Quality Evaluation in the Humanities. The Guide for the Perplexed

Aldis Gedutis
Klaipeda University

Kęstas Kirtiklis
Vilnius University

The presentation is based on our study that attempts to reconstruct the seemingly obvious, but not explicitly stated, notions of quality in the humanities. This reconstruction is based on semi-structured interviews with 30+ humanities scholars from 6 different European countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). The humanities researchers are generally perceived to be situated between two competing conceptions of quality: the administrative one and the one of their research community. Applying Max Weber’s theory of authority, we argue that the situation is more complicated. The external criteria are not to be identified with administrative or communal criteria alone, but correspond more or less to Weber’s types of authority: traditional authority (academic traditions, professors, supervisors of doctoral students, etc.), rational-legal authority (scientific administrators, science policy makers, university management, etc.) and charismatic authority (‘academic stars’, etc.). The internal sources are based on the personal experience of individual humanities scholars, which is not reducible to Weber’s types of authority. By combining interview data with Weber’s theory of authority, we try to show that there are at least four different and sometimes incompatible conceptions of quality in the humanities: 1. administrative; 2. individual; 3. mixed, i.e. semi-administrative, semi-individual; 4. moderately individual. These concepts are interpreted as regulative ideas that help to better understand the assumptions behind the research and evaluation of individual humanities studies, and provide an opportunity to look beyond the prevailing administrative notions and criteria of quality, which do not usually receive much attention from researchers, but which cause considerable perplexity and confusion in the minds of those who chair the evaluated academic units.