- This post is part of a debate on the relation between scholarship and policy held during the conference “The Constitution of Cultural Property: Interim Conclusions” in June 2011. It is reproduced on this blog for further discussion.
In his stance against policy recommendations Stefan Groth tries hard to end on a positive note: He sees a potential for the debate on cultural property to be placed within the greater context of societal problems and finds that this in itself is a form of recommendation. Apart from this, and he is making this very clear, there is no room for a “culture of recommendation”.
Do I disagree? Taking a holistic approach to the world will make it difficult for Stefan Groth or anyone else to come to a recommendation – I agree. Taking a holistic approach will make almost anything difficult, including a precise description. There are good reasons for being reductionist at times, and I myself find it difficult to walk on the fine line between being too holistic to say something meaningful and being too reductionist to not be trivial. From casual observation I feel, that economists are more often in danger of being too reductionist while anthropologists may be more at risk to be too holistic. But we clearly disagree on the scope for recommendations within social science.
Let me put in simple terms what Stefan Groth suggests: If we, society’s social scientists, make some finely tuned observations about how a conflict over something indefinable “cultural” in some equally nebulous social context such as an “indigenous society” or a “modern society” takes place, then policy maker’s time has come to make something out of it – or leave it be. In his perspective, I understand, policy recommendations are an accidental by-product of a scientific process aiming for something else. And ‘accidental’ he would understand rather in the sense of a casualty than a probabilistic event.
My point, by contrast, is that social scientists may aim for whatever they wish, e.g. understanding or enlightenment, but they must address in the end how societies’ institutions should or could be altered to bring about different outcomes. I am well aware that scientific progress is never quite as straightforward so as to end every paper with meaningful policy implications but we must grow with the challenge. I would like not merely to create a “culture of recommendation” but clearly demand that recommendations are understood as an ultimate test for the usefulness of a science project.
Most social science research I have come across starts out with some kind of a vague idea about a possible problem. Most academics are used to explain why their research is relevant to others and to society at large. Very few, me included, would expect large crowds to develop an interest in their issues, and are happy to find the few across the world who work on similar or related issues.
Putting the idea of the problem in words for a first time, as done by Regina Bendix in our research group on cultural property about six years ago, is equal to deciding on a lot of normative issues: On what do I place my attention? What is of interest to me? What do I accept as a problem? These are questions of enormous implications for the actual scientific process without being positive-analytical science.
I myself decide what is of importance to me. And I decide by pre-scientific standards, i.e. curiosity, reputation, conflict etc. The age-old debate over normative versus positive-analytic positions, so wonderfully summarized by Stefan Groth, appears of little importance in this respect: We are never non-normative however ‘Weberian’ we try to be in doing science. We are always caught by being and acting normatively within the science process. That is why it is so important to reflect one’s own normative viewpoint from the beginning to the end: From putting the research question into words to enunciating policy recommendations.
As we reflect our results on the basis of our prescientific and normative concepts we can grasp whether they can be accepted as universal results or whether they are merely based on our own normative predisposition. As social scientists, we try to build (or destroy) a stock of accepted knowledge in our field. To do so we all apply theories, build hypotheses, collect data, test hypotheses, falsify or accept them for the time being and suggest modifications to theories according to the data. But none of the theories are non-normative as they focus their attention already on certain issues: Political sciences frequently on power (Downs), justice (Rawls), economic theories on efficiency (welfare economics) etc. Across the disciplines we have many different forms of theories, we have different methods of collecting data and we may have different standards for falsifying hypotheses. The fine and elaborate description of what we find in the field is a necessary condition for scientific progress in all social science disciplines. But it is never a sufficient condition as the mere description does not test accepted knowledge against the empirical data.
I certainly agree with the notion of going only as far as an explicit model of assumptions, if-clauses and rigorous conclusions can take us. I also agree that we should be clear about our normative preconceptions which in earlier times might have been sufficiently labeled by “left” and “right” but which have grown much harder to make explicit nowadays. I also demand constant reflection of our conclusions and being open about the fact that our conclusions are contingent on ourselves and our normative preconceptions. But I clearly do not agree that we should accept diffuse concepts, nebulous arguments or, worst of all, no conclusions. For understanding as well as enlightening can only come from defining concepts clearly, arguing rigorously and drawing logical conclusions. In the process, we might still work on understanding theories; we might grow desperate over the lack of data or their inadequacy. We might grind our teeth to make sense of the data. But in the end we are called to add a piece of knowledge however small to our field which can be accepted as that by the community. If this piece of knowledge is added then we are called to check whether any conclusions must be drawn towards policy recommendations.
Let me exemplify my point: We could believe that many secrets of traditional knowledge will be never divulged for fear of being misappropriated. We could build a behavioral model addressing such choice problems and form respective hypotheses. Such a model would make use of already existing theoretical work. As economists we would be well advised to embed our analysis of the possibly individual choice into the social context within which the choice problem will be addressed. We would not only ask who keeps the secret, but also ask about the process of sharing knowledge, social sanctioning et cetera. If then we are successful in collecting field data or experimental data we can test our hypothesis, and reject or – for the time being – accept it. Let us say we accept our hypothesis that helpful traditional knowledge is kept a secret. From such research, we can draw conclusions: For example, we can provide a property right to such traditional knowledge to make it possible to share without having to fear its misappropriation. Of course, we should be careful about the policy implications as there might be adverse and non-intended effects which we did not address in our own research. But forming a clear policy recommendation enables our community to argue the point in question.
In my primitive functional model of society and science there is – even in its most elaborate form of principal agent models of politicians and social scientists – no place for hiding from or avoiding policy implications. There is plenty of space for debating the “best” regulatory choice or critical doubts about normative preconceptions, adequately collected field data, theories and disciplinary blindness to certain phenomena. But if you don’t even try to derive policy implications at any point of your own research, don’t be surprised if society feels that elaborate books whose authors do not feel it necessary to explain the social relevance of the issues investigated might not be worth the expense. Why, in a few words, should they pay for it?