As I see it, archaeological researchers or archaeologists intellectual enough to read Archaeological dialogues should generally qualify as ‘intellectuals’ in a general sense of the term. I also presume that these are archaeologists of the kind we are talking about here, when discussing how archaeologists may become public intellectuals. The public presence of such archaeologists, then, assuming that this presence relates to their professional knowledge and not, say, to taking part in cookery programmes, should, in general, qualify as public intellectualism.
The finer points of further defining what kind of public presence should count as ‘public intellectualism’ and what kind does not seems less relevant to me. In fact, I could go as far as saying that it may be that it is that kind of qualification that stops some archaeologists from developing a public presence since they are afraid that that presence may not be intellectual enough for their colleagues.
To me, and following from the above, in this context it is most relevant and interesting to discuss how intellectual archaeologists may ‘go public’, increasing their presence in public debate and becoming more visible, as intellectuals, in the present media landscape. It cannot be helped that this is to some extent also about becoming ‘popular’ or ‘famous’, since those must be facets of a public presence, whether intellectual or not.
Rather than discussing whether archaeologists can ‘be’ public intellectuals, which I think must be taken for granted, I would like here to try to illuminate how they may ‘become’ public intellectuals, since I think this is actually all about becoming rather than being. It is a process, and one wide open to archaeologists.
Becoming a public intellectual in the media context of today has less to do with who you are from the start (since there are any number of potential public intellectuals around even if we narrow it down to archaeological researchers) than with taking a specific interest in the matter and with developing a competence for public forms of expression. Becoming a public intellectual is about developing the ability to build such a position, which does not come automatically with, for example, being a professor.
In fact, cultural experts such as archaeological researchers have a double advantage when entering public debates, both by being academics and by being so in a cultural field which is of interest to the vast majority of people. These advantages enable them to engage with and comment on a very wide range of topics. I think that the problem signalled by the headline of this panel/debate – that archaeologists might not be public intellectuals to the degree they perhaps should – has rather more to do with the mindset of archaeologists and perhaps with a lack of capacity building for media engagement in their education and professional culture than with the existence of actual barriers to their engaging in and building public positions.
It thus worries me a bit that Tarlow and Stutz say, in their introduction, that archaeologists should have the potential to take on public roles but that they are ‘rarely either sought or heard’ (p. 3). In my opinion, the problem – if there is one – resides with what, seen from my horizon (admittedly heavily Sweden-centred), is rather a lack of interest or priority on the part of archaeologists themselves, resulting in weak competence in public engagement. Many archaeologists lock themselves up in well-defended towers of academia without any effort to be ‘public’, and subsequently complain that their knowledge is not sought.
Going public involves first of all getting out of the tower and choosing public engagement. Very few people actually get sought and those who do probably did not start there. It is you who must seek out media, making yourself heard, not the other way around. And developing a competence in public engagement and debate does not come easily or for free. As in everything else, some have a special gift for it and some specializations may be easier as a base for public engagement than others, but for most it comes with priority, with effort and with time invested. That is the simple truth of it.
What is the ideal? What counts as a ‘public intellectual’? The introduction says that this means something more than ‘just the promotion of archaeology to the public’ (p. 3). Public intellectuals are to challenge ‘popular understandings of the world’ (p. 3). I think these ideals are fine, but how do we get there? After all, nobody starts from being Judith Butler or Edward Said. To me, and rather than discussing what parts of the public engagement of archaeologists should count or not count as public intellectualism, the central questions are rather how to encourage archaeologists of different strands to engage more publicly, and how their capacities to do that successfully can be built.
It seems to me that what stops many intellectual archaeologists from going public, besides a general fear of being ‘popular’ rather than ‘serious’, is that they tend to overlook, or are even unwilling to accept, that the public debate does not look exactly like the academic debate, with the forms, rules and hierarchies they are used to – and especially so when it comes to digital media. I work in a museum, which is a media form of sorts, though comparatively slow, and I can confidently say that most archaeologists have no idea of how museum communication actually comes about, of exhibition processes or pedagogical programming. They may know their subjects very well but clearly lack in competence when it comes to how it may translate into public communication.
