Author: Huib Ernste

Prof. Huib Ernste Radboud University Nijmegen
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Conspiracy Theory and Science

Lately ‘Fake News’ and ‘Conspiracy Theories’ are the talk of the day. We believe that their followers are ridiculously stupid. and unknowledgeable. Some of them even believe that the result of the presidential election in the USA is a hoax which was deliberately set up by the democrats. Of course, sheer nonsense. And, Yes, we need to fiercely stand up against it. Especially science, as the rational counter programme should provide the ‘fact checks’ and propagate the truth.

But this is where it becomes complicated: Already ages ago, in the 1950’s the expert in cybernetics, Heinz von Foerster, wrote that knowledge or on other words: that epistemology is politics. Later on, it was Michel Foucault who linked the discourse about knowledge with the geometry of power in our society. The distinction between political opinions and scientific knowledge blurs. And yes, indeed, it is generally accepted in the social sciences that science is highly political. In our research, we focus on the most urgent societal problems and try to contribute to their solution, and therefore make science highly relevant but also highly political. It is difficult to see the societal relevance of investigating black holes, but it is evident that we should find solutions for the Covid-19 pandemic, and we should try to overcome racism and poverty. But if our science is so political, what makes it different from any other political opinions? The main difference is of course that we have the better arguments. As Jürgen Habermas wrote, it is the power of the better argument, which should be convincing in a rational communicative debate. Having different opinions is not the problem, as long as we are debating with each other, as long as we exchange arguments, and are willing to put our arguments to the test, and as long as we find the words to convince the others. This is where good science can stand out; in the way, it can provide empirical evidence, in the way it can logically derive conclusions, and in the way it may underpin certain interpretations. Combined with an effective translation into everyday language, science can be a main political force and a real contribution to society. People will also listen to it. Take for example the currently popular crossovers between different media like in the DWDD University on Dutch Television or take the scientists who become celebrity guests in talk shows during the current Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, we as scientists, we should be at the front stage in many topical societal debates. We should shout out loud. This performative stage work is certainly not my personal talent (there are others in our geography group who are more talented in this respect), but we do try to raise the critical awareness of our students and we try to mobilise their societal engagement and stimulate their communicative skills to fulfil this responsible role in civil society.

However, in science one also needs to guard for being too much taken away be certain political ideals, and for not being open to alternatives ideals, ideas and arguments. Ideals are often rather simplistic categorisations of supposed ‘goods’ and ‘evils’. Idealists can easily become as autistic as many conspiracy theorists and negators of real facts. Not the difference in opinions, ideals or convictions, but the lack of scientific debate is then the problem. And each debate starts with listening, with taking the other seriously and with meeting each other at eye level. Populism is fed by classes of neglected and not-listened-to people. They feel like the famous comic chick Calimero, who always feels as a marginalised minority confronted with a large overbearing majority. ‘They are big and I am small…’  Constructing and blaming some strawmen has always been an easy way of self-justification. But that goes in both directions. In the same way, one cannot counter populism by ridiculing it, by not taking it seriously and by not starting a discourse. This is, however, easier said than done…

Thinking of the current political situation, it seems as if science is a big exception, and is much more rational and communicative. Scientists seem to play the role of the wiser and more reasonable ones. But some critical self-reflection might be justified here. Because being at the politically correct side sometimes also gives us the illusion of truth. If we engage against racism, against colonialism, against inequality, against injustice, against climate change, or whatever, the enemy, the evil other, is easily identified and blamed. A Calimero-like reflex. But a second look can disguise this view as partly ‘fake’ and as another ‘conspiracy theory’. A closer look often shows that we, ourselves, are the so-called ‘evil others’. Such imaginary contradictions are not that uncommon in science. Science is not separate from society and its populistic tendencies. Science is always in danger of becoming a playball of the political economy of academia and of scientific populism. Also in science one sometimes observes such self recursive and self-emphasising bubbles like we also see in social media, with their own ‘truths’ and their own ‘enemies’, their own journals, their own conferences and their own fan clubs of followers and Maecenas. Science is not different from everyday life.

In this situation, scientific doubt becomes a precious virtue. The willingness to recognise and not prejudice the other and to express openness for alternatives without apriori enciphering away one’s own arguments and judgements. We need to ask who (and why) is the other and we should try to understand them. A difficult dilemma, between clearly positioning oneself while also being ready to move on to new insights and understandings, between clearly communicating what we really believe to know and interaction for the sake of gaining better knowledge. Like in society also in science the debate around this dilemma is reviving. The dilemma, however, is not just the problem, but also the solution. We should not be tied to fixed positions, to fixed categorisations, of fixed conceptualisation and essentialising judgements, but we should always be in between, on the move, in transgression, crossing borders, in a state of change. Although this blog-site has placemaking as title, scientific placemaking in this line of reasoning should focus on creating spaces for change, change of knowledge, change of understanding, change of position and change of place. Only in this way we can fight prejudice, conspiracy and populism, not just in science but also in society.

