+

Geopolitical diversity in

Digital Humanities

How do we make it happen?

+ RedHD

Red de Humanidades Digitales (RedHD)

June 2011

“Our aims are to promote and strengthen work on the humanities and computing, with special emphasis on teaching and research in Latin America. The RedHD supports better communication between digital humanists in the region, the formation of human resources, preparation and documentation of good practices, the promotion of DH projects, dissemination of DH related events as well as promoting the recognition of the field. Additionally we seek to promote regional projects and initiatives on an international level”

+ Scholarly publishing and

communication

Highly complex international structure in place today

An integral part of power and prestige (assignment of grant

money, hiring, tenure, etc.)

Also a communicative and collaborative practice

Essential for knowledge construction

+ Publishing from the periphery

Little participation in “international journals”

Dominance of researchers from developed nations

Indexing services (Arts&Humanties Index, Web of Science,

Scopus)

What journals are in?

Citation and production analysis using these ‘core’ journals

Fiormonte (2015) looked at DH literature. Strong

predominance of citations to publications in English (related

to English speaking institutions and projects).

+ Science on the periphery

(…) science on the periphery is characterized by

poor funding,

the absence of a viable scientific community,

negligible presence in international invisible colleges,

an insularity resulting from inadequate access to relevant information and

inadequate communication within the local scientific community and with international invisible colleges,

an unduly long time lag before participants can take part in hot/emerging research fronts,

lack of originality,

weak institutional infrastructures,

an excessive dependence on science carried out in the centre, and

negligible contribution to the world’s pool of knowledge.

(Arunachalam, 2004)

Rarely periphery countries get to set the research agenda

+ Lost Science in the Third World

“structural obstacles and subtle prejudices that prevent

researchers in poor nations from sharing their discoveries

with the industrial world and with each other”.

Gibbs (1995)

+ A Geopolitics of Academic Writing

“how texts construct and constitute knowledge; how the

values of the Western intellect traditions are reflected in the

conventions and practices of academic communities and

their communications; how mainstream journals and their

publishing practices are congenial to the interests of center

knowledge while proving recalcitrant to periphery

discourses; and how academic writing/publishing functions

are an important means of legitimating and reproducing

center knowledge” (Canagarajah, 2002).

+ Research in periphery countries

Research in periphery countries is particularly invisible

Marginalization of peripheries in the production of

knowledge

And the impact of their research

+ Why and how is this relevant to

DH?

Research is collaborative

Humanities: rich cultural traditions, multilingual,

multicultural, heterogeneous

A collaborative and open community

Openness, collaboration, collegiality, connectedness, diversity,

experimentation

Spiro (2012)

DH as transformative / reposition Humanities

Not just about using technology

+ Defining Digital Humanities

“The tension between the digital humanities and the academic

establishment is multifaceted and involves institutional hurdles to

doing interdisciplinary and collaborative work, need for space

and technological infrastructure, tenure systems not adapted to

digital production and publications, and the need for non-faculty

experts and corresponding career paths. Based on these and

other factors, there is a strong sense that the university and the

humanities need to change to accommodate this type of work,

and all this feeds into a vision of transformed humanities.”

(Svensson, 2012).

+ DH on the periphery

Fighting power structures

Validation

Recognized and valid forms

of production Humanities

Academia at large

DH

+ The periphery in DH

Lack of diversity

Linguistic

Geographical

Power structures

ADHO

DH

Periphery

DH

+

Humanities

Academia at large

Periphery

Periphery

DH

+ New forms of publishing

Academic structures in the Humanities value individual work

Traditional outputs – journals and books

Open Access movement

New forms of peer review

+ DH publishing

New DH production

Datasets, web pages, digital scholarly editions, textual markup,

visualization

Figuring out how to certify them as valid outputs and

communication on knowledge

A BIG DH issue

New ways of publishing

Novel forms of peer review

New career paths

+ Internet as a publishing platform

Digitization of materials and making available online

Humanities 1.0 (Davidson, 2012)

Non-canonical texts (Earhart, 2012)

