News
Op-ed: Knowledge Policies for the Humanities
11 February 2008
| Byline: | Dr Brian Opie (Executive Director, Te Whainga Aronui The Council for the Humanities) |
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| Source: | First published in the Dominion Post |
Major efforts have been made in New Zealand over the past 20 years, through policy development, funding and structural change, to bring into being a conception of New Zealand as a knowledge society achieving economic transformation through research-led innovation. To this point, a substantial part of the nation's research expertise, represented by the humanities, has been left out.
In a period dominated by the power and economic importance of the sciences and their technological applications, this omission may be hardly surprising. Research in the humanities does not directly lead to new kinds of energy efficient vehicles, more powerful weapons, new drugs or surgical techniques, and so on. And, since no-one knows what the economic value of humanities research is, it is assumed to have none.
For a country which has arguably been more innovative socially and culturally than technologically, this state of affairs should be astonishing. At the heart of social and cultural innovation lies the question which such innovation seeks to answer and which is the focus of the humanities, "What does it mean to be human"
Speaking at the inauguration of the New Zealand Academy of the Humanities, Professor Philip Esler, CE, Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), said that it has been recognised in the UK that most problems facing governments and requiring new knowledge need the involvement of the humanities. Because they are human problems, their solution requires detailed understanding of cultural, historical, moral, religious, political and social factors.
Professor Esler was visiting New Zealand at the invitation of Te Whainga Aronui, The Council for the Humanities, to assist the Council in its advocacy of a new approach to recognising the value of humanities research and its contribution to New Zealand.
The highest priority for the Council is the establishment of a research council, with a mandate and funding to assist the humanities to realise their potential for New Zealand. Professor Esler said that the AHRC is leading the introduction of new modes of research in the arts and humanities, based on the co-production of knowledge by researchers and users, resulting in major benefits to public policy, the quality of life, and the economy.
The task of the humanities, in a twenty-first century knowledge society, is multiple. As the inherited body of European traditional knowledge, they underpin Pakeha culture. As the study of human cultural knowledge in the many languages and localities in which that knowledge is created, they are global in scope. In the context of the Treaty partnership, they contribute to the evolution of a distinct New Zealand humanities, the humanities-aronui, as an outcome of the conversation between cultures through which national identity evolves.
Whatever the issues facing New Zealand - environmental, social, economic, political, international, and so on - policies and solutions will be incomplete until the humanities are able to participate fully as equal partners in their formation.