Not so long ago, one of my favourite columnists wrote a background article on this issue in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, which I share with you here in my own freely translated version.

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PhD Defence by Rodrigo Bueno Lacy

Friday, November 13, for many a curious date, one of our members of the Geography Group, Rodrigo Bueno Lacy, successfully defended his PhD Thesis entitled ‘In the image of Kronos – or how Europe is devouring itself. The iconological construction of EUropean identity, its geopolitical implications for the project of European integration and why it needs to be re-imagined ‘. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the opponents and audience needed to follow the defence at a distance via the live stream connection.

In his thesis he addresses how consciously or unconsciously the European identity and implicitly of course what is excluded from being ‘European’ is socially constructed also by means of cartographic images. The relation to the title of my personal website is obvious. This is a prominent form of Placemaking. Rodrigo strongly criticises how this European identity is superimposed and enforced upon others and how many are also excluded in this way. In his thesis, he develops a ‘critical cartography’. In this defence, he was generally praised for his emancipatory engagement. On the other hand, the opponents almost jointly addressed in how far the imagination of an evil top-down power superimposing a specific conceptualisation of a European identity, does justice to the diversity and layered identities of Europe. In the same way, one could ask who the ‘other’ in this case is? From this discussion, one might also wonder in how far this very engaged view, is maybe also contributing to, instead of emancipating from an ‘us’-‘them’ thinking, which he, in the first instance, intended to criticise.  Reality in this sense might be much more complex and probably needs to be looked at much more from a relational perspective starting with a flat ontology. Nevertheless, addressing this issue in the way Rodrigo did, already contributes to a critical debate about how identity is not naturally given but continuously is part of identity politics and the politics of placemaking. This cannot be stressed too much.

It is again fascinating to see that the basic issues addressed and the theories mobilised in this analysis are very generally applicable in many different fields of Human Geography, Spatial Planning and Environmental Politics, irrespective if it is about borders, migration, integration, tourism, diversity, urban development, mobility, place experiences, economic relationships, armed conflicts or whatever. Especially in human geography, we tend to look for local contexts and the situational aspects of many phenomena and want to unveil the small stories of everyday life, but these more general aspects also show that there are also larger stories to be told. Looking into these general mechanisms of placemaking is also an essential aspect of doing fundamental research in academia. In that respect, Rodrigo’s contribution to the debate is a very valuable one.

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First MOOC of Radboud University

On the second of November, with a few months delay, because of Covid-19 pandemic situation, we finally launched our MOOC on Qualitative Research Methods, in close cooperation with the Geography Department of the University of Zurich. This is the first MOOC of the Radboud University and therefore a first step bringing our university into the 21st century of online teaching. The Radboud University can be very proud of its beautiful green campus, especially also in this autumn season, and for a long time has seen this as their competitive edge, and therefore was very reluctant in developing off-campus online education. In the meantime, the university has become aware that one needs both, a beautiful campus for in-person and on-location teaching as well as an online presence reaching out and accessible for a worldwide audience. And I am proud that with our MOOC we could contribute to both, as our online course is combined with on-campus teaching in a real blended way.

But our course is more than just an online presence of our university. It is as well a dynamic platform in which different universities can share their expertise in Qualitative Research Methods with their own students as well as with a larger audience. It is therefore also a platform on which we openly try to bring together the best one can get in this field from wherever in the world. As such it is also an attempt to ‘de-border’ our university in particular and academia in general, and a contribution to a sharing society. Our course will therefore also for certain develop further and offer a spectrum of different modules for a diversity of needs.

If you are interested you can peek into our online course: https://courses.swissmooc.ch/courses/course-v1:UZH+RadboudMANBCU2033UZHGEO242+201920/about

In the current times of the Covid-19 pandemic, of course, the emergence of all kinds of quick-and-dirty online teaching modes are ubiquitous. This MOOC, however, is very different as we started this project well before the pandemic hit us. We developed this not for pandemic reasons but to get the best out of both online and on-campus teaching. We also wanted to move beyond many free online courses which for reasons of accessibility also lowered the standards for academic teaching. We really wanted to keep up our high academic ambitions. At the same time we also did not want to turn everything academia has to offer into an endless sequence of brief video’s, no, we know that it is the mix of different modes of teaching (watching, reading, doing, discussing, presenting, reviewing, engaging, reflecting, assessing, practising, etc. etc.) which stimulates the learning experience. Many features of online teaching can help us in doing that. It is also this, which is the big challenge for me in developing this MOOC and in developing it further. I learned a lot as I usually do from teaching and interacting with students. These kinds of intellectual challenges make scientists ticking.

