Writing this blog has been an interesting experience. Some people like what I write, and some don’t. What I have come to realize, however, is that the people who are the most strongly opposed to what I write here tend to be people whom I would call “gatekeepers” (người giữ cửa).
In the academic sense, “gatekeepers” are people who control access to knowledge. They also might be people who control access to careers in the academic world.
For instance, in the second half of the twentieth century in (North) Vietnam, there were four scholars who played this first role with regards to knowledge about Vietnamese history: Đinh Xuân Lâm, Phan Huy Lê, Hà Văn Tấn and Trần Quốc Vượng.
If you wanted to know about the Vietnamese past, you had to pass through one of the gates that each of these men guarded. They interpreted the past for (virtually) everyone else, and if you wanted to understand the past, you had access it through their respective interpretations/gates.
Certain laws can also contribute to “gatekeeping.” In the case of Thailand, for example, the lèse-majesté law goes a long way towards guarding a gate concerning knowledge about the monarchy. And in Indonesia, the restrictions on free expression during the New Order period (1965-1998) also guarded the gate to knowledge about the past.
So while this effort to guard access to knowledge has historically been very strong, the Internet has made it difficult to keep guarding those gates. Now people can access information that comes from multiple sources, not just from gatekeepers.
In addition, the rapid increase in recent years in the number of people who study abroad also works against the efforts of gatekeepers, because when students go to a foreign country, they might find that the scholars there don’t agree with (or don’t even know anything about or care about) the gatekeepers in the country that the student comes from.
So how do you maintain a gate in such a world? And is doing so even desirable?
Ironically, at the same time that it is getting more difficult for gatekeepers to maintain their personal dominance, Wikipedia is popularizing their ideas.
Studies have been done in the US that show that the average person who writes a Wikipedia page is a white male in his late teens or early 20s (the exact type of person who would follow the [conservative] ideas of a gatekeeper). So basically all of human knowledge (on Wikipedia) in English at the moment is now being created by young white guys who support the ideas of gatekeepers. . .
Having realized this, there are now people in the US who are starting efforts to “rewrite” Wikipedia entries by getting people who have different perspectives to contribute.
It will be interesting to see where this all ends up.
What I think all of this shows, however, is that the idea that academic knowledge is something that a privileged few control through the gates that they guard is one that is going to be harder and harder to maintain in the years ahead.
So if you are a gatekeeper of knowledge, what do you do? Should you give up the gate and try to survive in a world in which the production of knowledge is being democratized? Should you keep guarding your gate in a world in which gates are increasingly coming under attack and being marginalized?
Or maybe there are other options?
Just some quick thoughts, but I think gatekeepers could also creatively engage with other ways of looking at academic knowledge and at their own scholarship so as to bring their scholarship to the next level of sophistication. Conservative ideas are not necessarily bad or out-dated; they are just one source of knowledge that is subject to being challenged and critiqued.
I have seen examples of high profile gatekeepers transform their scholarship gracefully when they seriously engage with competing ideas. And I have also seen gatekeepers stubbornly defend their scholarship regardless of the rigour of critiques against their works.
However I am afraid that gatekeepers in most fields boldly continue to play a dominant role and continue to get supporters partly because their scholarship tends to serve the interest of the powerful in any community. And if the Internet can help circulate critiques of certain ideas, it can also help spread dominant (conservative) ideas. It works both ways, and thus, competing ideas/discourses will always exist side by side.
And regarding ‘tứ trụ’ (Lâm, Lê, Tấn, Vượng), my impression is that every one of us interprets the significance of their scholarship in different ways. In the 90s it seemed that these ‘tứ trụ’ were referred to with much respect and utmost admiration, particularly when the country was just out of poverty and free from economic sanctions from everywhere and was trying to go through some educational reforms. Critical scholarship wasn’t paid much attention to then, and these tứ trụ’s scholarship was still taught with much depth at many universities. But over the past few years, it seems that voices against the grand scholarship produced by these ‘tứ trụ’ have been heard more and more. The need/desire to unveil the secret of the past has been so strong among many scholars across generations and across borders. But I don’t think it is productive to argue that their scholarship is invalid and entirely politicised, but rather it would be more stimulating for other scholars to seriously and critically engage with key ideas in such scholarship to generate more rounded knowledge from which we will all benefit. Of course it is naive to expect these ‘tứ trụ’ to argue back! They are no longer in the position where they can do so. Their followers might, I guess!
I am sure certain ‘gatekeepers’ in the field of discourse and academic literacy would argue that these tứ trụ’s scholarship is not considered scholarship by the conservative definition of scholarship. However, if we are prepared to challenge such dominant definition of scholarship, then there would be other routes to knowledge that we can explore!
I only meant to write a few sentences, but it has turned out to be a long response! See, your post is stimulating ;)! Thanks.
Great comments!!! Yea, I wasn’t trying to criticize a certain person, especially someone who cannot argue back. All that I was trying to do was to point out that the environment in which knowledge is produced today is different from say the 1990s. However, I don’t think that people (of all ages, and regardless of whether they are a “trụ” [a pillar of scholarship] or not) have come to terms with, or figured out how to deal with, the changes yet (and I include myself!).
