A Conversation between Ella, Zarreen and Shahram Khosravi

Shahram Khosravi has been a public figure in Sweden since the 1990s. For his extensive participation in art-events, talks and activism. Khosravi has become a go-to name for perspectives on migration, decoloniality and social justice. We (the editors of this year’s Antroperspektiv) sat down with him to discuss Tredje Uppgiften, and how its shaped the university, to think about the future of Tredje Uppgiften, and what practices need to emerge for “it” to gain value. The conversation itself came out of a book chapter Shahram had contributed towards a book on public engagement. In it he recounts projects, experiences and reflections.

Ironically, as we sat down with Shahram we were reminded of the constraints of our institutional environment. Searching for a space to talk on the university campus we settled on a seating area facing the entrance to our university department that appeared otherwise open and free, until we tried to move some chairs into a circle. They were bolted to the ground.

Shahram: I have always been working outside the university in terms of Tredje Uppgiften. It was always a natural part of my work.

Zarreen: I suppose you didn’t necessarily have this formal idea of it in your head, right? Or did you think about Tredje Uppgiften when you started participating in public events?

Shahram: No, no, I didn’t know about it. I mean this Tredje Uppgiften became something, just, maybe in the past 15 years. It was there before but nobody talked about it nor that it was established in 1977. In the 1980’s, our department had kvällskurser [evening courses].

It was, you know, short courses and the point was to target people outside academia. And I think it was successful. But since these students don’t write the final paper, then you [the university] doesn’t get paid. I think Tredje Uppgiften is still very much about, ‘How can we [the university] market ourselves and have collaborations with the private and  business sector?’ Whilst a talk at the library in Rinkeby, is not considered as important to the university. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, people look down on you if you do public things. They’re not seen as academically serious.

Zarreen: It seems like Swedish anthropologists don’t know what to do with the public. One part of this is the move to “public anthropology” which hasn’t been very big in Sweden. There’s a strange hypocrisy where the public is not worth engaging in  the Swedish anthropologists’ imaginary, nor are they worth studying.   Do they want to be in the public, do they want to study the public? So, the public kind of disappears entirely.

Shahram: One of the problems is that when we say out in public, we mean that we go there and we deliver something. But this is not true. The “public” is also a site of knowledge production. It’s not a one-way direction. It’s not that you produce knowledge at the university and then deliver it there.

Ella: It’s such a shame. When I read about Tredje Uppgiften and understood that it was founded in 1977, I had this romantic idea that the law emerged from an idea of redistribution. If the state and tax payers would invest resources in allowing certain people to get educated and do research, then that knowledge needs to go out to the public. I was thinking about the history of Folkbildning that we have in Sweden and how different social movements have always emphasized the importance of learning outside of the university. There’s a duty to share knowledge with others.  

This should be our moral obligation in a way, similar to how a doctor has an obligation to save somebody if they can. But it’s such a shame that a concept like Trejde Uppgiften could get so watered out into something about utility which is translated into numbers, credit, profit or impact. Can you imagine if Tredje Uppgiften was valued in and of itself? Can you imagine if they asked you in interviews about the number of public lectures that you’ve held, or the number of courses that you’ve held outside of the university instead of just how many publications you have.

Zarreen:  How was the reception of the people who were involved in your public engagements?

Shahram; Outside it’s always good, or interesting, you know. When I say good, it doesn’t mean it’s always positive. Sometimes there are also conflicts, but it’s always been a good experience. You end up staying in touch with those people.

Zarreen: Yeah,I’m thinking that you probably find your collaborators through these engagements as well, right?  Not too differently as you would if you were, say, to go to a conference and find a co-author, write a paper.

 Shahram: But I think that’s interesting because like there, at least in a conference, you’re all sort of academics and scholars. But with this kind of public engagement, all of a sudden it’s the public, and then before you know it you’ve got lifelong friends, partners, that sort of share the same practice as you, and as such. As you say in a conference, you meet someone and then you decide to write something together. So you know the format, the process, let’s do something together.

But in public, then you have to take the risk because you don’t know anything about the methodology. So it means you have to have tolerance, not tolerance, but that you are  open to a different methodology which involves taking risks. You think about what you want to say and then you try to find the best way to say it. Which is the best way to say what I want to say? Is it an academic article? Or is it a movie? Is it fiction? Is it what? It’s more about communicating. Yeah. And using different mediums to communicate.

