• thewonder
    1.4k
    I am writing this to avoid doing my required reading as per my education, and, so, will probably, again, leave in, like, five minutes, but this is something that I've been thinking about for a while.

    There are three notable inaccuracies that I have encountered within my general research put forth by established sources. The first of which is that, up until recently, the CIA World Factbook listed a precise demographical figure for the percentage of ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan, at, I believe, 85.6%, despite there having been no census taken within the country since 1979 due to that it has been within a constant state of war. They made no mention of this on their website.

    The second thing that I have noticed is of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Mohammad Zahir Shah, the "Last King of Afghanistan". The article tacitly argues that Zahir Shah established a liberal democratic state that guaranteed the rights of women. While I don't doubt that Shah became a liberal reformer later in life, established a more democratic form of monarchy, and helped to facilitate the development of women's rights while he was in office and later, if you read the 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan, you will find that this is just simply patently false. The constitution establishes a constitutional monarchy, one wherein the king is granted powers that could be considered as somewhat absolute, and, so, therefore, one that would drastically differ from something like the governance of Denmark, and makes no mention of women whatsoever. This claim was later repeated within his BBC obituary.

    The third thing that I have noticed is that The British Museum explicitly states that Leonid Kannegisser was a Socialist Revolutionary. What we know about Kannegisser is that he was an associate of Boris Savinkov. Though Savinkov was a Socialist Revolutionary, by the time they would have been affiliated, he would have effectively have had joined the White Movement and have become an associate of none other than Sidney Riley, also known as "The Ace of Spies". Kannegisser's affiliation with Savinkov proves absolutely nothing whatsoever. I have read a peer-reviewed journal article that posits that Kannegisser was a Socialist Revolutionary. There, however, is no conclusive evidence for The British Museum to declared for this be the case, as it is still a matter of considerable historical debate. For those of you who don't know, Kannegisser assinated Moisei Uritsky in an act that would set in course to motion the series of events that would lead to the Red Terror. Had the British Museum merely suggested that he could have been a Socialist Revolutionary, I think that that would have been fine, but have just simply stated that he was was just simply in error.

    Something that I've also noted in comparing the Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikipedia is that the Encyclopaedia Britannica tends to be comparatively shy on information, if not occasionally willfully omittant. I am of the opinion an annotated citation of Wikipedia that verifies the information in the cited article ought to be permissible within an academic setting. In so far that a person paraphrases or quotes an article with another veritable source, it ought to be considered permissible, particularly when the information given is fairly general.

    The greatest academic prejudice, to my estimation, however, is against the allowing of citations from Marxists Internet Archive. It seems extremely doubtful to me that there are any serious concerns over the information given on the website not accurately corresponding to what is written within the texts themselves. Sure, you could claim that, while engaged in a highly specified theoretical dispute over this or that passage, a person ought to use a more reputable translation than that undertaken by the likes of Zodiac or Brain Baggins, but I highly doubt that anyone has interfered with the rigor of such debates by citing the website. For all intensive purposes, I think that it is not only a good source, but a rather valuable one, particularly for anyone researching Marxist theory. As it concerns publishing rights, to me, this is a clear cut case of works that belong in the public domain.

    Another common assumption is that a book or article published by a fairly well established company is somehow more veritable than those which have been published otherwise. An article that has been published on someone's blog, though there is a comparative likeliness of such things happening that a person could draw, could very well be better researched, more rigorous, more detailed, and provide more robust information than anything published by a company that is not necessarily subject to peer review. There is only some basis for the claim that something published by HarperCollins contains more accurate information than something that someone has published independently.

    The academic process of subjecting journal articles to peer review, to me, does seem to make a certain degree of sense and provide fairly good grounds for considering such information to be somehow better than that which has not undergone such a process. Just about everything else, however, I think, could stand to be called within a certain degree of question. Do we consider information as good by that it is in keeping with a fidelity to some form of truth or by that it is in keeping with the prevailing views of our cultural hegemony? Assuming the former is a more lofty goal, as I do, how, then, does our cultural hegemony effect what we consider as veritable?
  • thewonder
    1.4k
    As it concerns Marxists Internet Archive, it is within the spirit of the texts, in most cases, the legal time elapsed since publication, and because of that they are of historical importance that they very clearly should be in the public domain. As before, I highly doubt the academic concern over the website and think it solely to relate to an argument that relates to publishing rights, of which there is no reasonable basis.

