I mean “academic” subjects (“disciplines”? - give me a break) like “Women’s Studies” or “Cultural Studies”. Catsix is the inspiration for this thread, for her steadfast defence of common sense in a “rape” thread in the Pit.
A little story to illustrate what I’m getting at. When I returned to university in my early 30s to study Linguistics, one of the modules I took was Language and Society. I did an essay on “sexist language” , in which I essentially toed the party line (mine was a renowned left wing establishment) and got a good grade. Just regurgitated a few impoverishered studies about how men always interrupt women - while being canny enough to mention that interruption was not a unitary phenomenon, and might indeed be used on occasion (i.e. by women) to challenge domination, rather than to assert it (you see, be being critical, you get more chance of an A) - and used phrases such as “the semantic derogation of women”, which does, you must admit, have a ring to it.
Suitably encouraged by how easy this was compared to syntax and phonology, in the following year I enrolled in the Language and Gender course, sadly only a half module. I cheerfully rehashed my earlier essay and got another A.
Orwell speaks of the tendency for prefabricated phrases (“semantic derogation of women” fits the bill perfectly) to replace argument and discussion. Popper also warns against group thinking, writing that he was “an almost orthodox defender of unorthodoxy”. I ended up writing a thesis that I wanted to call “Linguistics Imperialism: The Abolition of Thinking”, which ended up with the more prosaic title “A Critique of Critical Discourse Analysis”.
I look at the work being done in medical scholls and science departments, and then consider the guff that is being produced by some of the social sciences, and I wonder when the madness will stop. Or more pertinently, when the madness will be recognised for what it is.
I guess I don’t get your gripe. What does your annoyance with a class or two really tell us about area studies, much less social science disciplines?
It’s hard for me to see where you are coming from. You attended a “renowned leftist” institution (what does that mean)? Which cowed you so much you wrote stuff you didn’t believe? And then you signed up for more classes because you found them easy? Well, how did that equip you really discuss, at any great depth, what’s happening in the social sciences. Let’s start really basic: on what basis are you extending your experience across the incredibly wide spectrum of social sciences?
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly think there is a place for healthy debate about the direction that certain scholarly areas are going. Some of that debate is going on within those selfsame disciplines. This broad assertion that “medical schools and science classes have it right, and the others don’t” doesn’t strike me as a good basis for that kind of serious consideration of the issues.
I wonder if inventing a subject (by attaching “Studies” to it) isn’t a flawed process in the first place, as the inventors tend to found these subjects on their own prejudices. By lacking the tradition that buttresses older disciplines from the worst excesses of ephemeral fervour, aren’t these subjects especially susceptible to group thinking and biased research agenda, leading to impoverished outcomes?
To the contrary, I thought that newer fields were distinguished by their lack of consensus, their lack of clear, discpline-wide standard of methods, determination of truth, and so on. While there might be pockets of “groupthink” whose flaws might not be as readily corrected (because not everyone in the field agrees how to evaluate ideas and theories, making it easier for contrarian findings may be dismissed), it’s also true that there is plenty of room for opposing thinkers and alternate theories. Other groupthinkers, if you will.
I think it’s wrong to think that any new field must by its very development be narrow-minded. Org Behavior comes to mind–what a rich field that’s turned out to be, using everything from games theory to neural networks to the garbage can theory to a bunch of other cool stuff.
Maybe if you were a little more specific–surely you can’t be talking about all social studies fields, (despite your OP)? Which field do you think exhibits the most monolithic thinking?
Any reasonably bright student can ferret out what any average professor wants and churn out a high-scoring paper on it, be the subject US History or marxist mulitcultural queer cinema studies. It is also possible to search deeply, use critical thinking, and produce a meaningful and original paper that illuminates some small corner of the world in just about any subject. Many students choose the former, and coast through college with decent grades without learning much of anything. In the end they are only shortchanging themselves (which is one of the reasons why I oppose grades in university, but that is another debate) by declaring the whole thing bullshit and not challenging themselves to write a well-researched and coherent paper on why they disagree with the mainstream view or taking a thread and running with it until they find something they do believe in.
In short, there is no way for a class to shortchange a student. There are only ways for a student to shortchange themselves.
Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit out there. And there are a lot more average profs than excellent ones. But there are also a lot of things that are worth being studied. It took years of fighting to get American literature to be approved as a “serious” field of study in American universities. If someone thinks something is worth studing, and takes steps towards creating an open, critical, peer-reviewed cirriculum of it, who are we to tell them not to?
I think that most of the relatively new “studies” have not developed a sufficiently broad base of research to be of much use to undergraduates.
There are oppurtunities to extend knowledge in specialized fields in graduate studies, but findings in these areas have been so limited by their relative youth that classes aimed toward undergraduates will of necessity be basically teaching a party line, due to insufficient material.
