A round of applause to Jeremiah Tolbert for this plea to people to stop picking on each other. He’s talking about SF fans being nice to furries and fan fic writers, but he might just as well be talking about hierarchies in any group. I may start talking about the TBLG community just to make a point. And I’m sure there are just the same sort of distinctions amongst rail fans, stamp collectors, petrol heads and just about any other group you care to mention. The academic hierarchy would, I think, be a wonder to behold.
6 thoughts on “Down With Hierarchy”
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“The academic hierarchy would, I think, be a wonder to behold.”
As would the editors-to-writers and writers-to-fans, I’d imagine.
Thanks for the applause! You’re right, though. Everything I said there could be boiled down to “stop being jerks!” and applies universally.
Jess:
The thing about academia is there’s so much richness to the hierarchy. People can look down on each other for so many reasons. There’s a seniority hierarchy, and the science hierarchy (physicists look down on chemists who look down on biologists and they all look down on engineers), and just loads of other hierarchies within each faculty, and that’s before you get into inter-faculty rivalry. Do computer scientists look down on archaeologists or vice versa? Would we need a diagram to find out? Is anyone actually employed studying these issues?
In or out of academia, people who can do math look down on everyone else!
Cheryl–
Not to mention tenured-vs-non-tenured, regularly-employed-versus-adjunct, professor-versus-t.a., etc etc etc.
I think there have been some papers written on this, but nothing recently.
Jess:
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard at least one paper at ICFA mention the hierarchy of fandom, so I think we have now come full circle.