Hi Steve,

Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
Doesn't this also apply to students who are locked through academic, financial and occasionally emotional reasons into working for professors who happen to be on their graduate advisory committee?
Yes, it does. Despite Stans' comments about Greg (), the pattern is one of "unequal power relations" - regardless of whether that is with an agency or an individual. The real question, to my mind, is how this relationship is defined: is it one which encourages the student to grow or one that stunts their growth?). To my mind, these unequal relationships will always exist, and to attempt to deny their inevitability is either an exercise in ideological BS or an act that indicates an incipient psychotic break with reality. If absolutely nothing else, there is always the parent-child relationship. I would love to see Hugh and David try to argue that such a "debt bondage" relationship doesn't exist at the parent-child level!

Having said that, I would also recommend that they take a look at the introduction to the second edition of Emile Durkeim's Division of Labor in Society which deals with "intermediate structures" - i.e. organizations that stand between the individual and the state (yes, David, I lecture on Durkheim in my Introduction to Anthropology courses - consider his effects on the thinking of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, to say nothing of Mary Douglas it is appropriate).

Marc