Acknowledgments: An academic ritual

Academic Questions

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 63-76

  Hollander, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037517119     PISSN: 08954852     EISSN: 19364709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12129-001-1056-x     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. Mthough this is an impressionistic account, the reader is entitled to know how I chose my sources and examples. The selection process was truly "random" though not in a social scientific sense. First I looked at my own books, which accumulated over a period of forty years; subsequently at those of three colleagues, each of whom has different professional interests reflected in his library. How did I choose the actual volumes from these four collections? How did I decide which ones to take off the shelf?. I disregarded slim volumes (on the assumption that there was in them less to acknowledge) and those published before the 1960s, since I did not intend a historical survey. I also avoided considering acknowledgments that were very short, that is, less than a page. Even after noting such criteria of selection, there remained a partial randomness to the actual process of selection. I was less inclined to reach for books that were physically less accessible, i.e., on very high or very low shelves. What books placed high or low had in common and what bias their placement and subsequent avoidance (on my part) introduced is hard to say. All this still leaves open the question: What is the likely ratio of books with short acknowledgments (and lacking in the attributes which inspired this essay) and those longer and effusive? Whatever the ratio, there is a huge number of books with the kind of acknowledgments examined here.
2. Eugene Goodheart, The Reign of Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 18.
3. In a famous volume in social psychology, 63 individuals were thanked; in a well-known sociological study 67, in another one 103. The number peaked at 124.
4. M1 quotes are anonymous, since I do not wish to embarrass anybody. I took, however, note of the source of each quote and on request can supply them to the reader doubtful of their authenticity.
5. Saul Bellow, "Scepticism and the Depth of Life, " in The Arts and the Public, ed. James E. Miller and Paul D. Herring (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).