Humanities and Social Sciences Futures

Papers from the National Humanities and Social Sciences Summit held in July 2001

Edited by Malcolm Gillies, Mark Carroll and John Dash
Centre for Continuing Education
The Australian National University

Introduction

Backing Australia’s Abilities

Malcolm Gillies
President,
Australian Academy of the Humanities

Why have a Summit? Today’s event finds its origin in January, with the launch of the Federal Government’s innovation action plan, Backing Australia’s Ability. That plan was built upon the foundations of three recent reports: of the Chief Scientist on Australia’s scientific capability; of the Innovation Summit’s implementation group; and the Anderson report on information and communications technology. These reports were solidly focussed on concerns of science and technology. Backing Australia’s Ability did provide a much-needed boost, mainly to Australian science, but also to the humanities and social sciences through increased funding to the Australian Research Council.

My concern with the Backing Australia’s Ability plan was that it carried the humanities and social sciences, at best grudgingly, on the coat tails of three scientific reports. Where, in the process, had we soberly assessed our national capabilities and new-century needs in the areas of Australian non-science ability? And when had we considered how these fields might be relevant in their own terms to the formation of a clever country, the new-economy, knowledge-driven, innovative Australia?

True, the Academies of Humanities and Social Sciences had, only in 1998, submitted two compendious reports on Australia’s research and research training needs, but these had been prematurely written off in some quarters as ‘old knowledge’, because of their failure to adopt the ‘new speak’ of innovation and commercialisation. Those Academy reports were, in fact, highly relevant and forward-looking documents, but they looked for balance between arguments of immediate utility and longer-term wisdom. Furthermore, they did not eschew debate about declining working conditions for academics or developing plights in, for instance, library purchasing or language provision.

The Academy of the Humanities’ report, Knowing Ourselves and Others: The Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century, has over the last three years been a quiet achiever. There has been significant movement towards implementation of a majority of its recommendations. We are waking up to the value of our distributed library collections, and also to the advantages of a national approach to the purchasing of digital research information. Support has been gained for some collaborative schemes for subjects of small enrolment. The Australian Research Council has come to an understanding with the Australia Council about the overlapping interface between creative work and research. But its central tenet—that the humanities are a vital part of twenty-first-century Australia—has not yet caught the popular or political imagination.

I am hoping that this Summit can raise consciousness of just how important the humanities and social sciences are to Australia either as a knowledge or an abilities nation. Australians have many abilities, and a diverse, inclusive country needs to be backing them all. Can this Summit look forwards and upwards, I wonder, to demonstrate why abilities in and knowledge of the humanities and social sciences are truly relevant to the new-century world?

This Summit’s program started through identification of three case studies of exciting new work in growth areas: creative industries, museum and heritage management, and social applications of geographical information systems. They provide excellent examples, in their different ways, of the humanities and social sciences seeking to address immediate employment, cultural or social needs.

But we cannot stop there. The humanities and social sciences are not always so immediately attractive to the marketplace, but are, thereby, no less valuable. The working group sessions of the Summit, then, plot issues where long-term, broaderband expertise is vital to Australia’s future:

in ethics, where a society in rapid transition is demanding new rules of behaviour;
in the environment, where a degraded earth requires better nurture by its citizens;
in ideological transformation, as we move spasmodically to more commercialised and globalised models of business and leisure;
in governance and policy, as the knowledge economy demands new forms of decision-making and regulation;
in languages and cultures, which underpin cultural diversity, national security and business expansion;
and in traditions, so that we preserve and cherish our cultural heritages. For if we don’t, who will?

This Summit should be able to demonstrate that the humanities and social sciences can meet both the needs of tomorrow and of centuries to come, but, as well, that these disciplines are an excellent investment in long-term skills of creative thinking and communication. The serendipitous aspect of great thinking is something which, in an age driven by key performance indicators, is hard to maintain. Yet I am reminded of Sydney University’s Giovanni Carsaniga, who wisely warns in a recent Campus Review article that ‘[Education] needs more than targeted information: it thrives on cross-fertilisation between seemingly unrelated inputs’.

One way of enhancing that cross-fertilization is through productive alliances between academe and industry. The humanities and social sciences have been slow to enter into such alliances in education and research. I believe we have suffered because of our slowness. There were—and there remain—important parts of our activity which must remain ‘away from the world’. Public-good research is clearly one area where commercial alliances may be entered into at one’s peril. But there are, I suggest, many more areas which wither—and currently are withering—because they are hiding from their marketplace. The virtues of the humanities or social sciences find immediate advertisement through such alliances with business, governmental or cultural institutions. Indeed, all three of this Summit’s case studies show the strong benefits of strategic alliances within and beyond the walls of academe. And the Summit itself, through its speaker list, demonstrates another alliance which has always been strong in the humanities and social sciences: between the staff and the students of our universities.

