The value of reviewing academic monographs

I came across this article via the twitters today, titled 'Why Bother Writing Book Reviews?' The author, Rachel Toor, asks us 'Is the time spent reviewing other people's books more important than writing your own stuff, making your own contributions?' 

Modified stock image c/o thekellyscope

While she points out a few positives associated with reviewing books, especially in disciplines where like mine (social sciences) where the academic monograph is the entry point into academic life, she concludes by saying that no - you shouldn't bother with book reviews: 'It's better to write one good article than to review 20 books, and even better to write one good book'. While I agree with the sentiment that sometimes the monograph and book review 'sausage factories' are not always the best uses of our time, writing book reviews can actually be very valuable for emerging scholars (grad students/postgrads) like myself.

While reading the article, I initially felt a slight twinge of regret at having written five book reviews over the past few years (OMG WHAT A WASTE OF TIME?!), but then I reflected on the positives:

1. I got some free books, and for a poor postgraduate, books are sometimes better than food.
2. My name and some of my thoughts made their way into some stellar journals. I have two review essays in New Media & Society, for instance, one of the leading journals in my field that I dream of getting an article into one day. Sure, as Toor points out, maybe nobody will ever read those review essays. However...
3. ...I get a surprising number of 'hits' on the review essays I've uploaded to my academia.edu profile.  People are searching for book titles or keywords and coming across my work through these book reviews. My guess is that a few of those hits are students googling for quick ways to summarise a book for an assignment, or maybe the authors googling themselves, but I suspect a few are simply from people interested in a subject area who have come across my essay and perhaps even glanced over my other work.
4. Probably most importantly, the task of a book review (with a deadline attached!) makes me read critically and with depth, and then produce something coherent from that reading. This is something all emerging scholars/grad students/postgrads should be encouraged to do. Most do undertake this kind of exercise by way of notes that never get read again. Writing a formal book review, however, makes you articulate yourself with an audience in mind... and someone might read it!
5. Finally, beyond the vague 'networking' and 'marketing yourself' rubbish above, I've actually established some real dialogues with the authors of the books I've reviewed. I was very humbled to get an email from one author who thanked me for my review (even the critical bits!) and asked me about my own work. I've also since worked with another author whose edited collection I reviewed. He contributed to a special issue I've been working on. (This is also why you shouldn't bee overly critical in your review essay, and never cruel or nasty).

So, yes. There are these positives, but there may be other more important things postgrads should be working on: fieldwork, a chapter of your dissertation, converting a chapter into a journal article, an important conference presentation, going out on a date, cooking dinner. Don't throw out the idea of writing a book review or five, though. You might be surprised by the outcome.

into the fray: orientation + erotics

Alright! So tomorrow is the beginning of orientation week, which will be particularly busy for me as this year I'll be serving as the first year advisor for my School, helping all the firsties settle in and transition to the big U. This year will also be my first year as a full time member of staff, convening two courses, along with being the year I'm planning to submit my thesis. So... no biggie, right? I'm actually looking forward to 2011. I'm up for a challenge, so let's see what happens.

This week I also dropped in on the Erotics conference hosted by my research centre, the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research. It was a great few days filled with some excellent scholarship, a bit of fun and some new friends. Jack Halberstam's keynote on 'Going Gaga' was an absolute standout. Longest applause following a conference presentation I've ever seen. I've found myself recounting some of the arguments at parties and in conversations since then. There is an echo of it in this review, but damn: I wish I had recorded it!

The conference was seamless. Well done to my mate and idol, Jodie Taylor, who convened with a sharp sense of style and humour that only she is able to reproduce with what appears to be such little effort. Amongst many others, Fiona Patten from the Australian Sex Party was there, along with the delightful Alan McKee who reminded us of the importance of happy endings. On that note, adieu!

Alan McKee

CSAA 2010

A couple of weeks ago I was in Byron Bay at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA) conference - 'A Scholarly Affair'. It was generally quite an enjoyable experience. The highlight for me was a plenary talk from Dr Katrina Schlunke who did an amazing job. I laughed, I cried. I tried to recall the specifics of her talk over dinner with some colleagues last week, but I failed miserably except to say something along the lines of "well there was this louse metaphor, and an observation that single beds are quite queer... and then she was fighting Engineers!" The resounding take home message was not to forget why we (people in cultural studies) do the things we do, and to go back to those motivations when we feel like giving it up or jumping ship. So, I'll leave it at that, because any further recollection wouldn't do it justice. Hopefully I can track down some reliable record of the talk

(Prof. Raewyn Connell - another wonderful talk)

Some other stand-out conference moments include a paper from Jenny Kennedy (Swinburne) who presented some really interesting and polished thinking, titled: 'Exploring social interactions in networked spaces'. I also enjoyed a paper from Daniel Marshall (Deakin) titled 'Life during wartime: sexuality, recruitment and reality television' where he explored the integration of Australian naval recruitment processes in the 'So You Think You Can Dance' television series. Penny Robinson (Sydney) also had some interesting things to say about how young Australian women engage with contemporary understandings of feminism mediated by popular culture in her paper '"I googled for feminism": creating a postfeminist methodology for cultural research'.

