This is our fourth installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series of posts on what it's like to work as an academic philosopher in countries outside the anglophone west. This is a guest post by Ignacio Silva, Research Fellow at the Philosophy Institute, Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
After twelve years in the UK, I returned to Argentina in 2017 to join the research philosophy institute at Universidad Austral, a small, internationally well-ranked, private university. During my time abroad I did my doctorate and worked as a post-doc in several research projects (the classic story of an early-career scholar going from one post-doc to another, though luckily in my case – as I like to think – these positions were all at the same institution). Perhaps naïvely, I thought that returning to my home country after this experience would mean easily landing a permanent position. Mine were nothing but vain hopes: soon I realised that several private universities were happy to hire me as long as I brought external (international) funding to cover my own salary and research costs; that was the only deal I could get, and the same applied to a bunch of my friends who studied and worked abroad. So I did in the end, and, though I’m not technically a post-doc any more, I’m still looking forward to the time when I can say that I have a permanent position. I start with my story simply to illustrate how difficult it is to find a job in a country where experience abroad is certainly a meaningful thing. In fairness, though, it is not the same for those who stay in the national state system. I shall come back to this later on this post (two disclaimers here: 1) I work with Templeton funding, which made my landing back home by far easier than that of many of my friends; 2) this post is but my take on Argentine philosophy today… of course, other stories could be told, and mine does nothing to invalidate them). So let me first try to describe the philosophical environment in Argentina.
Argentina is a country with a long and robust philosophical tradition, with a strong vocation to engage in the international scene and that attracts many regional students. This tradition is characterised in particular for its strong continental heritage, and as such, most Argentine philosophers work either in the phenomenological/hermeneutical traditions or in the history of philosophy. Of late, however, Argentine philosophers have actively engaged in the analytic tradition (in philosophy of science, logic, ethics, among other), a tradition that has grown to be as dominant as the continental one. This is not to say, of course, that these are the only philosophical traditions in the country. In fact, Thomism, within Catholic circles, is rather large in numbers as well. Perhaps the most notorious common feature to all these traditions in Argentina is that they have very little contact with each other (there are some incipient trends to eradicate this incommunicability, which makes me hopeful, though much work still needs to be done on this matter). I’m perhaps the only person teaching and doing analytic philosophy of religion in the country (or undoubtedly one of the very few… so few that I don’t know them! There’s certainly no one doing religion at the Argentine Society for Analytic Philosophy – SADAF – that has about 270 members).
Undergraduate philosophy students in Argentina are quite lucky with the education they receive, though not that much with receiving funding, of which there is nought but a few ‘low-income household’ or ‘best-in-the-class’ scholarships. Most students work while they take a full-time degree at university (this is the same for almost all undergraduate degrees in the country, so it’s something that students assume as the norm). Still, perhaps the most interesting feature for undergrad studies in Argentina that balances this study-and-work situation is that undergraduate degrees from state universities are free for anyone (from anywhere in the world) with a high school degree. So, if you wanted to take an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA, the largest philosophy faculty in the country), you could go, register and earn your degree. This is not the case for private universities, where one must pay fees for any degree.
Most universities have quite thorough undergrad philosophy curricula. Take, for instance, the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), where I studied and currently teach philosophy of religion (curricula do vary across universities, but this example should serve as an illustration of the general trend). This degree takes five years to complete (four in some other institutions), with courses on ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary philosophy, which are complemented with courses on reading major works for each of those periods; in addition students take three years of Greek and Latin (this language requirement is almost unique to UCA), two years on logic, plus the core courses on all kinds of philosophies (many as optional courses): anthropology, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, of art, social philosophy, of religion, of education, natural theology, metaphysics, and so on… So philosophical education at an undergrad level is pretty comprehensive and quite solid. I find students to be very engaging and interested in all sorts of topics (not surprising considering the wide array of issues thrown at them during their degree), with many of them looking forward to an academic career in their not-so-distant futures, which brings me to tell you about graduate studies in Argentina.
There are not so many universities offering graduate studies in philosophy in the country, though there seems to be enough for the demand. There are two paths to take and fund a doctoral degree in Argentina. You can either get a scholarship to dedicate full time to your research from the National Research Council or the Agency (Conicet and Agencia, I’ll explain this below); or you start teaching an enormous amount of classes, usually at different institutions, while finding time to run behind a PhD that can take several years beyond the normal five in the making. The latter path usually means that you would end up teaching philosophy to non-philosophers for many years without any chance for engaging in research at all, and most commonly without even finalising your own PhD. Until not so long ago, teaching philosophy to non-philosophers at high school or university level would have been the only path that most philosophy students would have considered if they wanted to stay somewhat connected to academia, as Claudia Mársico reported in 2015, when she was Director of the Philosophy Department at UBA.
The former path is reserved for those who persist in their applications (my wife was lucky enough to receive one of these doctoral scholarships after three attempts). The system is really good in its structure (though could be better in its funding) and has become increasingly competitive. The National Research Council is called Conicet (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas), and the government funds research on any discipline through it. Conicet offers a number of doctoral scholarships each year (it can vary from over 30 to 5 for any given discipline, depending on the tendencies of the government at any given time), and these are awarded competitively, on a points-based system (so many papers published internationally mean so many points; nationally, so many points; so many conference presentations, so many points; etc…). These scholarships last for five years, and after this, if one wants to continue doing research, Conicet offers two-year post-doctoral scholarships (usually fewer, awarded through the same, though tougher, points-system). Finally, Conicet offers the full-time permanent position of ‘national researcher’ after the two years as a post-doc, with a similar, though tougher, system. The Agencia, another state funding body in Argentina, also offers some scholarships, usually through research projects, though it does not have researchers of its own as Conicet.
