; instead it responds to specific singular practices and situations, around how openness is implemented and the materiality of the book changes, for example. Our ethics are therefore performative, they arise out of the way we (as scholars, publishers) become with the media we publish.

OLH: Why is being radical a good thing?

JA & SM: Being radical is neither good nor bad, it is a terminology we have adapted to distinguish the specific version of open access we want to promote from more neoliberal or top-down versions, for example. The etymology of “radical” shows it derives from the Latin radix, for root, where it means going back to the origin, to what is essential. For us, radical open access simply represents what we always perceived open access to be, it is a way for us to position ourselves within the wide diversity of meanings open access represents and conjures up.

The etymology of “radical” shows it derives from the Latin radix, for root, where it means going back to the origin, to what is essential.

Being radical does however offer us the chance to present an affirmative counterpoint to the dominant discourses around open access, particularly those promoted by commercial publishers and governmental funders—such as HEFCE and RCUK (now UKRI) in the UK—who tend to be interested in OA inasmuch as it promotes business, transparency, and innovation or merely protects the interests of commercial publishers (see the Finch report, for example). This is how the average humanities and social sciences researcher is likely to encounter OA—as merely representative of a neoliberal ideology and a top down instrumental requirement—and so the ROAC seeks to illustrate that there is an alternative and that OA can have a basis in something both emancipatory and transformative.

OLH: The ROAC is an advocacy group, but it is also a community-builder. How does a strong community translate into a response to the pressing issues of open access?

JA & SM: Because it offers us the opportunity to scale-up or as we have previously argued, to “scale small”—keeping the diversity and independence of the (often small-scale) endeavours of our members intact—both horizontally and vertically. By harnessing the strengths and organizational structures of not-for-profit, independent and scholar-led publishing communities we hope to further facilitate collective efforts through community building and by setting up horizontal alliances. Next to that we hope to enable vertical forms of collaboration with other organisations, collectives, institutions and agencies within scholarly publishing, for example libraries and universities, but also with collectives of artists, technologists and activists. As we have argued elsewhere, we want to explore how we can set up so-called “chains of equivalence” (Laclau) with other movements and struggles that are also dealing with aspects of openness – not just those associated with open knowledge, open science, open data, altmetrics and so on, but also those areas in the Arts and Humanities that conceive digital media more explicitly in terms of power, conflict and violence. Those associated with critical media theory, p2p networks and shadow libraries, for example. We are interested in exploring a plurality of open movements, theories and philosophies in this respect, which may at times conflict and contradict one another, but which can nevertheless contribute to the construction of a common, oppositional horizon.

By harnessing the strengths and organizational structures of not-for-profit, independent and scholar-led publishing communities we hope to further facilitate collective efforts through community building and by setting up horizontal alliances.

In this respect the ROAC also intends to present a unified voice in response to certain issues of advocacy and policy. Having a strong community allows us to discuss and respond to various issues around publishing and openness, around how open access is being implemented for example, highlighting why funders should take alternative, scholar-led publishing initiatives seriously as part of this discussion. Think for example of the recently announced intention of the UKRI in the UK to have a mandatory OA monograph component to the REF after the next. This could present a threat by commercialising and formalising a particularly kind of OA monograph practice in the same way that the current REF policy has done for journal articles (including for example the adaptation of (high) BPCs for monographs, which are unsustainable), which is to say, in accordance with the wishes of commercial publishers. This has already summoned conservative reactions from organisations such as the Royal Historical Society, positioning themselves against this development. Yet, such funder requirement for OA books could also potentially present an opportunity for many presses within the ROAC who already publish OA monographs (such as ROAC members punctum books, Open Book Publishers, and Mattering Press, for example) as well as for scholars looking for options to publish their books in OA without (excessive) BPCs. Making both funders and scholars aware of the existence of these scholar-led models for publishing open access books is of the highest importance here. This is where we would see the ROAC coming in.

OLH: How do you imagine the role of radical experimentation as a tool for humanities open access?

JA & SM: Many of the ROAC member presses would understand the relationship the other way round, that openness affords experimentation and is the reason many OA projects adopt an open approach to begin with. This means that openness is often foundational to radical projects, a natural way of working that permits different kinds of experimentation in certain contexts. Openness is thus not about being more open, for instance, but is rather about being open to change and experimentation—depending on the contingent circumstances, the political and ethical decisions and cuts that need to be made, and so on.

… [B]y experimenting in an open way with the idea and the concept of the book, but also with the materiality and the system of material production surrounding it—which includes our ideas of the material and materiality—we can ask important questions concerning authorship, the fixity of the text, quality, authority and responsibility; issues that lie at the basis of what scholarship is and what the functions of the university should be.

This is why, in foregrounding experimentation, the ROAC reflects a range of practices and ideologies, rather than a single, coherent movement for making research freely available. Experimentation in this respect can be seen as a form of ongoing critique, serving as a means to re-perform our existing institutions and scholarly practices in a more ethical and responsible way. Experimentation thus stands at the basis of a rethinking of scholarly communication and the university in general, and can even potentially be seen as a means to rethink politics itself too. For instance, by experimenting in an open way with the idea and the concept of the book, but also with the materiality and the system of material production surrounding it—which includes our ideas of the material and materiality—we can ask important questions concerning authorship, the fixity of the text, quality, authority and responsibility; issues that lie at the basis of what scholarship is and what the functions of the university should be.

