The Social Sciences in Australia: an Unrequited Instrumentalism

Abstract

Australian universities expanded rapidly in the period after the Second World War, assisted by the national government and with a clear understanding that they would serve national purposes. Social scientists sought to participate in the enhanced opportunities for research by pressing their relevance to the nation-building project. At the same time they sought academic recognition as research disciplines by stressing the objective and authoritative character of their knowledge. This article explores the way these strategies were pursued in Australia and the United States, and suggests their consequences. The institutionalization of the social sciences in the university is contrasted with the oppositional social science practised in the labour movement's independent working-class education in the early part of the 20th century, and it is argued that the expectations created by state support of research in the social sciences -and the policies imposed to serve them -are ill founded.

Thirty Years of Thesis Eleven: a Survey of the Record and Questions for the Future

“…But social science (if not philosophy) has been rather fully engaged in practical policy research since the mid-20th century at least. This is as true of Australia (Macintyre, 2008) as the US. Universities and research institutes are more in danger of losing their autonomy to demands to produce practical results than of drifting into a never-never land of mere interpretation.…”