Dear David,
 
I promised a brief report on the Glasgow meeting of June 26-28. In reviewing my notes--necessarily fragmentary, because of the many concurrent sessions--I would say that the meeting more than lived up to its global billing.  More than forty speakers from a dozen countries presented papers on topics ranging from khat to cocaine. What most impressed me, though, was the variety of approaches. James Nicholls, for example, used political philosophy as a frame for prohibition history, showing how the policy evoked fundamental problems and tensions within the liberal tradition. Alex Kreit did something similar with the U.S. drug war by making explicit its contradictory impulses (reconcilable, I think, at the level of authoritarian psychology) to protect and punish the young. Aija Kaartinen used journalistic and voting evidence to reconstruct ethnocultural and gender patterns of support for and opposition to prohibition in Finland. Harry Yi-Jui Wu combined ethnographic and fragmentary epidemiological evidence to tell the story of alcoholism among indigenous Formosan peoples after World War II. Psychologist Bruce Alexander used ethnohistory and a natural experiment to argue that cultural destruction, not alcohol per se, was the real killer of indigenous Canadians. Rami Regavim looked at opium in Iran through the lens of economic history, stressing its production and its importance as a source of government revenue. Dan Malleck evoked Weber, Foucault, and the photographic record to interpret attempts to manage respectable drinking in Ontario in the 1930s and 1940s. I left the three-day meeting feeling as if I had just completed, on a crash-course basis, a particularly ambitious graduate methods seminar. I take this as a sign of the maturation of the field and its continued appeal across disciplines. 
 
The business meeting was well attended. I reported that it was still uncertain where the next meeting would be held. A meeting in China is one possibility, if funding and other issues can be resolved; the University of Buffalo is another possibility, though it is only in the early stages of discussion. Dan Malleck reported on the status of the journal, solicited volunteers for the post of treasurer, and asked if anyone was interested in the possibility of starting an ADHS group blog. (A much fuller statement of this idea, prepared by Joseph Spillane, appears below. Joe would have made the presentation himself, but he could not attend the meeting in person.) Scott Martin announced that the organizers of the Policy History Conference (meeting in Columbus, Ohio, June 3-June 6, 2010) are keenly interested in papers and panels on alcohol and drug policy history. Other meetings mentioned included a conference on drug policy and history in El Paso, Texas, in September 2009 (Chuck Ambler can provide details), the annual ADHS sessions at the AHA meeting in San Diego, January 7-10, 2010, and a conference on Intoxicants and Intoxication in Cultural and Historical Perspective will be held in Christ's College, Cambridge, July 20-July 22, 2010. In short, opportunities galore.
          
The facilities at the University of Strathclyde were excellent. The reception at the Glasgow City Chambers, the conference dinner at the Arta Restaurant, and the tour of the Glengoyne Distillery were wet, sociable, and memorable. None of this would have been possible without the splendid organizing work of Patricia Barton and James Mills and support from the ADHS, the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, the Wellcome Trust, and the Bowling Green State University Graduate Program in Public Policy. I know that I speak for all the attendees in extending thanks to these individuals and organizations.
 
Respectfully submitted,
 
David T. Courtwright
ADHS President and
Presidential Professor
Dept. of History
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL 32224-2645
Home office: (904) 745 0530
University office: (904) 620-1872
Fax: (904) 620-1018
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
 
 
 
 

ADHS Blogging: Some Thoughts for Consideration

 

Joe Spillane

University of Florida

 

 

Introduction

 

This document briefly reviews the prospects for an ADHS group blog.  I've written it informally-as a substitute, really, for my being able to discuss this in person.  It isn't the final word on the subject, by a long shot, but I hope it stimulates some discussion.

A group blog is one kind of digital project.  There are obviously a number of other ways in which academics, individually or as a group, can take advantage of the opportunities provided by the digital environment.   Digital projects can include electronic archives[1] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn1> , wikis[2] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn2> , educational sites[3] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn3> , and news feeders[4] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn4> , among others.  A group (or collaborative) blog is a type of blog focused on a specific subject area, to which a number of contributors post entries.  A group blog is neither better nor worse than these things, just different.[5] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn5>   The question is whether or not it represents a good use of time and resources by the ADHS!

What I have tried to do in this document is to explore the ways in which an ADHS group blog might be organized, and to consider how such a thing might benefit the ADHS.  Please note that I'm a fairly avid consumer of academic blogs, but have no special expertise in helping to produce.  So I'm not claiming ownership of this idea, just trying to start a conversation. 

