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

710 Eric Trist
U. urban universities must be designed or reconstructed to assume their long neglected
role as society’s instrument for continuing self-criticism and social change. The
university has to become a laboratory but we are still thinking in terms of the 18th
and 19th centuries (Dr. M. Tarcher, University of California Medical Center, San
Francisco).
b. what the universities are searching for is avehicle similar to the agricultural experi-
mental stations established many years ago. Urban experimental stations could do
for the city what the agricultural stations have done for the rural areas (Dr. L. B.
Mayhew, Professor of Education, Stanford University).
Since then an Urban Institute has been established in Washington. A joint
Center for Urban Studies has been created by Harvard and M.I.T. In Detroit
business, labour and community interests have collaborated with the university
to bring into being a new Center for Urban Studies with an action- as well as a
research-orientation. Set up at Wayne State University, it will have the collaboration
of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, the
other two universities in the State’s university system.
25. If the social sciences in American universities are to become engaged with
problems of the society, critical changes will have to take place in the academic
value, system. The traditional values are ‘publish or perish’. Moreover, work is
preferably individual. These values have become dysfunctional. They encourage
the pursuit of competent, short-term, low-risk research as a career safeguard.
The physical sciences have got further ahead in overcoming these problems than
the social sciences.zO1
Types of independent research organization
26. Given the dysfunctional state of some types of university research, it is
scarcely surprising that independent research organizations of the non-profit
type have been increasing. Many of them came into existence to undertake
assignments of a specific character, but the orientation of others is to strategic
problems. Many of these engage in fundamental work. Their advantage is that
staff can engage whole-time in research and can commit themselves in teams
to long-range problems. The disadvantages are that, as they are contract or-
ganizations, worry about financial stability tends to make them client-dominated.
27. Some us independent institutes have been in existence for several decades,
are of substantial size and have attained international reputations. The oldest
are based on economics, such as the Brookings Institution in Washington and
the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York. Organizations such
as these provide independent analyses of economic and social trends. The Nation-
al Bureau of Economic Research pioneered national economic accounting.
In collaboration with private foundations, perceptive congressional leaders,
and key members of the Administration such bodies have reset in more pertinent
directions a great deal of effort in social research. An example is the leadership
recently given to the development of social accounting and social indicators.
28. Another innovation has been federal contract centres.* As when the us
* The official name is Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. They
may be associated with universities as well as with non-profit organizations. They
include a wide variety of ~ndertakings.3~