Enfilade

At The Long Eighteenth, Laura Rosenthal (Professor of English at the University of Maryland) reviews Michèle Lamont’s How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment, which studies how grants in multi-disciplinary committees are assessed:

In this well-written and relentlessly object study (in the sense that Lamont has no ax to grind as far as I can tell and treats her subjects with respect), the author mainly I think is offering a counterpoint to Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that academic awards constitute a system of self-reproduction. Instead, Lamont finds that even though evaluators certainly see the application through particular lenses, they nevertheless in general make a sincere effort to discover quality. This process, however, takes place contextually through a series of negotiations in which a variety of factors shape decisions. . .

For Rosenthal’s full review, click here»