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[navelgazer]

I am trained as a humanist and I am writing up a collaboration with a social scientist. So far we've managed to negotiate our different writing styles largely by writing up the sections that would be single author.

We're publishing the co-written part of our research as a book chapter, which seemed like a great way to avoid some of the peer review issues we saw coming up. I'm an American humanist, the editors are Northern European trained social scientists. Our fields have the same name but radically different methodologies which adds to the confusion.

Now I'm having issues with how much the editors want me to change my writing style. Things I gladly changed while working with my collaborator: general paper format (which is basically upside down with how we write in my field), citation format (obviously not a problem), and literature review style.

However, there are other things that go more deeply. First of all, I find their insistence that they "include lots of styles of writing" and what they want me to change  disingenuous. The best writing in my field tells a story using detailed, field-specific research to support the argument. We don't make broad claims about theory supported by a small amount of qualitative research. It feels insulting to be criticized for not doing something ridiculous (claiming a major addition to theory with this scale of our research) instead of relating what we've learned and arguing for its significance. In addition, we both of us were trained to write differently than them, which they seem unwilling to consider. (They want a hypothesis not an argument, for example. Huh?)

My collaborator and I have worked out a way to combine social science writing (that I find deathly dull) and humanities writing (which he finds filled with irritatingly irrelevant details). I'm at the point where I don't feel like I have the social science education to contribute equally to the writing process as we get to the end. Is there a way to say "we are communicating this information, but you aren't seeing it." "We'd rather support that claim with a direct quote than a parenthetical citation alone." "You are being blind and condescending." Anyone else experience this? Any social scientists want to weigh in?

[oldfullprof]

If you write for B-level social science journals, your writing can be exciting.  The more (pseudo) scientific, the more boring.

A danger flag for me in both humanities and social science is throwing the phrase "socially constructed" around without showing how.

You're right.  "Thick description" (if only judiciously sampled) is pretty convincing.  But thin description leading to modifications of theory isn't.     

[oldfullprof]

The real crap is procrustian.  Male domination is pervasive because of (instance, instance, instance...)  What you actually do is look for variation.  Pervasive when (instance, instance...), but not when (instance, instance...)