great deal. One has to remain open to a degree and not get quite
so personal. So I was struck often about how personal people
did get.These panelists’ concerns are somewhat exceptional, however. Most
reviewers uphold the legitimacy of the process by seamlessly folding
their idiosyncratic preferences and tastes into the formal criteria of
evaluation. So, for example, they tend to define originality in ways
that are in line with the type of originality that their own work ex-
hibits.^22 As one interviewee acknowledges, evaluators tend to like
what speaks to their own interests: “I see scholarly excellence and ex-
citement in this one project on food, possibly because I see reso-
nance with my own life, my own interests, who I am, and other peo-
ple clearly don’t. And that’s always a bit of a problem, that excellence
isinsomeways...whatlooksmost like you.”
During interviews, multiple examples of how panelists’ idiosyn-
cratic interests shape their votes emerged. A panelist who loves mod-
ern dance confesses (without flinching), “The one on dance [I liked a
lot]; I’m an avid dance person... in terms of studying dance, the
history of dance and vernacular dance in particular. So I found that
one really interesting, very good.” Similarly, an anthropologist ex-
plains her support for a proposal on songbirds by noting that she
had just come back from Tucson, where she had been charmed by
songbirds. An English scholar supports a proposal on the body, tying
her interest to the fact that she was an elite tennis player in high
school. A historian doing cross-cultural, comparative work explicitly
states that he favors proposals with a similar emphasis. Another his-
torian doing research on non-Western societies gives extra points to
proposals that look beyond the West. Yet another panelist ties her
opposition to a proposal on Viagra to the fact that she is a lesbian: “I
will be very candid here, this is one place where I said, ‘OK, in the
way that I live my life and my practices’... I’m so sick of hearing
130 / Pragmatic Fairness