Critical theory for library and information science

CRITICAL THEORY FOR

LIBRARY AND

INFORMATION SCIENCE

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CRITICAL THEORY

FOR LIBRARY AND

INFORMATION

SCIENCE

Exploring the Social from

across the Disciplines

Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given,

and John E. Buschman, Editors

Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission

in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Critical theory for library and information science : exploring the social from across the

disciplines / Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given, and John E. Buschman, editors.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59158-938-9 (acid-free paper) · ISBN 978-1-59158-940-2 (ebook)

1. Library science·Sociological aspects. 2. Library science·Philosophy.

3. Information science·Sociological aspects. 4. Information science·Philosophy.

5. Critical theory. I. Leckie, Gloria J. II. Given, Lisa M. III. Buschman, John.

Z665.C778 2010

020.1·dc22 2010012813

ISBN: 978-1-59158-938-9

EISBN: 978-1-59158-940-2

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Contents

Introduction: The Necessity for Theoretically Informed Critique in

Library and Information Science (LIS) vii

Gloria Leckie and John Buschman

1. Michel Aglietta and Regulation Theory 1

Siobhan Stevenson

2. Roland Barthes: On Semiology and Taxonomy 15

Hans Dam Christensen

3. Roy BhaskarÊs Critical Realism 29

John M. Budd

4. Social Capital, Symbolic Violence, and Fields of Cultural Production:

Pierre Bourdieu and Library and Information Science 41

Lisa Hussey

5. Beyond a Signpost for Resistance: The Promise of Michel de CerteauÊs

Practices of Everyday Life for LIS Scholarship 53

Paulette Rothbauer

6. Michel Foucault: Discourse, Power/Knowledge, and the Battle for Truth 63

Michael R. Olsson

7. Deconstructing the Library with Jacques Derrida: Creating Space for the

„Other‰ in Bibliographic Description and Classification 75

Joseph Deodato

8. Transformative Library Pedagogy and Community-Based Libraries:

A Freirean Perspective 89

Martina Riedler and Mustafa Yunus Eryaman

9. Psychoanalysis as Critique in the Works of Freud, Lacan,

and Deleuze and Guattari 101

Ronald E. Day and Andrew J. Lau

10. Anthony GiddensÊ Influence on Library and Information Science 119

Howard Rosenbaum

vi CONTENTS

11. The Public Library as a Space for Democratic Empowerment:

Henry Giroux, Radical Democracy, and Border Pedagogy 131

Mustafa Yunus Eryaman

12. Hegemony, Historic Blocs, and Capitalism: Antonio Gramsci in Library

and Information Science 143

Douglas Raber

13. The Social as Fundamental and a Source of the Critical: Jürgen Habermas 161

John E. Buschman

14. Martin HeideggerÊs Critique of Informational Modernity 173

Ronald E. Day

15. Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations 189

Will Wheeler

16. Jean LaveÊs Practice Theory 205

Sanna Talja

17. Henri Lefebvre and Spatial Dialectics 221

Gloria J. Leckie and Lisa M. Given

18. Herbert Marcuse: Liberation, Utopia, and Revolution 237

Ajit Pyati

19. Chantal MouffeÊs Theory of Agonistic Pluralism and Its Relevance for

Library and Information Science Research 249

Joacim Hansson

20. Antonio Negri on Information, Empire, and Commonwealth 259

Nick Dyer-Witheford

21. Ferdinand de Saussure: Duality 273

Paul Solomon

22. Investigating the Textually Mediated Work of Institutions:

Dorothy E. SmithÊs Sociology for People 283

Rosamund K. Stooke

23. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Deconstructionist, Marxist,

Feminist, Postcolonialist 295

Hope A. Olson and Melodie J. Fox

Index 311

About the Editors and Contributors 319

Introduction: The Necessity for

Theoretically Informed Critique in

Library and Information Science (LIS)

