UPDATE: 22 July, 2016. This post looks at the draft Framework. For a review of the approved version of the frame “Authority is Constructed and Contextual” please visit https://senseandreference.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/revisiting-the-framework-is-authority-constructed-and-contextual/
Ready for round three?
So far I’ve looked at two of the ACRL’s proposed threshold concepts for information literacy, noting that scholarship is only a conversation at a superficial and metaphorical level and that research is indeed inquiry, though the ACRL’s frame describing it is needlessly complex for such a simple, definitional concept. So, where are we?
- Scholarship is a Conversation
- Research as Inquiry
- Authority is Contextual and Constructed
- Format as a Process
- Searching as Exploration
- Information has Value
Looks like it’s time to look at authority.
Authority is Constructed and Contextual
Overview
From the ACRL draft framework, we get the following description of authority:
Authority of information resources depends upon the resources’ origins, the information need, and the context in which the information will be used. This authority is viewed with an attitude of informed skepticism and an openness to new perspectives, additional voices, and changes in schools of thought.
Experts understand that authority is the degree of trust that is bestowed and as such, authority is both contextual and constructed. It is contextual in that the information need may help determine the level of authority required. For instance, getting a weather forecast before going on a picnic does not require the foremost meteorological authority while a dissertation on the latest weather models may. It is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. For instance, a religious community may recognize the authority of religious leaders and texts which may not be as highly regarded by others who are not part of the community. Scholars within a discipline may value specific publications or publishers over others. Allowing that some kinds of expertise are more worthy than others can result in privileging certain sources of information unduly.
An understanding of this concept enables learners to critically examine all evidence – be it a Wikipedia article or a peer-reviewed conference proceeding – and ask relevant questions about origins, context, and suitability for the information need of the moment. Thus, the learner both respects the expertise that authority represents, while remaining skeptical of both the systems which have elevated that authority and the information created by it. The experienced researcher knows how to seek authoritative voices, but also recognizes that unlikely voices can be authoritative, depending on need. The novice researcher may need to rely on superficial indicators of authority such as type of publication or author credentials where experts recognize schools of thought or discipline-specific paradigms.
First off, we need to be clear on what kind of authority we’re talking about. This ain’t political authority, which is often synonymous with power. Though information literacy absolutely should address issues of power (and kudos to task force member Troy Swanson for carrying the torch on this one), this particular frame is not about systemic inequality, hierarchies of control, or oppressive social structures. Rather, this frame deals with cognitive authority, which deals instead with trust and credibility. And talking about cognitive authority gives me a chance to throw a shout-out to an LIS hero, the late professor Patrick Wilson: librarian, philosopher, and dean of the library school at Berkeley. Working at the intersection of social epistemology and library science (see why I like him?), Wilson wrote the book on authority. Literally. His 1983 Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority is one of the most widely read theoretical works on information literacy.
I’ve written before about the importance of testimonial knowledge and Wilson has argued essentially the same thing: the vast majority of what we know comes from the testimony of other people. As Wilson puts it, “all I know of the world beyond the narrow range of my own personal experience is what others have told me. It is all hearsay. But I do not count all hearsay as equally reliable. Some people know what they are talking about, others do not. Those who do are my cognitive authorities.” (1983, p. 13). These cognitive authorities are the people we deem credible and Wilson points out that this credibility is constrained in several ways. Cognitive authorities are credible only within limited spheres of influence, so, for example, an astrophysicist may not be an authority on literature and vice versa. Some spheres are very small and specialized (the authority on the mating habits of the Sao Tome Shrew) but I should add that many people are authorities in several spheres of influence.It’s also the case that these spheres of authority are contextual. For example, when I’m with my friends and family, I’m the authority on library and information science. But at work or at a conference I’m nothing special and I defer to cognitive authorities of the library world. What makes me an authority in some spheres and not an authority in others is not my expertise–that doesn’t change–but the nature of the relevant community. And that’s actually an important point that Wilson makes: having cognitive authority is not the same as having expertise. Being an expert is having a certain body of knowledge or know-how; being an authority is having credibility within a sphere of influence independently of knowledge or know-how. It’s all in the context. Of course, in many cases, authorities obtain their credibility by being experts or reliable sources for knowledge. But, it’s not a requirement.
