Thread by @ewzucker

Not only is the lay public unaware that academics who engage the public are generally viewed with suspicion by their peers, this very fact is symptomatic of *why it is that public engagement is viewed with suspicion*.

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https://twitter.com/AaronRHanlon/status/1170771444902617090

Why do I say this?

Well, it's useful to start with Abbott's (1981) discussion of the status-purity paradox in the professions: jstor.org/stable/2778344….

Abbott's observation: On the one hand, the professionals & professional subfields that are most respected by the lay public...

... are those that are perceived as having the most success at *solving the public's problems.* But on the other hand, the professionals/prof subfields that are most respected by professional insiders are those that are the *purest*, in that their work is the most distant...

.... from the public & the categories it uses. A classic example is how a famous trial lawyer (F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran, etc) who might capture the public imagination vs. the anonymous tax attorney or constitutional scholar who's more respected by fellow lawyers.

This kind of contrast exists in every profession, including academia.

Abbott's treatment is very useful & very general, but it has three limitations that I address in a recent essay (emerald.com/insight/conten…)

1) It doesn't distinguish between two diff kinds of impurity: i) engaging the public/outsiders; & ii) mixing/crossing into other professions (e.g., interdisciplinary work).
2) It misses the fact that high-status professionals can often get way with being impure whereas...

... low-status/novice professionals cannot (consider why it's a bigger risk for grad students/jr faculty to be impure than for senior faculty).

3) He never explains *why* insiders care about purity so much. Indeed, why is this? And why doesn't the lay public care?

The basic answer is that categorization schemes reflect the *objectives* of those who are doing the categorizing, and insiders and the public have distinct objectives when they evaluate professionals.

The public looks to professionals to solve its problems. To do that...

successfully, the public must be met on *its terms*. Moreover, the public will not care in the first instance if the professional is mixing and matching from different areas of professional expertise, as long as the offered solution works better.

But shouldn't professionals...

... apply the same criteria? After all, if professions (and academic disciplines) live and die based on public support, they should be responsive to the public's (quite reasonable criteria).

Yes, but two buts. First and foremost, professions have a very important objective...

(best articulated in Abbott's 1988 classic the System of Professions): maintaining/extending their control over their "jurisdiction" (i.e., activity in the division of expert labor that is ceded to them). As such, a major question in the evaluation of a fellow professional is...

... whether they are truly *committed* to defending and extending the profession's jurisdiction. *Impure professionals are suspect in this regard*: by crossing boundaries, they don't seem committed to defending/furthering the profession's distinctive claim to expertise.

In addition, since the public ultimately doesn't care about the diffs between the professions, a poignant paradox is that professionals who satisfy the public's criteria cast suspicion on themselves.

For example, since the lay public doesn't care to understand the diff btwn

sociology & economics, or btwn or btwn sociology & pop sociology), its appreciation for work by a sociologist will make other sociologists assume it must be bad sociology!

This takes us back to how I began this thread. Not only can we expect the public to be ignorant of...

... the criteria professionals use (why should they care), we should also expect the public to be naive about the fact that professionals turn up their noses at those who are admired and respected by the public!

NOTE: This theory also explains why the risk for high-status...

... professionals is lower: their status implies that they're recognized by their peers as capable & committed to the profession. And so the impurity that otherwise raises suspicion as an indicator of lower commitment to the profession can be interpreted in more positive ways.

P.S. My experience is that ppl often react negatively to this take bc they see it as an argument against impurity. Not at all. As I note in that essay, great things come form impurity. The point of this is to better understand why it's generally so *hard* to be impure.