The recent postings on the social practices of writing and reading have
stimulated me to think of this question:
Have you ever wondered why graduate schools make their students write
theses and dissertations before they would give them the degree?
Who would read the theses/dissertations? I've found 90% of them
gathering dust in my institute's library? What is the ideology beind the
whole institution and practice? What is the "cooperative meaning making"
enterprise involved? What is the symbolic capital or exchange involved?
I sometimes find it next to futile: apart from less than 7 or 8 people who
would ever read through your thesis, who would bother to read several
hundreds of pages?
On the other hand, I have always found it difficult to have access to
theses: they are expensive and cumbersome to get (e.g., through ordering
microfiche, and transforming it back to paper copies)... there are
several copies of theses I'd like to get, e.g., Geof Williams', and
Genevieve's, and another one recommended by Genevieve on activity
organization...
I just find the whole business of writing and getting access to theses /
dissertations extremely difficult to understand: difficult to write,
difficult to get access to, ...
well... what do you think? :-)
Angel