Back to the ACRL concept…
Overall, this overview is pretty good; it tracks Wilson’s work pretty closely. There are just a few lines that need to be changed or clarified:
“various communities may recognize different types of authority.”
This is true but I wish the frame was more explicit that (1) while different communities accept different authorities, (2) that doesn’t mean all authorities are equally valid and (3) it doesn’t mean those communities have good information. Sure, evangelical christians take the Bible as their authoritative source on social and scientific issues. But, that shouldn’t imply that the Bible is on par with science when it comes to authority. Then again, many social constructionists have argued just that. Richard Rorty, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature argued:
But can we then find a way of saying that the considerations advanced against the Copernican theory by Cardinal Bellarmine—the scriptural description of the fabric of the heavens—were ‘‘illogical or unscientific?’’. . . [Bellarmine] defended his view by saying that we had excellent independent (scriptural) evidence for believing that the heavens were roughly Ptolemaic. Was his evidence brought in from another sphere, and was his proposed restriction of scope thus ‘‘unscientific?’’ What determines that Scripture is not an excellent source of evidence for the way the heavens are set up? (1981, 328-9).
On Rorty’s account, Bellarmine’s appeal to scripture (to support a geocentric universe) was just as rational as Galileo’s use of a telescope (to establish heliocentrism). The problem should be obvious. If you don’t see it, then you might try considering how similar reasoning would play out in a moral situation. But, seeing as how I’ve done the anti-relativism thing in the past, lets consider it settled and move on.
“Allowing that some kinds of expertise are more worthy than others can result in privileging certain sources of information unduly.”
First, expertise and authority are not synonymous and they really ought to be distinguished. If anything, the ACRL needs a separate concept for expertise. Anyway, I’m also concerned by that dangling ‘unduly’ at the end. It seems that this sentence is saying that evaluating some information sources as better than others amounts to improper privileging. But, isn’t that the point? Aren’t we supposed to admit that some kinds of authority/expertise are better than others? Even this very frame admits that a local weather report won’t cut it for doctoral research on climate science. Sorry, ACRL, but I’m going keep on teaching students that it’s a good thing to privilege some information sources over others (in context).
“the learner both respects the expertise that authority represents”
Again, authority represents credibility, not expertise. Though the two often appear together, many so-called authorities aren’t experts at all; many experts aren’t authorities.
“The novice researcher may need to rely on superficial indicators of authority such as type of publication or author credentials…”
I’d contend that even expert researchers look to types of publications and author credentials for evidence of authority qua community acceptance.
Knowledge Practices
The frame on authority establishes the following dispositions, which I’ll annotate, lightly:
- “Determine how authoritative information should be for a particular need.”
- Should be clear that it’s the information source that’s authoritative, not the information itself.
- “Identify markers of authority when engaging with information, understanding the elements that might temper that authority.”
- Seems like a good idea
- “Understand that many disciplines have acknowledged authorities in the sense of well-known scholars and publications that are widely considered “standard,” and yet even in those situations, some scholars would challenge the authority of those sources.”
- This is a tricky point. We should never take an information source to be infallible, so it makes sense to question even what we read in in the most influential journals. But, when we question cognitive authority, what are we supposed to do? For example, we can admit that an article in an authoritative journal is wrong without diminishing the authority of the journal. Of course, repeated wrongs will diminish reliability which will diminish credibility, but my point is that we need to be careful: are we questioning the veracity of a source provided by a cognitive authority or are we are we questioning cognitive authority itself. The former does not automatically imply the latter.
- “Recognize that authoritative content may be packaged formally or informally, and may include dynamic user-generated information.”
- “may include dynamic user-generated information”? So, you’re saying comments, right? Online articles have comments? What does this have to do with authority?
- “Acknowledge that they themselves may be seen, now or in the future, as authorities in a particular area, and recognize the responsibilities that entails.”
- It would be nice if the ACRL mentioned what those responsibilities are.
- “Evaluate user response as an active researcher, understanding the differing natures of feedback mechanisms and context in traditional and social media platforms.”
