Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 556. Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne Hosted by DH-Cologne www.dhhumanist.org Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org Date: 2022-02-27 14:42:28+00:00 From: Jennifer Edmond <EDMONDJ@tcd.ie> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 35.555: working with others? Dear Willard, For what it's worth, we did a series of interviews a few years ago exploring a number of questions around research processes in the DH-adjacent humanities, with questions of collaboration among them. On this topic, we concluded the following, which chimes somewhat with our observation that modes of collaboration are dependent on a number of variables: Anecdote would have it that humanists do not collaborate: at the most, their manner of work has been deemed ‘cooperative .’ (Unsworth, 2003) This perception ... lies not so much in any lack among humanists in collaborative skills, but in a widely promulgated, very narrow understanding of collaboration as consisting of co-publication and the pursuit of narrowly defined parallel strands of physically co-located work. The fact that much of humanities research is based on human interpretation of cultural and social artifacts means that the presence of the wider community is always strong and the researchers interviewed were in constant exchange with it. What is different, however, is that the modalities by which they collaborate are, like their instruments of analysis, highly varied and often unique to their personal circumstances, topic of research, or personal efficiency requirements. When asked about how they tested their ideas with peers before publication, we received a wide variety of responses. Conferences are a very common (but by no means universal) outlet, but even within this response were degrees of variation: for some, the idea of an audience pushed them to ensure their ideas were robust, for others, it was the performative aspect of hearing oneself speaking the line of argument before an audience that was most useful. The actual questions and comments received at the presentation were of marginal value, but fitting one’s ideas into the theme or focus of a meeting was a key way of giving them form and shape, of focusing among many possible alternative routes of enquiry and of stretching one’s comfort zone in terms of content of approach. The fact that the presentation is ephemeral (though it may often lead to a publication) makes the perceived barriers lower and reduces the necessary investment of time, but it is also important that a conference organizer and audience are present to validate the work. In this respect, the divergence in disciplinary convention by which science or technical papers are most often submitted ready to publish, while humanities papers are generally (but not always) presented either as ideas or, if a written text, as a work very much in progress, can be seen to have a specific purpose. Beyond conferences, researchers also draw individually on peers, but only when they feel they can do so without wasting their precious time. In some cases, the peer input is used to extend the reach of a piece, in some cases to ensure that scoping of the secondary landscape has been robust enough to pass an initial friendly test: “If it’s something where you’re really reaching outside your comfort zone, it’s not only wise to ask other people’s advice, I think it’s also courteous, you know if you’re trespassing on somebody else’s patch, although scholarship shouldn’t be like that, I think it’s good idea just to open lines of communication, and mostly people are very well disposed.” Teaching is another avenue in which input is sought, not so much from the perspective of an expert point of view, but as a place to discuss, present, test the coherence of an argument, and quite importantly, to motivate the process of completing a full review of the secondary literature. Other forms of consultation and cooperation we observed other included co- writing with a spouse or other colleagues, consulting family members or other non-specialists to ensure an argument made sense outside of the jargon of a discipline or indeed chatting on-line with writers from outside of academia as a way of motivating progress and establishing a feeling of common purpose (“marching together”) in highly individualized work. Full report available here: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01566290 Best, Jennifer Edmond Trinity College Dublin ________________________________ From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2022 6:36 AM To: Jennifer Edmond <EDMONDJ@tcd.ie> Subject: [Humanist] 35.555: working with others? Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 555. Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne Hosted by DH-Cologne www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org Date: 2022-02-25 12:42:33+00:00 From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk> Subject: working with others Commenting on the attitudes of the Stoics, early Christians and others, Bertrand Russell notes in The Conquest of Happiness (1930) that, > All these are solitary philosophies in the sense that the good is > supposed to be something realizable in each separate person, not only in > a larger or smaller society of persons. All such views, to my mind, are > false, and not only in ethical theory, but as expressions of the better > part of our instincts. Man depends upon co-operation, and has been > provided by nature, somewhat inadequately, it is true, with the > instinctive apparatus out of which the friendliness required for > co-operation can spring. The value of working with others, it seems to me, is beyond doubt. But in what sense, 'with others'? My question is this: how does 'collaboration' in the broadest sense, including the sort that a scholar working alone does, with others both living and dead, play out across the disciplines? How does it vary by discipline? By kind or phase of a project? I take it that 'collaborsation' is not a transcendental good but is contingent on the nature of the work. Comments. Yours, WM -- Willard McCarty, Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk<http://www.mccarty.org.uk> _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/ Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php