Academic writing has really done a number on me, and it is only this summer session that I am figuring out how it works. From 11:30 until 2:30 each day, I take an LLED course on this very topic, learning how the social practice of getting my ideas published in journals and presented at conferences isn’t rocket science (as Dr. John Robinson was won’t to say) but certainly requires an amount of skill. First, being able to identify what counts as research instead than the wishful output of corporate thinktanks takes some getting used to: both Apple and Mircosoft would like academics to believe that their view of digital literacy, for instance, aligns perfectly with research produced at top universities. Their reasons are quite obvious, as it is better for their bottom line if the ivory tower elite institutions buy into their research. But all of this supposes that there is pure source of scholarly articles on digital literacy, and it is just a matter of finding it.
Where does one look? Cambridge University Press seems to have made it their business to keep tab on the various forms of legitimate (ie. non-commercial) research. Earlier today, I was tracing down an article my advisor co-wrote on digital literacy, and found it in the reference section of the Education Library, the Cambridge Handbook of Literacy – a book so high-stakes that the university cannot let you leave the library with a copy. I might as well post again from the library for the amount of time it will take to sit down with the book (yeah, I could photocopy it, but that is more paper an ink I’d have to store somewhere, while the digital copy (PDF) could just as easily be uploaded onto my iPad within seconds. So what sort of deal does Cambridge UP have with UBC? Would the situation be different if I had gone to Cambridge as a grad student?
Of course, Timothy Clark’s book on ecocriticism is an introduction to the environment and literature, not a more prestigious-sounding “handbook on” this topic (Cambridge has such a handbook on learning sciences, but none exclusively on environmental literacy). Clark’s criticism of standard social science method (SSSM) was my entry point into his evolutionary view of this uniquely human habit of storing our collective knowledge in publications and libraries. And it only seems to confuse readers and academics into narrow categories: are we looking at Darwin’s theory or Social Darwinism, two very different concepts spawned from his “survival of the fittest” understanding. Ideas will continue to evolve, and the only thing we can say with certainty about a play by Sophocles or Shakespeare is that the word are somewhat in the order the author intended, but thanks to SSSM, meaning can be all over the map. Thankfully there are handbooks and institutions to straighten all of us out, but then adds to the possibility of misunderstandings and sometimes disastrous decisions that effect the plants, animals and non-living inhabitants of our ecosystems. But at least we still have tonnes of books in libraries, that ought to keep the bookworms happy! :-S