Open Scientist Handbook: Chapter 3: Fierce Equality and Demand Sharing

The academy needs equality, and not just the word. It needs normative, active, celebrated, <i>fierce</i> equality. It needs this first as a corrective to the twisted incentives of the past century of perversely cumulative advantage (DiPrete and Eirich 2006). It needs this as an open door for scientists in the south who have been locked out of conversations. It needs this to ground a new operating logic that does not permit the hiring of temporary faculty at penurious wage scales. It needs this to repair so many years of gender inequality. It needs this because the best science comes from a requisite variety of knowing that is all inclusive. Here we will explore this need.<br>In this Handbook, we use the phrase “demand sharing” to designate a culturally advanced form of sharing, a type of cultural behavior that has been in widespread use of the majority of the human population for tens of thousands of years, and only recently eclipsed by marketplace logics in the past two to three hundred years. “Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture” (Harari 2014). Additional information about demand sharing is available elsewhere in the Handbook.