Why should you go public?
Why should archaeologists want to build public positions or even become public intellectuals? With the development of digital media follows an increased mediatization of society. Public media are present everywhere, with a wealth of channels and voices. Organizations and people who want to be seen or even ‘exist’ in society will have to be present and visible, archaeology just as anything else. This will not stop; it will increase, and archaeologists have to be part of it in many ways, ‘popular’ as well as ‘intellectual’, if archaeology is to exist in a meaningful way in society.
The scene
From a situation with lots of radio, comparably few printed media and ridiculously few television channels there is now, with the firm establishment of the Internet and digital media, any number of channels available and in quite a range of new forms. More or less anyone can actually broadcast publicly and many people outside the media business do just that on such platforms as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, as well in blogs.
New digital media are not just additions to the by now traditional modern media forms, they change the scene altogether since old and new forms are blending into one another, creating a new and more complicated landscape.
With the multiplication of channels and forms, and with their ever-growing availability through new media devices such as smartphones, follow a higher media tempo and intensity, which leads to a new sensitivity to form and format. Content is certainly still king, but will just as certainly be an isolated, disconnected king, locked away in an ivory tower, if it is unable to or unwilling to play the game by its new rules more sensitive to form and context.
Public expression and debate are faster, with more voices and forms involved. This means that there are several more potential ways of establishing a public voice than before – more ‘career paths’, if you like – and there are many potential ‘experts’ on any given topic out there.
Get over your academic snobbery
(If you are not culpable of academic snobbery just skip this part.) I think that a major threshold for academics in general as regards taking part in the public debate has to do with the fact that they may have a highly respected position in academia and have a hard time accepting that this position just does not translate right into a similar one in the public debate. But taking part publicly means entering another field of engagement with a different kind of positioning, one which requires competence and skills complimentary to those of academia. You cannot just go there and demand the same status and respect as within your specific field of expertise. It will have to be earned. This may be discouraging but is just a rule of the game.
So you need to start by accepting that going into public communication is about entering another kind of field, with slightly different rules and skills. You may not think of those qualifications as being as valuable as knowledge in a scientific field, but you need to see that they exist and to respect them.
Know the big issues; know yourself
Going public, especially if you aspire to be a public intellectual, you must have an idea of the big debates out there and their different positions, because that is the scene your contributions will play into. Knowing the debate means more than reading the daily paper and watching the news. It probably means following and analysing a wider range of channels.
The public debate revolves around ‘big questions’ while ‘small’ and seemingly irrelevant texts and statements are commonly interpreted into those big issues. The big questions are, first of all, politics. Are you conservative or liberal? Right-wing or left-wing? Is your subject actually used in party politics? Cultural heritage and archaeological practices relating to it are political hot stuff in many countries. In academia you will not have to declare a political stand and many academics frequently argue the non-political nature of their research. The political or non-political nature of research as such is not the issue here, but you must know and be sensitive to the degree of political interpretation of your contributions – much higher in public debate. And where do you stand on, for example, sexual freedom, immigration and cultural traditions versus cultural change? If these are not your primary interests, know that they are to others who will read you from those starting points. Editors will consider your profile and your texts starting not in specific knowledge about your expertise but based on current situations in the big debates and from the particular positions of their own publications or other media channels. What this adds up to is that you will have to know the scene and where you stand yourself on the big issues quite well and decide how you want to be read or not read in relation to them.
You will also need to find out what are the public interests and representations in the specific field to which you make public contribution. What is the public, or ‘popular’, understanding of, say, the Maya culture, the Neolithic revolution or what archaeology is all about? In the country or other context in which you stand? If public intellectuals are to challenge ‘popular understandings of the world’, they will have to know them quite well first.
You should know yourself since you will have to think about how you want to profile yourself. Developing a public presence means developing a public image of oneself and one's competence.