 

How an ADHS Blog Might Be Organized

            The prospect of constructing an ADHS group blog raises a number of basic questions about organization and structure.  I'll review some here, with my suggestions.  Throughout, I'll use a very good academic history blog, Frog in a Well, as my illustration.[6] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftn6>   Frog in a Well is actually three distinct Asian History group blogs.  I'll use the Korean history blog as my example.  You can see it here: http://www.froginawell.net/korea/

Managing Editor-An ADHS group blog would almost certainly require an individual to serve as a sort of managing editor for the enterprise.  The managing editor would, at the outset, be responsible for constructing the platform on which the group blog would be based.  Thereafter, the managing editor would handle a fairly modest set of responsibilities, I would think.  One reason is that the ADHS group blog would be invitation-only.  That it, the ability to add blog entries would be limited to a specific set of contributors.  That keeps to an absolute minimum any need for a managing editor to actually spend time editorially reviewing anything, since contributors would be free to go ahead and post entries themselves.  Frog in a Well-Korea, for example, seems to have no formally designated managing editor, though it is graduate student K.M. Lawson who serves in that role.

Contributors/Contributing Editors-The heart of the ADHS group blog would be those individuals who agree to serve as ongoing contributors.  Frog in a Well-Korea, for example, lists ten "authors" at the top of the right hand menu (what to call these folks is an interesting, albeit minor, question-authors, contributors, contributing editors, and so on).   The size of the contributing group for academic blogs varies considerably.  Each of the ten authors at Frog in a Well-Korea contributes their own entries, though the frequency of the blog entries varies considerably by author.  Likewise, an ADHS group blog's contributors would not be expected to maintain any sort of uniform pace of posting, though one would assume that wholly inactive contributors might eventually be removed from the rolls. 

Guest Contributors-One might assume that the Managing Editor could on occasion invite someone to contribute one or more entries without being permanently added to the ranks of contributors.

The Blog Entries-Contributors would be wholly responsible for producing and posting their blog entries.  Blog entries can certainly include information items, along the lines of what the Daily Register already includes, but the goal is to feature short, original, and thoughtful contributions to our field.  Here's one example-an entry from last Fall to the Daily Register from my University of Florida colleague Trysh Travis:

David Foster Wallace Obituary

 

Author David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home Friday night, an apparent suicide. The many obituaries and retrospectives that will be extruded from the bowels of the mainstream media over the next week or so will make much of Wallace's pyrotechnic intellect and incendiary postmodern prose style. They will pay scant attention, however, to the thing that makes his death relevant to readers of the ADHS Blog: Wallace was one of the most insightful and innovative writers about addiction and recovery-particularly about Alcoholics Anonymous-that we have seen.

 

Writing about Wallace's 1996 opus Infinite Jest typically begins by mentioning that the novel resists summation-probably a wise move, given that it is over a thousand pages long and contains 388 endnotes, some of which have their own footnotes. Authors then go on to talk about some of the book's flashier and more hilarious elements: the intergenerational struggles of the Incandenza family of avant-garde filmmakers and sports phenoms; the plot by quadriplegic Quebecois separatists to terrorize the U.S. with a samizdat videotape so entertaining it literally paralyzes its viewers; the corporate sponsorship of anything and everything, such that different years are no longer denominated by numerals but by brands-the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken, etc. Most mention in passing that the novel also touches on addiction and recovery, but those elements are treated as part of its larger interest in the detritus of late 20th-century popular culture; they are rarely seen as central to its aesthetics or thematics.

 

In fact, depicting the nature of addiction-to alcohol, drugs, sex, consumer goods, fame, and so on-is one of the novel's central concerns. The other is an investigation of how 12-Step recovery, of the specific "black belt" style long associated with certain Boston AA groups, can break the cycle of addiction and return the addict to full and functional humanity. At the novel's moral and narrative center is Don Gately, a recovering narcotics addict and petty criminal, and much of its action unfolds at the residential facility Ennet House, where the novel's various addicts cross paths, all hoping to achieve "some thin pie-slice of abstinent time, till they can start to get a whiff of what's true and deep, almost magic, under the shallow surface" of meetings, chores, and the daily repetition of AA slogans. In the few interviews in which he was asked about Infinite Jest's depiction of addiction and recovery, Wallace talked about the emotional power of AA meetings, and of the simultaneous sense of sadness and love that he felt there. For these reasons, as Brooks Daverman has argued in his prescient thesis on Infinite Jest, AA became for Wallace a "narrative solution" to postmodernism's fetish of distance and irony, pushing his work beyond the formal boundaries of precursors like Thomas Pynchon or Robert Coover.

