Thursday, September 20, 2007

Deciphering Academic Snobbery or A Rant Against Contrapuntalism

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.)