customary rules. Chief among these is the rule of cognitive con-
textualization, which requires that panelists use the criteria of evalu-
ation most appropriate to the field or discipline of the proposal un-
der review. In other words, they recognize that different standards
should be applied to different disciplines. Panelists learn as well the
importance of a willingness to listen and to defer to one another’s
expertise. As a geographer points out, despite the difficulties, the act
of evaluating interdisciplinary work can bring its own pleasure and
unique rewards:
Even though it’s a lot of work to read all these proposals, what
was wonderful was to hear experts in fields acknowledge people
for their scholarship...itwaswonderfultohear the perspective
from a person in the field on that topic and on that proposal. It
was a process for me, it was like sitting in a lecture in a field that’s
notyourown...[seeing] the imagination and the scope of that
field revealed through a practitioner.How evaluators move from a hypothesized (Bourdieuian) world
where, to paraphrase Hobbes, academic men are wolves to each other,
to one where deliberations are described by participants in a lan-
guage of pleasure, consideration, and deference is the topic we turn
to next. As we will see, the black box of grant peer review is charac-
terized by colleagueship, but it is also a multidimensional space in
which muscles are flexed and where networks compete in the forging
of shared definitions of excellence.
106 / On Disciplinary Cultures