I think this lecture is interesting in the context, https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_why_fascism_is_so_tempting_and_how_your_data_could_power_it/transcript#t-367398 the part about the data dictatorships in particular. Add the global economy, power of the corporation and an inability of the national governments to control the global processes… and there we have at least a possibility for a private company to become a controlling figure, a public discourse dictatorship if you will. You do not need an army these days, you just need enough money to buy FB, Google and Twitter to achieve the world dominance… Ok, maybe you need an army of trolls/bots as well, but that is the details. 🙂

367,185 is the number I estimate for all degrees, about 19,543 PhDs, 48,654 MA/MSc, 284,909 BA/BSc, and 13,776 other degrees/certficates. At a minimum there is roughly 299,000 people with an Anthropology degree. The minimum assumes everyone with an undergrad/other degrees also got all of the Anthro. postgrad degrees. Plenty, of people with postgraduate degrees in Anthropology got their undergrad degree in another subject so the actual number is probably much larger.

Half of all degrees have been given out since about 1992. The majority of Anthropologists, well people with anthropology degrees, have got their degrees in the last 25 years. The graphs below really capture this trend. It makes you wonder if that is reflected in the current make up of people working as Anthropologists?

Source: https://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/anthropology-gradautes-1948-2009/

For additional data see

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/anthropologists-and-archeologists.htm

Well I am anthropologist turned game developer, turned the common worker, turned… oh well, lets just say variety is the spicy of life. :)))

The thought was more that when I look at all the people I studied with and later the students I taught… some of them moved on to the other areas, some stayed to work in related fields, museums, societies, etc. They still are the anthropologists, so I assume they should have at least some interest in what is going on in the discipline.

So when I think about it worldwide… share numbers should be pretty high, of all the people who have ever finished anthro-studies. Ofc not everyone uses social media, etc., but when I see the interest in open access article being 3-10 people… considering the hypothetical numbers above… that is awfully little? Are we boring people to death with our writings? :/

Well there also is an over-moderation problem, which is also very successful in killing off the communities. For things to keep interesting, there has to be a certain amount of challenge – from different views, from things people disagree with. It is simple tendency that people generally tend to post more when they are unhappy with something and remain silent when they agree (creating the impression that nobody read the piece). When the disagreements get weeded out too much (and a lot of people cannot differentiate between disagreement and personal attack), people loose that carrot on a stick which brought them to the site in the first place.

Also, practically in any research I did in virtual spaces, people were telling me that the comments are the best part – the wit, the discussion, the relationships people build by fighting for the different sides of the argument, the alliances and the enemies. When comments are disabled or delayed, that natural flow is disturbed and people move on from the site, not waiting for the discussion to start.

What concerns me slightly in this light (as someone completely from the side) is… where are the anthropologists who do not work in academia? Surely, there must be some who still work in the field, or changed the occupation, but still like to read a bit of anthro-theory? When the discipline is followed only by the PhD students and their superiors… that kind of undoes any point in even having this kind of studies?

The problems with moderation are, of course, policy and execution. Historically both have been in the hands of those who set up and thus become the owners of the sites or forums in question, and those who combine the initiative to set up a site seem only rarely to have the diplomatic or managerial skills to keep them running smoothly. Also, the effort required frequently leads to burnout, accelerating the tendencies mentioned above.

When I think about Anthro {dendrum} and its predecessor Savage Minds, I see a rare success, at least so far. Why? I suggest the following factors.

From the inception, this blog has been a collective effort.
Uniquely, in my experience, there has been a series of successful transitions, with members of the original group replaced by newcomers. The failure to find and groom successors has doomed other efforts.
Active recruitment of guest contributors has kept the content fresh.

And, yes, moderation has been both firm and handled with a light touch. Alex Golub (Rex)’s moderation has, from my perspective, been exemplary. I have myself had comments rejected and been chided when temper overwhelmed respect and courtesy. Far from being angry, I am grateful for these interventions.

