Hello all,

I welcome this exchange, as I think these discussions are essential if the 'field' has any hope of becoming a healthy one (i.e. less toxic, less unequal). I notice it across the board, not only in professional associations but in academia in general, we are pretty bad at generating cultures of accountability: we are good at asking people to volunteer work (i.e. time, i.e. money, i.e. effor and skills), often under very tight deadlines, but we are not so good at keeping our stakeholders transparently informed about processes of decision making.

And if someone asks about these, or raises it as an issue, the responses tend to be defensive and blame the one giving the feedback for not being more 'engaged' in the ways the engagement is expected. There are serious consequences to this. It seems to me we insist on following processes that are not really fit for purpose, or that de facto exclude those who do not enjoy the same set of circumstances (read: privileges). In brief, it seems to me we are not good at designing processes suited for the wide diversity of our sector. It's no surprise these conversations do not attract more intense, or wider, traction-- we are all so busy, or so disappointed, that our spaces for participation have been reduced significantly, often to the bare minimum of the established and official channels.

In October this year I wrote a blog post reflecting on these issues. https://epriego.blog/2018/10/09/openness-transparency-accountability-on-new-ways-of-being-scholarly/ 

Are there different ways of being "scholarly"? Are the ways in which "we" expect participation always-already about exclusion and discrimination, or can we engage in scholarly cultures that are more inclusive, more focused on engaging in critical conversations with each other?

All the best,

Ernesto

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On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 at 03:03, Domenico Fiormonte <domenico.fiormonte@protonmail.com> wrote:
Dear Martin,

thanks for your answer. As you know I appreciated, and also cited in my works, the critical reflections on the Anglophone dominance in DH conferences that you made in 2014. Actually José Pino Díaz and myself have tried to extend those reflections and data in some presentations in DH conferences in México and Argentina (if you want to have a look:  http://www.academia.edu/36900514/La_geopol%C3%ADtica_de_las_humanidades_digitales_un_caso_de_estudio_de_DH2017_Montreal).

However, it is not clear (and I think I'm not isolated), how these and other critical reflections could be translated or will translate into actual governance structures.

ADHO is not (not yet?) a "federation of grassroots associations". It is not just a matter of formal labels (I don't see the word "federation" in any official document), but of substance: voting members are the CO representatives, not "allies" or other sub-layers. This pyramidal organization is reflected in the financial model of ADHO, basically a two-speed or may be three-speed system based on income, i.e. on the subscription to the DSH journal (I quote from the ADHO web site: "Both scenarios were based on the principle that as far as possible ADHO-level activities would be supported by income derived from institutional and consortia subscriptions to the journal."). In fact, the existence of DSH, a paywall journal mostly unaccessible and unaffordable in Southern (?) institutions (including my own, Roma Tre) it is a primary obstacle to the creation of a genuine grassroot federation based on the principle of equality of status. I don't want to open a discussion on DSH here, but it seems paradoxical - and for many colleagues around the world unacceptable - that a DH organization which sets among its "key strategic drivers" the "Support for and encouragement of cultural and linguistic diversity, locally and globally", links its existence to an expensive monolingual publication that makes almost invisible non-Anglophone research.
This approach is, in the words of Leslie Chan, at the root of all forms of "epistemic injustice in the production and circulation of knowledge" (https://www.openlibhums.org/news/314/).

So, the short answer to your final question is "no": it is not enough to expand the steering committee to prevent hegemony, because the ADHO structure is in itself hegemonic and based on inequality of status (cultural, epistemological, linguistic, political, economical, etc.) among its members/organizations. This hegemonic model, in the last years, shifted from a US-UK oligopoly to a North-North directorate, as reflected in the present SC. I'm glad the Francophone friends are in, but data suggest that the attention for cultural and linguisitic diversity did not improve. Just have a look at the DH2019 CFP: "The primary language of the conference will be English, but we warmly invite proposals written in other languages…". Warmly invite? This is a backward step of 10 years in DH language policy.

Hegemony, I would like to remember, is a concept coined by Antonio Gramsci and should be read as "cultural hegemony". This is in my opinion what I see from outside: a (legitimate) attempt to reinforce and expand the research agenda, technological standards and geopolitical influence of Northern élite institutions upon "the rest" of the world.

I believe global DH deserves more.

All the best

Domenico





‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Il mercoledì 12 dicembre 2018 09:19, Martin Grandjean <martin.grandjean@unil.ch> ha scritto:

Dear Domenico, dear all,

You know probably that in a federation of grassroots associations, the layers are not imposed by the highest level (which is just bringing together the federated bodies) but created by the associations themselves because of geographical/cultural/historical/personal reasons that are specific to each organization. So ADHO cannot interfere and tell its COs and AOs how to organize themselves.
But the organization itself can change at the local level: for instance, there is nothing to prevent an Associate Organization from becoming a CO. 
And the « Affiliate Organization » category is not really a layer, just a way to recognise that ADHO can have relations outside the COs/AOs if needed. 
So beyond the AOs question, who voluntarily get together as a CO, I think that the SIG question will be more critical in the future (I don't want to reopen the whole GO:DH question here).

By the way, isn't the natural expansion of the steering committee due to the arrival of new and very various COs the best way to protect the organisation against hegemony?

All the best,
Martin

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Martin GRANDJEAN
Junior Lecturer UNIL and EPFL
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On 12 Dec 2018, at 03:22, Domenico Fiormonte <domenico.fiormonte@protonmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

does anyone in this list know what has been decided (if anything) about the new ADHO governance structure, etc.?

I've checked the ADHO website, and it seems that the last documents published (and publicly shared) date back to April 2018. For example:


I'm finishing to write an article that involves issues of cultural-linguistic diversity and political representation in DH, so I'd be grateful if someone more involved in the procees could illuminate me.

Incidentally, I found the proposed tripartion of organizations in three layers of decreasing power a sort of neo-feudal model: CO (consitituent organizations, who put the money and take the decisions), Associate Organization ("allied to ADHO"), and Affiliate Organization ("compatible aims with ADHO").
I have no doubt that in this increasingly imperial world there are and there always will be   organizations and groups in search of "international visibility", and will accept to pay the price of subalternity. We see this everyday. However we're talking about a scholarly organization, not NATO, and a tripartion like this, if implemented, will inevitably reflects a caste system based on income (?), to say the least. I wonder what will be the final result of this process if not a reinforcement and widening of current unbalances and discriminations, and of course the perpetuation of the Anglophone hegemony within our field.

Statemi bene

Domenico

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