[csaa-forum] Turner full text

[Melissa Gregg]

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News Limited Dec 15, 2004

Populist ridicule of humanities research projects may backfire, writes
Graeme Turner

WE have just completed another ritual of the warmer season. Every year at
about this time, the Australian Research Council releases the results of its
Discovery Projects; every year they are greeted by a customary attack from
some quarters, keen to opine about the daftness of academe. This year was no
different. According to some, this kind of stuff is just self-indulgent
radicalism or the whim of fashion, with no possibility of a return to the
community.

These commentators tend to disqualify themselves as judges of scientific
research but clearly feel entitled to dump on the work of humanities
academics without bothering to find out anything about it.

Last year, for instance, David English and Andrew Bolt laughed at a study of
mobile phone culture by my colleague Gerard Goggin, characterising it as an
example of the pursuit of self-indulgent theories and neo-Marxist fancies.

The mobile phone industry disagreed: the Australian Mobile
Telecommunications Association -- the industry's peak body -- has since
joined Australia's leading social scientists in a world first to develop a
research agenda into the social and cultural impact of mobile phones. Goggin
is a key participant in this project, as well as in several other
industry-partnered projects. Private enterprise does not spend good money to
support self-indulgence or fantasy, and neither does the ARC. Clearly, the
ARC got it right and the reactionaries got it wrong.

Criticism was again levelled at many equally important projects this year,
such as Bill Loader's study, Attitudes Towards Sexuality in Judaism and
Christianity in the Hellenistic Greco-Roman Era. However, the thought of
this period -- when two civilisations mingled to produce what we now know as
Western culture -- is part of our contemporary history too. Assumptions and
attitudes developed then have exercised a lasting influence on ethical
thought and laid a foundation for much of what followed, including Western
attitudes towards religion and sexuality.

Ridiculing such a project is to suggest that our society no longer needs to
understand the history of Western thought. Given the political difficulties
the West confronts when it attempts to deal with divergent cultural
histories, these days that seems a highly dangerous suggestion.

Unfortunately, the humanities are vulnerable to this sort of superficial
criticism because they are engaged with shifts in the culture of the real
world that go in and out of fashion rapidly: with students, with politicians
and with media pundits.

How likely would it have been, say, 10 years ago, that we would be reading
about research projects dealing with homeland terrorism in the US? Imagine
what these self-appointed arbiters of relevance might have thought about
such a proposal? Their form suggests that they would have treated it with
derision, yet now that is precisely the kind of research government demands
from the sector.

You do not build a national research effort that is comprehensive and
effective by responding to fashion or to a punditry that falls back on
uninformed anti-intellectualism. The enhanced national research priorities
established last year reinforced the view that we must have an
internationally competitive research effort in the humanities as well as in
the sciences. The ARC employs an effective process that delivers on
Australia's diverse research demands.

When we abandon process in favour of prejudice (or politics) to guide
research decisions, the results are predictable. We have been badly served
in the past by those outside the universities who think they know what is
worthwhile research and what isn't. Too often they have failed to understand
the short-term and partisan nature of their own interests.

An example of the consequences is our present incapacity to provide much in
the way of expertise to help us understand the cultures of Islam.
Australia's collective ignorance about Islam is significantly the result of
successive governments' reluctance to fund teaching and research in then
unfashionable languages and cultures. Our capacity in Islamic studies is so
diminished that we are hard-pressed even to find suitable readers to assess
new projects that aim to rebuild our knowledge.

It is a little difficult to beat up on the sciences when most of us don't
understand what they do or what their technical language means. The
humanities are sometimes attacked for being arcane or obscure, but it is
their accessibility and apparent transparency that makes them vulnerable to
the kind of ridicule that populist commentary produces.

The flexing of muscular common sense might make for an entertaining
newspaper column, but we need to defend the role of specialised (if at times
unpopular) knowledge if we want a truly sophisticated and effective national
innovation system.

Graeme Turner is president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.


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