- Again, how do comments and retweets factor into authority. I might be able to accept the practice if the ACRL explained this point, but honestly it just seems like a strange addition. (As an aside, the Framework comes across as having a strange relationship with social media. Whenever social media is mentioned, it feels like an afterthought desperately shoehorned in.)
Dispositions
Again, lightly annotated:
Learners who are developing their information literate abilities are:
- Inclined to develop and maintain an open mind when encountering varied and sometimes conflicting perspectives.”
- I totally agree. Now what does it have to do with authority in particular?
- “Motivated to find authoritative sources, recognizing that authority may be conferred or manifested in unexpected ways.”
- No problem here
- “Aware of the importance ofassessing content critically to the best of their ability.”
- This is just generally good advice. Not sure how it’s specific to authority.
- “Recognize that there are potential problems with traditional notions of granting authority.”
- There certainly are, but it might help to talk about them.
- “Conscious that maintaining these attitudes and actions requires frequent self monitoring.”
- “Be aware of what you’re doing.” Good advice across the board. Why is it specifically here. You know, several of the dispositions, throughout the framework, really need to be pulled out and given their own space. I’m thinking it could just be called “Critical Thinking.”
The Verdict: Is authority contextual and constructed?
I’m going to agree with the ACRL on this one: authority is constructed and contextual. Hopefully this concept will bring renewed attention to Wilson’s work on cognitive authority, but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed. Thankfully, the concept as written doesn’t commit itself to either strong constructionism or naive realism, so it should be palatable to a wide range of librarians. However, it would help if the relationship between authority and expertise were fleshed out a little better. If it helps, I’ve got a post on the nature of expertise and another on the expertise of librarians. Really, if there’s a problem with this frame, it’s in the knowledge practices and dispositions. First, the parts on social media are tacked on sort of awkwardly. Second, many of the knowledge practices suffer from lack of explanation. “Markers of authority,” “packaged formally or informally,” “responsibilities that [authority] entails,” “user response.” These aren’t explained in the overview and can be interpreted in many ways. There’s nothing wrong with leaving things open to interpretation, but it does work against the purported “thresholdiness” of the concepts if they can be freely interpreted however librarians want. Third, several of the dispositions are just generally good intellectual traits and it’s hard to see why they are coupled with authority in particular. Other frames make more explicit connections between their dispositions and the concepts in question. This frame? Not so much.
And at three frames in I’ve reached the halfway point. The scholarship frame points to a helpful metaphor, but it also oversimplifies scholarship in an unhelpful way. The research frame gets things right, but it also doesn’t say that much. As Paul Hrycaj pointed out in the comments, “Given the meaning of “inquiry,” this frame seems equivalent to ‘Research is research.'” And the authority frame also gets things right but leaves a lot unexplained. Still, each frame is stronger than the last and I’m hopeful that the trend continues.
Thanks for helping to clarify this frame, Lane. I agree with the “authority is contextual” part of the frame, but the “authority is constructed” part I’m still unsure about. It doesn’t help that the Framework folks chose to illustrate the “constructed” part with a bad example that has a foul whiff of relativism (as you point out). Do you think the addition of “constructed” does any work in this frame, and if so, could you say a word or two about this? (By the way, thanks for the reference in your post!)
To tell the truth, I’m not fond of using the word “constructed” in this frame; the word carries too much baggage for my tastes. But, I didn’t want to get nitpicky on this so I let it slide.
My personal take is when they say “authority is constructed,” the obvious question is “out of what?” If the basic building blocks for authority are consistent across all cases (e.g., expertise + influence + intention = authority), then we can get a non-relativistic construction. But, if the building blocks are supposed to be wildly different across communities and all means of conferring authority are equally valid (e.g., holy scripture ~ patrilineal deference ~ reliability ~ etc.) then I’m not on board.
