Notes From a Conference Part 1: Arrogance and Recognition

It’s hard to tell if people are (a) predisposed to arrogance at an early age and/ or (b) if they develop this trait as they age and become more powerful or better recognised in the profession. All I know is that some (generally well established) academics appear to ‘less modest’ than others. So, I have this general angst about becoming (or, at least, appearing) more arrogant when engaging with other people and, crucially, not knowing it. This is perhaps more of a concern for people in subjects like social science where some conference discussions will be about challenging the statements, methods and views of other people. There is a fine line between a positive challenge and a negative dismissal, so we need a high degree of self-awareness to reflect on our behaviour and ask ourselves if we have crossed a line. This is particularly important:

·        In international conferences where people bring different levels of expectation about politeness. For example, many UK based scholars may be less likely to start their comments with ‘thank you for your interesting paper’. Instead, like me, they may see a strong (thoughtful) challenge as a strong signal of respect (since, it shows that you care enough about the paper to listen and engage in a meaningful way).

·        If you are in a room with a dominant view – it is only by being open to opinions from others that you can avoid being close minded and dismissive of things you don’t agree with initially but might appreciate if you allow yourself the time to listen and reflect (something that is too easy to dismiss if you are in a room with people that largely agree with you).

·        If we identify the subtext to many conference proceedings: the desire to make one’s name by presenting papers and engaging with the papers of others. I have said to a few colleagues that a large conference is really a battle for attention and recognition, wrapped up in the pretence of positive discussion, and only most of that statement is tongue-in-cheek.

It is in that context that I’d like to describe the crumbs of recognition I got at a recent conference (International Conference on Public Policy). I figure that, if arrogance comes with age, I’d better write this down before it’s too late. The thing about this profession is that it is so full of negative signals from other people: critical reviews of articles; negative signals on promotion prospects; deflating rejections for grant proposals; and, so on (if you are trying to do a PhD, we might add deflating rejections for funding that threaten the completion of the project; if you are not a white man, we might discuss further obstacles relating to relative success rates). So, when people actually come up to you and say that they have enjoyed something you’ve written (and can discuss it with you in some depth, largely proving that they are not just being polite), it’s brilliant. There will be better descriptions out there, but ‘brilliant’ will do for now. The same goes for general name recognition – there is just something about people seeing your name badge and recognising your name (it beats the quite-regular semi-sneer when people can’t be arsed with you). So, the benefit of not being fully arrogant (yet) is that you can enjoy these crumbs of comfort in a rather disproportionate way. This may be some comfort to the PhD student wondering if it’s all worth it - in some cases it might be.

See also Part 2 http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/notes-from-conference-part-2-what-are.html
See also Part 3 http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/notes-from-conference-part-3.html