I missed a whole bunch of papers I would've liked to have seen, but you get that with concurrent sessions. It was also great to spend some time with many of my colleagues and friends from Griffith who were able to attend the conference given that it was just down the road.

I presented my paper titled 'Youth, identity and integrity on social network sites' which was a fairly casual kind of presentation where I discussed some of my findings more generally. I focussed on deploying my own data to resist Zuckerberg's singular model of identity and his insistence that privacy is dead. Good discussion, good suggestions. I was also delighted to contribute part of my argument from this paper to a special issue of a journal - the topic for another post!

Drop the "the". Just "Facebook". It's cleaner.

I went and saw the 'The Social Network' (2010) last night. It's a great film with a strong story-line and solid acting. I'm sure most of it is heavily dramatised, but the part I found most interesting was the deeper social and cultural sentiments the story points towards: we're such social creatures, even when we're bad at communicating with people and full of our own insecurities, which is how Zuckerberg is portrayed.

New technologies and new modes of engaging with eachother have always made this human condition seem more complex, from the advent of language (which probably took a bit longer than six years to hit 500 million adopters) through to the internet. Facebook does articulate, formalise and record these social interactions though, which is pretty awkward. We're definitely still getting used to that.

I'd thoroughly recommend seeing it!

Also, this:

K.C.: Seven different people spammed me the same link. 

KC's Friend: What is it? 

K.C.: I don't know, but I'm really hoping it's cats that look like Hitler 'cause I can never get enough of that. 

Creative Communities 2: Day 2 & 3

The final two days of CC2 were as inspiring as the first. Mary Fogarty kicked us off on Wednesday, day 2, with a very accessible and thoughtful keynote on her doctoral research concerned with breaking. Mary brought together much of the thinking from the previous day, suggesting 'extended families' in various youth cultures as useful mechanisms for inclusion and community.

Mary Fogarty, getting down low

Creative Communities 2: Day 1

This week the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research hosted the second annual Creative Communities conference on the Gold Coast at Crowne Plaza. The theme of the conference this year is 'Culture, Identity & Inclusion'. Here are some thoughts and responses to Day 1 of the conference.

YOUTH 2010

Last week I returned from a one month trip to Europe, hence why I haven't written much for a while. Aside from visiting some good friends of mine, the reason for my trip was to attend a youth studies conference, run by the British Sociological Association (BSA) youth studies group. It was a three day conference (July 7 - 9), organised by Paul Hodkinson, Sian Lincoln and Rachel Brooks. It was a truly fantastic conference and I wanted to recount some of the highlights here.

YOUTH 2010

My paper, a trimmed down version of the article I recently had published called 'Randoms in my Bedroom' was quite early on in the conference which is always a bonus. I spoke about how the young people in my study deployed a coherent spectrum of 'Friending' practices in using their preferred social network sites (primarily Facebook with a smattering of MySpace) and how these practices translated to a kind of practical control over their perceived online spaces. The paper seemed to be well received with plenty of questions and people approaching me afterwards. I was also lucky enough to present my paper in the same session as two other youth studies scholars. First was Liam Berriman from Goldsmiths, who presented his research on Habbo Hotel, a virtual environment pitched at teenagers. Liam discussed how the environment is shaped and inhabited by young people through a model of co-constitution that accounts for users, producers and the space itself. The other presenter in my session was Paula Geldens from Swinburne, who discussed her research into 'Generation Y' discourse in Australia. My own work often claims to resist such discourses (including that implied 'digital native' one, and of course discourses that construct online sociality as inherently counterproductive or wasteful) so Paula's research is definitely something I'll be returning to.

Andy's keynote

There was one other session I attended that had clear intersections with new media/internet-studies, which I chaired, featuring the work of Melissa Avdeeff (Edinburgh) and Helen Davies. Melissa's work actually has some continuities with my own work. While her paper did focus on music and issues of taste, she also considered how social network sites operate as 'invisible' (natural, everyday) technologies of transmission: 'for these youths, the technology is invisible; they must negotiate relationships with each other, through the filter of technology'. Melissa also had some interesting observations on eclecticism, an area of her research I'm particularly keen to read more about in the future.

