... I want a sense when I read a proposal that there is a mind select-
ing theory and working theory and an aesthetic to which a candidate
is sort of responding deliberately.”
As sociologists Charles Camic and Neil Gross note, theory is an-
other polymorphic term.^22 The meanings given to theory vary widely
across the social sciences and the humanities, and within each cluster
of disciplines. Among our interviewees, a third of the mentions of
theory refer most often to the articulation among theory, data, and
method, followed by references to schools and to anti-reductionism,
including reflexivity (roughly a fifth of the mentions), and to con-
cepts (one in ten)—the remaining 15 percent are spread across vari-
ous subtypes. The only noticeable differences in emphasis across
disciplinary clusters are that humanists are more concerned with ref-
erences to schools than are historians and social scientists; and social
scientists and historians are more concerned with the articulation
between theory and data than are humanists.
The diffusion of theory in the humanities that began in the 1970s
(see Chapter 3) significantly affects how panelists from these disci-
plines factor theory into evaluation. A music scholar, agreeing that in
the past decades there has been “an importation as well as an adapta-
tion of theoretical models that in particular came out of literary dis-
ciplines... a whole panoply of post-structuralist scholars from
Foucault to Baudrillard to Bourdieu to God knows who,” also pro-
nounces the role of theory in the humanities “extraordinarily impor-
tant.” A historian who mobilizes the term “theory” to refer to self-
positioning is less enthusiastic. He describes those who adhere to
“traditions of interpretive work as opposed to empirical work” as
potentially “more vulnerable” to a “sort of posture or positioning
that isn’t about theory as tool, but about theory as statement of
fidelities to all of the proper figures...It’smerelyawayof...saying,
‘I’m on this guy’s side’ and ‘I’m this guy’s guy.’”
Humanists are particularly concerned with reflexivity, which is
opposed to a naivety associated with earlier forms of humanistic
184 / Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence