The Social Sciences in Australia

An Unrequited Instrumentalism

Bibliographic Data

ID4481373
AuthorsStuart Macintyre (corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume95
Issue1
Pages5-19
Publication date2008-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513608095797
OpenAlexW2033982949
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

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

Epistemology · Institutionalisation · Instrumentalism · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Higher Education Governance and Development · Law · Public Administration

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