Find out the rules of the game
Unless you are very well connected to lots of media people you will have to find out what kinds of contribution different media forms want, what people to send them to and what social and professional conventions apply in this. Understanding formats should be the easy part, but I know that many academics have a hard time already here, or just don't care. Texts in different media are supposed to consist of about so and so many words, are commonly built up in certain ways, and this and that topic constantly recurs in specific publications – and that can be fairly easily grasped by taking a close look at previous contributions to them.
What publications or other channels invite contributions that agree with the sort of perspectives you wish to apply and with the profile you seek to build for yourself? In what formats do they invite voices from the outside? Get to know that. Practise and master them. There is no other way.
Media debates are fast compared to academic debates. You want to comment on a sharp ongoing debate? Do it right away. If the debate is in a daily paper preferably post your contribution the same day or the day after. A week later nobody remembers.
Start small
Nobody just sits down to write the best high-profile, full-page text in a debate in a major paper without previous experience of public writing, and nobody gets sought to comment on television news on the most important archaeological events without having built a public profile over some time. You will need training and all training starts from the start.
Facebook and Twitter are good places for practising how to build a public profile because that is what they are about. You don't need to say exactly who you are in those places, rather you will aim to create a profile of who you want to be, constructing a public image. Being a public figure in wider society is quite the same thing, just on a bigger scale.
Why not start with writing a blog or by improving some of the worst archaeology texts on Wikipedia? Blogging is very similar to column journalism and is excellent practice.
What do public intellectuals mostly do? Sometimes they write major original texts or initiate debates, but what they do most constantly is to comment on current events. So is there a major new book out or a major conference going on, changing things profoundly? Are there government-funding cuts or a new exciting archaeological exhibition? All of these things can be commented on by you, in public media. And there are most probably quite important things happening in archaeology where you stand that will not get proper public attention since there are too few public intellectual archaeologists around. So start with commenting, reviewing and in that way demonstrating your competence, inside knowledge and ability to translate it into publicly important and interesting material. Start in less prestigious places, such as your blog.
In the digital age, having something to say has a lot to do with being connected and networked. Following information streams such as blogs and tweets from interesting people and institutions in your field will let you know things early and give you a rich basis of potential things to comment on in your activity as a public intellectual.
Gradually build up your cred
From a small start, be strategic. Build up your information network and raise your profile with a stream of increasingly higher-quality public work. Aim for the kind of public media you wish to be represented in, but figure out how to get there in stages rather than aiming for the big win right away and getting disappointed.
Develop a network with voices and editors engaged in public media. In 2013 you can probably follow most of them on Twitter, and as your contributions get increasingly published you will also develop personal contacts. Make the page about yourself on Wikipedia because that is where people will find you when they Google your name.
Conclusion
I claim that many or even most archaeologists have the potential to become public intellectuals and that, given a reasonable basic talent, interest and the willingness to invest time and effort, most can do it by understanding and respecting the rules of the game and by starting on a small scale, gradually and strategically building abilities and profiles. This is not for everyone but I see no reason why those who want to should not go there and I think it should be more encouraged and given higher priority within professional archaeology.
To me this is a question of priority and of developing ability and skills rather than simply ‘being’ from the start. That is an illusion.
Quite a few years ago, at university, I attended a speech by David Attenborough in which he gave a ‘behind-the-scenes’ relation of his work making nature films. Afterwards an eager young zoologist interested in film making asked him how he could get to work for the National geographic. He seemed to be hoping for insider knowledge about some magic shortcut. Attenborough told him, instead, that he should simply go outside, with whatever filming equipment he possessed, and make a skilful and innovative film about the local sparrows and send that to the National geographic, saying, ‘this is what I can do with local birds and poor equipment’, and in that way demonstrating his ability and skills.
I am not an Attenborough fan, but I have always considered that quite an elegant way of saying that in this, as in other fields, there are no magic shortcuts, but questions of developing competence and skills. I don't agree that archaeologists should have a harder starting point than others when it comes to public intellectualism. It is about choosing to go there, accepting the rules that prevail and getting to work. Just do it.