OLH: How does a radical approach to open access empower researchers in the Global South, and those outside of traditional institutional frameworks?

JA & SM: We would rather emphasise the opposite: it is researchers in the Global South and those outside or on the fringes of institutions (so-called para-academics) that empower the open access movement and scholarly publishing more in general. Dominique Babini has for example stressed that “the international community would do well to follow the examples of initiatives in Latin America, where open access is already the norm and where costs are shared among members of scholarly communities to ensure lasting impact”. In Latin America, Babini points out, the cost of publishing has always been an integral part of the cost of research, where it is universities and academic societies, not commercial publishers that predominantly publish journals and books. There is also the example of sustainable publishing platforms and models developed here, based on cost sharing, in opposition to the commercial enclosures APCs impose for example. Think of portals such as SciELO and Redalyc, but also the organisation (and ROAC member) Babini represents,CLACSO, which brings together hundreds of research centres and graduate schools in the social sciences and humanities, predominantly in Latin American countries.

… [I]t is researchers in the Global South and those outside or on the fringes of institutions (so-called para-academics) that empower the open access movement and scholarly publishing more in general.

From the perspective of being outside of established structures, we also need to acknowledge the essential role shadow libraries and guerrilla open access play in providing access to research in a global context, where for example LibGen and Sci-Hub have achieved with relative ease what the open access movement has for decades been striving for: quick and easy and near universal access to the results of scholarly research.

OLH: Open source tools and open access publishing are intertwined. What needs to be free and open for smaller initiatives to thrive?

JA & SM: If possible the entire production process (open that is, nothing is free), although we appreciate we will always be implicated in commercial, profit-driven, proprietary structures, platforms and models to some extent. It is about making strategic choices on the basis of what we, or better said, the ROAC’s members, think is important. Sometimes this means using proprietary software, sometimes it includes publishing in a closed way. There are no pre-set answers or guidelines here, although there are now many open-source options for scholar-publishers to choose from. Future work of the ROAC will be, based on the information portal we have already set up, to further collate many of these options and to develop a toolkit of advice so that other communities can start their own publishing projects too.

In many ways we’re heading in the wrong direction with increased control of the means of production by large corporate entities.

That said, the current push for centrally-controlled walled gardens, such as those being developed by Elsevier (see e.g. this article by Posada and Chen) and Springer-Nature, is very disturbing. Publishers now seek to lock users into their ecosystems, monetising not just user intellectual property but their interaction data too. In many ways we’re heading in the wrong direction with increased control of the means of production by large corporate entities. A perhaps missed opportunity to counteract this is the recent tender call for the European Commission Open Research Publishing Platformthat does not specifically require open infrastructure to protect against corporate capture.

Nonetheless, instead of centralised and one-size-fits all publishing platforms, we would like to emphasise the value of decentralised ecosystems of small open source publishing projects, where platforms are often based on implementing a specific model or solution aimed to solve the crisis in academic publishing. This kind of imposed uniformity could lead to a loss of control of certain aspects of the publishing process and threaten the independence and individuality of small experimental projects. This is why the ROAC intends to complement library-based and university press publishing projects that share a more decentralised vision, and urges funders to support a biodiversity of publishing projects and models.

OLH: What are your views on volunteerist labour in publishing? Is this something for which people should always be paid or is unpaid publishing work acceptable?

JA & SM: Our feeling is that academic publishing is already sustained by (and couldn’t exist without) large amounts of volunteer labour contributed by academic editors, reviewers, copyeditors and interns. Presses in the ROAC simply divert some of this labour from commercial publishing (and encourages other academics to do the same) towards something more transformative, that is truly in the communities interest as well as community-owned and controlled. Yet labour is not a zero-sum game and will be always be a site of struggle between individual commitments as part of the traditional publishing industry, due to the prestige this confers, and collective commitments to transforming this system through experimentation into alternatives. Ultimately we want to make the appeal that publishing should be valued as both an integral aspect of research and something for which scholars should be paid as part of their academic positions.

Ultimately we want to make the appeal that publishing should be valued as both an integral aspect of research and something for which scholars should be paid as part of their academic positions.

That said, many of our initiatives are currently committed to paying their designers, typesetters and proofreaders, interns, or other people they do work with, fairly (whilst they often don’t receive a wage themselves). On the other hand, members of the ROAC have also been critical of applying a market logic or a logic of calculation to all the relationships within research and communication. There are different ways than mere monetary ones in which we can recognise the contributions of the various agencies involved in the publishing process.

The ROAC also aims to decrease the amount of volunteer labour in publishing to some extent by enabling scholar-led and not-for-profit projects to work closer together and to encourage them to, as a community, share amongst themselves, tools, best practices and information that might aid with working more efficiently, including information on how to obtain funds and grants to subsidise publishing projects. To encourage this, we have set up the Radical Open Access mailing list, which we use to discuss issues around the politics and ethics of publishing, and to share best practices and strategies amongst each other.

