[News] the new academic norm/ality: the care-giving academic

[Jan S. Hutta]

Dear Caro,

many thanks for sharing this timely intervention!! It makes it very 
clear that discussions around slow scholarship, gender inequality and 
care work need to be taken even more seriously since the corona measures 
started. I stumbled over this passage, though:

"Having a child should no longer be penalized neither in academia (see 
motherhood penalty) nor society (see increased risk of mothers for 
poverty) because our children will be your future students and our 
nations’ future citizens. Our children are not a private issue but 
'system relevant' to ensure the future of education and society."

While I agree with your call for societal recognition - in the sense of 
structural change - of care and reproductive responsibilities, the 
formulations "our nations' future citizens" and "to ensure the future of 
education and society" seem in danger of catering to femonationalist 
argumenations. They suggest that this is chiefly about 'our nations' 
(rather than, say global society) and that these nations necessarily 
reproduce themselves endogenously (rather than by e.g. through 
migration). Drawing on Haraway ("/Make kin not kids/") or Queer Studies 
(Edelman: /No Future/), we could more fundamentally interrogate this 
association of reproduction and future. (Haraway goes as far as calling 
attention to how tying futurity to (biological) reproduction eclipses 
the problem of humans overcrowing this planet - certainly a highly 
controversial move - and I'm aware that you're not necessarily talking 
about biological reproduction here..) But at any rate, there is a 
variety of feminist and queer imaginations of a desired future, and 
associating reproduction, the nation and the future through making and 
raising kids seems in need of some further interrogation - also in terms 
of the kinds of families, homes, living arrangements etc we create, as 
these also lead to a reproduction of gendered inequalities..

This is not at all to dismiss the claims you are making - and I'm aware 
that your understanding of reproduction (and the nation) is more nuanced 
than it might appear in this text. I also agree that right now, it is 
import to affirm care work as 'system relevant' - and as someone without 
current care responsibilities, I am aware of the privileges this 
involves. In this sense, I mean this as 'solidarische Kritik' that calls 
attention to a potential argumentative trap in your text - which might 
need some clarification, or to be discussed more in-depth another time 
and place..

Warm best wishes,

jan


Am 28.05.2020 um 15:40 schrieb carolin.schurr at giub.unibe.ch:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I apologise for the self-promotion but as these are exceptional times 
> and the cause is close to my heart, I would like to draw your 
> attention to a blogpost, Heike Mayer, Andrea Winiger and I (all 
> University of Bern) have written on Gendercampus 
> <https://www.gendercampus.ch/de/blog/post/the-new-normal-the-care-giving-academic/> about 
> the results of a survey in the Institute of Geography at the 
> University of Bern, which revealed the crisis’ uneven care 
> responsibilities. While acknowledging these unequal effects, our blog 
> calls for considering the current crisis as an opportunity to 
> constituting a new academic norm/ality: The care-giving academic. 
> We hope that collectively we succeed in fighting against the time 
> pressures of the neoliberal academy and for better working conditions 
> at Swiss universities. We need time to care - for our society, our 
> loved ones, our children and ourselves - also as researchers and 
> professors! Let’s not return to the old normal but collectively create 
> new norms!
>
> Please feel free to share, discuss and start organising resistance!
> Best wishes,
> Carolin
>
> https://www.gendercampus.ch/de/blog/post/the-new-normal-the-care-giving-academic/
>
> ***********************
> Prof. Dr. Carolin Schurr
> Professor for Social and Cultural Geography
>
> University of Bern
> Department of Geography
> Hallerstrasse 12 | CH-3012 Bern
> carolin.schurr at giub.unibe.ch
> www.geography.unibe.ch/fgb
> follow us on Twitter: @FemGeoBern
>
> Out now:
> Schurr, Carolin, Müller, Martin und Nadja Imhof (2020) Who makes 
> geographical knowledge? The gender of geography’s gatekeepers 
> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00330124.2020.1744169>. The 
> Professional Geographer.
>
> Schurr, Carolin and Peter Weichhart (2020) From margin to center? 
> Theoretische Aufbrüche in der Geograhpie seit Kiel 1969 
> <https://www.geogr-helv.net/75/53/2020/gh-75-53-2020.pdf>. Geographica 
> Helvetica.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr. Jan Hutta
Kulturgeographie
Universität Bayreuth
+49 921 552283

kulturgeo.uni-bayreuth.de/de/team/hutta
uni-bayreuth.academia.edu/JanSimonHutta

zeitschrift-suburban.de

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