Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

640 Pierre de Bie
The most recent and doubtless one of the most dynamic elements is this urge
to forecast and programme, which is growing in intensity and scope in many
fields : physical development (town and country planning) ; education (reforms
and plans); demography (recognition of problems raised either by an imbalance
in the demographic structures (age) or by the development or underdevelop-
ment of certain categories (the young, the gainfully employed, the aged) ;
political democracy (association of sociology, social psychology and political
science in the study and analysis of electoral opinion and behaviour, forecasting
of voting, studies of the activities of pressure groups and party dynamics);
social and economic democracy (study of standards of living, either by social
strata or by family types, family budgets and cost-of-living indexes) ; problems
of communication and information; research on fertility, peace, social tensions
and leisure. And the developing countries, so called because change there is
more rapid and striking, offer an optimum field for problem-focused research
within development programmes that are more all-embracing and ambitious
than elsewhere.
We are swept along by our systems of values: this era of mass communica-
tion and exchange is conducive to team-work, which in certain respects appears
to be a necessity. Work in isolation, disciplinary teams working on their own,
are things of the past: exchange is the order of the day. Nor are we far from
believing that, merely because it exists, exchange must be creative, and here we
border upon dogma. Surely, recognition of the merits and advantages of team-
work and multidisciplinary associations does not require us to go quite so far.
The development of multidisciplinary problem-focused research needs to be
considered within the context of the development of scientific research as a
whole.
It is important that the various scientific fields should not remain fenced off
one from another. If they have been so in the past, there are many trends and
demands peculiar to contemporary research and thought that argue for opening
them up so as to permit exchanges. The structures and requirements of educa-
tion have been an important factor in the specialization of the various branches
of knowledge. This has been encouraged by the tendency of schools, faculties
and university professorships to increase departmentalization and to create
scientific ‘alveoli’ whose independence was guaranteed by their being able to
rejoice in the name of a particular discipline, to have a terminology of their
own or specific tools of research. Intellectuals have been trained in autonomous
institutions having no openings upon the outside world. Revolving on individual
training, by the mastery of a discipline, the method of teaching did not lead to a
dialogue nor to multidisciplinary curiosity. But the requirements of action and
research have led to a dawning awareness of fellow researchers, to the crossing
of frontiers and the creation of new ‘constellations’ of knowledge centred upon
a particular theme, project or subject. New disciplines have been born: social
psychology, psychiatric sociology, socio-linguistics, ethno-linguistics, socio-
economics, psychological anthropology, behavioural sciences and the science
of information.
The structure of scientific knowledge can undoubtedly be considered, as