Zygmunt Bauman -- liquid copyright or solid plagiarism?

What a joyful era is that of postmodern society, when fixed hierarchies, old orders and classical scholarly rules of solid modernity have melted around us. What a wonderful world we live in, where a brave PhD student can catch one of the most famous sociologists alive with his hand in the cookie jar of alleged plagiarism and teach him about basic copyright (and scholarly) standards [being then enthusiastically praised on this weblog, adds Merpel]. This one of those tales that can likely make some noise, as the Professor at issue is Zygmunt Bauman, 88, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, author of over 60 books and with an International Research Institute in his name. The brave PhD student is Mr Peter W. Walsh, right, PhD candidate in sociology at Cambridge and “huge admirer” of Professor Bauman. Here’s how it went.

'Does the attribution to
no-one benefit someone?'

In the recent book Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?, Professor Bauman mentioned a study entitled Human Development Report, published annually by the UN. Although Bauman’s book was published in 2013, the report quoted in it is from 1998. This rang a bell in Mr Walsh’s mind, especially because the 2013 book at issue is about inequality getting worse in recent years —but 1998 was not exactly “recent” for an annual report. In his further investigation, Mr Walsh told to have come across an impressive number of instances in which Professor Bauman reproduced text near-verbatim from newspaper articles and webpages, failing to provide proper attributions and in some cases even reproducing mistakes in the copied material. Taking up arms against your own hero is not easy for anyone, and this is particularly true when one’s hero has a name in the field in which one wishes to establish a career. After some days of reflection, however, Mr Walsh decided to disclose what he discovered to Times Higher Education, which broke the story of this academic star allegedly breaching the basics of anti-plagiarism rules. 

“According to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources”, said Mr Walsh, “‘if you copy bits and pieces from a source (or several sources), changing a few words here and there without either adequately paraphrasing or quoting directly, the result is mosaic plagiarism.’ This is exactly the transgression Professor Bauman makes in multiple instances throughout his book.”

Contacted by Times Higher Education, Professor Bauman did not take Mr Walsh’s accusation well. After alleging to have “never once failed to acknowledge the authorship of the ideas or concepts” in 60 years of publication [there may always be a first time, sniffs Merpel], he declared:

“While admiring the pedantry of the authors of the Harvard Guide to Using Sources, and acknowledging their gallant defence of the private ownership of knowledge, I failed in those 60-odd years to spot the influence of the obedience to technical procedural rules of quotations on the quality (reliability, effectiveness and above all social importance) of scholarship: the two issues that Mr Walsh obviously confuses ... As Mr Walsh’s co-worker in the service of knowledge, I can only pity him” [is this an example of post-modern professorial elegance? If so, Merpel would like to go back to mediaeval times].

Pity apart, in his comments to the IPKat Mr Walsh replied that

“There is nothing pedantic about asking authors to indicate when they are using the words of other authors. The Harvard guide is actually fairly conventional in its prescriptions and it is no more pedantic than the Plagiarism Guide of the University of Leeds [where Professor Bauman works].  It should be clear that appropriating text from the internet without due attribution rather detracts from scholarly excellence. And it should go without saying that correct attribution and accurate quoting are of supreme importance to good scholarship. Finally, if the author does not check the material that he copies, it most certainly can affect the reliability of their scholarship. Failure to check the facts, statistics and quotes featured in the material that one reproduces risks repeating their errors”.

After reading Professor Bauman’s reaction, this Kat became intrigued by what the acknowledged academic meant by “private ownership of knowledge”. What dangerous monopolistic drift of the always-expanding liquid copyright monopoly is the Author of Liquid Modernity warning us all about? As further investigation was in order, the IPKat asked Mr Walsh for some extracts from the comparison document he diligently drafted while reviewing Professor Bauman’s book. The IPKat is now proud to share some bits of that in exclusive with his readership.

A first example may be the part including the UN’s 1998 Report, mentioned above.  It was mentioned in an interview transcript of Asia Times Online that, according to Mr Walsh, Professor Bauman partially copied and pasted in his book, along with an erroneous reference of the same article as to where the statistics were quoted in the UN reports [please click on images to get them full screen].

Another example is at pages 3-4, this time from The Daily Telegraph:

And the final one, regarding the Wikipedia’s page on the Italian movement Slow Food:

At a first sight, the IPKat cannot really identify menaces for knowledge to be monopolised. On the other hand, one would not need to call the Infopaq decision into question to note that some copyright and right of attribution issues are triggered here [works hosted on Wikipedia also require attribution, as provided here]. This is not an issue of owning knowledge or ideas, the diffusion of which IP law and scholarly principles actually aim to promote. It is the expression of those ideas that requires the author’s consent [sometimes] and the attribution to its creator [almost always] when copied, and this is where Professor Bauman appears to have failed. As to liquid copyright expansion, one might argue that certain economic rights are going far beyond a reasonable balance between copyright and social needs, but this has not much to do with the case at stake: attributing a work is for free and should be considered as one of the basis of all human works, scholarly ones in particular -- which are all Mr Walsh cares the most.

So, all things considered, a sporting admission of a possible lack of care in drafting one of his numerous books would be preferable to the counter-accusation made against a brave, younger colleague.  Such an admission would have been more befitting to Professor Bauman’s reputation and to his role as a scholar and teacher. While looking forward for this outcome, the IPKat sends a huge katpat to the brave Mr Walsh.  Since this story is all about acknowledging intellectual debts, we certainly owe him one.

Professor Bauman on liquid society here.

Liquid things expanding more dangerously than copyright here. 

Liquid(o) here. 
Another beloved Ziggy here.