Conferences and Traveling to Cities

November 19, 2007

The past few days I have been in San Diego for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. These large national conferences are strange animals. I understand their usefulness.. and as the years pass I could attend my groups and begin to recognize names and faces.. and make friends. But there is another part of me that is uncomfortable with the corporatizing of such conferences.

I stayed at a small hotel in the Gaslamp District—the old town area just beyond the convention center. The convention center setup was convenient: I could walk from my hotel to the convention center and there were tons of restaurants and upscale shops to attract me in off hours. But the artificiality of this arrangement was offputting. There was nothing old about the Gaslamp District except its geographical location. It was resurrected (probably on the model of Pasadena's Old Town) precisely to cater to convention goers. And it struck me while I was here that the whole business of conventions is designed to enable such fake Old Towns. These are zones of the American landscape that I particularly dislike.. upscale and aimed at traveling business types.. nothing local about any of it. I see no reason why academic work should play into this cultural dynamic.

Tied to this unease is my sense that advances in web-based applications make this kind of national meeting unnecessary. Why not facilitate online meetings and exchanges for specialized groups.. and then put some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars toward getting professors overseas or at least someplace where they can absorb a culture besides the faux-culture of a convention zone? As things stand there is a perverse reward system in place for academics to do things that are resource intensive and yet low in content. A web-based group would allow for regular postings and for more developed dialogues. (This change will come.. mark my words.)

One last comment.. offered from a more emotional standpoint. Why should intellectual life mimic the rich life? This business of staying in Sheratons and Hyatts and Mariotts is degrading. Over the past decade the "haves" have gained a larger and larger portion of American wealth.. and the "have nots" have dramatically increased in numbers. From this economic situation I find it repugnant to walk around in the places that flaunt their privilege and commitment to the hollow fakery of wealth. Holding conferences in these sites constitutes an unspoken approval of this privileged landscape and a temptation to take for granted the values that it enables.

We were at the conference to give critical readings, but our presence in this landscape disabled our ability to respond critically to American privilege. The following photo is the scene I looked out on after stepping out of the hotel in which I presented my paper on the cultural landscape of medieval Cairo. I would say this picture deserves a critical reading. What are we doing here?