Re: Re: Jill - email [towing the party line]

[Guest guest]

On Sunday, October 30, 2005, at 05:51 PM, Nelly Pointis wrote:

> Sorry to butt in (I don't feel well enough to participate) but I can

> testify that what happens in medicine also happens in other fields,

> especially he bit about only being allowed to choose a usually very

> narrow research topic (collecting data) that would then " feed "  the

> papers, books etc that your professor would sign.

>  

> At least this is what happened in the field of linguistics. And you

> had to toe the " party line " as well, whatever trend was in fashion in

> your university at the time. 

>  

> Nelly 

Well, I guess I'm in a bizarre field (ethnomusicology, folklore). It

seemed to me that they were encouraging originality. So much so that

when I wanted to do ish-derived fiddle music in Nova Scotia, it

was considered passe, never mind that nothing much had really been done

with it. But yah, so I guess that was " party line " stuff, as the

in-thing at the time was African anything, or, get this Nelly, anything

that related to linguistics. But aside from whether one was cool or

not, it didn't make that much of a difference. Probably because there's

no money in that field!

Money must be the root of the problem. The people who are getting money

don't want it going elsewhere.

- Kate