OLH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Janneke and Sam!

Join us again soon for more #EmpowOA Open Insights.

INC

Vacature: Onderzoekscoördinator bij INC

Let op! Sluitingsdatum: 25 april 2018
Ga naar de HvA-site om te solliciteren

De Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) is voor het lectoraat Netwerkcultuur, onderdeel van het Kenniscentrum (CREATE-IT), van de Faculteit Digitale Media en Creatieve Industrie per 1 juni of 1 september 2018 op zoek naar:

Onderzoekscoördinator (0,6 fte)

De functie

De onderzoekscoördinator leidt en beheert onderzoeksprojecten van het lectoraat, onder meer het RAAK-MKB-project over digitaal publiceren waarvoor het lectoraat een succesvol subsidievoorstel heeft ingediend en dat van start gaat op 1 juni 2018. In dit project werkt het lectoraat samen met twee kunstacademies en ruim een dozijn MKB-partners uit het veld van uitgeven, vormgeving en softwareontwikkeling aan de optimalisering van het (digitale) uitgeefproces in de cultuursector. Ook speel je een voorkomende rol in andere projecten van het lectoraat, zoals over alternatieve verdienmodellen en kunstkritiek, en initieer je nieuwe projecten en schrijf je daar plannen, fondsaanvragen en begrotingen voor. Je draagt zorg voor de documentatie en administratie van projecten, bewaakt de voortgang en zorgt voor de inbedding ervan in de organisatie. Daarbij wordt ook het onderwijs betrokken. Je werkt hierbij nauw samen met de lector, de twee onderzoekers van het lectoraat en de eveneens nieuw te werven onderzoeksmedewerker.

Wij zoeken

Een ervaren projectmanager met WO werk- en denkniveau die graag aan inhoudelijke projecten werkt in de media- en cultuursector, waarbij verschillende partijen samen op een experimentele en hands-on wijze onderzoek doen. Je hebt ervaring met het schrijven en redigeren van projectplannen en subsidieaanvragen. Je bent op de hoogte van de ontwikkelingen in het vakgebied van de nieuwe media en netwerkcultuur; ervaring op gebied van digital publishing is een pre. Je kunt mensen activeren en inspireren, vindt het leuk om te organiseren, en kunt goed het overzicht bewaren in projecten die opgedeeld zijn in losse deelprojecten die zich op verschillende locaties afspelen. Je bent nauwkeurig in documentatie en administratie en beheerst zowel het Nederlands als het Engels op hoog niveau in woord en geschrift. Ten slotte heb je hart voor onderzoek en onderwijs.

De afdeling

Het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur (INC) maakt onderdeel uit van het kenniscentrum CREATE-IT. Tot de werkzaamheden van het lectoraat behoren onderzoek, het organiseren van theoretisch onderwijs en het ontwikkelen en uitvoeren van een programma van seminars, conferenties, evenementen en publicaties ten behoeve van kennisontwikkeling en kennisoverdracht. Het lectoraat bestaat uit een team van vijf medewerkers. Daarnaast werkt het lectoraat regelmatig met (internationale) stagiair(e)s en gastonderzoekers.

CREATE-IT applied research is het kenniscentrum van de faculteit. Studenten en onderzoekers werken samen in uitdagende projecten op het gebied van media, mode en IT. Het centrum wordt gekenmerkt door een ondernemende instelling en multidisciplinaire aanpak. Het onderzoek vindt zoveel mogelijk plaats binnen de bedrijven en instellingen waarmee samengewerkt wordt, maar er zijn ook verschillende labs, waar nieuwe technologieën onderzocht worden en waar studenten (afstudeer)opdrachten uitvoeren.

Wij bieden

De werkzaamheden maken deel uit van de organieke functie Projectmanager 4. Bij deze functie hoort de loonschaal 11 (cao hbo). Het salaris bedraagt maximaal € 4.661,- bruto per maand bij een volledige aanstelling en is afhankelijk van opleiding en ervaring. Het betreft in eerste instantie een tijdelijke aanstelling voor één jaar.

De HvA heeft een uitgebreid pakket secundaire arbeidsvoorwaarden, waaronder een ruime vakantieregeling en een 13e maand. Daarnaast biedt de HvA (via de HvA Academie) uitstekende studie- en ontwikkelingsmogelijkheden en stimuleert medewerkers om zich blijvend te professionaliseren.

Informatie

Nadere informatie: Miriam Rasch per e-mail vacatures@hva.nl (niet gebruiken om te solliciteren).

Deze vacature is gelijktijdig in- en extern gepubliceerd. Bij gelijke geschiktheid hebben interne kandidaten voorrang op externe kandidaten.

Meer informatie over de sollicitatieprocedure is te vinden op onze website WerkenbijdeHvA.

Bij de werving en selectie ter invulling van deze vacature, houden wij de HvA Sollicitatiecode aan.
Acquisitie naar aanleiding van deze vacature wordt niet op prijs gesteld.