Especially now, under the current pandemic situation, we became again aware of how important it is to not just academically reflect at a distance (at least 1.5 m), but also to be physically and personally confronted with the topics we investigate and we teach about. The direct exchange, the touch, the feeling, the engaging and experiencing is central in our learning, not just in relation to the objects and subjects of our study, but also in relation to each other, to the (fellow) students and to the lecturers. In the current on-campus meetings with students, which enhance our MOOC, I experience the more, how important it is to really experience that both lecturers, tutors and students need to be in a collaborative and friendship relationship to jointly discover and learn. Under the current difficult pandemic conditions teaching sometimes really sucks, but on the other hand, it is still a big privilege… as this cartoon, which I found on the pinboard at our department next to the xerox machine, expresses.

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Making Policies against Migrant Smuggling

On Thursday, September 24, 2020 our Phd candidate Federico Alagna, successfully defended his PhD thesis.

Federico was part of a double degree programme together with the University of Bologna, and from the side of the Radboud University was supervised by Prof. Huib Ernste, dr. Joris Schapendonk and dr. Martin van der Velde.

His thesis is titled: SHIFTIG GOVERNANCE. Making Policies against Migrant Smuggling across the EU, Italy and Sicily.

Abstract
This research seeks to understand the policy-making dynamics related to migrant smuggling within the European Union, focusing in particular on the Italian case and on the Sicilian sub-case, over the period 2014-2019.
The study is based on an operational definition of migrant smuggling which goes beyond a merely legal understanding of it and considers smuggling in its persistent tension between security and human rights. To do so, the phenomenon is unpacked into its two main components – supply and demand, the latter being often neglected in policy practices. After that, such components are brought back together into a ‘smuggling spectrum’, which becomes a key analytical tool: an area of complexity where the phenomenon is considered through six different layers, pointing to the existing contradictions both in empirical and policy terms.
Building upon this approach, this interpretive case study, falling within the broad field of the EU studies, combines new institutionalist and multi-level governance approaches. This analytical perspective makes it possible to answer the main research question, aimed at understanding how and why agency, influenced by institutional constraints, moves within and across governance levels in the formulation of policies aimed at countering the smuggling of migrants in the EU, Italy and Sicily. To do so, multiple data are considered and analysed, including: 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews, realised with relevant actors on different governance levels; parliamentary proceedings from 1998 to 2019; judicial proceedings; documents from the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, national ministries, Europol, Eurojust, UNODC, UNHCR and NGOs, among others.
The multi-level perspective is unfolded into three different levels – i.e. supranational (EU), national (Italy) and local (Sicily) – each of them being associated with a sub-research question. Moreover, the elaboration of an analytical model makes it possible to apply the conceptual combination of new institutionalism and multi-level governance on the specific case at hand and on the three governance levels connected.
Adopting a bottom-up perspective, the focus is firstly placed on local implementation patterns in Sicily, based on different arenas of agency. The consequences of these practices on policy-making, as well as (sometimes unwanted) bottom-up dynamics in fighting migrant smuggling, influencing both national and European policies, are also discussed, disclosing the importance of certain actors in particular, such as judiciary, NGOs and intermediate bodies (institutions placed in-between governance levels), among others.
The analysis of the national level explores policy-making in relation to migrant smuggling, in the light of vertical and horizontal dynamics. The former are based on the influence of the local and EU levels, where again intermediate bodies play a crucial role, alongside parliamentary committees and unwanted effects originating at EU level. As for the latter, they consider the way in which different policy areas and different institutional and non-institutional actors placed at national level interact in the elaboration of smuggling-related policies. Here the security-based framework, the unwanted consequences caused by NGOs and the executivisation of policies are all aspects that gain primary relevance.
A very similar approach is proposed also at an EU level. In this case, vertical dynamics confirm the importance of intermediate bodies and parliamentary committees, in addition to field visits, whereas horizontal interactions help to disclose the relevance of other policy domains outside the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, the institutional consequences of that, the interaction between supranational and intergovernmental actors as well as the important (and yet contradictory) role of research and studies.
Building upon this analysis and assessing the way in which each actor moves within and across the governance levels, influenced and limited by institutional constraints, this study makes it possible to understand (a) which actors lead the policy-making process in the field of anti-migrant smuggling in the EU, Italy and Sicily, and why this is the case; (b) what their approach to smuggling is; (c) what dynamics characterise the relationships between them; (d) how much room there is for processes of information and preference upload; (e) to what extent non-institutional actors contribute to the process of policy adoption.
Namely, what emerges in these five dimensions is the strong executivisation of policies, with a prominent role of national governments and of the Council of the EU; the widespread tendency towards a more securitising approach to migrant smuggling; the existence of pass-the-buck dynamics (especially between national and supranational levels); the difficulty in processes of information and preference upload (mostly depending on the content to be uploaded); and, lastly, the importance of non-institutional actors in influencing the policy-making process through their practices.
The conclusions that are reached, on the one side, allow for an in-depth understanding of the specific Italian/Sicilian case, which is significant, considering this as first systematic insight into a policy domain still to be explored. On the other side, through the conceptual combination proposed, they provide a definition of a model aiming to look at similar policy-making processes in other fields and/or in other case-based and comparative studies.

