Grain of Sand Award Winner 2011: Anne Norton
Winner: Anne Norton (University of Pennsylvania)
Anne Norton is an ideal honoree both for her scholarship and for the work she has done in the profession to expand the scope of what counts as knowing in political science. Her research record exemplifies her tireless efforts to change how political science is done and what types of political science are valued. Her 95 Theses on Politics, Culture & Method (Yale University Press, 2004) provides a stunning assault on political science orthodoxy and opens multiple possibilities for using interpretive and antifoundational approaches to understand power, politics, culture, and identity. Her earlier works in political theory and American politics render these possibilities concrete through elegant applications of anthropological theories and semiotics to enduring questions about culture and identity.
In addition to 95 Theses Anne deserves special recognition for her Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, also published in 2004 (Yale University Press). This courageous, beautifully-written book constitutes a compelling demonstration of some of her theses from the other book. Rather than feign political neutrality, she passionately engaged in the debate over the Iraq war, taking a clear stand against it (manifesting Thesis 55: “There are no neutral scientists”). And rather than expunge the author from the text, Anne imaginatively and profitably incorporated into the narrative her experience as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where she studied under some of Leo Strauss’s leading students. Thus, this “[w]ork speaks simultaneously of its ostensible object and of its author and context” (Thesis 56). Inasmuch as Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire draws both on Anne’s life experiences and on her careful reading of Straussian texts, the book offers a compelling model of combining phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to interpretation.
Finally, we would be remiss were we not to recognize Anne Norton’s work within the profession on behalf of interpretive methods, both as a challenger and gadfly to traditionalists and as a mentor and supporter for newer scholars who use interpretive and other non-positivist approaches. We all owe Anne Norton a debt of gratitude for helping to open the space we now inhabit.
