Paparazzi Ethnography

—  Aleksanteri Conference: Fueling the Future —


10/27: At the end of the first day, I met with Simon-Erik Ollus, Finnish economist specializing in Russian electricity development. In 2008, Simon gave a wonderful talk about Russia’s electricity industry at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway.

The Arctic Frontiers conference coincided with the release of a scientific report Assessing Arctic Oil and Gas Development, sponsored by Arctic Council. I still remember the clarity with which Simon spoke, and wanted to meet him in person to discuss how ideas about Russian energy development circulate and shape arctic development. This evening, when we met, he told me he had since quit academia, and went into private sector. He is Vice President, Chief Economist at Fortum Corporation.

We only had a brief time to discuss, as he needed to pick up his daughter. He suggested we grab a coffee. We left the conference slightly before the other participants, who were now all intending to walk to the Helsinki City Hall, for a catered reception. For the world, I did not want to miss the reception! But I did want to speak with Simon-Erik, so I followed him without protest to a nearby coffee shop. As it turns out, it was perhaps the best thing I could do, because within the space of a few minutes, he asked me how my work was going. Specifically, he asked, indeed, that if I examine communities of experts, and that if I study the way they get together and share ideas, what in fact, did I think so far of today’s meeting?

This was a brilliant question. I certainly had not thought about it until that moment. I had no idea what I would have written about in this particular blog right now, had he not asked that question. I was in fact, stunned. I told him that he just asked me an excellent question, and in fact, I was now, in this instant, prepared to provide an answer. We entered the coffee shop, and he treated me to a Finnish-type roll and latte. We sat under a dome, with a red ball hanging down, and there was an echo effect. This is what we told him:

I’ve been studying energy workshops, conferences, executive roundtables and other gatherings for a long time. And so there are certain things I know to look for. For example, the first thing I look for in a meeting is to see what type of venue has been chosen for the gathering. Is it a university? Is it a hotel? Is it a 4 Star hotel? Venue makes a big difference in the way knowledge can be transmitted. Typically, anthropologists don’t think so. We pride ourselves on giving talks at universities where the speaker system doesn’t work well, or where there might be some problem with the image projector. These issues we accept with a feeling that the knowledge will somehow rise above all these petty issues that preoccupy more wealthier (and thus superficial) gatherings. But even for anthropologists, venue matters, otherwise we would hold job talks in New York’s Times Square – and just think how much knowledge would be transmitted then!

In my previous experience, the venues of energy consultants are very high-end. They usually take place in 4 star hotels, like CERAweek, which takes place at the new Hilton in Houston. There, all activities can be orchestrated without a glitch. For example, a lot of electricity needs to be used, and the stream of energy needs to be reliable. There are huge walls screens with Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, speaking. Just think if the venue didn’t have appropriate energy requirements, and electricity back up. Hilary’s time is important, and she probably couldn’t wait the 20 minutes required to boot her back up.

For this reason, I arrived early, before anyone else, to the Aleksanteri meeting space, to take a few photos. As you can see, it’s beautiful. I knew right there and then, that the organizers of this event, had indeed, a few ideas they wanted to convey. That is, they were ambitious with their thoughts. They needed a space to match that ambition. They wanted to make sure their ideas would float comfortably across the room. And that we, the participants, would be comfortably seated, warm, cozy, even receptive to the ideas when they began to float.

The second thing I look for is the attendance list. This is a big indicator of how ideas will circulate at a meeting. When you organize an event, you make a decision about who will attend. You make a conscious selection about who you want to surround yourself with and with whom you want to speak to and with whom you would like to share your ideas with. Such decisions include how many Americans you want in the room. In my experience, Americans always think we’re right and we have the best ideas. And so if you put too many of us in the room together, whether we are natural scientists, politicians, social scientists or even anthropologists, we are going to be the only ones in the room that are right. That’s just my experience.

Based on casual observation, the ratio of one American to 10 non-Americans creates a healthy balance of idea sharing, where ideas are not drowned out by the confidence that we take with us. That doesn’t sound too analytical, and I won’t go into it more than that right now, but simply to say, at this conference, there are not that many Americans. And the effect has been so far, that no particular set of ideas has dominated the conference, with exception of the ideas that the organizers have put forth, which I will talk about more in a minute.