This PhD thesis shows that Places are especially made at the Border! and not just at the centres of European Governance.

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Informality in Spatial Planning

Spatial Planning is closely related to applying strict procedures and rules for spatial decision making, and for the implementation of these decisions. In the ancient times of Spatial Planning this was a sole government responsibility, even though in the seventies of the last century, certainly also in the Netherlands, spatial decision making was increasingly done in a participatory way. These were the heydays of collaborative and communicative planning.  Since then we moved from government to governance, and spatial planning became a joint responsibility of many involved public and private partners. The public participatory decision making was at the same time partly replaced by market-led planning. Throughout these developments, the relationship between the different involved stakeholders and affected groups and parties has also changed. They are not always led by the same target, they have different interests, they value the diverse aspects of a spatial decision differently, they have unequal resources to contribute to the plan, etc. etc. Spatial planning has thus evolved as a complicated game of dealing, negotiation and collaboration. This is therefore much more than choosing a target, setting up a plan, and implementing a plan. Successful planning nowadays is the art of bridging these cultural and social differences between the involved parties, and only to a very small part driven by formal rules and procedures. This also implies that much more informal ways of communicating, evaluating, and negotiating have become crucial in spatial planning. Spatial planning is really the work of human beings with all their subjective needs, interpretations, valuations, preferences, visions, intentions, beliefs, politics, talents, etc. One might say that these ‘soft factors‘ or ‘cultural factors‘ in spatial planning have increasingly become decisive, and formal and institutional aspects seem to lose their importance. Spatial planning becomes a regular form of Placemaking.

It was my Austrian colleague Prof. Peter Weichhart from the University of Vienna and Prof. Rainer Danielzyk from University of Hannover, who already addressed this in 2005 as the Culture of Spatial Planning when they were asking, why is even in states which have an elaborated and almost perfectly institutionalised and regulated spatial planning system planning not always successful? and, what are then the real structural principles and deeper working mechanisms in spatial planning? And what is the role of the subjective and cultural backgrounds and of their culturally determined ‘ways of doing’ of the people involved? It is self-evident that the growing importance of these cultural aspects of spatial planning is not necessarily about ‘national’ cultures, or planning styles, or planning systems but much more about the cultural backgrounds and everyday ways of doing of the people involves in spatial planning, beyond the rules and regulations of the planning system.

In the former PhD project on this issue by Marlies Meijer (see separate entry on this site) this was addressed as Informality in Spatial Planning in demographically shirking areas in Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands. As a follow up on that stream of thinking, now Jinshuo Wang now successfully defended her PhD thesis on Local government-led informality in planning in Chinese urban land development. She was supervised by Prof. Erwin van der Krabben, but I had the honour of being a member of the panel at her defence.

Her thesis was different and also her defence was different. Of course in China the situation is different and also local cultures are different, both: the local cultures of spatial planning as well as the local cultures of doing research on those issues.  Jinshuo Wang accordingly operationalised ‘informality’ as ‘spatial decision making through negotiation’, and investigated this on the basis of a huge quantitative data set on many spatial planning projects. This also in first instance seemed to have confused some of the spatial planning peers, which somehow again confirms the importance of ‘culture’ in spatial planning and spatial planning research. This is of course only one form of informality and maybe also not the one where soft factors can fully flourish and have a broad impact, but on the other hand — as she convincingly showed — it is a culturally sensitive deviation of traditional formal top-down planning. Her defence was also different because of the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, which implied that several opponents could only participate remotely on screen.

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Alexander von Humboldt Lecture

Alexander von Humboldt Lecture
and Opening Lecture of the 2020-2021 Human Geography Master Programme

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020, 15:30-16:45 (Dutch time)
Public Virtual Lecture by means of Zoom:
https://radbouduniversity.zoom.us/j/92973028257?pwd=TGdSZS9WZHhMamowWXVWRE43RW5tdz09
Meeting ID: 929 7302 8257
Passcode: 748148
Free entry

Prof. Eberhard Rothfuß, University Bayreuth, Germany

The Theory of Recognition and its relevance for Geography
Empirical evidence from urban Latin America and rural Sub-Sahara Africa

Abstract: The aim of this presentation is twofold: Firstly I will try to explain, why the Theory of Recognition by Axel Honneth (1994) – the most prominent protagonist of the third generation of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory – has a high potential for Human Geography and secondly to illustrate the empirical evidence of recognition theory from two different socio-spatial contexts of the Global South, to understand the struggles of social groups in their ‘fights for recognition’.

The first case study will focus on a marginalised neighbourhood (“favela”) in Salvador da Bahia – Brazil, which is constantly confronted with exclusion and ‘social invisibility’. The point which is being made is that the Brazilian favelas are, on the one hand, in terms of their media coverage and stigmatisation, the most visible urban spaces in Brazil. On the other hand, however, with regard to societal recognition and human relevance of the Favela residents, these disadvantaged urban spaces remain socially invisible. This involves a double humiliation of this Brazilian declassed class.

