{"id":2145,"date":"2016-03-23T17:43:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T01:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2017-05-23T11:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T19:34:06","slug":"philosophical-lab-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2016\/03\/23\/philosophical-lab-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophical lab infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The short version of this post: Philosophers have practically no lab infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The long version:<\/p>\n

Coming back\u00a0to my research about\u00a0philosophy departments in France, I was recently reading an institutional document describing the (highly-rated) research laboratory<\/a>\u00a0for philosophers at the University of Paris-8.\u00a0Apparently it was a\u00a0bureaucratic requirement to write\u00a0a section describing the “infrastructures” available to the laboratory. But since Paris-8 is a typically underfunded public university, operating in\u00a0cramped quarters on a small campus in\u00a0the Parisian\u00a0banlieue<\/em>, the sad reality is that their infrastructure was quite limited. To the point of comedy.<\/p>\n

I quote:<\/p>\n

Infrastructures<\/span><\/p>\n

L\u2019unit\u00e9 dispose d\u2019une salle de 35 m2<\/strong>, \u00e9quip\u00e9e d\u2019un t\u00e9l\u00e9phone, de deux ordinateurs fixes et d\u2019une connexion par WIFI. Elle est meubl\u00e9e de tables, chaises, et biblioth\u00e8ques. Elle est situ\u00e9e dans un b\u00e2timent neuf de moins de deux ans. La surface disponible par chercheur membre de l\u2019\u00e9quipe \u00e0 titre principal est de 1,5 m2<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The unit possesses a room of 35 m2<\/sup><\/strong>, equipped with a telephone, two desktop computers and\u00a0WiFi access. It is furnished with tables, chairs and bookshelves. It is situated in a new building less than two years old. The\u00a0available surface per principle\u00a0laboratory researcher is 1.5 m2<\/sup><\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One and a half square meters\u00a0per researcher is just about\u00a0enough to cram a chair into, and clearly\u00a0not enough for any sort of individual workspace. Accordingly, there were none; the room in question was purely used to hold small seminars.\u00a0The whole laboratory staff would never have fit inside it, and when they did have meetings, they took place elsewhere.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, something charming\u00a0about the plaintive note that at least the tiny room is “situated in a new building less than two years old” (the building pictured above). It’s as if the author felt\u00a0obliged to put\u00a0only the most positive spin on a clearly inadequate situation. Nevertheless, there is something to learn here about what counts as infrastructure for philosophers at Parisian public universities:\u00a0in short, all the\u00a0productive<\/em> infrastructure (the books, the libraries, the computers, the desks) is elsewhere, generally\u00a0at home, and the campus becomes\u00a0purely a place of knowledge exchange, not of knowledge production. Which is why it it is possible to have\u00a0a philosophy lab with practically\u00a0no facilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The short version of this post: Philosophers have practically no lab infrastructure. The long version: Coming back\u00a0to my research about\u00a0philosophy departments in France, I was recently reading an institutional document describing the (highly-rated) research laboratory\u00a0for philosophers at the University of Paris-8.\u00a0Apparently it was a\u00a0bureaucratic requirement to write\u00a0a section describing the “infrastructures” available to the laboratory. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488,753,497],"tags":[737,736,647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2152,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions\/2152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}