    As it concerns established publications, I'm not saying that it isn't somehow probable that the information that they give is somehow better; I'm only saying that that isn't necessarily the case. This whole sort of thing breaks down a bit more when you think about something like the difference between Verso Books, which would generally be considered as somewhat veritable, and AK Press, which may not. The status that the publications retain is more or less the sole determining factor in whether or not they are considered as veritable sources. Verso Books just so happens to publish more mainstream left-wing theory than AK Press. There is no good reason to discount the latter due to its general interest in the kind of political philosophy that it publishes. That's a comparison that I have drawn to my own experience, but, I think that, if you looked closely at a lot of contemporary publications, you would find something similar in what is considered as a good source, namely that the designation of one publication over another relates moreso to the status of the publisher than the veritability of the information.

    I'd also like to point out that, while publishers vet books, there is no peer review process which they undergo, and, so, there is nothing that necessarily makes a book that has been published, at all, more veritable, which isn't to say that they may be more likely to be so.

    Anyways, that's about that all that I have to say about any of this for the time being. I'll probably be wandering on again fairly soon.

    Edit: There are, perhaps, things to say about the business models of Verso Books and AK Press that may play into both the popularity of certain theories and common perceptions about the publishers. It could be suggested that the moniker for AK Press is too incendiary, indicative of that they are lacking in political maturity by slating their publishing house as a revolutionary organization, and that the usage of the red and black flag, commonly associated with either anarcho-communism or anarcho-syndicalism, by a publishing house that primarily publishes somewhat high-flown autonomist theory is somewhat appropriative, whereas Verso Books, though somewhat boorish, in my opinion, is notably lacking in any of the aforementioned potential faults, but, within academia, it does seem that the sole consideration ought to be the veritablity of the information. Franco "Bifo" Berardi, for instance, has published After the Future with AK Press, who did a good job with it, I might add, whereas Paul Virilio is on the roster of Verso Books. As Berardi has never been within an academic scandal for having been singled-out as the primary example for the book, Fashionable Nonsense, he actually enjoys better academic standing than Virilio, but I do think it quite possible within a paper that cites both texts for the former to be called into question without the latter also having been done so, particularly if any given professor or person engaged within review doesn't happen to be well versed in left-wing politically philosophy vaguely proceeding from the work Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I kind of actually like Speed and Politics, and, so, don't really want to knock Virilio, but I think that you get the gist of what I'm trying to glean here. What is relevant is the quality of the publications and not the manner in which a publishing house presents itself.
  • thewonder
    1.4k
    As much as I don't want to not be able to cite books within an academic setting, I would like to come out in favor of the substantiated pure production of open access journal articles. In the full luxury lifestyle communism of my gradualist nonviolent anarchist future, they will actually sustain the habits of philosophers endlessly rambling into the void.

    That's all that I have to say about this. I'll be taking off now.

    This is @thewonder signing off.
  • javi2541997
    5.9k
    For all intensive purposes, I think that it is not only a good source, but a rather valuable one, particularly for anyone researching Marxist theory. As it concerns publishing rights, to me, this is a clear cut case of works that belong in the public domain.thewonder

    Never heard about this until today. Thanks for sharing it with us. I going to check it out more deeply because it sounds interesting. Also, I am agree that is looks like an accurate research source.

    does our cultural hegemony effect what we consider as veritable?thewonder

    Good question. I think it is about institutions and developing a good image inside Academia. When you see a paper from an author which has published on Oxford or Cambridge you quickly give to him or her so much credibility. This happens because both British universities have reached a very good standard and position in Academia during years. When you publish a paper in their files you can earn a lot of prestige and then many other universities want to collaborate with you as well. Also, we have to admit that in these universities were raised and educated some Nobel laureates. I guess they deserve such big respect.
    But it is true that there are other research sources that are important too and not necessarily come from big Western universities. I wonder how is the image on Japanese or Chinese universities because it is common to think that they are so difficult to study there and publish some papers. I guess what truly makes the difference could be both languages and culture.
    It is so difficult to understand a research paper on Japanese and sometimes when it is translated to English is not so accurate...
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