Gloria Leckie

University of Western Ontario

John Buschman

Georgetown University

THE EVOLUTION OF CRITICAL THEORY

The rise of critical theory is usually identified with the Institute for Social Research

(Institut für Sozialforschung), formed in 1923 and associated over the years with the

University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany.1

The institute was the home of what

became known as the Frankfurt School of social thought/critique. Particularly under the

leadership of Max Horkheimer during the 1930s, the institute became a focus for the

radical critique both of the fabric of society (including the economy and its attendant

sociopolitical formations) and the social theories that were purported to be explanatory

of social phenomena. Dahms (2007) remarks that

Critical theory began as the project of illuminating how „traditional‰ theories of modern society,

conceptions of social science, approaches to studying social life, and practices of doing research

start out from largely implicit yet highly problematic assumptions about the relationship between

social science and society, in the sense of social science and concrete socio-historical context.

Since the early 1930s, critical theory has stood as a reminder that the specific economic, political,

cultural and ideological configurations of socio-historical contexts have a direct bearing on the

form, content, practice and normative orientation of both social life and social sciences (18).

Early critical theorists of the Frankfurt School included Theodor Adorno, Walter Ben￾jamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, and later,

Jürgen Habermas. While this group of scholars had a wide-ranging intellectual agenda,

they were united in their neo-Marxist thinking and analyses, which they brought to

bear on issues such as the sociohistorical origins of capitalism and the nature of work /

labor in a capitalist system, historical materialism, the characteristics and functioning

of the modern state, processes of cultural hegemony/domination, exclusion and ideol￾ogy, alternate views of existence, the nature of reality, and the psychosocial processes of

everyday life. In addition, members of the Frankfurt School took aim at contemporary

viii INTRODUCTION

social theory, including logical positivism and pragmatism, and the nature of dialectics.

Although the Frankfurt School now refers to a particular historical period and group

of theorists, the Institute for Social Research continues, with the current director being

Axel Honneth, and associated prominent scholars including Nancy Fraser, Seyla Ben￾habib, and Agnes Heller, among others.

While in some academic circles the term critical theory is still used as shorthand spe￾cifically for the Frankfurt School, this was not the only group of theorists who offered a

penetrating critique of the social. Dant (2003) points out that there was an „overlapping

but slightly later Gallic tradition‰ (3) of critical theory, including the writings of Roland

Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Andre Gorz, Henry Lefebvre, and Alain Touraine. Dant notes

that both the Germanic and Gallic critical theorists took „MarxÊs analysis of the mode of

production as a starting point that needs to be developed to cope with the changes in cap￾italism that had become apparent by the middle of the twentieth century,‰ and from there

attempted „to extend the Âcritique of political economyÊ towards a broader critique of so￾ciety and culture as a whole‰ (4). However, the critique does not end there; rather the

emphasis shifts towards what we might call the „culturisation‰ of the economy: the way that

modern culture follows the underlying rationale of the economy. . . . What emerges in both the

Germanic and Gallic critical theory traditions is a concern to modify MarxÊs analysis, sometimes

drawing on Freud, to mount a critique of culture and society beyond the critique of political econ￾omy. At times this critique is of society as culture, in distinction to MarxÊs critique of society as

political economy, but consistent is a critique that addresses society as a totality and treats culture

not as epiphenomenal, as Marx was prone to do, but as the form in which the modern mode of

production resides (4).

In addition to those noted by Dant, there were other French scholars whose work has

come to be considered in the realm of a loosely defined critical theory, but who did not

see themselves as aligned with the project of the Frankfurt School and who rejected,

or at least resisted, the Marxian and Hegelian foundations of the Frankfurt scholars.

