The idea for MACS arose from a sense that PhD students and junior staff are often at a distance from existing forms of collaboration between researchers in different universities within the one city. While much emphasis is placed on the end product of research, and there are plenty of avenues for presenting and publishing our work, the early stages of an academic career involve particular anxieties that can be ameliorated with the support of a community of peers. The MACS group is an attempt to create a space for discussing everything to do with our work aside from the end product, to share accumulated knowledge and resources to gain insight into the opportunities available within our field of research. It aims to provide a space for networking, information exchange, peer support and mentoring. MACS meets at an off campus venue that is designed to be centrally located.

Since I began teaching in a department setting I’ve found it increasingly difficult to see how postgrads and ‘ECR’s can connect with each other across institutions without significant leadership. While there have been advances at some levels – the postgrad bursary schemes attached to symposia and conferences in various fields, for instance, and the CRN Early Career Researchers node which culminated in the 2009 State of the Industry conference – we lack a sustained response to the situation in which junior scholars regularly feel alone in their field at a local level.

There are major obstacles discouraging young researchers from finding their peers within institutions as much as across them. It depends on context, of course, but in universities the size of Sydney (and these are the universities with large grad student cohorts) it is hard enough for those on faculty to know their colleagues in other disciplines, leaving aside the productivity pressures that challenge the whimsy of collaborative collegiality in the first place.

The isolation that can affect students within particular departments is further compounded by the culture shock of those who travel large distances to enrol in research higher degrees, sometimes from the other side of the world. This situation calls for an amount of professional and pastoral care that the competitive world of the contemporary university hardly encourages.

In recent years it seems clear that Facebook has emerged to fill some of this void. Its non-committal affect is a less time-consuming version of the PhD/junior faculty blogosphere I have written about elsewhere. But as a result it is also less useful for facilitating ongoing relationships of critical experimentation, exploration and trust. We would do well to have reservations about encouraging students to turn to a corporate entity with dubious political motives in order to solve a problem with the university experience.

Anyway, rather than get carried away in a critique of white collar networking and its self-promotional dynamics here, I’ve started a new MACS blog to house debates like these. Part of the aim is to provide an archive of discussions relating to the research conditions young scholars inherit. There are already excellent resources online addressing many of these issues, some local, some not. But the point – as my “Banal Bohemia” piece argued – is that we need to get better at making connections between cyberspaces of support and the industrial conditions that make it hard to have these conversations face to face. The field of cultural studies began by attacking the forms of elitism evident in the humanities; a natural extension of this project today must surely involve collaborative activism targeted at the point of reproduction for a still exclusive system.

Alongside the announcements that are part of the network’s rationale, I imagine it might be useful to have a schedule of guest posts on the MACS blog too. These could include research and industry matters, advice from established academics, features on current PhD projects and so on. Feedback on these ideas is welcome, as are volunteers!

Finally, I should acknowledge that this initiative is also designed to make a clearer distinction between the mentoring and professional development work that this blog has sometimes been used for (looking back at that link makes me realise how little has changed), and more reflective writing of my own that is both personal and research oriented. With any luck, this should mean more writing in two places.

I still have a bunch of things due but today I’m trying to have a few hours of play (or what I should call ‘sanity writing’) in between. I finished the interim report for the Willunga project over the weekend, which is a bit of a milestone for me. I have the full report to write by the end of May, and will go back to SA in coming weeks to do some more interviews. But I have a wealth of data already and I’m excited to think about what it might mean to use it in different ways in coming months and years.

From what I could tell there seemed to be some interest in the methods I’m using for the project in the Chicago and New York talks I did… specifically how affect theory can be used in conjunction with ethnography for policy outcomes. Also the significance of doing rural cultural studies as a response to the metrocentrism of technology design and marketing. I hope to write more on this soon. In fact I must, since the broadband project also formed part of the discussion on ethnography in the thesis course these past couple of weeks.

