Does it ever bother you when someone does perfectly good research, writes a good sized book, and in order to sound "academic" attaches fancy (dumb) names to otherwise obvious categories or divisions?
Example: Samuel C. Heilman wrote a great book on American Orthodoxy entitled Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy. In it he calls Haredim "enclavists" and Modern Orthodox Jews "contrapuntalists".
The "Social Scientist Writing a Book" Thought Process Deciphered:
1. MOs straddle the religious and secular world
2. Everyone knows this
3. I'm an academic
3. A fancy word that captures the idea of holding apparently opposing views at the same time is contrapuntalism
4. Therefore, MOs are contrapuntalists
5. Hey, everyone! I've made a great discovery! MOs are contrapuntalists! (Of course you never knew that!)
(Obviously "contrapuntalism" is not the point of Heilman's otherwise excellent book, but the thought process outlined above - particularly step 5 - is all too present in social science research and makes a definite appearance in Heilman's latest work.)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Deciphering Academic Snobbery or A Rant Against Contrapuntalism
Posted by Ethicist Watch at 12:09 AM
Labels: academia, samuel c. heilman
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