Although slightly off-track from my own research, there were some other really great papers from the conference. I won't recount them all here in any depth, but for my own memory: I really liked Mark McCormack's (Bath) paper on 'the erosion of homophobia and the softening of masculinity among the boys of an English sixth form' and Michael Whelan's paper on violence amongst young men in London. There was also a great panel of familiar faces titled 'when youth culture meets middle-age', including the work of our own Jodie Taylor on queer culture, the entertaining Mary Fogarty on b-boys/b-girls and the very inspiring work of Paul Hodkinson on ageing goth subcultures.

Left to right: Erik, Melissa, me, Jodie and Mary

Some other highlights included four really great plenary/keynote sessions from Rob MacDonald, our own Andy Bennett, Christine Griffin and finally Les Back. Very motivating stuff. All the 'socialising', networking, learning and preparing took it out of me I must say, but I did manage to sneak in a couple of weeks worth of extra-curricular activities in London and Paris before returning to Australia for classes this week. It's not everyday your University sends you to Europe!

chatroulette: show me your books

ChatRoulette was launched at the end of 2009 (Nov.) and has in a few short months emerged into mainstream discourse. The idea is simple and certainly not new, but it's one that had kind of fallen out of fashion over the last few years: chatting with strangers! The site pairs random individuals from all over the shop and lets them peer into each-other's lives through the webcam window. With the proliferation of social network sites, we've observed a pretty strong tendency emerge whereby people are spending most of their social time online with people they already know -- not strangers. So if ChatRoulette continues to grow, this will mark a nice little shift back to (semi)anonymous chatting with strangers. Although, having said that, the kind of 'chatting' that actually goes on here is debatable. There's no way to pre-select who you'll end up with (it's a gamble, hence the name) so you might end up with some guy rubbing his pants or a bird in a cage or a kid dressed as a stormtrooper or a drunk Polish girl or a whole swathe of regular, inquisitive people. There are lots of funny examples that have been screen-captured (see chatroulettetrolling.com, for instance -- NSFW).

Anyway, a few weeks ago the local newspaper called me up to interview me about this new interwebz phenomenon, and I sheepishly admitted to never having used it. The interview continued for half an hour or so (slow news week, I guess?) and we'll find out soon what the results are. The reason I didn't abandon the interview from the get go was because I think it's important for public discourse to start off on the right foot here. This site is going to attract a whole lot of really negative media attention very quickly, so before the moral panic takes hold completely I thought I'd have a crack at constructing this site in context. So, in the name of research, myself and an esteemed colleague of mine went about exploring this strange and wonderful world we live in armed only with cheap beer, rum and poor lighting.

Our findings? Yes, there are creeps and weirdos out there, but you'll encounter them wherever you go. Unlike IRL, ChatRoulette allows you to 'Next' people (spin the wheel again and get a new partner) quite frequently. In fact, most of the encounters we had lasted only a few seconds. We waved, they waved, we got nexted. Are we not pretty enough for your interwebz?! Here's a nice little doco that sums things up pretty neatly. No no, it's not personal. After a while we got used to nexting people pretty regularly too. We discovered quite a few creeps, but also had some really great discussions with people from all over the place. We taught this Chinese guy some tricks and he told us a bit about where he lives, what he's studying (Fine Art) and we talked about the differences between our lives. It was kind of cool!

There are quite a few other instances of people doing interesting and funny stuff with the site, such as the piano guy. I'm sure we'll see these proliferate. Hopefully the site won't get commercial or change too much for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing whether or not it continues to build.

I'm really enjoying danah boyd's comments about the site (see a full copy of her SXSW keynote here). I know I'm a big boyd fanboy, but she makes too much sense! This site might be just a fad, but it reminds us about the fantastic potential of the internet to make visible the great and quirky and diverse and sometimes-cringe-worthy, sometimes-laugh-worthy world we live in. Lame? Maybe. I'll enjoy my optimistic youth for a little longer yet if that's ok.

To return to the title of this post, here is a link she shared on twitter recently: show us your books! Love it. Adieu!

google-opoly

A week without Google. How would you fare? This class was given what seems to be a fairly straight-forward and easy task. Don't use Google or any of its products (Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger, YouTube..) for a week. Just one week. See the comments on the linked page to see what happened!

This is a great example of how a corporate infrastructure can become embedded in our lives to the point of reflex. This isn't just 'oh I feel hungry and can't be bothered cooking, let's go to McDonalds..' this is 'Google is actually replacing my brain'. I'm strangely not that terrified by the prospect, although that in itself terrifies me. Weird, right? Anyway, I'm going to a masterclass with Geert Lovink for the next two days, so I'll record some reflections on the discussions that emerge out of that here. I'm just reading his article 'The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives', so I'm sure the above experiment might have some resonance there.

apt excursion

While I was digging around in the archives at the State Library, Chris and I popped into the GoMA to check out the APT. It was amazing! Selected favourites below.