In, I believe, January we had a fairly lengthy discussion about how WSN
could be used to make the processes of decision making and governance within
PEWS more transparent and accessible. As I recall, Fred Deyo wholeheartedly
supported this idea. We now have an opportunity to put this into practice:
specifically, I am referring to section award for distinguished scholarship.
It is my opinion that this issue should be addressed by the section as a
whole (or at least the far larger portion of the section that can be
addressed via WSN) instead of some small private committee.
After posting some comments about Arrighi's LONG 20TH c and my belief that
this book should be nominated for the award, I received a communication from
Phil McMichael, PEWS Chair -Elect, informing me that no decision had been
made about this award. I was also informed that several people were under
consideration. In my reply to Phil, I posed two questions: what were the
people/works under consideration and had the members of the award committee
(whoever they may be) read all these works. In addition, I also suggested
to Phil that we (PEWS) attempt to gain some broader recognition, i.e, an ASA
award, for whomever we nominate for a section award. I have not heard from
Phil on any of these points and so I have decided to report this situation
to other section members on WSN and raise these matters for discussion on
the list.
Note - before I sent this message to the list, I sent it to Phil. Although
he responded, he never answered my original questions. I wouldn't reproduce
his response here because I did not ask him if I could but the gist of his
response was "the organization (PEWS or, for that matter ASA) has
precedence over its members. I you want to do something, go through the
approved channels"
Needless to say I find this a totally unacceptable, elitist (and insulting)
response. At one time, (and mainly because communication was so difficult)
we tolerated a small elite running this (or for that matter any other ASA)
organization. This is no longer acceptable precisely because we have the
means to achieve direct participation - e-mail (which, I should add, in
terms of potential participation has to be far superior to the section
meetings at the ASA). New procedures should be established to insure that
whatever members wish to have input into a section decision, do, in fact,
have input. It is no longer necessary to have a small group of individuals,
meeting in quasi-secrecy, and making decisions in the name of the section as
a whole. .
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Carl H.A. Dassbach E-mail: DASSBACH@MTU.EDU
Dept. of Social Sciences Phone: (906)487-2115
Michigan Technological University Fax: (906)487-2468
Houghton, MI 49931 USA