On one level, gatekeeping is good. You have to have a process that someone goes through in which a professional community can validate that this person has the ability to “produce” knowledge that others should take seriously. This is what the process of getting a PhD is about.
On another level, however, such people now operate in a world that is very different from what it used to be. Just say 10-15 years ago, for instance, the only access that students in say a North American university had to knowledge that a professor presented in a class was from 1) the professor her/himself and/or 2) books in the library. So if they had to write a paper, they would have to do so based on information coming from those two sources.
Now the source students will turn to is the Internet (and particularly Wikipedia).
As I see it, there are at least two ways to deal with that.
1) You can do what the History Department at Middlebury College did in 2007 – ban students from citing Wikipedia in papers.
2) You can do what the people in the “Rewriting Wikipedia” project that I mentioned in this post are doing – engage with Wikipedia and try to transform it (and also teach others how to read Wikipedia in a critical way).
As I see it, #1 is the kind of gatekeeping that was possible in the 1990s. It doesn’t work as effectively anymore. But it’s interesting that the History Department at Middlebury took this traditional gatekeeping approach in 2007. And I think many people still operate from this mindset.
#2 is a way (to quote what you said) to “transform one’s scholarship gracefully [and] seriously engage with competing ideas.” Where will it all lead? I’m not sure (and it would be naive of me to be optimistic) but it looks like a much more interesting and more realistic path to follow than #1.
Someone told me that this post from you has had hundreds of hits every day on your blog and/or fb. Oh well, I guess you’ve kind of scratched many people on their ‘itchy’ point(s). The fact that you ‘dared’ to mention the ‘tứ trụ’ has probably made the post very hot, although it is quite clear that you only referred to them as an example of ‘gatekeepers’ of history in modern Vietnam without any intention to criticise their work/scholarship per se. I would treat this example as something similar to saying Randolf Quirk a gatekeeper of anything to do with Standard English, for example. Whether he himself claims this status or whether readers have given him this status, his views and the authority associated with such views have somehow granted him this gatekeeper status.
And gatekeepers, as you have rightly put it, do not have to be specific people but can be norms and values that regulate and govern our acts and performance according to certain standards. For example, some academic journals are not interested in critical scholarship and some would not be open to writings based on qualitative research. I have seen academics furious and feeling humiliated by blind reviewers’ comments on their submissions when they felt that their methodological approaches were unfairly attacked.
I hope people get inspired by your post on this topic in productive ways!
Yea, it will be interesting to see, for instance, what happens with MOOCs. I recently tried to test a few out. There is one from Harvard that I’ve seen mentioned a lot. I could only endure about 30 seconds of it. I found it to be incredibly boring, and extremely conservative.
I found some others, however, (from both “1st tier” and “2nd tier” schools), that I liked.
You can see that different people have different ideas about what will work, but a lot of their approaches don’t work.
So when the MOOC situation stabilizes (eventually) there will be certain standards that will have been established, and there will be “gatekeepers” of those standards.
At the moment, however, it is all in flux, and it’s clear that some of the current gatekeepers will not be able to make the transition to a MOOC gatekeeper (some, however, probably will). Meanwhile, there is the potential for people who are currently nowhere near a “gate” to create a new type of “gate.”
I’m getting more and more abstract, but hopefully you see where I’m going with this.
Thanks for the comments!!!
As you note, the reasons for keeping a gate often have more to do maintaining the power to distribute goodies — money, career, perks, prestige, recognition and reputation — than with any scholarly ideal. So while the wider distribution of information may have the ability to challenge the reputation and prestige of those currently keeping the gate, it may not touch their ability to distribute goodies and enforce an ideal of behavior.
Even at the lower end of the food chain, those of us with little ability to distribute goodies, keep gates. We have may control or have unique access to specialized knowledge, information or connections. Gate keeping in itself is not an issue. As a gate keeper one can choose to be a bouncer or maitre d’ or choose to be a tour guide or travel companion. And even the most generous tour guide or travel companion might not open the gate to someone who they have good reason might trash the place.
So, as you write, we may be seeing a new kind of gate. But the key for all of us who must from time to time navigate gates (and sometimes station ourselves at gates) is to interpret the knowledge and motivation of the gate keepers (as others and sometimes as ourselves). The fact is that there is much more to know and there are many more gates available to choose from. But of course, if you really, really need the goodies you have to ingratiate yourself with the bouncer / maitre d’ (which might only mean downing a few glasses of chè, bia, or rượu quốc lùi) and maybe even slip him or her some green every now and then. But sometimes one has to choose a different gate. So more gates can only be good.
Great comments!! I particularly like the ideas in the second paragraph. It makes me reflect on what I do at the gate. . . 🙂 I’ve definitely played the role of a bouncer. Not every time though. Maitre d’? Probably not. That’s too high class. So that leaves tour guide or travel companion. . . hmmm. . . there must be other types of gate jobs. Sweeping the gate maybe?