Care and Curation

In this post I want to go back to the conference on material religion in Durham. It always interests me how the programmes that are put together at such conferences always manage to juxtapose different and sometimes seemingly incompatible ideas, but still manage to spark new thoughts. It is the serendipity of the process that I find so fascinating, and which links through to some of my ideas around post-post modernism (see posting below).

One particular combination of papers at the conference triggered a particular line of thought for me. Both were very different in themselves. The first was by Amy Whitehead and drew on her fieldwork in southern Spain, where she is observing the way in which local people interact with specific shrines and statues of Our Lady. She was interested in the kind of issues related to subjectivity and relationships with non-human others that I looked at in the previous posting in this strand. The second was by Pamela Smart and focussed on the collecting practices of the De Menil family and in particular showed how their religious background and concerns led to a specific approach both to collecting in general and to that which was collected. The main purpose of Pamela's paper as I understood it was to show that Catholicism and modernism were not incompatible, especially when seen through the lens of the De Menil family's collecting. Both were excellent papers but it was one small element of each that particularly caught my attention and led me to reflect on our relationship with material objects in the light of my own interest in Dogon art.

From Amy's paper the element that struck me was the way in which the women associated with the shrine care for the statue. Traditionally these women would have been virgins, but that is no longer possible. What is interesting, however, is that these women are the only ones entitled to care for the statue in an intimate and very personal way when all the other people have been removed from the church. They change the clothes and even they have to hold up a sheet and look away while their leader changes the underwear. This is very intimate care representing very close contact with the statue that treats that statue as a real person, and a very special person, a person who is understood to be a Queen.

In Pamela's paper the point that she made, which particularly struck me, was that the private nature of the collection led to a particular emphasis on curatorial care of the objects within the collection. This involved restoration, stabilisation, and an attention to the needs of the object in terms of environment for storage and display. Pamela argued that such attention to care is not as clear in the case of public collections of different kinds, but was central to the whole ethos of the maintenance and display of the collection for these private collectors, even to the point of dictating the form of the building that holds the display. There is a personal element here, as with the statue from southern Spain, but this is the collector's personal attachment to the objects within the collection.

What I picked up from this particular juxtaposition was the different understandings of care and curation of objects in different settings and contexts. Linked to this is very clearly the idea of ownership. For the private collector it is the fact of personal ownership that leads to the emphasis on care for the object. In the case of the women at the shrine I might suggest that it is actually the ownership of the women by the statue that demands the level of intimate care that is seen in the ritual. But ownership is only one aspect. As with the wider themes of the conference and the questions of personhood and subjectivity, the issues around care and curatorship lead us right into the question of our relationships with the material, especially within the context of religion.

As I work through the material on the Dogon I can see both elements of this juxtaposition at work. For the people themselves there is a caring for the objects, within the shrines as part of the ritual, in their placing these objects within the cliffside caves to preserve them among the dead, and in their reuse of the objects at other times. The layers of sacrificial patina represent a kind of care, as do the addition of nails, jewellery and other additions. Finally there are also elements of repair that are seen on some of the objects that in itself is a sign of care. Repair can also be seen, depending on when it is undertaken, in relation to collectors (although it is often frowned upon as authenticity does not expect the collector to go quite this far in their care of the object). How the museums, galleries and private collectors also 'care' for the objects, and the different ways these different groups do 'care' for the objects is also a fascinating area of study. I am not sure I can offer any conclusions at this stage, but it has raised so many new questions for me about the relations between the human and the object in the case of Dogon art, and in many other contexts.

Teaching as a Protected Characteristic

Last week I went to Leeds to present some of the findings from the Valuing Teaching @ Birmingham (VT@B) Project to those who are taking part in this year's HEA Change initiative. VT@B was an Higher Education Academy supported project undertaken here at Birmingham University to look at the way in which the balance between teaching and research among academic staff was understood by the staff themselves. It consisted of a series of interviews with a wide cross section of staff, feedback from a web survey and a number of focus groups and discussions with senior managers within the University. The project led to a series of recommendations aimed at redressing the balance between the recognition of teaching and research in academic contracts within the University.

This is not really the place to go into the specific results in great detail. The overall conclusion, which will probably reflect many other research intensive universities (and others from the responses at the HEA event) is that as we approach the REF submission, many academics feel that teaching is being undervalued, at the day to day level within specific departments, when considering issues such as promotion, and in the wider messaging of the University, especially on the outward facing web site. With the emphasis on increase grants, however, an increasing discourse around student experience, and the importance of NSS and other elements of national league tables, then it was noted that this might be changing.

One interesting point struck me, however, as I was preparing the presentation for the HEA event, and that I raised in the final few minutes of the presentation. This was the similarities between much of the language and structures of discrimination that we had heard around teaching within the project and the debate that is happening more broadly around gender, race or sexuality within the whole field of equality and diversity. I am responsible, within the University, for our Equality Executive Group and like so many other Universities we have been struggling with things like the Athena Swan charters, questions of BME attainment gaps, recognition for our work on sexuality and even interfaith activities across the University. Within all these areas the question is not so much overt sexism or racism among staff or as an institution. Attitudes of that kind are very rare these days, although perhaps still too common for comfort. The issue in all these 'protected characteristics' is actually one of implicit prejudice.

I could perhaps take the example of religious faith as an example. Many colleagues, and even whole individuals, will claim quite legitimately that they have no faith position and that they do not take faith positions into account in relation to teaching, to promotion practices within the institution, in relation to research or in relation to expectations in terms of workload models or whatever it is. However, almost by saying that they are demonstrating an implicit prejudice and if they took the time to make themselves aware of the specific needs and experiences of people of different religious groups, then they would realise that whether it is in relation to prayer times, washing facilities, food provision, failure to recognise faith perspectives in learning and teaching, or whatever else it might be, by claiming to do nothing detrimental they are in fact limiting the chances of some of their students, or their colleagues who hold committed faith positions.

Another element of implicit prejudice comes through experiments which show that even those who have a good track record on, for example, race issues can still react differently (more quickly, less consciously) when confronted by pictures of individuals from different racial backgrounds holding guns. the prejudice is so ingrained that we do not always note that we display it. This has also been shown to be the case when names are added at the top of essays, or promotion documentation. Even if the individual is not known, our assumptions about gender, race, or perhaps even religion, will determine, perhaps only slightly, but still measurably, our response to the paper concerned.

In the case of teaching, therefore, what we see in our data is the idea of teaching as a 'protected characteristic' among academics. We say all the right things. We assert as institutions that individual academics have as much chance of promotion or reward on their teaching as they do on their research. We claim to recognise teaching excellence in colleagues and at times of promotion etc. If we stop to think about it, and are clearly challenged to do so, then this is what we do. However, when we are under pressure to deal with a pile of forms, to sort out next year's work load, to think on the spot of who to recommend for reward or recognition (however that is done) at any one time, then across most research focussed Universities, and perhaps we could say most universities, we revert to type, and our implicit prejudices come to the for. I am probably as guilty of this as any other manager. The solution, however, is one of raising awareness, noting and drawing to the attention of boards and managers, asking our colleagues to stop and think about the consequences of their actions, becoming self aware. These are exactly the same solutions that we are learning to take on board for all protected characteristics and perhaps, in the University context, we need to add 'teaching' to that list.