New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

What it takes to succeed in academia

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

I’ve just been promoted to (junior)* full professor in Groningen, and while I’m still duly enjoying the accompanying feeling of achievement and recognition, it got me thinking about how I got here. It does not take much to conclude that, while I've worked incredibly hard for this, I was also *extremely* lucky. I know countless  people who work just as hard as I do (or more), and who are as good as I am at what they do (or better), and yet do not get similar professional recognition. It takes an incredible amount of luck and, yes, privilege, for things to work out. So let me comment on two kinds of luck that may play a role in one’s professional development. 

The first kind is simply the luck to have been dealt rather generous cards in life. While I am a woman in a male-dominated field, and while I had to overcome hurdles related to coming from the ‘periphery’ of academic action (originally from Brazil, and then developing my career in the Netherlands, which is ok but frankly not Top of the Pops), for the rest I’ve been extremely privileged. My parents were both academics (my mother still is), so in terms of academic support at home I was particularly well served. For a number of reasons, I also never had to worry about economical hardship and financial stability, and thus I could choose the risk of an academic career without having to worry whether one day I’d have no food on my plate. And, last but not least, I am white, not differently abled, cis, and I fit reasonably well within certain stereotypical standards of beauty.

Let me refer to this kind of luck as privilege-luck, and it is still a matter of luck because I might just as well have been born in different circumstances, and things might have been very different. One way in which privilege-luck manifests itself very conspicuously is with the so-called ‘pedigree’ phenomenon; depending on where you go to school (both undergraduate and graduate), your career will develop in very different ways. But we all know very well that the school you end up going to is almost entirely determined by the kind of socio-economical background you can fall back on.

Gary Becker’s Deus ex Machina on Health Behaviors

By Gordon Hull

As Melinda Cooper notes (recall here), one of the reasons Gary Becker – as opposed to other neoliberal theorists – was interesting to Foucault because of his emphasis on microeconomics, particularly the quotidian institutions through which micropower functions, such as the family.  At the same time, Becker’s human capital theory has become increasingly important in neoliberal constructions of human nature.  In a late essay, Becker applies himself to health economics.  The result, I think, offers a very clear demonstration of neoliberal thinking and how it works nearly inexorably to distract from social problems, generally by constructing them as individual problems and ignoring the social determinants of an individual’s situation.

Tracking The Job Market: A Start

by Carolyn Dicey Jennings

I recently joined Twitter and uploaded some quick attempts to sum up what has been happening with job ads on PhilJobs this year compared to a couple of past years. I noticed, first, that there are fewer job ads this year so far than in previous years, at least on PhilJobs (with some nice caveats provided in comments here). Second, looking at first AOS, the most sought-out area of specialization this year differs from previous years. While in my initial tweet on this I said that value theory appeared better off than other areas of specialization this year, that was based on a mistake. (You can check out the Excel file I used for 2 and 3 if you want to help me identify other potential mistakes. 1 is based on PhilJobs searches, not a csv file.) In terms of percentages, all areas of specialization are down this year since open searches are up, relative to last year. I take this increase in open searches to be a good thing, in terms of potentially increasing the intellectual diversity of philosophy, but I am interested in what others think about this. Third, if you look at the full AOS listing for job ads, certain words are more frequent this year than you might expect, given the first AOS listing, such as "science." Finally, if you look at the first-reported AOS of the bulk of the placed candidates in the APDA database, the AOS balance is different yet again (favoring LEMM over history and traditions, for instance). (In the future, I can break this down by TT placement year, but I didn't have time to do that for this post.) These are initial numbers, and the season just started, but I think this is a space worth watching. Here are some numbers and images (with 2015 highlighted in yellow):

Cooper on Foucault on Iran and Neoliberalism

In her contribution to recent the Vatter/Lemm-edited collection of essays on biopolitics, Melinda Cooper argues that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism needs to be read in the context of his interest in the Iranian revolution.  If she’s right, this stands current complaints about Foucault’s engagement with neoliberalism on its head.  The standard complaint about the work on biopolitics is that Foucault ends up supporting (deliberately or otherwise) neoliberalism.  The merits of that claim have been debated ad nauseam, particularly in light of the Zamora book last year, and I have no interest in revisiting them here (plus, Vatter’s paper in the same book does a great job on the topic, and I think he ups the bar considerably for future discussions).  Cooper’s paper is of interest because she makes what is essentially the opposite claim: Foucault was so disturbed by the general diffusion of the oikos into the polis that defines neoliberalism (and really classical liberalism, too) that he found the Iranian revolution interesting precisely because it focused on restoring some sort of classic oikonomia.  There’s thus two main steps to the argument in its most condensed form: (a) The Iranian revolution was premised on getting women out of the public sphere after Shah Pahlevi introduced a number of reforms that greatly expanded their integration into the full economy; and (b) Foucault thought that it would be a good thing if there was some sort of restoration of the law of the household as a bulwark against neoliberalism.

The Los Angeles Times

... has been publishing philosophers' op-eds recently -- a couple by me (here and here), and this past week Harry Frankfurt on why inequality isn't immoral and an adaptation of Regina Rini's Splintered Mind guest post on microaggression.

The new op-ed editor Juliet Lapidos is behind this trend. Encourage Juliet by sharing the LA Times philosophy links widely and by sending the LA Times your best op-ed queries. It would be terrific if this trend could stick and we could have another major U.S. newspaper that regularly publishes philosophers!