Salaries at Conicet are not great, but it allows for a quite modest living style; plus being a national researcher at Conicet comes with huge prestige within the country, and it involves doing nothing but research (Conicet scholars are allowed to take up a few extra weekly hours of teaching, and most do, particularly given the low salaries in face of an economy with constant inflation). In terms of numbers, Conicet reported in 2018 having 199 philosophers doing different kinds of research, and 247 scholars doing their PhDs and post-docs in philosophy (I could find no report giving numbers on philosophy researchers across the country). There are a few full-time positions at state and private universities, though not many, and they tend to have a very heavy load of teaching associated to them. As I mentioned, I work at two different institutions (in my case doing research in one and teaching a few hours a week at the other). This situation is the norm for most philosophers in Argentina, being faculty members at two or more universities, a trend that is explained by the fact that universities do not usually have the possibility of offering many full-time positions.
Local funding for research is offered mostly through Conicet and the Agencia, and, though limited, it tends to be somewhat generous. Historically it has been the case that Conicet researchers or those few based at state universities received this funding, probably due to the fact that private universities did not hire philosophers to do research. Given the government’s requests to create a research environment at all universities, this trend is slowly changing. So, some universities are now offering research grants for their own staff (some universities instead of grants offer a bonus to your salary if you get to publish a paper at an international journal), though these grants tend to be smaller than those funded through Conicet or Agencia, and there is no private funding available for research in philosophy. Not very many scholars apply for international external funding probably either due to a lack of knowledge of its existence, to thinking these opportunities are unattainable, or even to a lack of administrative infrastructure in institutions to receive such funding. Those who do apply internationally tend to do it only for visiting for a short period some institution abroad (via DAAD in Germany, Fulbright in the US, or Carolina in Spain for example). Perhaps the most challenging situation with funding in Argentina is the usual inflation in costs. To give you some context so you can get an idea of the extent of this peculiarity, Argentina (a member of the G20) has the fourth highest inflation in the world (at about 54% annual measured in August 2019), after Venezuela, Zimbabwe and North Korea. Depending on the government, national grants are (or not) actualised to some inflation rate, though this is typically insufficient to cover the same costs. Inflation is exacerbated by the recurrent economic crises, normally accompanied by big currency devaluations. Take as an example the past two years: the rate went roughly from US$1 = AR$20 to US$1 = AR$60. So if you received a three-year project in 2017, you could only do a third of what you were meant to do during 2019… Finally, and though experiences vary, it is not unusual for grants to be disbursed after you have paid for the expense with your own money, meaning that, considering the constant inflation going on, you receive money that has actually lost its original value.
Argentine philosophers (like many others around the world) get the feeling of being in the geographical peripheries of the philosophical world (there’s a saying here that we live in the behinds of the world). Simply consider the distances: it takes twelve/thirteen hours to get to Western Europe and ten hours to get to the US (thirteen if you want to go to LA), plus a couple of thousand dollars in expenses (which are not that easy to get on in these shores just for a trip to a three-day conference). This situation, coupled with the scarcity of funding, means that those doing philosophy here feel fairly cut out from the international scene. Still, Argentine philosophers are quite resourceful and they manage to keep up-to-date with the international scholarship of their interest through the different open-access web environments known to us all.
So what if some philosopher from other countries wanted to come and work in Argentina? Well, I know of only one such case: a philosopher from Colombia who works on the philosophy of chemistry with a post-doc scholarship from Conicet. In fact, Conicet offers its PhD and post-doc scholarships to anyone in the world (and I’ve been told that many Latin Americans apply for them), but will only accept your application for becoming a national researcher if you first become an Argentine citizen (check condition #7). Telling, right? If to this exemplar institutional block you add the general sense of ‘why would anyone want to come and work here?’, and then you join these two to the sentiment of living in the periphery of international philosophy, you can start to understand why universities tend not to advertise their positions abroad at all (unlike what happens in Chile, Brazil or Mexico, to give a few regional examples). So perhaps we are cut out of the international scene not so much for our lack of funding, but more so for our lack of reaching out. I know for a fact that individual philosophers would love to have more international peers around, though much work needs to be done on this institutionally and structurally.
Overall, still, I’m more than happy to have returned to do philosophy at my home country. I am aware of the structural difficulties and challenges ahead (more now than before returning), but I am also convinced that philosophy done here is of a high standard, with the international vocation I spoke about, and with a latent bright future in its students.
Yet another interesting instalment!
Posted by: Ada Agada | 10/08/2019 at 06:54 PM
I admire your optimistic vision... I have a totally different (and more negative) opinion, but I prefer not to develop. Although I rescue one thing of Argentinian public universities (which are the best for studies on science and humanities): as you said, public education is completely free of charge, for everyone, independent of her nationality, and the quality of teaching is high (although is still too much focused on the history of philosophy, so philosophy done in the last decades is almost absent of the programs).
Posted by: marina | 10/09/2019 at 03:53 AM