Among these are included both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, most notably

Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François

Lyotard.2

These thinkers, and the areas of scholarship they have influenced, have at￾tacked a wide-ranging set of issues and contradictions, from the hegemony of vari￾ous socioeconomic systems, to unexamined forms of domination and social regulation,

forces of marginalization, and the constraints of a curriculum and pedagogy based upon

a privileged canon of literature. Their critique is rooted in a shift in emphasis to aes￾thetic, textual, and quasi-political strategies, demonstrating a commitment to celebrat￾ing those who have been defined as the Other by those with power. Pluralism has thus

become a primary value, justifying movements to dismantle processes and hierarchies

of power that have enabled the divisive selecting and sorting of people, thus creating the

Other (Rose 1989).

These notions dovetail with the refusal to accept Western privileging of mathemati￾cal and scientific definitions of reality at the expense of other ways of knowing. The

overall project supports inclusion and democratic justice for persons of color, women,

and gay men and lesbians in society, bringing a refreshing poignancy to conceptions of

fairness. These critical theorists „drew attention to the inadequacy of class reductionist

accounts of human society [and] the marginalization of women and minorities‰ in ways

that other forms of critical analysis were not able to do (McCarthy and Apple 1988, 18).

Introduction ix

The recognition of the complex heterogeneity of people is now a core idea, and the re￾lationship between genuine multiculturalism and democracy was established. Further￾more, critical theorists have shown that the actions of professionals are implicated in

power·asymmetrical relations based on class, race, ethnicity, and sexual preference.

Edward Said (in Leonard 1993, 388) has pointed out that „ Âall cultures are involved in

one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily dif￾ferentiatedÊ; . . . that we are in our Âhistory-makingÊ less the Âsymphonic wholeÊ. . . than

Âan atonal ensembleÊ of complementary and interdependent . . . rhetorics.Ê ‰

In earlier phases, critical theory has had to overcome two resulting problematics:

radical pessimism (Held 1980) and the later conflation of culture and philosophy. Hall

(1986) made this second point some time ago on the danger of collapsing analysis and

prescription and going beyond „identifying new trends or tendencies, new cultural con￾figurations, but in learning to love them‰ (45). While some still find in critical theory a

tendency towards these two problematics, nonetheless, as the definition of critical the￾ory has shifted in the last few decades, new critical approaches, such as poststructural￾ism, postcolonialism, feminist and queer theory, have developed and solidified. In this

wider sense, critical theory is evident across more diverse disciplines than ever before,

including education, literary studies, philosophy, management, communication /media

studies, international relations, political science, geography, language studies, sociol￾ogy, and psychology, to name a few. Yet while the idea · or definition · of what critical

theory is may have broadened in recent decades (see, for instance, Sinnerbrink, Deranty,

and Smith 2006; Badminton and Thomas 2008, 1–5), within its theoretical heritage are

two concepts that have been carried forward and form underlying assumptions within

this volume. The first is that critical theory opposes all theory that „renders its own va￾lidity claim dependent on the concealment of its grounds‰ (Bauman 1991, 277). In this

sense, critical theory as it is manifested in this volume is not „theory in the ordinary

sense, but a theory of the foundation and validation of theory‰ (Bauman 1991, 277).

The second is that critical theory now culturalizes the interpretation of the world instead

of naturalizing it (Bauman 1991, 284). In other words, it is a short leap in post-Frankfurt

critical theory to move from the earlier basis of the analysis of categories of social rela￾tionships to now say that:

• History is made by human beings, but in turn history shapes human experience and

„produces outcomes which [people] neither intend nor foresee‰ (Giddens 1987,

156);

• The mode of production, as it exists in various societies, is embedded within all so￾ciocultural practices and institutions and cannot be separated from the analysis of

culture;

• Knowledge is socially constructed and must be understood in its sociocultural con￾text. The „genesis of what has heretofore seemed to be natural and necessary involves

contingent relations. . . . Categories, principles, rules, standards, criteria, procedures,

techniques, beliefs, and practices formerly accepted as purely and simply rational

may come to be seen as in the service of particular interests‰ (McCarthy 1991, 45,

47; see also Sim 2005, vii–xiv);