[…] Ready for round three? So far I've looked at two of the ACRL's proposed threshold concepts for information literacy, noting that scholarship is only a conversation at a superficial and metaphoricallevel and that research is indeed inquiry, though the ACRL’s frame describing it is needlessly complex for such a simple, definitional concept. So, where are we?Scholarship is a ConversationResearch as InquiryAuthority is Contextual and ConstructedFormat as a ProcessSearching as ExplorationInformation has ValueThis post has as topic: authority is constructed and contextual […]
[…] « Is authority constructed and contextual? […]
Lane, it’s a good idea to distinguish between expert and authority, as you do. Also, thank you for citing Patrick Wilson. He is an authority on this matter, and I’m a big fan of his work. But that does not mean that Wilson is correct!
Can an authority be a real or genuine authority without having expertise? You don’t say, but you express doubt when you say, “many so-called authorities aren’t experts at all.” This suggests you might think that alleged authorities who lack expertise are not genuine authorities.
Wilson seems not to say whether an authority is genuine only if she possesses expertise. The question I’m asking might be confused with the question about whether an authority can be *perceived* as having authority without expertise. Of course someone can be *perceived* as an authority without having expertise.
Some cases don’t require any expertise for knowledge. If someone tells me the whether in a distant place, she does not need expertise.
My opinion, for what that’s worth is that in other cases (scientific, medical, economic, etc.) genuine authority should be backed up by expertise. Presumably, in my view, we should not look to an authority unless that person is really able to deliver what we want, which is knowledge. (Of course people often look to people who do not really have knowledge, and also even genuine authorities make mistakes.)
That means we need to worry about whether authorities are legitimate, and whether they really have knowledge and evidence to support it. I think that in fact we do worry about that.
Of course I cannot force anyone to withhold their acknowledgement of authority!
Aaron, you raise a really good point and I wonder what others think of the distinction between being an authority and being perceived as an authority. Authority is a social relationship, so we really need to treat it in both ways: a manner of being and a way of perceiving.
Expertise, though, does not require acknowledgement; it’s not a social relationship. I think you’re right that authority should be backed up by expertise. Unfortunately, too often, it isn’t.
Oops I meant “weather.”
[…] Authority is Contextual and Constructed […]
Much like Form as a Process, this TC could be improved with a glance in rhetoric’s direction.
As I read it, it’s primarily about using “authoritative information” in relation to a “particular need.” It’s not about how an individual constructs authority. Nor is it about the role context plays in that construction.
If authority is constructed, how is it constructed? Is it specific “markers”? Listing my credentials? Citing my resources? Speaking the discourse? Or is something more intangible, like reputation built over time? How do these choices actually construct authority? The Frame doesn’t offer much guidance; authority just seems to exist. It’s an information literate individual’s responsibility to recognize it. There are “well known scholars and publications that are widely considered ‘standard’,” which deserve a “degree of trust.” Only one Knowledge Practice references the individual construction of authority: “Acknowledge…” On paper, that sounds straightforward. In reality, It is a rhetorically complexity task.
Authority is constructed in context, not just constructed and contextual. Different rhetorical situations* call for different types of authority (or, as it’s called in classical rhetoric, ethos). Mentioning that “a religious community may recognize the authority of religious leaders or texts which may not be highly regarded by others who are not part of the community,” comes tantalizingly close to this idea. But it treats context as a passive component of the situation: “various communities” simply “recognize different types of authority.” Context is an active agent in how an individual/group constructs and an audience recognizes authority. In other words, a religious leader gains authority by meeting the expectations and standards of his or her congregants in the rhetorical situations of spirituality. When he or she steps outside that context–say, rhetorical situations involving evolution–problems occur. Now in the realm of science, with elevated expectations and standards, authority must be constructed differently. The religious leader may not have the ability to complete that task.
If students are to truly understand how authority is constructed and contextual, I think we must raise their rhetorical awareness.
*Great overview here: http://rhetoricity.com/resources/rhetoric/
[…] Authority is Contextual and Constructed […]
Lane,
Thanks for all of you work on these critiques. It’s great that you took the time to share your thoughts.
