Comments on: What would you do?

By: Jennifer Eagleton

Jennifer Eagleton — Tue, 29 May 2012 02:02:09 +0000

Not really related to this, but as my recent PhD topic involves a CDA of Hong Kong discussion of certain political issues shows — researching a topic like politics has made me get involved in the local political scene, as in protesting and writing letters to the editor and generally having arguments with people about politics!

As a member of the society I am researching and as also an outsider (non-Chinese), my research has raised many interesting issues. The research changes the researcher!

By: Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江 — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:33:24 +0000

Thoroughly enjoyed the post. Thank you for informing us of the experience of these ethnographers – the choices they made and the varied consequences they faced – that could have been easily forgotten. As in the previous post (http://languageonthemove.com/multilingual-academics/strange-academic-women), the life stories of McConnel and Tennant Kelly put us in perspective on the gender politics in academia, urging us never to be complacent. I find “What would you have done?” rather difficult to answer, but it’s an important question as it necessarily invites us to expand our imagination (even including ‘inaction’ as Christof mentions above) and to think in terms of the intersection between research and activism in our own current research practice.

By: Christof Demont-Heinrich

Christof Demont-Heinrich — Tue, 22 May 2012 03:29:04 +0000

Great post! Thought-provoking and informative. Perhaps it is a bit cliched, but it is worth pointing out that inaction is itself a form of action with plenty of political and social consequences to boot.