Evaluation and Adjudication of Research Proposals: Vagaries and Politics of Funding

Abstract

In this contribution for debate, I attempt to do a critical anthropology of research funding at one national council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In this, I follow its own paradigmatic inscription on the cover of the "Manual for Adjudication Committee Members" (which regulates funding related evaluation and adjudication at the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada) and take "a closer look," an inspection de plus près, at its process, the vagaries and politics included. To guide my anthropological investigation, I draw on different social science theories, which I articulate in terms of the topologies they provide for structuring the social. I draw on a form of writing that integrates third- and first-person perspectives on the social processes of funding and the autobiographical experiences of being and not being funded. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0203259