Helga Nowotny: Humanities in European Research

Helga Nowotny : Humanities in European Research
In March 2000, the European heads of state decided in Lisbon to make Europe the most
attractive research area worldwide . Yet how could the humanities be positioned in this oftquoted
European Research Area? Helga Nowotny, member of the Scientific Council of the
future European Research Council (ERC), explores the opportunities which an ERC might
hold for the humanities .
The claim that the researcher's perspective is by
definition bottom-up rests on the assumption of a
kind of wide-spread academic territorialism . Many
years ago Tony Becher described academic tribes
and their territories as a landscape in which each
tribe seeks to defend vigorously against outside intruders
the territory it managed to occupy . Those
belonging to the tribal clans of the natural sciences
usually inhabit extremely crowded spaces . Apart
from driving up the property prices in these urban
areas, this also makes for fierce competition which
becomes the norm.
The social sciences and particularly the humanities,
by contrast, inhabit a landscape that is still
overwhelmingly rural in character. In order to avoid
living too close to their neighbors scholars can easily
migrate and settle in an adjacent valley . It is therefore
easy to avoid competition and to cut down
communication. The rural lifestyle nourishes a different
kind of individualism compared to the urban
life style . It can easily become complacent and
it is clear that the system is paying a high price for it
- that of fragmentation and slow rates of growth .
Becher was interested in exploring the topography
of the academic landscape which led him to a
horizontal mapping of what he observed . My interest
is primarily a vertical one, exploring the relationship
between those who toil in the academic landscape
and those who supply the necessary funds to
ensure its proper cultivation. In recent times, expectations
on both sides have changed rather dramatically .
The state, once seen as the primary source of
research funding, has leveled its expenditure for research .
The pressure for higher yields, now called
performance, has increased . Researchers had to
learn that they are accountable to society and its
representatives in numerable ways . While this may
render daily life and work more difficult, it must
also be stated very clearly that the opportunities for
research have vastly been expanded .
Helga Nowotny is Chair of
the European Research
Advisory Board (EURAB)
of the European Comission .
She is also a member of
the IWM's Academic Advisory
Board . She is Professor
em . of ETH Zurich
in Social Studies of Science
and former Director
of its Collegium Helveticum .
Her recent publications
include : Uners~lttliche
Neugier . Innovation in
einer fragilen Zukunft,
2005 ; The Public Nature of
Science Under Assault :
Politics, Markets, Science
and the Law (co-author),
2005 ; Cultures of Technology
and the Quest for Innovation
(editor), 2005 ; Re-
Thinking Science . Knowledge
and the Public in an
Age of Uncertainty (coauthor),
2001 .

Humanities to be left behind?
The overall expansion of the research enterprise is mainly due to the success of science and
technology in fuelling economic growth, the increase of labor productivity and the ongoing
process of globalization . The humanities have viewed this expansion with a mixture of alarm
and the confused recognition that they must join if they are not to be left behind . What they
often ignore is the fact that they are deeply implicated and involved in the growth of the
culture industries which have acquired a global and globalizing flavor a long time ago .
Closer to home is another kind of political and geographical expansion, that of the European
Union. The vision that this vast territory could be transformed into a truly European Research
Area, an open space inviting the productive migration of concepts and of those who carry
them, of culture and its artifacts, is radical in the sense that it challenges the still prevailing
dominance of the nation state and its monopoly over scientific careers . ERA must include the
humanities as well .
Therefore, the establishment of an ERC with the explicit purpose to fund basic research of the
highest scientific quality at EU level, provided it is done on a truly competitive basis, sends a
strong signal to all those who wish to use the opportunities offered by going beyond the limits
of the national science systems . Its significance goes far beyond offering additional funds, it
provides the opportunity of moving into a vastly expanded European space . For the
humanities this space is also a conceptual one, perhaps freed for the first time from the
strictures and inevitable blinders imposed by the nation state in whose shadow the humanities
grew up in the last quarter of the 19th century .
