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Social sciences' serious image problem
Eight thousand of Canada's academics will soon gather to hear papers on such topics as 'doorology' and 'the sock in society'
DOOROLOGY?: Exploring 'the ambivalences of the human experience, specifically those produced in interaction with doors'
Anne Marie Owens, National Post
Published: Saturday, May 20, 2006
The social sciences are always seen as the flighty older sister of the academic family, eternally straining to be taken seriously for nailing down ethereal wisps of knowledge when their more serious siblings in the so-called hard sciences are gaining accolades for researching a cancer cure or genome theory.
But when 8,000 PhDs from 80 scholarly associations across Canada get together to swap ideas about everything from the Bonoization of Democracy to the Significance of the Sock, there will be no time for such an inferiority complex.
Among the thousands of academic papers to be delivered during the week-long Congress, which begins a week from now at Toronto's York University, are titles about education, aboriginal rights, environmental ills, and warfare. There will be lectures from such academic luminaries as David Suzuki, Stephen Lewis and even the Ethics Commissioner, Bernard Shapiro.
But the annual brains-fest, otherwise known as the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, will also feature papers with titles such as "Cheese as Class Indicator in the Retail Market," "A Reflection of the Sock in Society," and "Opening, Closing and Revolving: Studies in Doorology."
Such titles are sure to elicit some guffaws and even calls of outrage about misguided government funding, but the people who ply their trade in this world are accustomed to this derision. "It is a constant struggle," concedes Donald Fisher, education professor at the University of British Columbia and president of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. "There is that sense that this knowledge isn't as useful, it isn't as concrete, it doesn't contribute economically, it doesn't have that obvious benefit...."
"We've always suffered from that image. What sometimes seems arcane and particularistic and sometimes remote is, when you actually unpack it, very relevant."
This kind of research is a particularly tough sell in a climate that favours results over process, where measurable is better, and where speculation about aesthetics is always trumped by the pragmatic.
When the first such conference was held 75 years ago, it was attended by then-prime minister R.B. Bennett and the former prime minister Sir Robert Borden. These days, politicians who eagerly show up for ribbon cuttings of new technology research centres approach the social sciences with trepidation -- wary about scrutiny from a dismissive public, even though most of them hail from backgrounds in the social sciences of economics, political science and history.
Perhaps that's what makes the annual congress -- which was once known simply as The Learneds before too many cynics snidely took to calling it The Stupids -- such a welcome respite for those involved.
Even the many sessions devoted to exploring the more decidedly out-there aspects -- aesthetic pursuits or the nature of being, for example -- are critical to our societal understanding, Dr. Fisher and his cohorts insist.
Take the aforementioned papers about cheese, the sock and doors: Each, in its own way, explores how we present and perceive of ourselves
Diuretic said:Reminds me of the story (possibly apocryphal) of the men's toilet in the Engineering faculty at one of our universities in my city. Above the toilet roll dispenser was a sign "Sociology Degrees, please take one."
As I said probably apocryphal. Mind you engineering students are arrogant bastards
