Wolin also has turned considerable attention to an understanding of theory (political and democratic) and its role, doing so initially in response to the movement to make the study of politics a “science.” He contended that reducing politics and democracy to a behavioral science is “deflationary,” tending toward a reductivism that, as noted, evacuates the concept of “citizen” and reduces it to the hollow, ritualistic and vicarious enactment of “democracy” by the “voter.” Political “science” redefines the “excessive demands o[f] the ‘real world’ ... to suggest a more realistic version of democratic theory” (1968, p. 51). The critique by political science of theory was that it is merely normative and metaphysical, “transempirical,” and incapable of progressive (scientific) movement toward a better, verifiable truth. Wolin pointed out that far from transcending or obviating democratic theory, political science simply describes a flattened reality which it can then more easily measure, and contra the claim to theory being superseded, “a society which is operating fairly normally has its theory in the form of the dominant paradigm” (1969, p. 1082). It is the job of the democratic theorist to unsettle this: Wolin (1980) posited that theory is not a >text to which the ‘problems’ of existing politics can be referred, but a form of criticism in which the ‘text’ itself [prevailing practices and understandings] becomes a problem . ... The underlying purpose is not to ... take sides in a debate over policies, but to expose hidden and troubling interconnections that call into question the authority of the ‘text.’ (p. 200)
— Buschman, "Democratic Theory in Library Information Science: Toward an Emendation", p. 1489 of the version published in Journal Of The American Society For Information Science And Technology, 58(10):1483–1496, 2007 or 14th page of the preprint version if you start counting at the page with the abstract.
Looks like I might be reading more Sheldon Wolin before long!
The "[a stable structure] has its theory in the form of the dominant paradigm" bit is great. It's good to remember that practice is theory put into action, whether or not that theory has been made explicit.
Again, this is why praxis (reflecting on practice & intentionally critiquing it through theory) is so important for librarianship and pretty much everything else worth doing.
