My favourite book is Malice in Blunderland (edited by TL Martin, 1973). In it, he discusses kludgemanship, the study of glitches. Murphy’s laws hang out here. Then there is a chapter on Hierarchology, how bureaucracy has permeated every aspect of our lives. The Peter Principle is best known in this category. Martin’s Law of Committees is found on the chapter on Status Quo Vadis. Clause 2 of Comitology states that: a committee is a group of people who, individually, can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done. Fuglemanship is the art of science and leadership, another word for (mis)management. Machiavelli is this category’s key character. Lastly, my favourite, IS Academocracy, the study of the educational bureaucracy. Martin’s book was written at an earlier time when the academy was engaged in education, rather than now that it is run by and for spreadsheet economies.
So, my blog deals with the insanities of the institution, to be known by the word coined by a committee of students in my employ. Hacking through Academentia is the objective of this blog.. Where aca-democracy means academic democracy (Martin, 1932:113), aca-dementia could signify collective academic psychosis. Academ-entia describes the institution globally as the sane are not always running the asylum – if they ever did.
The blogs that will be regularly published here are all adapted from my column in UKZNdaba. UKZN stands for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, while “indaba” is a Zulu word for meeting.
In the education system the people are represented by two separate diivisions. The academics who generate knowledge and the administrators who manage the academics.
These are my stories:
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