The world of academia is funny. You meet people all the time who tell you what they are researching and you think: "what?" Sometimes it's because their topic is so obscure you can't imagine how they even came up with it in the first place. Othertimes you feel like asking "and what is this going to add to the great body of knowledge?" Sometimes the topics seem so incredibly self-indulgent, like writing about graphic novels or action films or basically hobbies. How many PhDs have I seen about some sport or another, skiing, surfing, hiking, camping. In fact, a lot of PhDs are probably written by obsessive hobbyists.
It's a peculiar world I suppose. And the more you become entrenched in it, the more selective you find yourself becoming. You might start out an open-minded and generally curious person with lots of interests, but the whole process of doing a PhD means you need to become more and more particular, draw lines so that certain things are inside your field of interest and the rest are outside of it. It's an exercise in focus in more ways than one, and you can easily be accused of 'eclecticism' if you try to cross boundaries between theoretical perspectives for instance, or consider the value of too many things at once.
Most of this happens fairly subconciously. At one time, when I was an undergrad for instance, I had interests in geopolitics, in cultural studies, classical history, homelessness and the concept of home, gender studies and general roles and relations... all these things and many more. Slowly though, I've found myself specialising more and more... except not necessarily based purely on interest, but also on available courses, supervisor interests, and a desire to contribute something to the world of knowledge that might have some positive effect in the long run (though the chances of that look ever more slim as each day goes by and I disappear into words and books).
The other day as I was sitting in the kitchen eating and listening to the radio and there was a program on about the cultural capital, and it was Derry/Londonderry that won, and the person accepting the award said something to the effect of 'if a place can't find a way to use culture to express the hardships and struggles and tensions and realities of its history and present, then what good is culture?' Prior to this I think 'creative city regions' and so on, a newish concept in geography had irked me a little (sometimes concepts just sit uncomfortably). Creative cities studies tended to focus on the impacts of capital of culture awards and the like on economic development. Ironically, economic development is pretty much my area of study, so this kind of does fall into my stated interests, though as I say, the more PhDing you do, the more specialised you get, and the more things actually find themselves outside of your interest net. So this was one of the things that had fallen outside.
So anyway, I was listening to this program and thinking, you know, this IS important, and maybe all of those studies that seem really particular or obscure or based on people's hobbies also have some kind of value and are worth at least being open to and open-minded about. I'm a believer in not closing the doors on inquiry, and while it can be exhausting to try and think about EVERYTHING that comes up, I think it's an important exercise of the mind not to fall into a pattern of having pre-made judgements about things.
Another example of this is a political one. We were having lunch the other day in the common room, and discussing the recent case of Raoul Moat, who shot his ex-girlfriend and her new lover (killing the latter) as well as a policeman, and made lots of threats besides. There was an outcry over the way the case was handled and the perspective that the man deserved to die for what he'd done. The most 'left-wing' person in our group made the argument that seeing the man simply as bad and thereby justifying his sort of assisted suicide if you like (tasering him as he had a gun to his head) was an incredibly right-wing thing to do, and it was worth looking into why he'd ended up like that in the first place and how the system had failed him. The most right-wing person in our group automatically supported the conservative party's statements and actions. In essence, party politics is sort of a way of simplifying the need to decide on issues based on whatever you can glean about them. If you are convinced by a particular party's ideology, you support it no matter what.
Of course now I am oversimplifying, and we still have a great deal of debate in this country at least about individual issues, yet I refuse still to align myself with any particular political or other kind of party because I think as soon as you do, you've shifted the responsibility for opinions and decisions about things to some group mentality and unless you're REALLY REALLY sure that that group is thinking more clearly than you and is aligned on all moral/ethical standpoints as you, my view is that it is detrimental to start relying on any group association in that way.
So what's this all about? Open-mindedness I guess. The value of thinking for oneself. And questioning your ideas and challenging yourself to consider alternatives and defend what you believe in rather than just accepting it and refusing to question it.