• Finally, the critic herself must both conduct a „theoretically informed analysis of so￾cial phenomena‰ while at the same time acknowledging that she is unable to assume

a superior or neutral position. The critic is always and only a „partner in dialogue, a

participant, even when observing or criticizing‰ (McCarthy 1991, 128).

x INTRODUCTION

Critical theory now speaks to this ensemble of approaches. While „it is clear that criti￾cal theory is situated in the Marxist tradition . . . it is equally clear, however, that critical

theory is an attempt to adapt MarxÊs insights in the face of profound social and eco￾nomic change‰ (Granter 2009, 3). Accordingly, critical theory questions the grounds of

claims; it situates human action and structures within culture and history as contingent;

it questions categories; and it insists that the critic/theorist is neither neutral nor above

the social circumstances being theorized. At the same time, there is still a desire to un￾cover and distinguish between the just and the unjust, the reasonable and the irrational,

the consensual/dialogic and the coercive and unspoken (McCarthy 1991, 54–55). Criti￾cal theory seeks, above all, to reveal the irrational societal contradictions (cloaked in the

ideologies of supposed rationality) that enable

individuals and indeed nations to annihilate one another, as they continue to do. It is irrational to

condemn, structurally, whole sectors of populations to poverty, toil, unhappiness and servitude,

as continues to be the case . . . Critical theory seeks to identify and penetrate the ideologies that

cloak this domination (Granter 2009, 2–3).

In this sense, then, critical theory is viewed as liberationist and transformative (Matus￾tik 2001, vii–xi; Granter 2009, 1–5). Along these lines, Matustik calls for a new or re￾invented critical theory in the New World Order (ix), a critical theory that will „speak

about liberation in plural and multidimensional voices and yet do so while being his￾torically and materially linked to ongoing struggles‰ (xi). Thus, as it is understood here,

critical theory has both a scholarly and a normative purpose.

Can critical theory realize this dual purpose? Despite its seeming uptake across many

different areas of scholarship, Dahms (2007) is skeptical that critical theory is truly

making a difference, particularly in the established disciplines of the social sciences

(where one might think that critical theory should be very strong). He comments that in

mainstream (i.e., traditional, noncritical and established) social science

resistance to considering the specifics of socio-historical context takes many forms, the following

being among the more prominent:

• the strict separation between the logic of scientific method and the analysis of the char￾acteristic features of socio-historical context;

• the determined refusal to acknowledge that the centrality of contradictions to modern

society influences concrete research agendas and modes of research, to scrutinize con￾crete contradictions and implications resulting from their centrality, and to determine

the nature of the link between contradictions and social forms; and

• the ingrained unwillingness to ensure that claims made about the purpose and conse￾quences of research coincide with its actual orientation and effects within socio-historical

contexts (Dahms 25).

Dahms further remarks that „the goal and purpose of critical approaches is to direct re￾search efforts at providing representations of modern society that reveal to its members

and to social scientists their problematic features as integral components of its concrete

socio-historical form, and thus, its very possibility‰ (48). Given the resistances noted

above, can critical theory move us forward toward this goal? Dahms concludes that it

can, at the very least by holding mainstream research agendas and practices to account,

and by reading much of mainstream research „against the grain,‰ as it were (49).

Introduction xi

THE NEED FOR CRITICAL THEORY IN LIS

We argue that an understanding of critical theory is important to scholarship in LIS

for a number of important reasons, not the least of which is reading much of our own

scholarship against the grain. First, while there certainly are scholars in LIS who are

known for their critical-theoretical work (including John Budd, John Buschman, Ron

Day, Bernd Frohmann, Michael Harris, Hope Olson, and Sanna Talja, to note a few)

overall, there is not a strong tradition in LIS of producing metatheoretical discourse in

the vein of Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, or Negri, for example. Accordingly, there is

a tendency in LIS to adapt theoretical perspectives from other disciplines, often doing

so without a critical or complete understanding. The chapters in this volume by Ron

