RE-RECOGNIZING INTERPRETIVE METHODOLOGIES 369sional generating knowledge (in the form of papers and articles) for consumption by disciplinary
colleagues (at conferences and in journals and books) and replicating disciplinary norms through
socializing students (through curricular practices) and through hiring, retention, and promotion
of junior faculty.
In several social sciences, the present period of questioning is being driven by, and is itself
driving, a reflexivity—this enacts the science studies concerns for the production of knowledge—
and a set of career-related issues such as socialization through curricula, editorial practices, hir-
ing, and so on—these are the sociology of the professions concerns. This is the “critical” cell in
the table, populated today by Post-Autistic Economics and D. McCloskey’s writings (1985),
Perestroika (in U.S. political science), critical sociologists, cultural anthropologists of the 1970s
to 1990s, culture studies, critical legal studies, critical race theory, feminist theories, queer stud-
ies, and so on. Burawoy’s call for a “public sociology” parallels the call within the U.S. Perestroika
for an “engaged” political science—and both would fill the vacuum created by the deaths or
(self-) silencings of the “public intellectuals” of the 1960s to 1970s and earlier (see, e.g., Posner
2001). The thrust of this book lies in that lower-left, critical cell, with the potential to move into
the lower-right one to the extent that chapter authors are also engaged in substantive changes
(e.g., policy related) outside the academy (the thrust of the evaluative criteria of “criticality,”
“pragmatic use,” or “community purpose,” as noted in chapter 5).
The critical, engaged, and applied cells in this table take scholars out of what are considered
normal disciplinary practices, with varying effects. Whether those effects aid or are detrimental
to scholars’ careers seems to depend on the “Knowledge for whom?” dimension, whether knowl-
edge is applied and serves its “clients”—those who commission studies—or whether that knowl-
edge asks of its audience, whether scholarly or more broadly societal, a change in conceptual
thinking and values.^2 On the whole, those researchers who practice their science to serve external
audiences—particularly politically powerful audiences such as government or corporations—are
generally rewarded, not only by these audiences but within the academy as well. In contrast, those
scholars who criticize scholarly, governmental, and corporate activities (e.g., Piven and Cloward’s
1977 challenge to the welfare system) may be either actively “punished” or simply “not valued”
(for example, by depriving them of institutional supports of various kinds, such as funding, office
space, etc.).
Cecilia Lynch (chapter 16) briefly describes her own realization of this key distinction. She
observes how the “objectivity” of faculty who consulted for the U.S. national security establish-
ment was not questioned, whereas her own involvement in peace movements was said to compro-
mise her research. Contesting the possibility of value-free definitions of politics, Mary Hawkesworth
(chapter 2) provides further grounds for questioning the claimed neutrality of “experts” and “con-
sultants” advising foreign governments on modernization, democratic institutions, and market
economies. Those scholars who serve power, or who domesticate their critiques, seem to be
routinely rewarded both inside and outside of the academy.
There seems to be comparatively less evidence about the outcomes for scholars in the bottom
two “change” cells, probably because fewer scholars venture there, given the lack of rewards and
the possible dangers, compared to the more familiar ground of standard disciplinary activity.
Given the espoused ideals of scholarly inquiry, one might think that the scientific attitude of
doubt would mean that those advocating change within the academy would be welcomed. That
this is not necessarily so is the theme of both science studies and the sociology of the professions
literatures that examine the relationships among knowledge production, its reception, and power.
As Brandwein’s chapter 12 on the “careers” of knowledge claims documents, reason and evi-
dence alone do not suffice to win arguments. More anecdotally, the perceived need for anonymity