Unless this point is clearly grasped by the humanities, an ERC will mean little to them . The
Europeanization process of research is then likely to bypass the humanities who will continue
to cling to their niches . An ERC offers the construction and use of the latest state-of-the-art
highways and bridges that would connect their remote valleys, allowing them to set up
regional trading fairs, intervalley festivals and new kinds of cooperatives for the production of
culture in the widest sense .
Autonomy, Solitude and Freedom
In line with the territorial instinct of the average researcher, his or her efforts are aimed at
defending and/or expanding the kind and degree of autonomy that they have succeeded in
carving out for themselves . While this is certainly also the case for the natural sciences, the
humanities lack the legitimacy to claim a special free space for doing basic research . For the
natural sciences such a space is recognized as indispensable, whereas the humanities' claim is
fuzzy . It can only be defended under the general argument of human creativity which, in
order to flourish, must be free from interference and directedness from outside.
Nor will it be politically helpful if nostalgic notions of solitude and freedom creep into the
public discourse . The choice to work largely as a research unit of one is seen from the outside
as just that - a legitimate choice, rooted in the traditional mode of scholars in the humanities
working alone in the process of production of books .
If the bottom-up perspective amounts to little more than the desire to be left alone, it is a lost
argument from the beginning . In all fairness, however, it must be recognized that the
individual researcher and scholar in the humanities must be granted his or her autonomous
space and the opportunities to work productively in line with the standards set by their
respective scholarly community .

Mobility and networks are fine, but it is often overlooked that they heavily depend on the
stability of nodes and institutions that enable the flux of ideas and the migration of concepts in
the first place .
Blurred Communication
Let us now contrast the researcher's bottom-up perspective with the alleged top-down
perspective of policy makers and the various funders of research. They see themselves as
enlightened representatives of wider society and as the true guardians of the public nature of
science . Of course they are aware that scientific content cannot be prescribed . But they insist
on deliverables and policy-relevance, seeing it as their duty to shape the research agenda and
to set research priorities .
Over the recent years, the vertical line of communication between bottom-up and top-down
has become blurred . Under the new rules of "governance" the task is no longer perceived as
being one of "steering," but of "enabling" and of "capacity building." For the natural sciences
the flow of knowledge and interaction between universities and industry has become
imperative under slogans like "wealth creation." The emphasis is now on networks and on a
much stronger inclusion of "users" into the process of knowledge production.
In a parallel move the wider involvement of "society" has been called forth and efforts to
strengthen it have been adopted . Democratic arguments have fused with outrightly utilitarian
ones, leading to the rhetoric of an enlarged circle or networks of "stakeholders" whose
presence, symbolic or real, and whose support and engagement are believed to be
indispensable for the creation of the much vaunted knowledge society . For policy makers
and research funders this is accompanied by placing new emphasis on "problem-solving," on
"wealth creation" and on "knowledge for growth" research activities .
Problems versus Expertise
As Marilyn Strathern has recently pointed out for her own discipline, anthropology, these
developments have led to surprising epistemic shifts that should lead us to pause - and worry .
Some research councils have come to see the world full of problems that require
interdisciplinary solutions . Strathern sees a new kind of orthodoxy in the making in relation to
what constitutes a research question, and along with this a reformulation as to why disciplines
can be justified : they offer expertise .
Disciplines may quickly disappear when they are re-moulded as being nothing but "sources of
expertise ." Not only can they be weighed against other sources of expert advice, but the
assumption that expertise is recognizable has its costs . Disciplines become judged by how
well their expertise matches the problems . How well they match their own research question
then becomes easily sidestepped, if other forms of expertise are seen as already
in place .
The pattern that emerges when looking through the perspective of research funders today
consists of their claims to speak in the interest and from the expectations of society which has
moved much closer into the territory of science that has become much less immune from
participatory demands . Increasingly, the humanities are expected to provide their expertise in
order to contribute to the "solution" of societal problems .
This differs from the claims made on the part of social scientists in the 70s to incorporate
topics of societal relevance into their research . Not only have the links to social movements

practically disappeared, they have been replaced by the expectation, if not the obligation, to
cultivate links to many different societal "stakeholders" and become accountable to them. The
vacuum that has arisen from the relative retreat of the state from its former role has been
quickly filled by research councils' and other funding agencies' self-set mandate to be the
guardians and spokespersons for "society ."
Research Question at Stake?
These shifts have a number of serious repercussions not only for the bottom, but also for the
future relationships between top and bottom . If what is at stake here - and at risk of becoming
eliminated - are the research questions articulated in a bottomup mode, we need to inquire
where they come from and what sustains them in the first place .
For the humanities, I see three broad sources giving rise to their research questions . The first
obviously is the disciplinary matrix in which research questions emerge, are selected for and
cultivated as the core of disciplinary identity . While fruitful encounters with other disciplines
can occur, interdisciplinarity will more often than not take the direction of establishing itself
as a new discipline .
Another important source are research questions as they have been defined by a few
outstanding individuals, towering intellectual figures, whose function has been to throw a
kind of search light into an otherwise under-explored research landscape . Their names often
become synonymous with a set of research questions that loosely may form a research
agenda, indicating topics and themes, theoretical approaches and how to go about
methodologically . The books they have written function as cultural icons for what is referred
to as Theory . It is taken to be programmatic, indicating a general direction. And while its
pursuit is largely done in the tradition of the researcher working alone, the direction is
ecognized as that of a collectivity, of those who follow in the footsteps of the towering
figures .
A third source of research questions may emerge from researchers who operate
in innovative spaces . Institutes of advanced study are a case in point . These innovative spaces
seek to provide a congenial interdisciplinary atmosphere for exploring new intellectual
avenues . They become breeding grounds for new ideas . Through unexpected encounters with
other disciplines and research traditions, new research questions may arise which in some
cases may lead to the constitution of new research objects, in themselves the outcome of
different disciplinary approaches and perspectives .
Radically Different Perspectives
Undoubtedly, other sources for research questions can be identified. The point of my list of
three is simply to illustrate that bottom-up and top-down views can be radically different. The
real challenge lies in how to establish communicative links between the two perspectives .
What holds for the natural sciences is equally true for the SSH : basic research and the pursuit
of research questions without knowing where they will lead and if/when they will yield
something of practical utility is indispensable to sustain the research system in the medium
and long-term. But unless at different levels and in different modes, both formally and
informally, communicative links are open and mutually sustained the research efforts of the
humanities risk becoming atrophied or irrelevant.
Finally, enter the European Research Council, a new entity at EU level . Concentrating here
exclusively on the opportunities it holds for the humanities, it must be clearly stated at the

outset what it cannot and will not provide : funding for a vast number of research projects in
the humanities in Europe . It cannot and will not substitute for funding at national level .
Rather, as a strategic instrument for promoting what is now officially called frontier research
at EU level, it has to uphold and implement both a bottom-up approach aiming at scientific
excellence while at the same time selecting the best of the best on the basis of genuine
European competition. It is obvious that this will also put the national research councils who
now act as the guardians of national competition on a competitive basis against each other at
the EU level .
Avoiding a Double-trap
An ERC that invites the humanities to participate under its general rules of operation has to
avoid a double-trap : that of following blindly the bottom-up approach by assuming that it can
simply be transferred from national to EU level and that of following the inclination of the
top-down approach by attempting to prescribe thematic areas, however loosely defined .
Therefore, some new thinking is required and new avenues and criteria need to be set up . By
situating myself into the position of a researcher in the humanities anywhere in Europe while
respecting the two constraints that will have to be incorporated into the working mode of an
ERC - the quest for scientific excellence under the principle of European-wide competition
- I see five different possibilities .
First, it would be nice to follow and prolong the best traditions of funding the humanities . By
definition and tradition these are predominantly national . Yet I recognize that there must be a
difference . This could come by enlarging the scope, content and modes of working of what
may get funded . By deliberately transcending the previous mode of working, one could aim to
incorporate or confront other national traditions in the same area or study related, but with
differently posed research questions .