This project has

Open Comment is actually disappearing from everywhere, especially the old school anonymous one (which often provides the more free discussion, when people cannot/do not want to disclose their identities for various reasons). The problem with comments is the moderation – a simple thing, but rarely done the right way, because it needs just a right balance of control and freedom to work really well. Institutions and bigger online businesses fear the Open Comment, because so now and then it tends to get on the politically-hairy side. Often you have a specific group of people who get “concerned” about the admins being not “tolerant” enough and it ends up in the 21st century Godwin’s Laws of sexism, homophobia, racism and the rest of the great “evils”. It is quite ironic actually, especially when it happens to the social sciences places, because it often has a certain Durkheim’s deviance doomsday feel to it. 🙂

Either way, major portals figured that the simplest solution to the political-ethical problem… is to kill the switch and disable the comments in general. No comments, no problems, right?

— Any publication directed by editors, esp when they are answerable to an Editor-in-Chief (how un-HAU is that?) is already an example of power and prerogative at work.

— Although being Open Access until it sold out to Univ of Chicago Press, HAU was never Open Comment. Writers and readers, however egalitarian in spirit, were consigned to an institutional relationship of seigneur vs. serf.

— HAU proudly insisted on peer review. As I’ve written at length, peer review in anthropology is a ludicrous fiction that requires one to believe that there exists an anthropological canon buttressed by shared standards of research — of the means of producing an anthropological “truth.” Once you’ve bought into peer review, you’ve sold the farm. The coin of Caesar.
(Adapted from my post on the forum, “Hard Times for Online Anthropology” at Open Anthropology Coop.)

I also think it is a history thing, a story of the Internet and free data ideas. In a wider sense, Open Access is a history of The Hacker Manifesto, the Linux project, also pirating, Napster’s death, Torrent’s birth, etc. All of it posed much higher personal risks than merely “bullying of the staff”… Hacker Manifesto was written by a kid in jail if I remember it right, Linux and open source projects are in a constant battle with Microsoft and other major corporations over the software patents, pirating poses a personal risk of imprisonment and a huge backlash not only from the entertainment industry, but also from the old good academia and general public. These are much bigger battles than just a secure armchair activism.

It is also a philosophical question of greed, I think. Open Access (and other open ideas, open source code, free copyright music/art, etc.) is centered around the thought of spreading the ideas and copies for free, without a sure personal gain for the author (and whomever else wants to piggyback on it). Copyright in a nut shell is making money of it, greed without caring much about “the rest” and justifying it with all sorts of fluff about the poor starving authors and “production costs”. The whole academic publishing routine, the quality assurance safeguards (aka peer reviews, etc.) have an inherited vulnerability and power to kill off the ideas even before they see the daylight and then, what is left, is trimmed by the practical application knife, funds management and whatever other vulture arrives at the scene in time. The corporate greed in academia manifests on the institutional level, of course (does it bring in the big funds? and no, bad/controversial PR does not bring in the funds), but what we talk less about are the situations when greed manifests on the personal level, in a form of a secure academic position silence vs. the professional integrity and standing your ideological grounds. It is not limited to academia, of course, in the wider sense it is all over the Internet, starting with a rather iconic Metallica’s involvement in taking down the Napster and finishing with a random common person fuming over a copyright of his/hers kid’s drawing, because god forbid someone uses it without a permission. The common argument of the arguments being … the artist/writer must be PAID for his/her work, above all things, because any work has a mythical default “cash” value attached to them, or at least people believe in that.

So what does it boil down to? I think the old good “no guts, no glory”. It is already somewhat understood in the industries which were online first – indie coding and music for example, where you can see that people accepted the uncanny truth about their work, that it won’t make them rich and probably will stay a side project forever, a hobby. They do it, because they cannot otherwise, the idea, the creativity is bigger than them, even if it does not bring them safe and well paid job, nor helps them to climb the corporate ladder. I do not see much of that in academia yet… which probably is part of the reason why journalism/bloging starts to take over the role of academia in social sciences/humanities. Arguably less scientific, it at least still speaks in the language of the ideas, spreading the word, rather than in academic check boxes. Academia on the other hand… seems to stick to the old good “every man for himself” way of doing things… which has a good chance to be it’s own undoing, at least to a certain extend.