The second case study will address aspects of energy justice in Ghana. Many urban households in Ghana are keenly installing Solar Home Systems (SHS) to mitigate frequent grid power outages and ensure stability in the performance of social and energy-saving practices which grant them recognition as ‘enlightened’ social groups or as individuals staying au courant with modern energy technologies. Many rural community residents, however, claim the SHS facility restricts performances of ‘modern’ practices in comparison to fellow ‘Ghanaians’ who have access to electrical grids and that its acceptance may perpetually reduce them to ‘second-class-citizens’. Empirical evidence suggests that energy justice visions remain fuzzy unless they are set in relation to how and why practical solutions to the energy ‘needs’ and ‘visions’ of socially and spatially differentiated groups could be realised. I call this practical recognition.

In this lecture, I advocate practical recognition as a suitable alternative pathway in Geography for researching just urban and rural futures by emphasizing connections between socio-spatial justice, human agency and entitlement notions.

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Master Programme 2020-2021

Our Human Geography master programme has been steadily growing in number of students. Of course, this is a very good sign, as it shows how attractive our programme is for students and how relevant the topics are which we address in our programme. This really triggers our students. Geography in general and Human Geography, in particular, is about how we deal with our physical, but also with our social environment. And this is not an easy nor unproblematic relationship, and our students are really very keen on making a difference in practice, and on helping to find solutions to urging problems. The topical issues we deal with in Human Geography are not very evident from the name of our discipline: ‘Human Geography’. Who really knows what that is about…? But if you take a look at our specific Master Specialisations, it becomes clear how topical and important these issues are, which we address in our programme. Through these Master Specialisations, we seem to touch a sensitive chord and that explains the great attraction our programme has on students.

Especially in the Dutch University System, which for its funding is so dependant on the number of students, this is very important. So, both for reasons or creating a sound financial basis for our teaching and research, as well as to make an important contribution to a better world, I have always been dreaming of surpassing the magical number of 100 new master students. This is of course, somehow ridiculous because 99 or 101 are numbers which are as beautiful and magical as 100. But of course, we somehow need a vision and to speak with Martin Luther King, ‘we need a dream’!

So I promised my colleague in our Geography Group, Dr. Martin van der Velde, who is responsible for the sometimes tedious job of finding Supervisors for our master students, a bottle of wine, once we surpass the number of 100 new master students. Although we all enjoy teaching and enjoy working together with students on a better future, it is also quite an effort, especially in times of severe austerity measures, my colleague was therefore always hoping not to get that bottle of wine, and was rather satisfied with the ‘small is beautiful’ slogan.

Nevertheless, this year my dream came true… We have now well surpassed the threshold of 100 new Human Geography Master Students, while the way we organise our Master Programme still preserves the advantages of ‘being small and beautiful’. Probably it is totally irrational, but somehow it gives me a good feeling, especially if one remembers that when I started my job at this University there were only about 12 Master Students.

But under the current Covid-19 circumstances we cannot really celebrate this occasion. So this virtual blog entry and the virtual bottle of wine should do the job. Thanks to all our Geography Group members! We could not have done it without you…! Cheers.

And of course also thanks to our students. With them at least we could properly celebrate the start of the new academic year with an informal bicycle tour to the Thornse Mill and a real Dutch pancake dinner.

We somehow again have contributed to the special place, called ‘Human Geography’ and the ‘Human Geography group’ at the Radboud University Nijmegen. This is ‘intellectual placemaking’…

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Plagiarism and Examination Board

On the first of September 2020, I will step down as Chair of the Examination Board of Geography, Spatial Planning, and Environmental Politics of the Radboud University. I fulfilled this task for more than 15 years, which is even longer than then official mandate for this position, to allow my successor to get acquainted with this task.

The main task of the Examination Board is to apply the rules and regulations of the four academic programmes, for which the examination board is responsible. This sounds rather bureaucratic and boring, but in my own experience, this certainly does not need to and should not be the case, if one takes a bit of a closer look at the responsibilities of the Examination Board.

The rules and regulations of our educational programmes are operationalisations of certain values and norms, which are central in academia. But as general rules and regulations, they always miss the crucial individual elements and circumstances of each specific case. So the art of doing a good job in the Examination Board is not in following the letter of the law but to judge, by the spirit of the law, by the moral principles, which are at the base of these laws, rules, and regulations. This then leads to more substantial justice within our educational programmes.

Although spatial justice is a common theme in the field of Geography, Spatial Planning, and Environmental Politics, it is not very common to reflect more deeply on the development of these moral principles. I, myself was mainly inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan to reflect on the ethics of values and moral judgments, which learned me to look at each case from a ‘post-conventional’ perspective in which also aspects of care are taken into account.