Ella: I agree. There are so many beautiful things happening in the public, but we always talk about the written words. But going public then means images, movies, dance, music. Just sharing space together, like performance, activism. To allow yourself to be hosted by someone else.

Shahram: Right, I mean, public anthropology or tredje uppgiften meant very different. Fredrik Barth had his own TV program in the 1970s. It was before the internet when there was not a lot of travelling. So, he used the TV program to open the world for the many Norwegians who had never travelled before.  

Zarreen: I think that’s also something people struggle with. They struggle with,perhaps they struggle with the possibility that their research gets misconstrued. Or no, I didn’t mean it like that. If you read the full length chapter, you’ll better understand where I’m coming from. 

As academics, we’re very attached to the idea of our own voice. I joke that some of us are just failed-fiction writers.   

Shahram: Yes, and you can see it partially in our review processes. In academic publishing, the editors help make your writing clear. But if you go to a commercial publisher, the editor will go through every single sentence and ask you to change it. Then there is a risk of losing your voice. That means that in academic publishing we are very protected. Maybe it’s good. I don’t know. But it also means that a lot of academic writing is difficult to read.  Academic publishing has also been changed through the peer review process, which didn’t exist to the same extent in the 70’s and earlier, for example. This peer review process has changed how we write, so today when we write, we think about how we will be evaluated. Because we know that we’re not writing for the public; I’m writing for the person who will be the reviewer of my book. So, I write having them in mind and we write to each other. We write about ourselves for each other and this is why the public is excluded.

Ella: Risk is something that I think about when we talk about this isolation. It’s  risky to expose oneself outside of academia. At the same time there’s a discourse of academic precarity. There’s this fear that it’s going to be difficult to stay in academia, which we as PhD students, are reminded of often. We often get recommendations from professors to not do too many things and that one of the biggest mistakes a  PhD student can make is to get  too engaged. I think there’s something about risk there.

Shahram: They want you to go native

Ella: Right, go to the university. Stay there. Become good at it. When you get the citations and master the peer-review process, then you can maybe go out. Then you can maybe say something.

Shahram: I think the most serious barrier is exactly that we feel so protected here at the university. I mean, who cares about our writing?  And who cares if we get misunderstood?  What does it mean if you don’t take risks? The point is to create a discussion. This is how a society develops. Our culture develops, our discourse and knowledge develop. We are so protected if we don’t say anything, and this is also the problem with peer review. When we write something, it’s been through so many stages of peer reviewing that in the end you say nothing, your words are washed and clean. Empty of any risk.

Ella:  We’ve isolated the university and with that comes this idea of pretended safety but also, we’re seeing now that it’s actually maybe not so safe. Research funding is being cut, the University board is becoming much more centralized. So maybe we shouldn’t rely on this as a safe space any longer, but really try and be out there to save ourselves.

Shahram: Yeah, definitely. Also, this is a public university, so it is supposed to be open. And nothing about these buildings lends itself to that openness, right? Every floor is very functional and even our students don’t know that they come up into our corridors. And just think about how our research seminars should in theory be open for everyone. Imagine a guy, who works for Foodora, parking a scooter and open the door into the seminar to listen. That would never work, because we don’t only have visible barriers, we have invisible barriers too.

Ella:  I think what you just said, shifts the idea of Tredje Uppgiften or “being out there” to be about practice. The practice of sharing, and to practice sharing what we are doing. Being in the public is about being in a practice of being with people.There’s something of just putting yourself in spaces with others. I mean public anthropology in the sense that you use the tools that you have been given to learn about the world to understand what it means to  put yourself in struggles that go beyond you. To become a citizen.

Zarreen: Yeah I also think that in this kind of movement in between spaces, like, politics happens. If you’re going to write about your research in Expressen, you’re going to have an argument. You’re going to have to take a stance in some sense. And that’s something I think, with Tredje Uppgiften unless it earns money for companies, becomes political. It becomes a political act.

It’s interesting to think about Tredje Uppgiften in relation to what anthropology can offer. Perhaps today we can no longer offer the “world” but maybe we can show a different side of the world. We believe we’ve seen everything, but maybe not everything, maybe we can show our familiar worlds differently.

Shahram:  Maybe that’s the new subtitle to this platform.

Zarreen: Right, Antroperspektiv: Showing it differently

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