FIELDWORK: SURVEY AND AUDIENCE

Let me emphasize, first, what I take to be the ultimate but unstated purpose of the survey: to develop a set of data that locates political theory firmly within the orbit of political science. By showing the centralizing tropes of political theory, the survey also shows a variety of ways in which the subfield both coheres internally (e.g., important figures within it) and relates to the larger discipline as a whole (e.g., a ranking of the “quality” of Ph.D. programs that both parallels and differs from more familiar rankings of programs and schools). Intriguingly, it does this by utilizing one of political science's favorite formulations of factuality, the allegedly neutral “survey.” The various critiques of this alleged neutrality of surveyance need not be rehashed here (Achen Reference Achen1975; Zaller and Feldman Reference Zaller and Feldman1992; Krosnick Reference Krosnick1999; Groves Reference Groves2004). But one of the consequences of these critiques is particularly germane: such constructions of questioning, distribution, and dissemination themselves produce new subjects and audiences. In many ways, Moore intends (and achieves) a pulling-together of “political theory” as a subfield, and constitutes those of us who read and interpret this survey as a particular kind of audience.

This also means that, as in most surveys, the created participants and the audiences differ. Political theorists participate for one set of reasons, commentators such as me for another, and the audiences who read and even utilize the results for their own purposes. That Moore conflates these groups is problematic, but deliberate: the production of data often presumes a neutral purpose in order to maximize participation, especially within the social sciences. Thus he can claim, in his first paragraph, that the aim of the survey was both to “investigate … whether political theory belongs in political science,” as well as to “get a snapshot view of the practice of political theory as a subfield” (Moore Reference Moore2010, 265). The first goal seems particularly grand, though it is asked only once of the respondents. It must be, then, that Moore hopes the rest of the survey begins to answer it, that the publication of the questions and the agglomeration of the answers places political theory in a relationship to the rest of the discipline. The answer to this question is an unsurprising and overwhelming “yes.” And this answer is reinforced by the survey's distribution and discussion at the APSA Annual Meeting and the very publishing of these results in this particular journal.

Other answers are unsurprising as well. Evidently Rawls, Habermas, and Foucault have been important intellectual figures for contemporary political theory (Moore Reference Moore2010, 267), the journal Political Theory serves as the subfield's flagship (269), and Princeton, Harvard, and Chicago are desirable destinations for graduate students (271). Political theorists feel that the discipline as a whole underrespects political theory (266) and that a notable minority of the nation's institutions of higher education fail to offer it as an area of study.

The results in which we, the readers, have a particular stake, however, are much more intriguing, though at an individual level. How well can one resist examining where one's own departmental program falls in the graduate rankings, or where one's name appears in the list of soon to be important scholars? How highly ranked is the academic press with which one has staked his or her intellectual career? These results reflect not only on our own positions and status in the field and subfield, they even judge those people with whom (and institutions with which) we intellectually affiliate ourselves.

Ultimately, much of this remains prescriptively useless. It does no real good, either in the subfield or in one's pedagogy, to note that Cornel West triumphed over Jean Baudrillard, but lost out to Catharine MacKinnon (Moore Reference Moore2010, 267). Nor does it foretell future changes in the institutional structure, as figures who define programs leave, retire, or die (and have in fact done so even since the survey was taken). As Jodi Dean (Reference Dean2010) notes in this symposium, single data points could be used as factoids to delegitimize individuals or specific departmental programs. Most theorists and departments likely figure themselves as more prominent within the subfield than they appear in this survey. But these irrelevancies and concerns miss, I think, the function of the survey, which remains the calling into being of certain constituent field (and subfield) identities.

THE NORMALIZING TENDENCY

The standards of the discipline of political science are always at least somewhat up for grabs (Schram and Caterino Reference Schram and Caterino2006). Those traditions that actively and often question their standards have their own sets of redoubled contestations. And yet disciplinarity demands standards, cohesive questions, and areas of study. So much of what is at stake, especially but not exclusively for political theory, is how well subfields fit into a disciplinary metric. What Moore has done, in part, is to provide an eminently accessible way for other political scientists to apprehend this fit.

So how well does this survey achieve this end? Part of the answer will necessarily be empirical; how different programs, departments, and political scientists will respond to the survey's findings has yet to be determined. But the textual, interpretive meaning of the survey is already apparent: it attempts to answer what political theory does, which programs are important, and which thinkers consequential. Especially for those outside of or entering the subfield, these prove important consolidations. The beginning Ph.D. student, for example, might decide that work on and by Charles Taylor will likely have more import in his or her career than will that of Will Kymlicka (Moore Reference Moore2010, 267). The descriptive survey thus becomes a prescriptive tendency.