 

Although given the debate and insights on these issues in philosophy and science this might sound self-evident, in the practices of many Examination Boards, in the current times in which bureaucracies do not except own responsibilities nor provide trust in substantial judgments, but instead seek full control and zero tolerance, it is certainly not common sense. In similar ways currently, universities and faculties seem to seek further standardisation and centralisation. This is in certain respects a way back to moral judgments at the conventional level at a greater distance to the actual educational practices, retreating from the more substantial justice and post-conventional moral judgments. Happily, as examination board, we have been able to resist these tendencies.

Also, the Dutch law for Higher Education protects the right of the Examination Board to divert from the general rules and regulations, in individual cases, and thus to practice post-conventional substantial justice. In this respect, the work of the Examination Board is a very responsible job, in which one can also set a certain tone, and style, which constructively contributes to the good practices within an educational programme. I always enjoyed to do this responsible work and with which we indeed co-determine the good practices and general tone, much more than being in committees or other bodies which only need to do what they are told to do.

For example, I always interpreted the responsibility of the Examination Board to judge the admission of students to our programmes in a very liberal way. I noticed that increasingly our university system tends to determine the quality of its graduates, by being very strict in admitting students to even start the programme. To a certain degree that is of course justified, since one should not admit any students who do not have the capacity to finish the programme successfully. But on the other hand, in doing so we often seem to forget, that it is our task as educators, to bring those students who do not have the knowledge and skills at the beginning of the programme yet to the level of knowledge and skills which we would require from our graduates. This is the core of formation. So being very strict with the admission of new students, is in a way making things easy for us by selecting those students who also without our help as educators would anyhow reach graduation easily. The real effort of an educational programme and a real educational achievement is it if we can bring those who do not already have the necessary knowledge and skills to graduation level. It is actually these cases which make us as lecturers proud of our work and of our students. Teaching is and should be a challenge. Being rather generous in our admission policy continuously challenges us but also feeds our proudness and is a real contribution to formation, which is expressed at the graduation ceremonies, which are also an important responsibility of the Examination Board.

Another example is the issue of plagiarism, with which the examination board is increasingly confronted, not in the last place also because of the current Covid-19 crisis with the sudden transformation of our teaching towards online teaching and online assessment. Of course, rules and regulations about plagiarism are clear and should be respected. But, if one reflects a bit more on how the use of sources has changed over times, one gets another picture.

When I was studying as a student at university, the internet did not exist yet. Copy machines at that time slowly but surely became available. Searching for scientific sources was a tedious job. Cycling from one library to the other, digging through thousands of library index cards, to identify the right source, then noticing that that specific source one was looking for was at that moment lent out, and therefore one needed to return weeks later to pick it up. Going through those sources and maybe make a photocopy of only those parts which were most relevant, because one could not afford to copy more. Also visiting these libraries, with these immense numbers of books, representing the condensed world knowledge, impressed us, and made us pay respect to these sources which were so valuable and hard to access.

When I was visiting the famous library of the monastery in St. Gall in Switzerland last week again, I once again became aware of this respect, as one automatically becomes very silent and modest in such a breathtaking place.

But compare this with how currently sources are ubiquitously available to students, in digital form, accessible at any time from everywhere. Without making a difference between fake or untrustworthy sources and thorough high-quality sources. Copying these sources or parts of them is then only one click away. And indeed in some of these sources that what the student tends to express in their paper is formulated in such a beautiful way, that it becomes very tempting to copy and paste. Totally wrong and reprehensible of course, and indeed the Examination Board is tough in these cases, but on the other hand one does understand, where this comes from, which does make a difference in our judgment.

In this way, the Examination Board has an important impact on the style and tone of educational practices and is partly responsible for the ‘moral place making’, of this specific place for academic education and formation.

References:

  • Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press, Boston.
  • Habermas, J. (1985) Philosophical Notes on Moral Judgement Theory. In: Lind, G., Hartman, A. & Wakenhut, R. (eds.) Moral Development and the Social Environment: Studies in the Philosophy and Psychology of Moral Judgement and Education. Precedent, Chicago (pp. 3-20).
  • Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., Hewer, A. (eds.) (1983) Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics. Karger, Basle.
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PhD Defence of Kolar Aparna

Universities are strange places. They are clearly different from other places. They claim to be places of free thought. They claim to be places of us all, and they claim to serve society as a whole. Wilhelm von Humboldt, the brother of the famous geographer, Alexander von Humboldt, is often said to have introduced the idea of the modern university as all universities all over the world nowadays claim to be. These very special places of academic freedom are, however, also clearly demarcated and bordered places. Especially also our university is proud of its campus as a very special and beautiful place, and intellectual meeting place. But as a bordered place and as an institution which poses special requirements to its students and faculty who want to participate in academic life on campus, might actually be less open and free than it claims to be.  What about the accessibility of the university for asylum-seeking intellectuals, scholars and students?