The aim would consist in letting the humanities find new ground in the conceptual category
which is established by thinking in European terms . And since Europe cannot be thought
independently from the rest of the world, a more global perspective might also make its entry .
Far from prescribing themes, including those of European identity or culture, the bottom-up
approach would prevail . But the criteria for entering the competition would be marked by the
highest standards that national funding of the humanities has achieved in the past, with the
explicit intention to prompt the humanities to move beyond .
Institutional Innovations
The second possibility would consist in privileging certain institutional innovations which in
the past have shown their ability to bring together researchers from different disciplines to
pursue innovative research paths . What comes to mind here are the institutes for advanced
study, but also other forms of active interchange with the arts or the creative industries .
Likewise, special competitive schemes at the national level could perhaps be extended to
the European level, if they can be shown to acquire more of a competitive edge in
doing so .
Thirdly, the question arises whether and how an ERC could become involved in the
production of more good Theory . I realize of course that none of the admired towering figures
would ever have put forth a grant proposal to such an entity as an ERC (and I refrain from
speculating whether it would have passed peer-review) . But this does not prevent me from
thinking about the future. Could we not set up together a number of highly selective

and truly excellent European Ph.D . programs in the humanities that would span whatever the
best European scholarship has to offer?
Genuine and Fair Competition
When discussing the fourth option, I come back to the beginning - to the picture of the
humanities living in a rural academic landscape where avoiding your unworthy colleagues is
easily possible by moving to the next empty valley . I would like to close these escape routes
and to set up a genuine and fair competition amongst ourselves . You dislike your colleague's
work and think it is worthless? Let's see how far your own approach will get you . Maybe
each of you has limitations and maybe some of the differences will be resolved, since you are
really asking different sets of questions . Maybe we will never reach consensus, but at least we
all are obliged to see where we agree to disagree - and why . The overall advances for the
humanities, I venture to say, would be enormous .
My fifth proposal starts from the observation that much of what we do in the humanities is
parasitic. Hardly any of us is engaged in the primary production of literature, art and culture,
but many are heavy secondary producers - writing commentaries on commentaries,
interpretations of interpretations, compiling ever more sources coming after the original
source, continuously feeding the enterprise of criticism of the contemporary cultural
production. All of this is a recognized, valuable and legitimate activity. Also, we continue to
acknowledge our intellectual debt to Shakespeare, Leonardo or Mozart, so nothing is wrong
with that . The difference arises when the artists are our contemporaries and, with few
exceptions, do not enjoy the kind of tenured existence in our university department as
we do .
My aim here is not to promote redistributive justice . But could we not think of ways to set up
new collaborative forms between the primary and the secondary producers of culture? While
the natural sciences have taken the lead in promoting novel interactions and explorations
between science and the arts, we have done nothing in the humanities to approach the arts
from our side . But artists are usually credited with special sensibilities in anticipating and
reacting to broader changes in society . Rather than waiting for their canonization, could we
not engage with them in exploring different kinds of interpretations of the fascinating,
repulsive, encouraging and bewildering changes that occur around us in this rapidly
globalizing world?
By now, I have reached the point where at last I have de-constructed myself . I am not a
researcher from the humanities . I have merely, for the sake of the argument and for provoking
debate, pretended to be one . In fact, I am a social scientist who has spent the major part of her
career observing and analyzing developments in the natural sciences and their mutual
interaction with society . Yet I feel a deep sympathy for the humanities . I wish them to become
part of an ERC and to share the vision of a Europe in the making to whose sense of identity
and role in the world they have so much to contribute .
This article was written before Helga Nowotny was recently appointed a founding member of the
Scientific Council of the ERC . The Scientific Council will be an independent body whose role is to
determine the ERC's scientific strategy and to ensure that its operations are conducted according to
the requirements of scientific excellence .