In the draft that you reviewed here (second draft I believe) it did not say, like it does in the final draft: “Define different types of authority, such as subject expertise (e.g., scholarship), societal position (e.g., public office or title), or special experience (e.g., participating in a historic event).” That makes me wonder if that might cause you to backtrack a bit on your insistence that the Framework is not talking about political authority at all but only “cognitive authority”. I don’t see such a hard and fast distinction made in draft two and the final draft would seem open enough to it. In addition, surely Plato would object to hard and fast rejections, right? : )
Also, you make a distinction between expertise and cognitive authority, and I appreciate what you are saying there. I guess my question here is that if the Framework is not talking about political authority it seems to me that it is cognitive authority which is left – but if this is the case, in order to be a [cognitive] authority wouldn’t one need to have at least some expertise, i.e. knowledge or know-how? (you say “being an authority is having credibility within a sphere of influence independently of knowledge or know-how”). It seems to me that the distinction is useful, but of limited value, as authorities basically need to have some kind of [cognitive or competency-related] expertise in order to be taken seriously by persons who are not completely ignorant and gullible. What might I be missing here?
Then again… maybe what I am missing is that you say authority is tied up with credibility and not expertise. I take the whole “authority is constructed” thing to mean “socially constructed”, per the regular meaning of the term – and it seems, based on what you say here that you do to. Can I assume that you don’t object to this kind of “social construction” talk at all precisely because you don’t think the Framework necessarily undercuts a realist metaphysic, and hence you think that all of this kind of authority-talk can be seen as having an appropriate connection with truth? (per the end of your post as well as your post “Librarians are experts on testimony”)? – with the caveat that this would actually be related more to genuine (“objective”) expertise/knowledge/know-how, as opposed to authority and credibility per se?
Thanks,
Nathan Rinne
Hey Nathan, thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I still don’t think the Framework is really addressing political authority, despite adding a new knowledge practice. Then again, I’m not so sure it needs to.
But as to the talk of the social construction of authority, you’re right that I don’t object because I don’t think the FW undercuts realism. I completely agree that authority is a socially constructed, contingent relationship. And since the Framework does not really engage with expertise (which I think is more objective) in any meaningful way, it doesn’t bother me. Though, I do think the language of the Frame is awfully vague and slippery. To the point that I think some librarians may end up teaching that authority=expertise and both are socially constructed, with which I would disagree.
Lane,
And thank you for the thoughtful reply. Well, you certainly made me think more about these things. I guess, *speaking generally*, I had always pretty much seen authority and expertise as going hand in hand when it comes to knowledge (“know that”) and know how (an exception being how above, Aaron does talk about how for some things, like local knowledge of the weather, we might rightly say a certain person has knowledge of what is true but not expertise). I think a person can make distinctions like you do, but again, it seems to me that they are nevertheless quite intimately related. In that, again, persons having what you call “cognitive authority” generally speaking need to have some level of expertise / knowledge / know that. Unless, of course, we are just concerned to talk about authority at the level of perception (individual or corporately perhaps?) like Aaron pointed out above – which I think for most persons will be quite unsatisfactory.
“To the point that I think some librarians may end up teaching that authority=expertise and both are socially constructed, with which I would disagree.”
I think that’s right on both counts. I don’t really see anything in the whole FW that seems to give the nod to any kind of realist viewpoint at all, frankly – which of course is much to the more radical CIL proponent’s liking.
And given that for many of those same folks absolutely everything reduces to politics/the personal, I think it is also convenient for them that the FW does not explicitly rule out that political authority has a place here…
Reading what Joel says above, the FW and debate surrounding it reminds me of classical Greece, with those who thought truth was seek-able and at least in part knowable, and those more given over to emphasizing rhetoric – and yes, “sophistry”.
Regards,
Nathan
[…] Wilkson, L. (2014, 22 de junio). Is authority constructed and contextual? [Weblog post]. Recuperado de [link] […]
[…] when I first wrote about the Framework, the Authority frame was the third one I critiqued, and you can click here to revisit it if you want. Here’s the text of the Frame from the June 2014 […]
I am wondering which definition for authority you are using above? When I looked it up in multiple dictionaries, authority’s definition includes something about having a certain level of knowledge or the word expertise. By the way they are defined above (“Being an expert is having a certain body of knowledge or know-how; being an authority is having credibility within a sphere of influence independently of knowledge or know-how) authority is misdefined. This tiny mistake is important to this argument as authority is contextual, and whether or not ACRL defines the factors that define that context/level of expertise/base of knowledge, there are factors and there IS a certain amount of knowledge necessary to be both an authority/expert.
