Modus vivendi

Earning a citation in a Q1 journal is a sign of certain prestige. Earning a citation outside your field (in a Q1 journal too) feels like that you have finally joined global credibility economies . But when a reference to paper about a trifling academic dispute appears in the Internationl Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics , something is off. Yes, my one of my papers is referenced in a paper about gamete donations! However, I have no idea why and how this happened. I do not know any of the authors. Is it supposed to be a jest? Of the authors or editors? An act of succour intended to help undercited scholars in social sciences and humanities? Some AI devilry? Or do our colleagues in gynecology and obstetrics want to initiate a new Sokal affair? I have no idea.

Quite a lot of my colleagues like to talk about hierarchies that structure the relations in the international academia and create inequalities between scholars from the academic centre and their colleagues from academic peripheries (framed as the East/West, Global North/Global South etc.). I am not always convinced by the arguments that are raised in support of the hierarchies' existence, and I certainly do not share the conviction of Professor Michał Buchowski that the existence of these hierarchies is "visible and undeniable". I tried to tackle the issue during my keynote talk at the 8th meeting of EASA's History of Anthropology Network, which I was kindly invited to deliver. My perspective was based on some arguments that I made in my book on the history of ethnography. You can find my talk here: https://easaonline.org/event/the-8th-hoan-meeting/ I am currently working on a paper for the upcoming SIEF congress in Aberdeen, which will explore other problematic aspe...