In arguing that Moore's survey operates within a nexus of disciplinary meanings and legitimations, that it is meant to consolidate political theory's position within those meanings and legitimations, I do not imply that it either misleads or denigrates the discipline. That Moore and his survey participate in a larger game about the legitimacy of certain forms of social scientific knowledge is only to say that both consider political theory important and attempt to translate that consideration into a separate, even unlikely, language. Moore here plays a kind of subfield hockey, strategically registering political theory in a different vein.

Games, of course, have rules. Else they would not be games, as Wittgenstein (Reference Wittgenstein1978) pointed out. But this admission does not minimize strategic moves as somehow undermining the importance of disciplinary practices. Law, language, morality, family: all are based on rules; all also reward those who think through potential movement within and according to those rules, regardless of how intended. Thus the goals of the survey, and the resultant calcification of political theory along particular lines, coincide.

Note, for example, how the survey results locate political theory. Table 8's detailing of the professional organizations to which political theorists belong shows a dispiriting divergence in professional affiliation (Moore Reference Moore2010, 270). The annual meetings of the APSA, the Western Political Science Association, and the Association for Political Theory do a fine job of highlighting theoretical work, and the survey makes clear to Ph.D. students (for example) the invaluable role these organizations' annual meetings play in the discussion, development, and distribution of theory. But the paucity of membership in potentially essential interdisciplinary organizations (the International Studies Association, Law and Society, or even the American Historical Association) points to a profoundly limiting internalization of political theory within the discipline of political science.

This finding is not neutrally descriptive. It implicitly instructs political theorists interested in their professional career (i.e., most graduate students) to ignore or at least underemphasize those interests that deviate too far from the norms of the subfield. If political theorists themselves so poorly respect the New Left Review or Public Culture, why should the rest of the larger political science department give weight to publications in those journals when making hiring or tenure decisions? Nevermind that the former published perhaps the most prescient analysis of the 2008 financial crisis (Brenner Reference Brenner1998), and that the latter published a groundbreaking reinterpretation of globalization along temporal and cultural lines (Appadurai Reference Appadurai1990).

IS PATCHEN MARKELL STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT?

In the course of the survey, hopeful signs emerge suggesting that political theory as a subfield resists this normativizing impulse. Many of the results tell of a far more expansive, open-ended collective conceptualization of the subfield. One might even say that many of the results are more contentions than they are conclusions.

One example, early in the survey, points toward the diversity of expectations for various departments' awarding of tenure (Moore Reference Moore2010, 267). While this says more about the departments in which political theorists are located than it does about the particularities of theorists' own desires and expectations, they show a surprisingly wide diversity of requirements. Roughly a third necessitate “at least one book,” one sixth expect more than five articles, a quarter presume between two and five peer-reviewed articles, and a noteworthy fraction require minimal or no publications. This is a discipline in which tenure is not awarded according to any central standard, but for a wide range of research (and, presumably, teaching and service) accomplishments.

More telling are the groupings of the programs recommended by political theorists for graduate study (Moore Reference Moore2010, 271). Those programs which received over one hundred votes are all over the map, literally. Far from being dominated by institutions in the Northeastern U.S., they are geographically diverse, even including the University of Toronto. Conceptually, they represent a wide range of what political theory can be, ranging from programs with strong liberal traditions to those strong in critical theory, close reading, or continental thought. Politically, they range from the conservative to the post-Marxist. (Of course, this expansive conceptualization can go too far, as enough responses compelled the inclusion of one program—Amherst College—catering exclusively to undergraduates.)

Most hopeful are the categories identifying political theory's important thinkers. While the top few may be expected, the intellectual, political, and institutional ambit of those chosen is both various and unpredictable, ranging from Wendy Brown to Giorgio Agamben to J.G.A Pocock to Eric Vogelin (just to mention those with 14 or 15 “votes”). The results for the question asking whose work “will be influential during the next 20 years” were even more dramatic. From 1,086 respondents, each of whom could submit five names to this category (a total of 5,430 potential “votes,” as the survey terms them), no single name received more than 40 mentions. This is more than a lack of consensus; it is a wholesale unwillingness to consolidate around a few famous names.

There will be those, of course, who read this result as a problem for political theory, a telling sign that theorists cannot even identify who will take the subfield forward in the next decades. For those critics, only a directionally specific, organized set of political theory questions would suffice. If we could identify the dozen or so truly important political theorists, and study only them, we could finally master the subfield. Such a subfield, however, would no longer be akin to a game, with a place for strategy, insight, and creativity, but would instead turn into a dead language, one that can be ultimately mastered but that also eliminates individual creativity. For those who welcome and embrace the unpredictable, centrifugal nature of political theory, the lack of unanimity in such results gladdens the heart.

Where will political theory be in twenty years? Its own normativizing tendencies, helped along by the disciplinary strategies implicit in this survey, may keep it a part of political science for that long. But it will be its simultaneously unrepresentable nature, its erratic and organic and mercurial creativities, which will keep it alive.