 

Wallace's meditations on addiction and 12-Step culture cannot be easily shoehorned into the standard fiction and non-fiction genres through which most Americans grapple with those topics. Both his conceptualizations of addiction and recovery and his prose style were too subtle and thoughtful to lend themselves to hackneyed formulas of the downward spiral and that-much-more-inspirational-for-being-so-hard-fought climb back into "normalcy." The loss of someone who thought with such originality and insight about being high and being sober-the nature of those states, how they work on the individual psyche, why we value them-is one that will echo for a long time.

 

By Trysh Travis for the ADHS Daily Register.

 

To my mind, that's the prototypical academic blog entry-thoughtful, engaging, of-the-moment, and short (roughly 500 words).  Needless to say, the subject matter, organization, language, and tone are all the responsibility of the individual contributor, and an ADHS group blog would feature very different sorts of authorial voices.

Other Features-To return to Frog in a Well-Korea for a moment, you'll notice a number of useful features on the site's right hand menu.  Below "Authors" is a "Blogroll"-a list of links to other relevant blogs.  It should be noted that contributors to group blogs may also have their own individual blogs, which may be listed here.  Further down, there is a list of links to general web pages of interest to Korean historians.  Obviously such as list for an ADHS blog would be a handy resource.  Still further you'll notice a list of "Categories"-familiar to regular readers of the Daily Register-to allow readers to target particular subjects, and an "Archives" of past entries.  In the case of Frog in a Well-Korea, the regular monthly archives go back to November, 2005.  

Platform-Frog in a Well-Korea, is built on a blog platform that I like quite a bit, called WordPress.  I'd recommend ADHS considering WordPress for a future group blog.  If you're interested in learning more about WordPress, you can find it here: http://wordpress.org/

  

What's the Point?

I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence by belaboring the potential value of an ADHS blog, but it is fair to say that blogging may always not seem like the most natural fit with the academic enterprise.  Some of its qualities-the brevity of the entries, the lack of formal peer review, and its seemingly transitory nature-may appear almost antithetical to what we're "all about" as historians and academics.  Indeed, the time and effort investing in academic blogging are almost certainly NOT going to be recognized with the traditional academic reward structure.  As a department chair, I can certainly attest to this!  I'd warn any of my untenured faculty or doctoral students, for example, to be wary of over-investing energy into a blog at the expense of those essential parts of professional labor like writing books or dissertations.  Still, I'd suggest that there are at least three distinct benefits to an ADHS group blog, which make it worthy of consideration.  I'll hope you'll forgive the personal reflections I've included by way of illustration.

Strengthening Social Networks-One of the real contributions of an academic blog is the potential to strengthen the social networks in the field.  We all know the value of conferences, for example, as devices by which we develop professional relationships with those in our field.  I can still remember attending the "Altered States" symposium at the Strong Museum as a graduate student, way back in (I think) 1992.  It was the first meeting I'd ever heard of devoted to the history of drug and alcohol, and probably the last one I attended where I had no formal role at all.  I just sat, listened, and introduced myself a lot!  Many folks I met there have been valued colleagues ever since.  Happily, the drug and alcohol history field has seen an ever-growing number of such meetings since then.  An ADHS group blog can serve as the bridge between meetings, a perpetual gathering place for the growing groups of scholars interested in the history of alcohol and drugs.

Enlarging Social Networks-I have a young friend, outside of the academic world, for whom drug history and drug policy have become something of an after-work passion.  He's a smart and serious person, currently working his way through Peter Reuter and Rob MacCoun's Drug War Heresies, and eager to locate the next book for his reading list.  As much as he loves his books, the web is his go-to place for information.  He's just the sort of person who would become a regular consumer of an ADHS group blog.  An effective, interesting group blog can attract an audience made up of the serious amateurs (like my friend), as well as undergraduate and graduate students with interests in the field (the next generation of ADHS members, I daresay), academics from other disciplines, as well as journalists with interests in particular historical issues and questions.

Asking Questions, Getting Answers-In May, 1997, Paul Gootenberg organized a conference on the history of cocaine, held at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York (almost unbelievably, Sarah Tracy's conference on the history of drugs and alcohol was held on the same date, in Philadelphia!).  I can still recall the eagerness with which we gathered around the large table at the RSF, ready to pepper each other with questions after so many months and years of individual effort.  I can't say that we answered every question-a fair number remain unanswered still.  But it was good to ask them, and helpful to hear some responses.  An ADHS group blog promises more of the same.  

