Dear Susan again at last..Sorry about the long silence: suddenly too busy. Where were we?
A true professional doesn't play the games that come along with politics.
It depends what you mean by politics and game playing.
Even if you set up a new organization from scratch and
became the
boss, I don't think you could avoid having to play politics
and the game. The employees have to be kept happy
for a start. Every organization is a social culture within itself. Every
organization has to fit into the greater socio/economical
culture in order to survive. If too many individuals
in the organization do not play the game, the result is irritation,
conflict and chaos. It's like trying to play a team sport
without rules: it doesn't work and it certainly is
no fun. That is what I see as the politics of work.
In my mind, the game playing is on two levels: the person
to person game and the
"playing the game" as in being a player within an organization.
The first has more
negative connotations such as the double agenda, playing
people off against each other
or "poor me", or "isn't it awful" and so on (tedious,
neurotic time wasting).
The second has to do with getting on with the job and
fulfilling your ambitions.
If a door is slammed in your face, you probably played
incorrectly. It should not
mean that you are disqualified so scrape your pride together
and try again.
Present the idea in a way which fits in with or will
contribute towards the spoken
(and/or unspoken) goals/mission of the organization.
Believe me, this is not being
immoral. Besides, you would not have taken the job if
your goals were not similar to those of the organization. This is how hierarchies
work and if that is distasteful it's too bad because no individual's wilfulness
is going to change the system.
I believe that the true professional in an organization
learns the game and the rules
as soon as possible and then plays a tough yet honest
game to achieve her goals
without a leaving a pile of bodies in her wake. In my
experience, if you don't play the
game, you lose.
if the field decided to boycott the position, someone who needed a job might not apply for it because she might fear the repercussions of her action.
Yes, that is a possible result but reactions out of fear
are not the political aims of
a boycott. I am still idealistic enough to believe that
a serious well organized
boycott would be so convincing that everyone who was
well informed of all the
issues and had a shred of commitment to the profession
would comply.
Student safety..
and the only advice I can give is to become a nagging
mother. .....If you nag them
enough, at least you get them thinking.
Weeeell, yes and no. They will also stop listening if you nag them too much. Getting the balance right is tricky.
Being an administrator not an attractive alternative?
Really? I
think people assume its all just pushing papers, but
its not .
It's good to hear that you have made a happy and successful
choice, but that's not for me.
I've just spent 2 days hammering at the computer and
it was again obvious that that was too long, much as I love to write. But
don't you miss handling textiles? My treatments these days are mostly virtual,
teaching students how to work on wonderful things. I miss it dreadfully
but I am not going to do it for nothing.
The state of textile conservation research. Do you
think its because the material doesn't lend itself to research projects?
Because many of us come from non-scientific
backgrounds?
The response of Kathleen Kiefer is very true: "Maybe physical
pain with its attendant physical and mental exhaustion partially explains
the paucity of publications and "world shattering new developments and
theories" within the speciality of textile conservation?"
What I also hear is "but no one would be interested in
that" or "but it is not so important" when I encourage someone to write
or speak about a treatment. That negative mentality thing again.
The non-scientific background is not strictly relevant
because it is up to the textile conservator to pose the problem to the
scientist. However it does come back to the mentality problem again: textile
conservation does not seem to attract hard technicians/chemists perhaps
because there are so little chemical processes involved in the processing
of the textile object itself. Fibres are spun, woven then embroidered or
sewn together = no chemistry except for removing unwanted matter. Printed
and painted textiles, weighted silk, early synthetics are more problematic
and "chemically interesting" and the problems have not yet all been solved.
For example, still no breakthrough in the treatment of weighted
silk. Is it really so impossible or is the motivation lacking to push for
that extra effort?
It is always inspiring to read (everywhere!) what the final year students at the Textile Conservation Centre (UK) are doing, but these do not always result in articles for all sorts of reasons, the main one probably being that they are fed up with writing about their final project for the time being. The UKIC's "The Conservator" usually has at least one textile article and the Textile Conservation Newsletter (Canada) is always a good read.
That will do for now: more later.
Best wishes,
Jenny Barnett
Andelos Textielrestauratie
Oude Looiersstr 65-67
NL - 1016 VH Amsterdam
andelos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx