Sometimes, theories are the same

I think it’s worth acknowledging, among justice folks, that a ton of the major theoretical frameworks people use are very similar to each other and have overlapping if not identical implications for praxis. On one hand, I think it’s worth being critical of how this comes about, via the kinds of pressures that activists and scholars are under politically and economically to develop frameworks that are novel, or at least can be marketed as if they are. In addition, the silo-ing of academic disciplines creates a scenario where two very similar idea may be developed in two different fields, and they may not speak to each other at all for several years. On the other hand, allowing for acknowledging similarities also allows for a serious examination of what, exactly, is important about a given theoretical framework that distinguishes its lens, practically, from other similar frameworks.

Which is to say I’m not wholly against new named perspectives developed under similar circumstances with similar conclusions with maybe one important tweak. Similarly, I think even wholesale redundancy can be okay if the purpose is to re-articulate a theory for a different audience that needs a different name. My more major concern is (1) the environment that forces people to develop new named perspectives and (2) the lack of discussion there is afterwards about how to synthesize the perspectives, which often leads to this assumption that all new perspectives are “progress” rather than just different lenses that should inform dialogue and action in different directions, colleagues at the table rather than necessarily improvements on a flawed design. (And then more practically, I think failing to acknowledge this accelerates people’s perceptions of academia as navel-gazing and impractical.)

Some of this, I think is getting better as the way people engage with research literature changes. Theoretical silo-ing, I think, was much worse when people largely thought about the information available to them through the lens of the specific outlets and journals that publish things about their field. At least for me, I almost never do a search for literature through a specific journal, and search engines like ProQuest and Google Scholar have completely precluded the need to search by journal. Because of this, I feel like I am much more likely to be able to quickly collect overlapping theoretical perspectives relatively quickly with broad search terms and an openness to read things in fields other than my own. I do not think I am unique in this regard; I think this is the common behavior of more recently-trained researchers. Concerns about corporate influence on how people access research aside, I do hope that the technological tools we have now will contribute to a more integrated research community that can be more transparent and practical about when new theories need new names.