One of the more obvious impacts of the pandemic in academia is the way it’s cuts students and researchers off from the physical resources and methods which are usually pretty much its raison d’être. I mean things like archives, libraries, labs and fieldwork. In a way, I find it reassuring that we miss these. They prove that our knowledge production still includes a point where the rubber hits the road, at a time when even I sometimes cynically suspect the ivory towers of floating on fumes, possibly illicit ones.
Just at present, however, my own ‘real’ world is largely confined to my home and the nearest supermarket, while the only ‘road’ I hit consists is the upper surface of a multi-mile long giant Victorian sewer pipe which constitutes the neighbourhood’s current exercise facility. There has never been a year in my life when I have been so sedentary. It doesn’t agree with me, or with my research. Fortunately, I’m in very early stages of a six-year project and can still believe that I’m just re-organising the order of work, rather than scrabbling for a plan B or C, like the PhD students in later cohorts or on full-time projects. Still, I’m getting frustrated with one particular pressure: the lure of Eurocentrism occasioned by the pandemic.
My project is not Eurocentric in conception although it includes a European component. Since I’ve been working in the area for a while, I know that this constitutes the low-hanging fruit: big, bright and easy to get at. Moving outside that zone involves swimming against the flow – it just is more work, even at the best of times. This is of course partly because I’m European and live and study in Europe. It’s not just any potential fieldwork/archive visits that’s on hold, as it would be rather early for those anyway. Like most people working cross-culturally (I assume) I had expected to engage in much longer term ‘immersion’ type relationships with the environments and cultures I study. Really, I was hoping to spend at least a year based in the West Indies, whether I ‘need’ to or not. And at this point, I’m at least two non-research trips behind where I expected to be at this stage. Last spring, I had intended to hike across Cuba and round about now, I would have liked to be in Jamaica, climbing mountains. What I would get out of those trips isn’t replaceable by other means.
Still, my general Europeanness and current Eurolocalisation isn’t the only problem. The fact is that the further you get from the Eurocentric ‘mainstream’ the less likely it is that resources will be available online, or available at all except in those specialist academic libraries and archives where they have accumulated over decades. Even basic data is harder to get. Currently, I’m compiling a list of botanists and well…. the fact of a botanist being West Indian (and/or female) is quite strongly correlated with basic information about them being just that little bit harder to get at. Meanwhile, the current of the mainstream is very strong. It’s not as if there is a shortage of Eurocentric research left to be done. I do love Germany too (and yes, that is relevant) ! The Plan B thesis almost writes itself. It just isn’t the one I want to write. It’s rather early days to feel frustrated, but I am starting to feel frustrated anyway. Possibly, the British winter has something to do with it.