ABSTRACT
Descriptions of scholarly activity tend to differentiate sharply between paradigmatic revolutions and normal science (Kuhn 1970); between brief bursts of innovation and longer periods of intellectual quiescence; between work that is analytically-driven and work that is driven by policy problems; between the theoretical and the empirical; the pure and the applied; the abstract and the concrete. In many of these dichotomies there appears to be a presumption that theorizing should be regarded as a pursuit apart, as a special, self-conscious process that strives logically and systematically to propound general principles that are, in effect, removed from our knowledge of the small, messy, immediate, here-and-now world of the senses. It is as if theory and theorizing may be found only when they parade quite explicitly under those names; that there can be no theory where none is intended. We exaggerate, of course, but not by very much. Academics are quite prone to make use of such contrasts for didactic effect.