Another thing I look for on the participant list, is which institutions are attendees coming from. This is another big issue. Often times, academics coming from prestigious named universities bring added-value to an event, precisely because they bring the prestige of the named institution to bear on the various ideas under consideration. I’ve worked at numerous universities, including UC Berkeley, Arizona State University and University of Calgary. I’ve attended Columbia University and University of Alaska. My experience suggests that when I meet another academic from a prestigious university, I tend to promote my affiliation with UC Berkeley and Columbia, instead of the other institutions, as if doing so lends my ideas more credibility. This may not mean much in terms of scientific progress, but it sure means something to a lot of us in academia when it comes to passing judgement about what differentiates great ideas from ideas that are just so-so. In Europe and Russia, this also seems to matter. Without going into too much detail, I noticed that among the few Americans in attendance, one was from Yale, another from Harvard, and myself, representing UC Berkeley. In fact, the four of us found ourselves instantly and comfortably chatting to each other, like bees in a bonnet.

A final point in terms of attendance list is the actual number of attendees. If the number is too small, it no longer can be considered an event but instead, an intimate setting. You need a critical number of persons, to generate a sense of excitement about the feeling that you’re attending a happening. But if the crowd is too large, then there’s no incentive to feel part of a group more generally. Nope, you need at minimum, 100 people, to make everyone feel confident that we’re in this together, but at the same time, to give everyone both enough anonymity so that they feel they’re being watched, but enough intimacy, so that they’re movements can be observed by the same people over a few days stretch, and thus, to create a sense of meaningful behavior among peers. In these three senses then, limiting Americans, highlighting prestigious institutions, and finding the magic number of attendees to create a sense of a happening, today’s conference was an absolute success. And here, I use the word success to refer to creating the kind of context where what can develop is a community of interpretation. I use the phrase community of interpretation to refer to a setting in which, much like a crucible, ideas over a several day period can be forged, launched, tested, honed, and made one’s own. These are the attendance requirements for creating and disseminating a new idea so to speak.

Well, let’s now take a look at the new idea that was being promoted today. Ideas are totally important. Think how much money the recent movie Inception made at the box office. What was that about? Planting an idea so it grows and becomes part of the entire total social phenomena of the person. That’s right. There are so many great examples in the social sciences where ideas are shown to be material forces that structure the individual and society. Both Max Weber and Norbert Elias, two of my favorites on how ideas shaped us as modern individuals, and have left me spinning like that little totem in the movie Inception, spinning around without stopping, yet thinking I’m doing it all on my own volition.

But let’s go on. To create a community of interpretation, in this case, about Russian energy strategy, you need a good idea. The existential requirements of a good idea are pretty straight forward. First, the idea can’t have too many terms and new words and the relations between these terms can not be such, that they need to be committed to memory before walking into the conference. You can dazzle people with complicated stuff and that will work, but if you’re going to move people to a consensus about a new idea, and not just a word or a term, and moreover, have decided to not prep them in advance of the meeting, it’s best to choose something that people can conceive of as an instrument that can be applied to a variety of different but structurally similar empirical examples. Like a can opener. It’s a good idea, no matter how big or small the can is. The only stipulation is, that what can be opened must be a can.

Let’s take the example of an alliance between persons of decision-making power without appropriate knowledge to make decisions (leaders), and persons of knowledge without decision-making power (academics, consultants). You can sell that idea as something that works, because it applies in a wide variety of empirical examples, just so long as you have those two elements, knowledge without position and position without knowledge. Simple. Well, in today’s presentation, there was an elaborated idea about understanding Russian energy strategy in terms of the structuration of energy policy. Right off the bat, people want to know what the story is with structuration, does it have a history? whose history? Giddens? what? You see there. You don’t need to discuss history with an idea like “tipping point” — which by the way is just Threshold. It’s an instrument void of history, or rather, it has transhistorical application, dangerous indeed. Gosh, we have to retire for the evening, we’ll finish this later.