Day and Andrew Lau on psychoanalysis and Sanna Talja on LaveÊs situated cognition

are cases in point: psychoanalytic and cognitive research concepts have crept into LIS

in the form of the cognitive paradigm, but that paradigm is not based on a thorough

understanding of the original theoretical frameworks or their deficiencies. While all dis￾ciplines borrow theory from other disciplines to a certain extent, in LIS, we need to be

more aware and /or critical of what and how we borrow or adapt. In LIS, analyses that

describe forms of power so pervasive and complex, with so many root causes, make it

almost impossible to direct critique against any one source of power, or to communicate

effectively to oppose further incursions of the current neoliberal grand récit (like the

market or managerialism) into library content and services. A more critical-theoretical

approach, therefore, is warranted and necessary.

Second, the incorporation of critical theory into LIS research is beneficial in that

it forces us to be more in tune with the current understandings and scholarly trends in

other disciplines. As a practice-oriented field tied to large institutions, a certain lag in

theory use might be understandable (although in a comparable field, education, critical

theory is much more in evidence). However, LIS cannot forever remain innocent of the

debates and the progressions of thought that have characterized broad realms of theo￾retical influence in the humanities and social sciences and still maintain its place within

those constellations of research and practice. Sophisticated use of critical theory makes

our scholarship and practice more relevant to a larger academic society and wards off

the dangers of LIS isolationism.

Third, critical theory in the LIS fields of research and practice should both encour￾age sophisticated adaptation and enable articulate responses to current issues facing the

field: tax revolts, cultural conservative demands to cleanse the contents of libraries (and

their screens), the incursion of ever more advertising into content, and the overwhelm￾ing demands to make libraries responsive to (and reflective of ) the neoliberal idea of the

market (Brosio 1994; Buschman 2003). Our „discourse . . . tends to favor technical and

managerial language use,‰ which in turn prevents librarians from critically examining

and evaluating information resources and systems (Andersen 2005, 21).

Library technologies continue to be seriously undertheorized, with a consequent re￾search focus on their technical facility, look, feel, appeal, popularity, and connection to

other media products of postmodern culture. These issues should be explored in depth.

In an obvious case, GoogleÊs plan, in conjunction with some major research library col￾lections, to digitize millions of books in a single collection is another enormously im￾portant project largely untouched by an LIS critical theory. The project has been greeted

with immense fanfare and outright triumphalism, but Google is becoming a powerful

portal for targeted advertising marketing to library audiences in the process. Another

glaring example is that there are notable intellectual freedom concerns, aside from the

xii INTRODUCTION

obvious invasion of private inquiry, over the technologies to track book searching and

reading in an age of secret information gathering (such as under the umbrella of the

USA PATRIOT Act), all to be blessed by libraries. Nor is there sufficient skepticism

within library research to question the use or abuse of this information in private, cor￾porate hands (generally), or the participation of the university administrators at public

institutions in this privatizing digitization project (Buschman and Brosio 2006).

Critical theory expands the boundaries of what we know and how we think, and thus

opens up new possibilities and avenues for LIS research. However, critical-theoretical

perspectives are not and should not be confined just to our academic endeavours, but

need to be incorporated into the very essence of our professional practices. As it stands

now, major areas of practice conduct a great deal of research that is pragmatic, but

highly uncritical. A better understanding of critical-theoretical approaches would serve

to sharpen the research lens when we examine problems relating to professional prac￾tice and real-world applications. To this end, Gerry Benoit (2002, 462–63) suggests that

critical theory in LIS would help to counter the influences of positivism, particularly in

the areas of the discipline that examine information systems. He comments that

If the field is considered from a critical theoretic stance, questions are raised also about the perfor￾mance of LIS research and practice, such as whether LIS research ought to rely solely on evidence

of causality, as user studies often do, or to reflect what is believed is happening (subconsciously)

in the mind of the user . . . LIS research that drives professional training and system design often

reduces the individualÊs need to a representation of group behaviors. To some philosophies, hold￾ing the user at armÊs length may be merely a concession to todayÊs understanding of professional￾ism, or the limits of computer architecture. To more radical philosophies, it suggests that reliance

on this type of scientific methodology, that is, one that prefers a quantifiable aggregate, permits

researchers to abrogate the right of individuals (the end users) to critique the researcher, which, in

an extreme reading, renders the method and practice self-legitimating (464).

