Like any professional association or interest group, the American Political Science Association bombards its members with emails, occasional junk mail, and various Calls to Action. Lately and quite regularly those Calls have been related to Congress's attempts to cut funding for the social sciences from the National Science Foundation. There are no data available but I suspect the response rate on the exhortations to "Contact your elected officials and tell them to fund the NSF!" is very low. Part of that is the nature of the shotgun approach to asking for help. Part of it is because while no one in the field doubts that funding the study of all subjects is inherently good for obvious reasons, the APSA is trying to mobilize its 10,000 members to save something that directly benefits about 0.
buy augmentin online gilbertroaddental.com/wp-content/languages/new/generic/augmentin.html no prescription
5% of us.
As is the case in any profession, I assume, academia has a pretty rigidly defined class structure. If we're being honest with ourselves, 99% of the NSF funding in this field goes to tenured faculty at about three dozen universities – with the top 5 or 10 collecting a disproportionate amount. So when the APSA asks all of us to help it lobby for NSF funding, what it's really asking us to do is to petition Congress to help our social/professional betters stay on top of us. Sure, they push hard on the idea that NSF-funded projects affect us all, and that's not without merit. But if I'm self-interested – and who isn't, regarding their own professional advancement and compensation – I want to know why I should help Joe Blow get a $5 million dollar grant at Stanford to conduct a survey in the hopes that years down the line I can use the crumbs of the data to scavenge for publications knowing that Dr. Blow and colleagues have already published all the good stuff.
It's a nice case study of how the incentive to participate in politics declines as inequality rises. Maybe if the vast majority of the profession had a snowball's chance in hell of getting an NSF grant we would all be fired up about this and put some real pressure on the relevant members of Congress.
buy symbicort online gilbertroaddental.com/wp-content/languages/new/generic/symbicort.html no prescription
Or, as I suspect many of us do, we look at it as the rich asking us to help them get richer in the professional sense and check out. That 50% of Americans who cannot be motivated to vote, or can be only at great cost, probably looks at the political process and draws the same conclusions. Hard to blame them. Survey data shows not only that income predicts participation but also that it predicts political efficacy – one's sense of whether participation is meaningful and the process itself is legitimate. The more money people have, the more they believe the political process is responsive to their interests.
They believe that because it's true.
As a gainfully employed white male, I generally don't have a hard time paying attention to politics because the entire system and the society it reflects are biased in my favor. It's remarkable, though, how easy it is to disengage when that's not the case. No wonder so many Americans do it so often. We could debate whether the futility of politics is reality or merely a perception generated to keep the poor complacent. Either way, it's working like a charm.
HoosierPoli says:
When I briefly dipped my toes into academia I got the same emails. It was pointed out to me by an advisor that the NSF barely gives any money to the social sciences anyway. Even for the Kings, Keohanes, and Verbas of the poli sci world, the NSF is essentially irrelevant. I think it's more a 'Solidarity with our fellow scientists because WE'RE SCIENTISTS TOO SERIOUSLY GUYS' sort of thing.
Mike S. says:
Years ago, I told my former PI that I wasn't interested in academia (in part) because the idea of 10:1 odds against getting a major grant like an R01 was demoralizing, and likely a waste of time.
He was shocked. It had never crossed his mind that people could take this view.
Those odds sound a lot better than what Ed describes.
Alex SL says:
I know several scientists working in Switzerland, and interestingly their NSF has got a rather egalitarian approach (or at least had five years ago). Nobody gets more than one personal grant at a time, although one could also be part of a consortium for extra grants. That means that in contrast to for example Germany, where some people have five grants and many others zero, Switzerland gives Assistant Professor Dr Jane Average a much better chance of also getting a grant with a good idea.
Rugosa says:
"the incentive to participate in politics declines as inequality rises"
Exactly. Why do you think they want to keep us poor and ignorant?
c u n d gulag says:
What @Rugosa said!
Emerson Dameron says:
Eh, you're almost definitely right, but I would ask for their numbers. If someone interrupts my cat gif reverie to ask me for money, I have a right to ask them to clarify anything I'm unsure about. What *is* in it for you?
This shotgun approach is annoying, especially to the more world-weary among us, but can be remarkably effective. Look at Alan Grayson.
Then again…
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/sci_fis_right_wing_backlash_never_doubt_that_a_small_group_of_deranged_trolls_can_ruin_anything_even_the_hugo_awards/
quixote says:
I never thought about the common thread between tossing stupid Calls to Action and general voter apathy. Interesting insight!
And, now that I think about it, makes sense that a political scientist would notice that first.
See, this is why the NSF needs to fund more political scientists so that — oh, wait.
Skipper says:
Oh, come on. Vote against your own self interest. It's the American way!
mothra says:
That's right: do what Skipper says. Because you know, you'll be one of those favored NSF grantees if you just keep voting for them to keep getting more and more and more. That's how it works.
Right? Right?????
Andy says:
This may be one of your finest posts. Excellent analogy / parallel.
democommie says:
@ Emerson Dameron:
I skimmed the Salon article, it would be depressing if I didn't already know that Orson Scott Card had won a Hugo a while back. Meanwhile, Kilgore Trout has never won one–where's the justice?
Loud, obnoxious rightwing dickheads have destroyed a number of forums I used to go to–because people let them.
Kaleberg says:
If you are arguing that lobbying the NSF isn't worth it because the stakes are too low, that makes sense. If you are arguing that one should only lobby for one's own personal direct interests, you are being played. Are you really arguing that Jews, for example, shouldn't lobby for greater acceptance of Sikhs because people are already used to Jews wearing skull caps but not Sikhs wearing turbans?
Liberals are generally concerned with fairness and harm reduction and tend to play down the need for in group solidarity. If nothing else, in group solidarity reinforces hierarchical structures which work against fairness and can cause harm. On the other hand, in group solidarity is a good way to get political power and ditching it is a good way to lose it.
One of the triumphs of the conservatives was telling non-union workers that the unions needed to be busted. After all, YOU didn't have a union. They were wasteful, expensive and so on. The thing was, the unions didn't just help their members. They left lots of crumbs like higher minimum wages, better enforcement of labor laws, better labor laws, pro-labor politicians and so on. We actually had rising living standards across the board, at least until people wised up to the union scam and punished those spoiled union workers.