Mike says "It runs sort of: the more institutionalized the practice, the
easier the positivistic evaluation, the more
deviant, the more difficult."
I think that's true. It's one way of explaining a continuing conundrum I
have -- if there are child prodigies in math and music, why are there none
in sociology, or geography, or cooking? Or, if there were, how would we
recognize them ?
Friday evenings musings. Have a good weekend, all.
Leigh
_________________________________________________________________
Susan Leigh Star, Professor
University of Illinois MC-493
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
501 East Daniel St. Champaign, IL 61820 USA
(217) 244-3280
"Romanticism is an evangel in the garb of metaphysics. It sidesteps the
painful, toilsome labor
of understanding and of control which change sets us, by glorifying it for its
own sake.
Flux is made something to revere, something profoundly akin to what is best
within ourselves,
will and creative energy. It is not, as it is in experience, a call to
effort,
a challenge to investigation,
a potential doom of disaster and death." (John Dewey, Experience and Nature,
1989: 51)