The Willunga job is one of a few things I’ve taken on recently to experiment with audience and genre. Last year I was starting to feel a little hemmed in by sandstone and all it represents. So this year I’ve been accepting other invitations – basically things that make me feel a bit less like an academic and more like someone who wants to move ideas around, wherever they might be welcome. Because the truth is that’s not always (or ever just) the classroom.

Last week I went to Brisbane to speak on a Q&A style panel at the Gallery of Modern Art. Fun! The week before I did some media appearances for Sony in advance of the Mad Men DVD release here in Australia. Ten News also did a feature last week on ‘cofficing’ – people using coffee shops as a substitute office – so that was a nice tie in with my new book.

All of these are opportunities to learn. They teach me how I might be able to contribute to knowledge differently – even in the most challenging circumstances. Given that I study cultural work, these are also occasions to to enact a reciprocal ethic between sympathetic industries. We are all content providers after all.

But now I will go back to the other things that pay the bills: marking, teaching, writing and reviewing articles. I will try to blog again over Easter to explain some real estate changes too, although as this post has been hinting, I’m a little tired of having to sound articulate.

This Wednesday will finally see the launch of The Affect Theory Reader, a book that many of you know has been under construction for about as long as the life of this blog. It will be a strange event without Greg, my amazing co-editor – and without whom the book would never have happened. We did manage to organise a bit of a pre-publication party at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference this year; even so I know that the contributors really benefited from Greg’s ideas much more than mine throughout the editing stages. I hope we all have a chance to thank him in person soon.

The launch will also feel strange because of the place and the context. The collection has been witness to so many changes in my life, including the scholarly directions I’ve been trying to fashion, not to mention the cultural/political scenes the chapters grapple with. I intend to write a proper speech to mark some of these shifts, so sick of the pace of performance lately that’s meant almost every public talk has had to rely on adrenaline. Maybe it’s ironic that this is the one event I find too important to count on the corporeal to kick in for me. I’ll endeavour to post the speech here for anyone interested who can’t make it.

I’ve been missing this blog space more than usual lately, and do want to try to write more regularly to the extent that I can. Part of my reticence has been self-imposed – still trying to come to terms with the demands of a job that seems destined to challenge all remaining personal and professional distinctions I’ve been trying to maintain – and knowing all the while my own desire to keep learning and growing as a thinker and writer can’t take place in complete solitude (nor should it).

But I’ve also been thinking hard about the ongoing effects and affects of Facebook, prompted in part by some of the reviews appearing around The Social Network‘s release, and the film itself. (This is still my favourite trailer, and I haven’t found anyone write anything that lives up to it). There’s little more I can say coherently about this right now, but I might try to share a few thoughts and links over the next few posts.

I should say too that the manuscript for Work’s Intimacy is now revised and at the press. That’s where a lot of my energy was spent over recent months. Let me know if you’d like to see any of the chapters – although the conclusion has expanded somewhat to incorporate some of the material I used in presentations earlier in the year.

Speaking about the project at the CCR Cultural Workers event last week made me feel optimistic that it may have been worth at least one lost summer. Well, maybe.

It’s June. My last month of being a postdoc. Things were supposed to be a lot more organised by now. At least it’s writing weather…

We’ll be able to announce more specifics soon, but I already want to suggest that people plan to be in Hong Kong from June 17-21 next year. Apart from the speakers and spotlight sessions that are proposed – which is one of the strongest line-ups I’ve seen for a cultural studies event – one of the best practical things this time is the range of accommodation options. There are literally hundreds of student dorm rooms availabe on site at Lingnan at very cheap rates with free wifi, and even the 4/5 star hotels either side of the campus home at Tuen Mun will be relatively affordable for academics. The schedule planned will also give people a chance to look around the city in the middle of the conference so that we can all have a break and relax without being too worn out from back to back papers.