By way of example, here's one recent entry from Frog in a Well-Korea, that gives some information, and asks for more:

It's been quite some time since I have posted (teaching two classes this semester has had that effect), but I wanted to catch up by mentioning several conferences that I've been to this spring, and to give a plug for one or two others that I've heard about.

 

  Two took place earlier this spring at NUS, "Emerging SE Asian STS" (January 2009) and "Toward a Trans-Asian STS" (March 2009), and the other was that traditional behemoth, AAS (Chicago 2009).

 

  I'm lumping these together collectively because I think there remains a lot to offer in terms of comparative work with South Korea and other emerging / new nations which received substantial aid in the 1945-1970 period, including the ROK, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Vietnam.   That is, I'm becoming more obsessed lately with the loose notion of "comparative developmental states," rather than South Korea or post-war  NE Asia in isolation. 

 

  Specifically, I'm interested in the role of South Korea as an agent of international / US construction interests, looking at the build-up of expertise and funding by Hyundai.  Just to cite one quick example, Hyundai worked on the Pattani-Naratiwat highway project (Dec. 1965-March 1968) in southern Thailand (almost on the Malaysia border) for their first big international project, losing money and going beyond the time projection in the process.  But the project was mobilized as a success and Hyundai contruction subsequently gained access to the Vietnam market, winning bids through RMK-BRJ, a Texas-based consortium (Think "Friends of LBJ," as Brown and Root funded his 1948 Senate run) that controlled many of the bids coming from the US Navy.  Lee Myung-Bak was there, too, and many Korean elites used this context (SE Asia, Thailand and Vietnam) to build their careers.    

 

  I'll be working on this more later, but mention it now as I'm familiar with the military role played by the South in Vietnam, but am just beginning to recognize the infrastructural role, especially when present-days scandals about construction in Iraq are still emerging.  It's also another area with overlaps between Imperial japan and Imperial America, with South Korea acting as an on-site representative in the latter case.

 

  That's just a brief note for now, and wondering if anyone out there has anything to say about "Scientizing Korea' at USC this spring (April), or the upcoming Japanese science workshop (May) at UCLA?

 

Doubtless there are other benefits to group blogging, but in the interests of time, I'll leave it at that.  I hope this starts a conversation on the prospects for a group blog, and I look forward to hearing from anyone who has comments/questions.

 

Joe Spillane 

 

 

 


________________________________

[1] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref1>  If I may indulge in a bit of self-promotion, a good example of such a site is the substance abuse research oral history archive constructed by myself and Nancy Campbell: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/substance.abuse.history/home <http://sitemaker.umich.edu/substance.abuse.history/home>  

[2] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref2>  A wiki gives a platform for the collective organization of information.  A good example of a scholarly wiki is the SCOTUSwiki, on the U.S. Supreme Court.  You can find it here: http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page <http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page> 

[3] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref3>  One of the best examples is The Valley Project, which combines an outstanding electronic archive on two Civil War era communities with a wealth of useful teaching materials. http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

[4] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref4>  The ADHS Daily Register is an extraordinarily useful example.  It isn't really a news feeder, per se, but it is a kind of aggregator of news and information.  As such, it already provides part of what an ADHS group blog might do, and one would want to figure out a way to synchronize the services provided by the Daily Register with the group blog.  I'll assume the reader has seen the Daily Register-but here's the link, just in case: http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/

[5] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref5>  For more on academic blogging, assuming you don't regard these few pages as the last word on the subject, see two slightly older contributions to the discussion: http://crookedtimber.org/2004/11/18/the-academic-contributions-of-blogging/ <http://crookedtimber.org/2004/11/18/the-academic-contributions-of-blogging/>  and also http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn/index.php/archives/2005/09/so-why-would-i-champion-academic-blogging/ <http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn/index.php/archives/2005/09/so-why-would-i-champion-academic-blogging/>  

[6] <https://webaccess.unf.edu/Exchange/dcourtwr/Drafts/RE:%20Glasgow%20conference.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref6>  Frog in a Well-Korea is not a perfect example.  While it is well organized, and the entries are interesting, it suffers (in my opinion) from a lack of activity.  The most recent entry was about one month ago.  The "Japan" and "China" blogs are much more active.