ABSTRACT
As the dominant practice of verifying and shaping academic knowledge, peer review is commonly defined as the evaluation of proposed publications, presentations, or research projects by a few (typically 2-4) experts in the discipline, whereby the most highly valued form of this practice, double-blind peer review, involves concealing the identity of the authors and of peer reviewers (Bazerman, 1988; Benos et al., 2007; Biagoli, 2002; Shatz, 2004; Zuckerman & Merton, 1971). Through the lens of genre theory, discursive practices, such as those of peer review, are regularized through genres, the routine patterns of social action that emerge and evolve in human collectives over time because they meet recurring needs or exigencies and thus accomplish the work of these collectives (e.g., Artemeva & Freedman, 2006; Bazerman, 1988, 1994, 2002; Bazerman & Prior, 2005; Coe, Lingard, & Teslenko, 2002; Devitt, 2004; Giltrow, 1994; Miller, 1984; Paré, 2002, 2005; Paré, StarkeMeyerring, & McAlpine, forthcoming; Schryer, 1993). As a result of their evolution through recurrent situations, genres gradually become the way things are done-common sense (Paré, 2002)—and play a strong normalizing role. Indeed, over time, the exigencies that gave rise to them originally are often forgotten, although they continue to shape assumptions and practices of participants. Retrieving these forgotten exigencies is therefore vital for uncovering the cultural logic of genres from beneath the cloak of their normalcy. Having originated with the emergence of scientific societies, such as the Royal Society of London, and scientific publication enabled by the printing press (Bazerman, 1988; Biagioli, 2002; Eisenstein, 1979; Zuckerman & Merton, 1971), peer-review practices evolved from state and religious censorship bodies instituted to curtail the spread of potentially incendiary messages. Overwhelmed by the explosion of printed materials and considering the technical treatises of the Society to be of relatively low risk, state and religious censorship bodies granted the Royal Society the right to selfcensor its publications following established protocols (Biagioli, 2002). Gradually, new needs emerged for protecting the reputation of the Society and its publications to ensure continued royal support, thus transforming the state-originated disciplinary practices into internalized disciplinary procedures (Biagioli, 2002). Nevertheless, as Biagioli maintains, despite the
eventual decline of absolutist forms of governments and censorship, the censorship and selection function of peer review remained and “eventually came to characterize the whole of academic and university science” (p. 32). To achieve their outcomes-be these the censorship and selection of publications or the protection of reputations-genres assemble a social order, regularizing who participates in what role, what is sayable and doable, and what strategies are habitually used. In Paré’s (2005) words, genres function as “systems of discourse control, more or less prescribed and explicit that determine who speaks (or writes), as well as when, why, where, and to whom” (p. 80). In peer review, participants fulfill clearly delineated roles-those of author, editor, or referee, with the assumption that referees produce impartial, disinterested reviews of the work at hand for publication, revision, or rejection-an assumption rooted in the enlightenment ideal of the rational individual, unconstrained by their situatedness in relation to an audience, community, or their own interests; and therefore capable of disinterested autonomous judgment through pure universal reason (Henry, 2007). As the practices of peer review unfold repeatedly, so do the Enlightenment assumptions on which they rest. Because of their repeated unfolding, genres have (re)productive force; they contribute to “the stabilization and (re)production of social institutions and communities” (Bazerman & Prior, 2005, p. 8). With its reliance on established disciplinary experts, the peer-review system, for example, has been instrumental in producing disciplinarity by reinforcing existing disciplinary orthodoxies, values, norms, and epistemological commitments, thus allowing for the stabilization of disciplinary knowledge-making practices, and ultimately for the production of highly specialized knowledge. As Biagioli (2002) notes, peer review functions to (re)produce a “distinctive kind of discipline” for academics, “something that is simultaneously repressive, productive, and constitutive of their knowledge” (p. 11). On the flipside, because of whom the genre system includes (disciplinary experts) and whom it excludes (experts from other disciplines, practitioners, and the public), the system has privileged disciplinary concerns over interdisciplinary, practitioner, or public concerns. In addition, peer review has (re)produced individual or small-group authorship, along with clearly delineated, portable, and tradable knowledge products, such as articles or books, that lend themselves well to assigning and protecting scholarly recognition and intellectual property rights. Today, this function of peer review reproduces critical economic practices of academic publishers and of universities by securing intellectual property and by serving as the principal practice for distributing research funding; for making merit, tenure, and promotion decisions; and for securing funding since peer-reviewed publications are central to winning grants and to building a university’s reputation and thus to attracting sponsorship. Their normalizing power and their function in (re)producing the material practices of institutions bestow genres with formidable conservative force and stability.