Difficult access (Priani, 2015)

Geographically dispersed

Journals

Scielo and RedALyC (“Science that cannot be seen does not exist”)

Collections – rich cultural heritage

International Dunhuang Project

Europeana

Hathi Trust

Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes

+ Internet as a transformative

platform

Access is not enough

“substantive rethinking (…) of the ways those faculty do their

work, how they communicate that work, and how that work is

read both inside and outside the academy”

(Fitzpatrick, 2011)

“Humanities 2.0 is distinguished from monumental, first generation

data-based projects not just by interactivity but also by an openness

about participation grounded in a different set of theoretical

premises, which decenter authority and knowledge”

(Davidson, 2012)

+ DH as transformative

DH are defined through the spirit of the times we live in

We should be fully aware of the radical cultural, social and

epistemological transformation that are occurring

Position of tension

“new interpretative models, new disruptive paradigms in our

understanding of culture and the world”

+ Building and critical thinking

Digital Humanities

Building, creating things

Importance of cultural criticism, critical thinking (Liu, etc)

New scholarly publishing and communication

DH can contribute by building

DH can contribute by thinking critically

+ Publishing

Power structures

Recognition and validation

Communication and inclusion

Build systems that address this historical imbalance

+ Thank you!

Isabel Galina Russell

Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

igalina@unam.mx

@igalina

+ References

Arunachalam, S. Science on the Periphery - Bridging the Information Divide. In: Moed, H. F.;Glänzd, W., et al (Ed.). Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research: The Use of Publication and Patent Statistics on S&T Systems. USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. cap. 7, p.163-184.

Canagarajah, S. A. (2002) A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. USA: University of Pittsburgh Press,

Clavert, F. The DH Multicultural Revolution Did Not Happen Yet. L'histoire contemporaine à l'ère numérique 2013.

Dacos, M. La estrategia de la sauna finlandesa. Blog de la RedHD. Mexico: RedHD 2013.

Davidson, C. Humanities 2.0 - Promise, Perils, Predictions. In: Gold, M. (Ed.). Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minesotta Press, 2012.

Earhart, A. E. Can Information Be Unfettered? In: Gold, M. K. (Ed.). Debates in the Digital Humanities. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. cap. 18, p.309-318.

Fitzpatrick, K. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. USA: New York University Press 2011.

Fiormonte, D. (2015), Towards monocultural (digital) Humanities? InforLet. 2015 2015.

Fiormonte, D. Towards a Cultural Critique of the Digitak Humanities. Historical Social Research, v. 37, p. 59-76, 2012a. Disponível em: < http://www.academia.edu/1932310/Towards_a_Cultural_Critique_of_Digital_Humanities >.

+ References

Galina, I. (2013) Is There Anybody Out There?, Blog de la RedHD, <insert URL>

Galina, I., Priani, E. (2011) Is There Anybody Out There? Discovering New DH Practitioners in other Countries, Digital Humanities 2011, Conference abstracts, Stanford, EUA.

Liu, A. Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities? In: Gold, M. K. (Ed.). Debates in the Digital Humanities: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. p.495-498.

Gibbs, W. Lost Science in the Third World. Scientific American, p. 92-99, 1995.

Priani, E. (2015) La Biblioteca Digital del Pensamiento Novohispano. DHCommons, (forthcoming).

Risam, R. Acroos Two (Imperial) Cultures. Roopika Risam. 2015 2015.

Rodríguez Ortega, N. Prólogo:Humanidades Digitales y pensamiento crítico. In: Romero Frías, E. e Sánchez González, M. (Ed.). Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Digitales: CAC (Cuadernos Artesanos de Comunicación), 2012. p.13-17.

Schreibman, S.; Mandell, L.; Olsen, S. Evaluating Digital Scholarship: Introduction. Profession, p. 123-135, 2011.

Spiro, L. "This is Why We Fight": Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities. In: Gold, M. K. (Ed.). Debates in the Digital Humanities. USA: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. p.16-35.

Svensson, P. Envisioning the Digital Humanities. DHQ, v. 6, n. 1, 2012.