Hong Kong is such an interesting city, geographically, socially, politically; and its economic transformations are a great place to be witnessing and discussing wider issues. What continues to excite me about ACS is that it can provide the opportunity for cultural studies to see its relevance contextualized and revitalized in different geographical contexts. I think this conference will do that and more. Can’t wait!

People seem to like notes, and blogging them helps me remember some of the ideas I’ve been hearing lately. Below is a bunch of thoughts I captured during Sandro’s talk, which was a good overview of the afternoon’s project. The amount of travel I’ve been doing lately made me particularly sensitive to the themes raised, and each paper opened up sophisticated questions about what we mean by the terms citizenship, labour, legality and belonging in the current infatuation with mobility. The usual provisos about my memory’s accuracy apply…

Working title for book with Brett: Border as Method or The Multiplication of Labour

‘differential inclusion’

Wants to develop concepts that improve upon the anodyne sociological language of neoliberal flexibilisation which avoids discussing social citizenship

Nation + labour market is a nexus that can no longer be captured by citizen + worker

Wants to describe the changing nature of inclusion rather than border studies’ preoccupation with exclusion

A growing number of people aren’t fully insiders or outsiders.

Ethnographic research into US/Mexican border was important background for the notion of ‘Fortress Europe’ which itself doesn’t really recognise the vast amount of immigration in the EU.

Can no longer focus on just the ‘global North’ or North/South movements but must account for variations such as movement within the ‘global South’ and particular zones of intensity (eg. the ‘Pacific Solution’). Particular cases can show how the timing and tempo of migration can be regulated and processes of selection mobilised and routinised leading to the possibility of “just in time, to the point migration practices”

Points based migration systems: these multiplying and stratifying policing systems for subject positions generate a range of new actors or “middle men” with varying claims to legality/illegality

Also prompt us to ask what counts as skilled labour? Practical skills may now be less important than ‘soft skills’ eg. ‘teamwork’ and the desirability of migrants employed in cognitive sectors of the economy

The competition for skilled work leads to ‘talent for citizenship’ exchanges: preferred migration practices promoting ease of access to permanent residency (a major factor behind Australia’s booming trade in international students)

Example of IT workers who engage in other work while upgrading skills: ‘benching’

Example of 2006 May Day Latino movement

Who is the citizen?

Differential inclusion: mobility and migration split between skilled/flexible workers (encouraged in particular ways) and undocumented/clandestine workers. They are the flipside of each other

Borders have moved from the edge of the nation to the centre of the city and the polis

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Something’s got to give in your day-to-day routine, Libra, insofar as you’re balancing (or trying to balance) a brimming schedule of work duties, domestic chores and personal-care maintenance measures. If you’ve been managing it the same way for a while now, chances are that your desire to put in a good effort every day may be waning. You desperately need some instance of reinvention in the daily grind, in order to rekindle your passion for productivity. It could be something as simple as finding a new workstation location, a different type of exercise class, a shift in your waking-up and going-to-sleep times, or a consolidation of household tasks into one chock-full day a week. Alternately, you may crave a much larger change—a totally different job, a drastically improved nutrition plan, or a part-time assistant to help with what’s not getting done. It’s all about pulling a vastly relieving breath of fresh air into your stale ho-hum workflow. Otherwise, should you ignore the need for reinvigoration, the quality of your efforts will continue their downhill slide. And if any certain person (a heartless boss, a selfish spouse, a bumbling colleague) is standing in your way, refusing to acknowledge your ongoing investment with wholehearted support of these greater-self-appreciation moves, then maybe they don’t appreciate you enough.

A picture paints a thousand words

You’re not getting any love

You have to be your own self-promoter

The man out front

Taking one for the team

What flies and what dies

Piggy-backing

Gate-crashing

Presser

Snapper

Have to keep putting yourself out there!

Meanwhile, who would have thought Kyle Sandilands would be the one to make the election a bit more interesting? Nice one. While the video is still live, check out the operators in the background once they realise what’s happening.