Critical theory can help us to break, or at least expose, the self-legitimation cycle by al￾lowing us to examine the unexamined and question the unquestioned, both in terms of

our accepted bodies of knowledge and their associated research agendas and method￾ologies. Frohmann (2004) explores why it is that a particular view of information as an

abstract object (11) has permeated our field and to a certain extent, our culture. This is

especially true with respect to science and our taken-for-granted understanding of the

production of scientific knowledge, which we (in LIS, but also elsewhere) have tended

to view in a particular way. Frohmann notes that

All the attention paid to improving information systems seems somewhat odd when knowledge

production is seen less as a matter of producing, processing and exchanging information than as

making things work in the laboratory and manipulating material things, processes and techniques.

Scientists would appear to have been quite successful at such work since the sixteenth century . . .

[until] today, when their labours enjoy huge military and corporate support. . . . What then, is the

source of the conviction that a perfected science information system would necessarily increase

scientific productivity? (93)

As FrohmannÊs work suggests, science is, in the end, essentially a product of com￾plex social forces, specific institutionalized and documentary practices and a rather en￾trenched story „of the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge‰ (22; see also

Introduction xiii

Kuhn 1996). This understanding runs counter to traditional views of the way in which

science operates and how it produces a body of scientific knowledge. Critical theory

gives us the tools to undertake such an investigation, to hold our assumptions up to the

light, and to examine the refracted beams in a new way.

Finally, as a quintessentially social field, LIS is interested (in one way or another) in

how society, people, institutions (including but not limited to libraries), governments,

and information technologies work, and the interactions among them. Furthermore, LIS

is also very interested in the betterment of society, from the development of national in￾formation policies, to the provision of user-friendly and equitable access to information,

the inclusion of diverse and /or marginalized clienteles, the support of citizen lifelong

learning, the nurturing of the library in the community, and many other proactive areas

of research and practice. Critical theorists give us an array of perspectives or approaches

to the very concerns that we have in LIS and help us to think about /examine those is￾sues in new ways. For instance, an act of information seeking might be viewed as an

individual and isolated event, but a critical framework allows us to see how information

seeking is part of a larger milieu that has many social dimensions in play, such as ideolo￾gies, hegemony, socioeconomic forces („cognitive capitalism‰), spatial practices, and so

forth. Similarly, critical-theoretical perspectives help us to understand how large-scale

changes in society, such as globalization and the permutations of capitalist production,

affect what might seem to be routine and local practices, such as collections develop￾ment or the purchase of catalog records, thus bringing fresh insights on who we are and

what we do, collectively and individually.

The educational philosopher Maxine Greene (1986) writes in language that is star￾tlingly close to the critical-theoretical sense of LIS we are attempting to describe:

Who knows better how important it is to look at things, whenever possible, as if they could be

otherwise? To speak that way is to summon up the idea of imagination. Imagination is, in part,

the capacity to apply concepts to things, to recognize the range of applications, and to invent new

concepts. It is the possibility to move between . . . „spontaneous concepts‰ and more formal or

schematic ones. It is the capacity to make metaphors, to create new orders in experience and to

realize that there is always more in experience than anyone can predict. It is, also, the power to

perceive unexpected relationships, to envisage alternative realities, and to reach beyond the taken￾for-granted towards possibility (26–27).