Refugees and asylums seekers do not just have to cross national borders, but to be able to participate in academic life and to integrate also need to cross the borders and ‘fences’ around the university. How can we make the university into a real place for free intellectual encounters? This was the initial research question, with which Kolar Aparna started her PhD research. For creating such a place she participated in the movement and initiative helping Refugees to cross also this border. Kolar, therefore, did not just investigate what was going on from a distance but conducted real Action Research and literally enacted what she calls the ‘Asylum University’, she became part of the politics of borders and encounters, and the Asylum University finally was only one example of a border crossing. Borders are however not just crossed, and also do not just fade away, but are also constantly re-produced, although sometimes in different ways. Irrespective of how one borders a place, these places do stay special places which differ from other places and therefore create and perform differences and borders.

Kolar excelled in continuously questioning all these borders and the related border practices. She managed to make fluid what always seemed to be so firm. Her supervisor, Dr. Joris Schapendonk, accompanied her of this fascinating border crossing journey.

On the 12th of June, in the middle of the Covid-19 crises, which sharpened the edges of many borders and only allowed encounters at a distance, Kolar Aparna successfully defended her PhD thesis in a critical academic encounter with Prof. Alicia Montoya from the Radboud University, Prof. Kirstin Simonsen from the Roskilde University in Danmark, Prof. Shahram Khosravi from Stockholm University, Prof. Derek Gregory of University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Dr. Teresa Piacentini of the University of Glasgow and Dr. Roos Pijpers of the Radboud University.

 

It fits to the point that Kolar Aparna with her PhD thesis tries to make to note, that a PhD thesis like this can probably only be written, defended and published in the free, while at the same time also not so free space of a university.

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Outreach

With outreach we usually mean, reaching out to the world outside the university, to practice, as nicely exemplified by this piece of art created by Wiebke Siem,  which I encountered in the museum of contemporary art (‘Kunsthalle’) in Bielefeld, Germany.

Reaching out implies sharing our knowledge with the outside world, in the hope it can be of use, for creating a better world. Somehow, however, this seems to be rather dissatisfying and one-sided. Are we only reaching out? What about the outside world reaching out to us?… sharing their knowledge and needs with us? Shouldn’t we together be working on the current problems in society? Shouldn’t we be in continuous dialogue with the world outside the ivory tower of science? So to quote a saying by Francois Gautier: ‘Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought’.

We live in a society with a deep division of labour. This separates us from others. And that is also good. It implies that we do in what we are best and we refrain from doing things we are not good at. We leave that to others, and if we need those other things we ask them. We trust we can count on them. We would reach out to them… But we also live together in one society and share the common problems and concerns and all need to live our life. This brings us together again. We cannot do without each other. Reaching out to get the help we need, and reaching out to provide the service we can give. Reaching out is bridging differences.

But it is easy to observe the others, and maybe also to know better than the others from our armchair within our own field of specialisation and from within the ivory tower of science, and leave the practical doing and changing the world to others.

Do not misunderstand me here, the ivory tower, the splendid isolation, of thinking, reflecting and doing rigorous scientific research is of great value and indeed deserves to be seen as made of such a precious material. The scientific progress this division of labour produced is without a doubt and should be carefully cherished and fostered. But the distance and separation created by this division of labour also create a bias, a distortion, and oversimplification of the real practice out there. The art of reaching out is bridging the rather abstract concepts and principles of science to the pragmatic realities of everyday life. Reaching out by denouncing what might be wrong out there and by providing help and advice to improve practice, makes science highly political. And that is good because only then science is of any use. But being a good scientist does not make us good practitioners. We need to bridge these differences from both sides, and come closer ‘together again’ as our prime minister, during the current Covid-19 crisis is claiming.

To get a better scientific understanding of practice again, the currently topical ‘practice theory approach’ as we have endorsed already for quite some time in our Department in Nijmegen might be helpful, as a further development of less comprehensive and more reductionist models of critique and intervention.

Figure: Practice Theory approach according to Shove and Schatzki

Within the scientific community, we have a similar kind of division of labour, and there are many different approaches competing with each other. We, therefore, do not just need to reach out and bridge differences towards the world outside, but also within our own scientific community. But the current university system focussing exclusively on individual performance is not an invitation to move beyond one’s own productive comfort zone, is not an invitation to build bridges beyond one’s own scope and filed, and does not support the curiosity in the other and the unknown. On the contrary, it supports competition, and differentiation and profiling one’s self by distancing and critiquing the others. Some even believe that this leads to better science. How ignorant can one be…?

Yes, critique is essential in finding a better solution, but at the same time, as Georg Hegel and Axel Honneth are teaching us, recognition of the other are fundamental for building bridges. This does imply that consensus can be anticipated and is feasible, but it implies that the other is taken seriously and is respected, that one is willing to take notice and not to condemn beforehand. Recognition is the basis of trust (Geneland & Deranty, 2016).

While Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes assume an ontology in which individuals are egocentrically interested in extending their individual power, on the basis of which it seems rational to use the supra-individual power of the state to pacify the war of all against all, and while Immanuel Kant assumed an ontology in which individual subjects, ethically restrict themselves for the sake of living together with other individual subjects,  Georg Hegel, George Herbert Mead and Axel Honneth, in contrast, endorse an ontology of intersubjectivity, on the basis of which a relational individual subjectivity can emerge. This latter ontology implies that in all differences a communal interest and common ground can be discovered, which as a conditio humana is the foundation on which all bridges are built. In this way Axel Honneth turns the logics of our social life around: Not the civil order emerges out of a natural order of each individual against each other individual, but individual diversity emerges out of a preceding solidaristic consciousness. It also turns around the motto on the state seal of the United States ‘E Pluribus Unum’ in ‘Ex Uno, Plures’, so changing ‘Out of many, one’ into ‘Out of the one, many’. First, the unity of a democratic and social background culture should be established before a peaceful pluralism can emerge (Heins, 2019, p. 692).

In a very similar way also Georg Simmel describes the nature of society as based on the fundamental intersubjectivity of our consciousness, or an original connection between the subjects, or in the words of Martin Heidegger, on an ontological ‘Zuhandensein’ (readiness-to hand), in which the other is already part of our being in the world (‘Dasein’). It becomes the moral driving force for moving beyond one’s own interests and convictions and to search for the other, the driving force behind building bridges. Bridges wich do connect and relate but not necessarily imply that one crosses the bridge to unite with the other. It is this kind of basic relationality which allows us also our own position and identity in this relationship. Our current experiences with social distancing instead of with building bridges because of the Covid-19 crises also let us feel the importance of this very fundamental dimension of sociality.

For me this is a fascinating insight, for which, I believe, there is a lot to say. I recognise many aspects of my own thinking which fascinated and intrigued me. For example, there is the obvious relationship to Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Rationality, which has been a source of inspiration to me, but which also posed a number of still unsolved critical questions, like ‘why should we engage in communicating at all?’, which is, of course, a killer question for his whole theoretical framework, but which could find its answer in the social ontology of Axel Honneth. Furthermore, I see many commonalities with another of my personal sources of inspiration, namely in the work of Helmuth Plessner, who in his philosophical anthropology (2019) also assumes that we as human beings are eccentrically positioned, and therefore already beyond ourselves and with the generalised other. The comparative zoologist Adolf Portman (1990) with his phenomenological biological investigations comes to the conclusion, that the essence of life, in general, is to be found in the performativity, and therefore in the relationality of every form of life (Kleisner, 2008). A stream of thought with many sources and roots, and certainly worth following further.

How this could translate into practical research questions in the field of Geography is nicely demonstrated by Eberhard Rothfuß (2017 and in a more elaborate way in 2012).

These tatters of thought or ‘think pieces’ are, of course, still a stub, which needs to be discussed, elaborated and further developed. But that is exactly how this post is meant, as an invitation to co-tinking, building bridges, and reaching out.

References

Dörfler, T. (2001): Das Subjekt zwischen Identität und Differenz. Zur Begründungslogik bei Habermas, Lacan, Foucault [The Subject between Identity and Difference. The logics of Habermas, Lacan, Foucault]. Ars Una, Neuried

Geneland, K. & Deranty, J.-Ph. (eds.) (2016) Recognition or Disagreement. A critical encounter on the politics of freedom, equality, and identity. Columbia University Press, New York.

Heins, V. (2019) Kultureller Pluralismus und Kritische Theorie. Von Adorno bis Honneth [Cultural pluralism and critical theory. From Adorno to Honneth]. In: Bohmann, U. & Sörensen, P. (eds.) Kritische Theorie der Politik [Critical Political Theory]. Suhrkamp, Berlin, pp. 674-695.

Honneth, A.  (2004) Recognition and Justice: Outline of a Plural Theory of Justice. Acta
Sociologica. 47, pp. 351–364.

Kleisner, K. (2008) The Semantic Morphology of Adolf Portmann: A Starting Point for the Biosemiotics of Organic Form? Biosemiotics. 1, pp. 207–219.

Plessner, H. (2019) Levels of Organic Life and the Human: An Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology. Fordham University Press, New York.

Portmann, A. (1990) Essays in philosophical zoology by Adolf Portmann. The living form and seeing eye.
Edwin Mellen, Lewiston.

Rothfuß, E. (2012) Exklusion im Zentrum. Die brasilianische Favela zwischen Stigmatisierung
und Widerständigkeit [Exclusion in the centre. The Brazilian favela between stigmatization
and resistance], Transcript, Bielefeld.

Rothfuß, E. (2017) On a Paradox of Urban Inequality: The Brazilian Favela between Spatial Visibility and Social Invisibility In: Hahn, B. & Schmidt, K. (eds.) Inequality in America: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. – Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, pp. 93-112.