I maintain that we can go some steps beyond this Summit’s program to bolder initiatives, in the realms of innovation and globalisation. One disappointment for me about last year’s Innovation Summit in Melbourne was its scant concern for the very process of ‘bringing in the new’ in innovation. Innovation is surely about bringing new things into our society, and into business. Without a people educated and willing to embark upon the innovative new journey, science’s new inventions and business’s new products are meaningless. It is only when invention and innovation work hand in hand that a society, and its business, prospers. Australia needs, even for these highly utilitarian reasons, strong and well-resourced human and social sciences. To make innovation work we must have strong ethics, deep understandings of different cultures, and good skills of personal communication, to name but three prerequisites. A recent American survey shows that cultural and social incompatibilities were the equal first reason for the collapse of strategic alliances between corporations. It was to a lack of understanding of the value systems, social customs, industrial history and even languages of partners that some thirty-five percent of alliance failures could be attributed. If Australia has been slow to innovate, perhaps the solution lies in paying sustained attention to the personal and social preparedness for innovation as much as to resetting incentives for investment in R&D or putting faith in a few, high-risk strategies of scientific or technological concentration.

Globalisation, too, has a vital human and social dimension, which we ignore at our peril. Think of Italy last weekend: $200 million spent in security arrangements; police in their tens of thousands; four thousand journalists seeking good copy from a couple of hundred thousand demonstrators; one martyr. And all of this fuss was over a meeting of eight world leaders. Surely there is a social revolution occurring here.

Globalisation poses many issues to which we do not have ready answers. They are burning social questions, which science and technology mostly cannot answer: questions of governance, security, social stratification and of the environment. These questions prompt answers in the broader realm of sustainability, not just of ecological sustainability, but of our human, socio-economic, cultural and institutional sustainabilities. These are vital quality-of-life and meaning-of-life issues for which we are currently ill prepared. If insufficiently well answered they may lead to serious civil unrest, as the threats of globalisation override its advantages in the public mind.

As readers of The Australian will know, I advocate a special Australian humanities and social sciences initiative over globalisation: to probe the many dilemmas of individual and societal responses to globalisation, and the rapidly changing constructs of human identity. The Canadians might be our model here. Last November they gave $100 million to their Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a five-year ‘new economy’ initiative. With this investment Canada sought to ensure that it remains a leader in the knowledge stakes. I suggest that we need a globalisation initiative as the focus of a large-scale exercise in rejuvenation of Australian humanities and social sciences research and teaching. Why? So that we better prepare our citizens for the many opportunities and challenges of the new global order. The anger and alienation felt by so many, particularly the young, at the spread of neo-liberal ideologies of deregulation, privatisation and free trade should be alerting our humanists and social scientists that here, again, is a social revolution already in progress. Is Australia to meet the global challenge, or play for the highest stakes, of denial?

I am hoping that this Summit will be able to keep its focus on how we in the humanities and social sciences move forward. For once, the public, politicians and press—although unfortunately only a handful from business—are keen to hear what we have to say. They are not interested in the financial intricacies of our bizarre semi-deregulated industry. They are not interested in how to maximize this or that research scheme. But they are demonstrating a level of goodwill than I have not seen in many years. They know that weak humanities and social sciences are bad for Australia—for Australian society, for Australia’s international reputation as a knowledge nation, and for Australian business. I hope this Summit can show how a strong humanities and social sciences sector can contribute to a strong Australia and so elicit stronger investment from government, business and community.

More particularly, we need now to be identifying a few key research priorities of truly national import. These might be priorities of particular significance to the humanities and social sciences, or broader themes involving collaboration with the sciences. Indeed, we need to be establishing these priorities right now. By next Monday the Academies are requested to submit their lists for the priorities-determined section of the Australian Research Council’s budget in 2002. This Summit is ideally timed to inform that process, which was only initiated at a round table convened by the Chief Scientist and the Chair of the ARC last Monday week. The priorities might reflect areas where there is an especial level of Australian expertise, or areas in which Australian research is unique. The Australian environment must, I think, be one front runner of priority from all scholarly sectors. I have already suggested the growing importance of a theme of Australian responses to globalisation. But what can we say about cultural areas, indigenous priorities, or well-being initiatives?

The recent past bears witness to the advantages of united advocacy. The humanities and social sciences have not regularly come together to push their common causes, and have suffered in consequence. This Summit has built its own temporary alliance, but should this continue? Is a body like the Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies, I wonder, something of a model whereby humanities, social sciences and arts organizations might more cogently pursue their common long-term interests? This is an issue that I would like to return to in tomorrow’s final session.

To conclude, here is some house-keeping. All Summit participants have received a booklet of position papers. These have been written under very tight time constraint, and I have to thank the workshop lead speakers and case-study chairs for writing these papers so rapidly. If you have read the relevant position paper before the appropriate session, you will gain most from the session. Summit speakers will talk to their papers, and their issues, and then a respondent will lead the discussion and debate. These papers will be revised after the Summit, and published by DETYA.

As Canberra Friday afternoons often disintegrate into an unseemly rush for taxis to the airport, I take this opportunity to thank those who have been most supportive of the Summit:

our host, the National Museum’s director, Dawn Casey;
our benefactor, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, in particular Steve Sedgwick, Mike Gallagher, Carol Nicoll and Evan Arthur;
our organisers, the Centre for Continuing Education at ANU, and especially John Dash, Beth Stoodley and Dick Johnson;
the Summit’s steering committee, consisting of Bettina Cass, Stuart Cunningham, Ashley Goldsworthy, Susan Holland, Leon Mann, Iain McCalman, Stuart Macintyre and Tom Stannage;
our keynote speaker, Charles Leadbeater;
our dinner speaker, Australia Council chair, Terry Cutler;
our many chairs, session speakers, position paper writers and scribes;
and, finally, the Summit’s sponsors: the Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences, the Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, and the Business Higher Education Round Table.