Just who do I think I am?
The answer to this question is not the title of the blog post below!
Rather, it’s the title of a talk I’ll be giving at a Boston University alumni luncheon this Friday. Shortly before I’d been asked to give the talk, I’d given another one in New Hampshire, at which someone asked me — as someone often does — what “makes [me] an expert”? As I mentioned to my Facebook friends afterward, I’m always tempted to answer “What makes you an expert?” with “The fact that people ask me questions,” but I fear that would sound sarcastic. I don’t mean it that way, though — I’m enough of a social constructionist to think there’s a good amount of truth in that reply.
It’s one thing to define expertise in a field that has boundaries. We know what karate is, so defining what it means to be an expert in the field of karate — or 17th century French drama, computer programming, veterinary medicine, architecture, even etiquette — is possible, if not necessarily simple. Of course, in all of these fields, levels of expertise can differ. More trickily, “expert” can either mean “having expert knowledge of,” as a critic would, or “being an expert practitioner of.”
I wrote about this question a couple of years ago on the other blog (back when that was a mishmash of whatever was preoccupying me, and wasn’t a straightforward question & response format as it is today). Check out the ideas I explored there. As applicable to the whole “Miss Conduct” venture, I wrote:
But if I am an expert, as Miss Conduct, what exactly am I an expert on? I’ve been writing the column nearly three years now and it moved beyond classic etiquette a long time ago. Social behavior, I suppose you could call it, but what isn’t? And in what way am I an expert? Whatever my column is about, there’s no degree in it, no professional organization, no standardized test to pass. I bring scholarly and work experience in theater, psychology, storytelling, comedy, project management, human resources, philosophy, and religion. And life experiences too odd and idiosyncratic to explain. But someone else could do just as good (well, almost as good …) a job as I do with a completely different skill set and experiences.
These are the ideas I want to explore Friday afternoon, I think, at the institution that granted me a PhD., which is where many people think my “expertise” comes from. I’m not so sure I agree with that. It’s an ingredient, sure, but if chili were only beef, we’d call it “steak.”
What am I an expert on?
What does it mean to be an “expert,” anyway?
What does it mean to be an authority? Does that differ from being an expert?
I would love to get your thoughts on this! And I will respond in comments, and share any insights that emerge from Friday’s lunch as well.
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4 Responses to “Just who do I think I am?”
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Authority and expertise overlap, but the distinction is important. To speak with authority is to say how things should be, which is normally based, in large part, on expertise, i.e. a close knowledge of how things have been, and are.
An authority is an expert with a public mandate (even if the public is only one other person.)
So, three or four guys may claim expertise about grilling, but the authority about when to take the meat off the grill lies with the host.
Expert knowledge, in whatever combination of information and skill, could stay home and mind its own business; it becomes authority when it steps out the door and tries to persuade someone else to do something.
We give authority to others partly because we perceive their knowledge and skill, and partly to relieve the burden of knowing everything, or coordinating everybody, ourselves.
I get to be an expert in my field some days. But I am not sure I consider myself “an expert.” Specialized information plays a part in this, but mostly “expert” is a role into which I am cast by the people coming to me for answers. Most days, I think I’m only considered an expert because I have answers more often than I say “I’ll have to look into that for you.”
That was disjointed, I know, but I’m on pins-and-needles waiting for an important, possibly career-altering meeting to take place.
While both can be subjective, I see an authority as a more concrete thing. If you are recognized as a authority in your field, one might expect you to have numerous degrees and published papers on a given subject. They may also have created something; Henry Ford could be considered an authority on automobiles, for example.
An expert can be anyone, based on another person’s experience. My sister can design and make creative cakes. When her friends need an idea for a party or a cake for a special occasion, she’s the one they talk to because “Molly will know how to do it/where to get it/etc.”. Why? Because she is considered an expert in that field by her circle of friends.
Perhaps my views on authority are limited by framing them in a primarily academic environment, but that’s the first thing I think of when I consider one an authority.
A few of thoughts (and these are coming from well outside an academic environment):
One can have expertise and not be an expert (and maybe vice-versa, at least in the country of the one-eyed). It seems to me that being an expert is in part a performance, and that’s where the social social constructionism comes in. One is an expert because people accept what one is performing is expertise.
And it seems to me that issue is not “because people ask me questions” but because “people listen to my answers”. And part of this — at least when dealing with etiquette (in which I also claim a minor expertise and therefore some expertise in the acceptance, or not, of my dicta) — sometime involves how much the answers are what the people listening want to hear and how well it conforms to their general picture of how the world works.
Another thought is that there are many kinds of authority. One can be an authority on something, or do things by the authority vested in one by some institution. One can also speak with authority — whether or not one actually has any expertise, credentials, or authorization. One can, in fact, with authority state the most blatant nonsense on occasion and be seen as being an expert, because one sounds like an expert.