The sociological function of the sponsors’ speeches at academic workshops

Am listening to one now (1). I do wish I had made a buzzword bingo card. Might have made it more tolerable.

Obviously if sponsors are sponsoring something, they have to be given their moment in the bully pulpit. But are they ever going to say anything interesting, that people attending the workshop don’t already know? I mean, if you came to the workshop NOT knowing all the buzzwords, then surely you were misinvited or over-promoted?

So, what function (2) does the incantation of the motherpie and applehood phrases (‘right voices in the room’… ‘most vulnerable communities’… ‘game-changing’ ‘inter-disciplinary methods’ ‘focussing on solutions’ ‘non-extractive way’.. etc) play?

On one level I guess it’s just a transaction – you couldn’t not do it because you’d be putting noses out of joint, noses that belong to people who can make the money go away/elsewhere. It makes those people (possibly failed/former academics?) feel like they still matter and are contributing?

For the punters listening, I guess it’s a chance for them to soothe themselves into the right lingo, I guess? You can drift off, do a phase shift from whatever you were doing, and figure out what vocabulary is ‘in’ and needs to be regurgitated to show your allegiance. It can act as part of that liminal process, taking you out of the real world into the one you’re going to spend (at least physically) the next few yours/days. I am sure van Gennep would have something to say, or at a push Mead.

I would love to do a PhD about the codes of academia and how it all ‘works’ to sustain itself. Or in theory I would love to; in practice, having to sit through dozens of these as “field work” would be a bit of a wrist-slasher, I expect.

Fwiw, it’s been done for Literature (David Lodge) and for science and innovation (Greenberg’s Tech Transfer).

Footnotes

(1) I was – I have scheduled this.

(2) That’s not to say it is ‘built in’ – they’re just kind of an inevitable part of the structure – think the spandrels of St Marco

(3) You see the same in activism. I went, maybe a decade ago, to an event in London. The “price” of getting the venue was we had to listen to someone mouth platitudes at us and guilt-trip us. Another event, almost 20 years ago, had 6 or 7 Trade Union sorts each tell us the same thing (unfettered capitalism bad, unions good, climate change bad, climate jobs good) one after another for an hour and a half. It was soul-crushing, but the Price You Pay as the organiser… And the punter. I don’t do activism anymore, least not that kind.