They expect results and transparency (to know where and why the money is spent). But now governments and private concerns put large amounts of money on the table to fund research. In times past, research was a more leisurely activity collaborations formed over years and could prove to be fruitful – or not. We don’t always have such time on our hands. Relationships need time to develop and become stable. It’s the perils of the affective realm – its unpredictability – which I am trying to highlight. This is what scholars of such things would call “the affective realm”. The Ice Storm shows how the key party messes around with powerful, complex emotions: love, lust, anger, jealousy, excitement…and all the funny emotions that lie between and among these recognisable ones. They feel compelled to go along with what is happening, despite their misgivings, and suffer as a result of not standing up for themselves. Some of the protagonists of The Ice Storm take part in the key party under duress of one kind or another. Some relationships cope well with this disruption, but many can’t. The key party is disruptive because it introduces other people into these existing relationships people who do not necessarily have the same history, shared interests or dependencies. Marriages (and families) are generally held together by love, common interests and shared responsibilities. But, as the The Ice Storm shows, the consequences of toying with the rules AND emotional bonds which hold marriages, families and, by extension, communities together, can be dangerous. It’s the randomness of the key party and how it upsets the ‘rules’ of relationships that makes it so exciting for some. When rules and emotions are combined, you have all the ingredients you need for explosive situations. The other way we bumble along together is rules. What I’m trying to say is that emotions are one way we manage to live together without hitting each other over the head with axes all the time. Nerdish excitement and the ability to focus is esssential to scholarship, but the behaviour which can result is easily misinterpreted as intense, abstract and strange, even by other nerds. If this was ever true, I don’t think it is anymore. People with an impaired ability to form coherent theories of mind, and the emotional states that go with it, are called ‘autistic’ and considered to have a profound disability.Īcademics are famous (or infamous) for being emotionally stunted. Theory of mind is based, in part, on the ability to experience empathy, a ‘fellow feeling’, where we feel in our body what we imagine others to be feeling in theirs. Theory of mind enables us to understand and predict how a person will react to us in literally split second increments. Emotions help us to work with other people – or not.Įmotions are key to being able to form ‘a theory of mind’. For instance, interest, curiosity, boredom and similar emotions help inform what and how we read. There are many emotions involved in the way we work as scholars, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. Why do I offer the key party as an analogy for research collaborations? We know that building good research collaborations is hard but, sometimes, I think we don’t give enough attention to how difficult it actually is, in an emotional sense. Later (presumably after large amounts of booze and whatever else), the other partner selects a random set of keys from the bowl and goes home with the person who owns them to…engage in certain activities.Īnyway, we’re all adults here so I don’t have to spell it out for you.
One of the partners leaves their car keys in a bowl. Couples are invited to attend a party with a bunch of other couples. Stay with me here, because I think the swingers’ key party has a lot to tell us about why some research collaborations can go so terribly wrong.
A key party, in case you missed this piece of 70s pop culture, was a way for suburban couples to engage in sexual experimentation, particularly swinging.
#FISH BOWL CAR MOVIE#
The 1997 movie The Ice Storm (which I remember being rather depressing) depicts a 1970s ‘key party’.
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