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

The organization and financing of research 779
and statistics and that it should set up a survey research centre. This expanded
institute would be outside both the universities and government but functionally
related to both. Its focus would be on broad problem-oriented work, program-
matic rather than simply project in character, generating fundamental work in
the universities but related to the most salient needs of the country. The diag-
nosis of these would be made by the representatives of the many interest groups
forming the council in interaction with the scientific staff. Friis felt that it was
too soon to go all the way in setting up a fully-fledged social science research
council aiming to produce a comprehensive policy for the social sciences. What
he did was to advocate that the next incremental step should be taken. This has
prevented dispersion without creating monopoly. A ‘leading part’ has been
provided which can have a cohering effect while leaving open other roads.
47. The most important features of the Irish development are that it has been
led by the forward-looking elite within the country and that members of this
elite belong to so many different sections of the society. Given this degree of
internal coherence and enterprise a natural engagement is likely to follow with
the type of social scientist interested in making a contribution to the problems
to be solved and believing that to do so wil further his own scientific under-
standing. It is also more possible under these conditions to ensure that foreign
research workers contribute to the growth of the country’s own social science
capability. One of the conditions which makes this most likely is when the type
of work undertaken is of a kind which cannot so easily be undertaken in the
home countries of the foreign specialists. Different countries with their different
traditions, social structures and current problems offer varying opportunities
for advancing knowledge in a number of critical areas of the social sciences.
Some of the smaller countries of the developing world offer unique opportunities
of this kind, as do the bridge countries such as Ireland. They have a front role
to play in the development of social science as well as being the recipients
of ‘help’.
Part three: Analysis and commentary
VI. BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITY
Changing the university context
I. In most countries the major disciplines of the social sciences have long since
separated themselves as domains of empirical inquiry from their hinterlands of
origin in philosophy, law or the humanities. Yet scientific separation has not
been paralleled by organizational separation as regards position in university
faculties. Persistence of inappropriate organizational contexts has kept them
away from real life, apart from each other, and, furthermore, diminished in
size. The newer trend is to set up broad schools of social science where all the
various disciplines are grouped together. This opens them up to each other and
to the outside world. It also enables them to grow more quickly to the size their
activities require. Their comparison groups now become’ the life sciences as a
whole, the physical sciences as a whole, or, indeed, the humanities as a whole.