Calling attention to this level of metacognition during research could possibly be the more important thing to do than defining the factors of context and construction. The factors vary and change, that’s what the framework is saying and outlining. And as instructional people, we have to teach students how to engage in those dialogues and teach them the kinds of questions to ask themselves to figure out the context and construction, for themselves. I’m wondering if the writers left this ambiguous because they are trying to recognize we all have our own biases and blindspots, which does influence how we construct and contextualize authority…and that it matters, and we need to question our own processes and authorities, while teaching students to do so and acknowledging our own and the information’s potential fallibilty.
Someone once told me – just because you go to a government website (i.e. the NIH) doesn’t mean it’s right. To me, that was a great (albiet simplified) way of contextualizing and constructing (or deconstructing!) authority. And this person was not saying this as in “.gov means legit” or “assume government has highest authority.” Rather he meant that the NIH are working off data and statistics and soundbytes and are people (fallible!) and people using processes that are all equally fallible and open to reiteration or correction as any other piece of information. Knowing that should EMPOWER the information seekers, not make them feel like we live in a post-truth world, or that Wikipedia and their neighbor are equally as authoritative as a PhD in the subject area (unless that neighbor or Wikipedia author has read extensively on the subject too, in which they COULD be equal authorities).
I’m going to share some of this with the listserv discussion around this topic as well to hear what others will say.
Thank you for your comment, Erikka.
I just checked the definition of ‘authority’ in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary and none of the definitions suggest expertise. The primary definition is “power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.” Granted, the last definition provided says “an individual cited or appealed to as an expert.” But that just goes with my point: it’s one thing to BE an expert, and quite another to be taken AS an expert. I also checked the OED and expertise doesn’t appear until the seventh definition as a minor colloquialism. I didn’t think to consult the dictionary when I wrote this, but now that I have, I’m more confident in the authority/expertise distinction I’ve pointed out. And, especially in the current political climate, I am going to stick to the position that even though many authorities are experts, authority does not entail expertise.
I’m not sure how to understand your final points, but I do take pause at this line, “using processes that are all equally fallible and open to reiteration or correction as any other piece of information.” I disagree that all rational processes are equally fallible. I disagree that all pieces of information are equally open to correction. I am far more of an epistemic optimist on this point. I think that some epistemic processes are more reliable than others. I think that some information is less open to correction. You claim that knowing the “equally fallible” nature of information sources is empowering, but you also claim that you don’t want students thinking that Wikipedia and a PhD are equally authoritative ceteris paribus. The only way to keep the latter is to agree that information producing processes are not “equally fallible and open to…correction.” So, there is an inconsistency in your approach and I’m curious which side you’re more willing to give up.
Not sure which listservs talk about these things (I avoid them like the plague), but I hope you’ll report back.
Best
Lane
Lane,
From my new paper in RSR (see here: https://reliablesourcessite.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/my-critiques-of-the-idea-that-authority-is-constructed-and-contextual/ ; this is not the paper I told you ITLWTLP rejected):
“The author suggests that it is reasonable for librarians to speak both broadly and deeply about matters of authority – despite the fact that the Framework, in its own attempt to do so, fails to clearly establish the critical connection between truth and authority. This section begins to make the case that this decision is fatal for the Framework.
A good place to begin this case is with one of the definitions of authority from Webster’s College Dictionary, “the power to influence or persuade resulting from knowledge or experience” (1999). If “power” here means “ability,” and “influence” includes the act of informing others, it is easy to see how this definition can apply to scholarship, and hence librarianship. It seems, for example, to fit well with what Rold Norgaard wrote some years ago in Reference & User Services Quarterly, namely “[t]he arts of information literacy vary according to the discipline and the ways that a particular discipline makes and communicates knowledge.” “[T]he key to communicating the relevance of information literacy,” he mused, “is to convey the broad intellectual playing field on which it moves” (2004)…..”
+Nathan
[…] what to say? Is Damore credible? Given Lane Wilkinson’s interpretation of the ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy, the answer to this question can certainly be […]