INTRODUCTION TO THIS VOLUME

This edited text, therefore, seeks to introduce into the field a number of sources of

theory of potential interest or relevance to current and future researchers. There is no

claim here that this subset of theorists is either exhaustive or represents the „best‰ theo￾rists who should concern LIS. Rather, the text was the product of negotiation between

the editors, potential chapter authors, the extant LIS literature, and the necessary prac￾tical choices to realize what might be possible in such a volume. In other words, this

volume illustrates one of the primary tenets contained in the title of the volume: it is the

product of the social. Further, this volume·with its proliferation of sources of theory

from the vantage point of the social·illustrates another of the primary tenets contained

in the title of the volume: it is a critique of these unexamined assumptions and the

scientivistic/positivistic undertones of much LIS research and practice.

xiv INTRODUCTION

The number of theorists presented, the welter of theoretical assertions, and the in￾commensurability of many of these thinkers here may well be cause for complaint.

This is not taken lightly, but there are two broad answers to this objection. The first

is that these thinkers help us make important distinctions between the theoretical and

the „technical in nature [that which is pointed toward] the most expeditious means of

achieving goals . . . agreed on beforehand.‰ The theoretical should be concerned with

the „ Âsystematically mistakenÊ: mistaken arrangements and wrong action[s]‰ that are

not „random consequences of a system. . . .‰ Theoretical work „seeks to displace‰ the

systematically mistaken, often ending in critique (Wolin 1969, 1080). The clear impli￾cation here, and in this volume, is that, as an undertheorized field (in the critical theory

sense), LIS can benefit significantly from more (and deeper use of) critical-theoretical

perspectives.

The second response is that the welter of theory is perhaps less of a welter than it

may seem. Bernstein (1983), McCarthy (1991), and Sim (2005) all variously argue that

critical-theoretical disagreements (in the broader debates) have been emphasized, and

this has masked substantial areas of common concern such as those outlined earlier: for

example, questioning the grounds of claims and categories, insisting that the theorist is

neither neutral nor above what is being theorized; asserting the contingency of action

and structures within culture and history; desiring to uncover and distinguish between

the consensual and the coercive, and so on. The contributions to this volume exhibit

some parallel characteristics. While it is true that there are a wide variety of approaches,

there does seem to be agreement on the broad issues of the socially constructed na￾ture of knowledge and information (variously defined) in LIS; critique and uncovering

of assumptions and interests to guide research and practice; and perhaps even a hope

for praxis in LIS. The chapters here perhaps represent a response to our theoretical

heritage·a heritage that has not led to the discipline of LIS being recognized as foun￾tainhead of theory development nor a strong player among her sister disciplines. This

volume then, is an explicit attempt to break open the theoretical floodgates for a variety

of sources of observation, analysis, and theory-informed practice.

Because of the conceptual difficulties that would immediately arise, we have chosen

not to attempt to group the theorists in this volume into artificially constructed catego￾ries but rather simply to order the chapters alphabetically by theorist. Accordingly, we

begin with an overview of the work of Michel Aglietta, the French Marxist economist

whose pioneering doctoral thesis provided the foundation for what has become known

as French school regulation theory. In this chapter, Siobhan Stevenson demonstrates the

explanatory potential of this relatively underutilized approach for some of the more vex￾ing questions facing LIS scholars and practitioners today. Following a brief description

of those aspects of Michel AgliettaÊs biography and specifically his experiences as a stu￾dent during the social and political ferment associated with Paris during the late 1960s,

which directly influenced his scholarship, Stevenson highlights the main analytic tools

associated with the approach and their application to date across a range of LIS sub￾fields including library history, the organization and representation of knowledge, and

the political economy of the contemporary public library. Through the use of concepts

such as Fordism and post-Fordism, modes of social regulation, and regimes of accumu￾lation, French school regulation theory supports the reading of all manner of informa￾tion phenomena, institutions, and occupations from a political economy perspective. As

such, the importance of history as a means of distinguishing between historical conti￾nuities and discontinuities, particularly the identification of the truly novel; the social