The season of gift giving is upon us. For Dutch people, ‘parcels evening’ is coming up, under the direction of an old bishop who spends most of the year in Spain. Together with his surveillance team (brightly dressed people, all named Piet), he keeps track of how we’ve all been behaving and what we might like as gifts in his ‘Big Book’.
I’ll be celebrating Sinterklaas this year with my partner’s Dutch family. We’ve drawn lots to determine for whom we have to buy a gift and write a poem. I find the poem difficult, not so much because of the Dutch but the often somewhat teasing tone is hard to get right. The ten-year old has, like Luther, nailed her list of possible gifts to a door. Book tokens and bottles of wine might simply be circulated amongst the ten adults.
Gift giving plays a role in academic life. I’ve received book tokens, chocolate, bottles of wine and bunches of flowers. I appreciate them all, but wine and flowers are difficult to transport if I’m about to get on a plane, and only have hand luggage. Socks with pictures of Erasmus were given to me after a lecture at the university bearing his name. These were re-gifted to my philosopher partner who is not embarrassed to wear such socks in public.
There is also the gift exchange that we call peer review or taking part in PhD committees. We don’t get paid for this, nor is it accounted for in the grand reckoning of how much teaching and administration we do. We do it because it’s important for maintaining academic quality, and because other people review our articles and book manuscripts. If you submit an article to a journal, you really should feel obliged to write three anonymous peer review reports for other journals. Similarly, if you call on five people to serve on the committee of your PhD candidate, then you need to reciprocate. Some people don’t do this, instead they prioritise their own research and writing at the expense of collegiality. But Sinterklaas knows.
Sally Wyatt, professor of Digital Cultures