Public Intellectuals and Useful Knowledge

Susan E. Clarke
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado, USA

Citation: Clarke, Susan E. “Public Intellectuals and Useful Knowledge.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Prof. Dasberg's heartfelt comments strike a chord for all of us in academic careers, especially since our students often ask us similar questions: is this scholarly work of value beyond the canons and community of scholars?  What can we do to make our knowledge more useful?  These questions, and Prof. Dasberg's concerns, direct our attention to the historical role of public intellectuals as well as to more direct questions about knowledge and research as instruments for social change. There will be no definitive answers but it is important that we continue to ask these questions and that our students and colleagues continue to challenge our answers.

For social scientists, the role of the public intellectual is a deliberate choice and not a particularly fashionable one at this point in time. The traditional view of the public intellectual is someone who speaks to the issues of the day; who seeks a broader audience than the academic community, and therefore speaks and writes in accessible language; who often asks unanswerable questions and acts from a moral rather than a careerist impulse. Historically, public intellectuals often spoke from marginalized positions within the scholarly community as well as in civil society. In the American context, the public intellectuals of the 30s and 40s were often Jewish, white males. Increasingly these roles today are taken up by African American, Asian, and Latino/a men and women, often speaking from a university setting but still from socially marginalized positions. Their engagement stems from their American experiences rather than from the European context shaping earlier generations. Although today's public intellectuals often speak from privileged positions, their dilemma is similar: how to simultaneously speak and act as an insider/outsider and in ways that make a difference.

This public intellectual role can be traced back at least to the Dreyfus case of 1898.  Globalization and new technologies mean the audiences for public intellectuals now are different and likely to be larger, the means of reaching these audiences is more specialized, and the salient issues commonly reach beyond national borders. In speaking to issues of the day, public intellectuals confront the reality that the contemporary experience of globalization occurs alongside the worsening of everyday life for many people around the world.  Yet, linking everyday despair to globalization forces is a problematic enterprise. Politicians often embrace this proposition, but too often as a means of avoiding responsibility for problems that they feel ill-equipped or unmotivated to address. Advocates and researchers attempting to demonstrate this linkage face the irony that politicians and policymakers are often unwilling to act until there is “enough research” to reduce uncertainties about whether and how globalization brings about the too-apparent ills and inequalities of concern. As Prof. Dasberg notes, this perverse research agenda supports researchers but does not necessarily contribute to reducing inequality and promoting justice.

This is not a clarion call for less research, of course, but for more attention to the social utility of information. Some of the frustration about the prospects for using research to bring about social change may stem from a misidentification of the problem of research and social change. As Prof. Dasberg points out, injustice is not a matter of insufficient knowledge: there are few instances where more research and better knowledge has such direct effects on policy problems. But the transmission of research into useable policy information is a problematic weak link. There are many points in decision processes where information may be partial and incomplete, where the availability of alternatives is poorly understood or articulated, where the appraisal of alternative policy options is woefully inadequate, or where the termination of ineffective policies is long overdue. Researchers now face not only the responsibility of the public role they choose to play, but also the need to ameliorate weak decision processes.

It is possible, for example, that we have enough research on children to act now.  More research could improve our understanding. Disaggregating available research into sub-national units is more likely to generate specific action alternatives. But surely we know enough now to act. If the issue is not whether there is enough research but how to communicate these understandings to politicians and policymakers, it is useful to look to other “guerilla movements” to understand what works. The difficulties lie in understanding the fluid political conditions that make some “guerilla tactics” more likely to succeed than others. As Dr. Moor notes, the most effective tactics indeed draw on shame and guilt as mobilizing and transformative factors. 

This is hazardous terrain. The environmental movement offers some of the most compelling examples of the difficulties of communicating “truth to power.”  Although environmentalists share a concern with human dignity, well-being, and life-chances, they also deal with a pluralistic science community that lends itself to the politicization of science. Science and research become politicized endeavors when they are used to narrow policymakers' choices to the option preferred by advocates; a policy perspective, in contrast, uses research to expand the choices available to policymakers (Pielke 2002). To reduce some of the hazards of producing socially useful knowledge and communicating this knowledge effectively to policymakers, journals such as Children, Youth and Environments need to highlight and disseminate useful knowledge and effective implementation strategies. By linking academic research and community practice, Children, Youth, and Environments and other such conduits can provide leadership and ideas that are sensitive to social responsibilities, the real information needs of decision makers, and the potential common grounds for action.

Reference

Pielke, Jr., R.A. (2002). "Policy, Politics and Perspective."  Nature 416, 368.

Susan E. Clarke is a professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, USA.  Her research interests include local economic development, cross-border regionalism, democratic inclusion processes, and policy development. In addition to numerous articles, her publications include The Work of Cities (with Gary Gaile: Minnesota, 1998). At the University of Colorado, she is the Director of the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS), a campus-wide interdisciplinary program. She is currently the Editor of Urban Affairs Review with Gary L. Gaile and Michael Pagano.