Recently, in the Chronicle of Higher Education {I sometimes refer to it as the “chronic of high ed” on Twitter, cue rimshot }, there have been articles on the dearth of jobs for academics in the humanities. “Thomas Benton’s” “The Big Lie “ was countered with James Mullholland’s “Neither a Trap nor a Lie“.
I won’t weigh in on the discussion about the state of academic careers in the humanities, as the above articles and comments have done that for me. My focus is on the structural issues of this situation. Moreover, I think many should heed what is going on here, as it’s a case of too many applicants searching for too-few jobs. Unless the job losses from the Big Recession are replaced, I’m afraid many middle-class wage earners will be facing the same situation, resulting in employees being at a disadvantage in the power dynamics of the labour market.
The humanities offer a rich corpus of knowledge that can be used to address issues of the day. I recall heading to lectures by Jacques Derrida on forgiveness at the UC-Irvine Critical Theory Institute, as well as talks by scholars such as W. J. T. Mitchell on images and Anne Friedberg on the metaphor of the window. Universities see value in offering courses in the humanities, but in the business of higher education, the model results in an oversupply of labour. In a gross simplification, humanities {and social science} graduate students are taken on to teach discussion sections as cheap labour that results in more doctorate degree holders than the market will bear. Even if graduate students are warned of the job market, nobody expect’s the Spanish inquisition. Universities seeking to maximize efficiencies not only draw upon graduate students, but also well-qualified adjuncts at discounted wages. The humanities, in my opinion, often suffer from a public relations problem. In a sense, they can be the ivoriest of the ivory tower, often communicating in a dense linguistic code that causes lay audiences to scratch their heads. Phallogocentrism? Huh? While I’m not advocating that the humanities need to be applied in nature, I feel there is a need for their staking of a claim for relevance.
Is there a need for a rethinking and a restructuring of academe? Are departments creating silos of knowledge based on fields? Should curricula be reconceptualized?
I’m sure these questions will resonate with many and strike fear into the hearts of others. Hence, these questions are ones that can be readily addressed by organizational sociology. Academe is one of the last feudal systems. This doesn’t mean that all universities are terrible places, but that context is everything, as they are structures with power relations and resource allocations that are highly idiosyncratic. Moreover, they are businesses with cost and profit centres. While Bourdieuean {huh? what?} analysis that incorporates::
- Field. Social space where individuals and groups vie for dominance
- Habitus. The social norms and rules affecting behaviours
- Capital. Economic, symbolic, knowledge, and relational resources used by individuals and groups.
could illuminate institutional dynamics, I’m afraid it will also illuminate how difficult change will be without a radical discontinuity, e.g., financial exigency. There also is the question of values, as well as what is valued.
I’m actually in favour of a life of the mind and I see the value in humanistic inquiry to society and in an everyday sense. I feel how the humanities are currently situated within universities is often problematic, in that there’s a social reproduction of humanistic fields that, in my opinion, limit how the humanities can impact society. I hope for more cross-disciplinary modes of inquiry that span how fields are currently defined. While some may balk at this, I’m also for the humanities {and social sciences} as being more popularized, but which institutions would take this on.
Twitterversion:: Thoughts on the life of the mind & the role of the humanities. #ThickCulture @Prof_K
Song:: Ministry-“So What”
Comments 1
Jason Radford — March 20, 2010
I am an ex-philosopher turned sociology grad student. Having gone through extensive training in the humanities and kept in touch with classmates, it saddens me to see how ill-focused and untimely the humanities training has become. It is just as much the traditionalism of the discipline as an institutional field of power as it is the evolution of the broader intellectual, academic, and economic arena. What most universities, and particularly the humanities, have traditionally ignored is the fact that most students don't pursue the self-perpetuating faculty route called graduate school. While most universities historically justified this stance as a general education for the elite and then the broader public, this legitimacy argument has evolved in tandem with the incorporation of "trade schools" including journalism, business, and communication.
What may be the most ironic (or cynical) historical turn is that most culture is created by capital. I am inclined to believe that most of the images created in our society are constructed by companies trying to sell us things. Most writing is technical, internal, and/or fact-based. The technologies of creativity are commodified and technicalized by marketing, communication, design, and journalism majors. While there has been a push in business and journalism schools as well as design and communication departments to incorporate knowledge produced in the humanities, there is not a similar trend to technicalize or apply the humanities to practical/applied questions.
Today, the humanities still interpret themselves as providing the cultural education component of the general curriculum and maintained their disengagement from the technicalities of students' job-oriented realities. There has been a significant amount of push back from students, alumni, administrators, and some professors particularly due to the lack of a programmatic focus on new technologies and the "business side" of the creative economy (i.e. internet media for journalism and creative writing and building a market and brand for one's art). These changes are coming, however incrementally, but they are not sufficient to address the sheer number of students in the humanities who want jobs that enable them to practice their arete. In addition, it does not address the intellectual isolationism of the humanities curriculum.
I believe there could be a great utility for the techniques of abstract art, for example, in advertising and design to create visceral sensations in public spaces, homes, and advertising. There is a quiet demand for applied ethics and philosophy in business, medicine, and journalism (in self-help columns, agenda setting, and op-ed pieces). Critical theory and its siblings could be incredibly useful in political organizations, media, and even marketing and management. There is a potential to commodify and technicalize the humanities that not only provides useful job/career skills, but also deepens the cultural, discursive, and technical economy through the reflexive creativity championed in the humanities.
I think the humanities as a discipline and as an institution of production would benefit from technicalization and a reintegration with commercialization. Given that existing forces have already created bottom-line economic approaches called technical schools, moving the humanities towards these fields would enable them to economize without their raison d'etre being eviscerated by and reducible to money. The result would mitigate the current oversupply of labor by making humanities graduates more flexible within existing labor markets and begin to build out an economic, academic, and cultural environment where the humanities are more appreciated and rewarded.