[URBANTH-L]Campus: Gold, Silver. . .Green?
mckennab at umd.umich.edu
mckennab at umd.umich.edu
Tue Aug 19 11:50:31 EDT 2008
It's a given that green anthropologists work on gold campuses. . .but
is there a silver lining? The gold is "Mr. Moneybags" - the
military-industrial-academic complex. The green is, too often, a
coopted movement of energy audits and adopt a river programs which
leave Eisenhower's dark forces alone. David Orr says that trying to
change universities is like walking north on a moving train going south.
But how well are anthropologists doing? Is there a silver lining?
That's where I need your help for an article I'm writing.
Here's a devil's advocate view. . . .not mine of course. . .
Most university anthropologists are more concerned with typical
academic career matters (grant writing, academic publishing, teaching,
merit raises, excavating, or protecting their "own adopted group" of
natives elsewhere around the world) than they are with radicalizing
their own universities along "green" lines. Their own backyards
crumble while their journal entries grow.
Yes, there are a hundred or so anthropologists (of thousands and
thousands) who push hard to transform their "campuses" towards
policies and practices that radically challenge non-sustainable
capitalist social relations. But, as a group, anthropologists on
campus are generally co-opted by a sustainability movement that asks
little of them in terms of challenging or overthrowing the reigning
"culture, resources and power" arrangements of their universities.
Some may work with administrators and colleagues on energy
audits,biofuel alternatives, Earth Day celebrations, pesticide reduc
tion, adopt a river
programs and other initiatives. But though important, these substitute
for a powerful overarching movement to "green the campus." Over in the
cloistered seminar room radical theories about the ecology get full
exposition but generally do not when one is sitting across from
scientists, engineers and patent officers of the campus. "Why! you're
certainly not against patents, are you?" an anthropologist was once
mockingly asked by one such administrator at a public meeting.
The penultimate "green campus" a form of eco-socialism that is
organized against neoliberal practices. It is pre-eminently concerned
with the fact that colleges and universities are for sale to the
highest bidders and that the non-sustainability military is growing
and growing on campus. A green campus is also a red campus, a festival
of critical pedagogy in all venues. . . .where there are an abundance
of union drives, student loan forgiveness, a democratically elected
university administration (by students, faculty and workers), constant
demonstrations against corporate influence, the take-over of PBS
stations on campus by democratic representation, and a clear public
communication about how universities are more gold than green.
The corporate knowledge factory model advances by leaps and bounds
while the "red and expert" model wanes. A good many anthropologists do
extraordinary work in teaching and research ing about conservation,
biodiversity, sustainability, commodification,privatization,
interdisciplinarity and so on, but too many of these same
anthropologists at missing in action when it comes to challenging
corporations like Dow Chemical, General Motors, the Business college,
the Pentagon, university media and their Boards of Trustees
in jettisoning neoliberal authoritarian movements on their own campuses.
What happens in their curricula or classrooms or in their speciality
substitutes for border crossing work on their campuses.
Back to me again. . .the devil is, er, gone.
Best,
Brian McKenna
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