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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">For those who can't get access, or just wedded to the desktop...</FONT>
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<P><I><FONT FACE="Arial">News Limited Dec 15, 2004</FONT></I>
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<P><FONT FACE="Arial">Populist ridicule of humanities research projects may backfire, writes Graeme Turner</FONT>
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<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">Graeme Turner is president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.</FONT>
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