I suspect it’s much of the same in graduate school as well, due to the peer reinforcement of commonly held, if not rigorously proven, doctrines. But at least in theory there is as much possibility of independent study as there are in other “soft” disciplines, and we await the maturity of these studies to establish a sufficient canon to achieve a balance.
I came to the same conclusion a while ago about politics, so it’s nice to know Orwell agrees with me. I understand what you’re saying but I’m not sure about your complaint, particularly since you’re taking your personal experience and projecting it to such a large degree.
Well, to a large extent I’m just tossing it out for discussion based on my experience, reading and understanding.
Others seem to have noted what Cranky missed, viz. that I’m not dissing all the social sciences. My spleen is being vented especially on those with “Studies” in the title. I’m most familiar with Women’s Studies and to a lesser extent Cultural Studies, but never took degrees in those subjects as such. I would appreciate comments from people who have done so (plus comments from anyone else, it goes without saying).
To me, much of what passes for teaching and learning is actually propaganda.
That’s a …very weird criterion. I’m taking a class called Translation Studies. It’s mostly about techniques we use to translate well. I’m not sure what relevancy it has to the point you are attempting to express.
Yes, but that’s not an undergraduate degree, and what’s more it’s a real subject. Just tagging on “Studies” because that’s the flavour of the month (last decade or so, actually).
Hmm…I dunno. One of the worst evaluations I ever got was on a paper evaluated by a science professor, and it remains in my opinion the best bit of expository writing I’ve ever done. I was supposed to be talking about the challenges that organic farmers face (the professor taught a class on organic farming, emphasis on soil chemistry, pest lifecycles, economics, and agrarian history), and I wrote it in the form of a travelogue, instead of in the form of a “Thesis-political/social/economic-conclusion” McEssay that any college student can churn out in their sleep. I spent a couple hours with a writing tutor going over the essay, refining it and soliciting feedback, between drafts. It was freakin’ good.
And because the professor was a scientist and not a social sciences professor, he completely missed the fact that the nontraditional format directly addressed the assigned topic. He applauded the format in his evaluation but said that I neglected to answer the question asked of me. Had I done a boring-format essay, he would’ve been able to tick off the three supporting points, the thesis in the first sentence, and the conclusion paragraph, and I woulda gotten a great eval.
In that case, I really wish I’d had an X Studies professor grading me, one who’s familiar with language play, one who reads essays in the New Yorker, who understands that a thesis may appear anywhere in a piece of expository writing, who appreciates the rhetorical power of analogy. Having a no-nonsense scientist professor ended up hurting me.
(He was a great professor in many ways; my point is that science professors have their weaknesses, too.)
I think that one of the important questions we(as society) have to ask is what we expect the youth to get out of college or even a particular course or major.
{Admittedly, the notion that society expects naive eighteen-year-olds to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives before they have enough life experience to know themselves has become a hobby horse of mine. I think that is off-topic and will try not to focus too hard on it.}
Many young people use college as a way to learn and grow, party, become quasi-independent while developing some of the skills that will enable them to find a “real” job. Maybe someone wishes to take a course, or even major in “_____ Studies” but expects to find themselves doing some job that requires a bachelor’s degree but not really a particular set of courses. Or if someone dreams of being a lawyer and knows that law schools accept students with a wide variety of backgrounds.
I don’t know. But I’m having a hard time seeing why it matters what gets taught in an “X Studies” course for people not dreaming of being experts in “X Studies”. The person dreaming of being an expert (with a PhD) in “X Studies” will still have to work hard to collect enough evidence to develop their thesis, etc. They may find themselves less employable than a more standard degree. But in the long run, if “X studies” is based on the predjudices of “Professor X” and is impoverished because of it, it will only be a fad, and ten years from now, no one will remember “X studies” – everyone will be talking about “Y Studies” led by Professor Y.
At least, that is my instinct- but I come from kind of a weird background to answer this question.
roger thornhill:My spleen is being vented especially on those with “Studies” in the title.
?? There are literally thousands of academic institutions, organizations, departments, programs, research journals and courses in the US alone concerning disciplines such as
– American Studies
– Communication Studies
– Development Studies
– East Asian Studies
– South/Southeast Asian Studies
– Media Studies
– Science Studies
– African Studies
– Latin American Studies
– Middle Eastern Studies
– Third World Studies
– Jewish Studies
to name only some. Which of these are you lumping together with “Women’s Studies” and “Cultural Studies” as appropriate objects for your vented spleen, as opposed to what you condescend to call “real subjects”?
I think you need some more specific criteria for determining when a subject with “Studies” in its name is a bad thing and when it isn’t.
(By the way, how seriously are we supposed to take this alleged concern for academic integrity on the part of somebody who openly confesses to writing what he considers bullshit just to get a better grade—and then to recycling his bullshit essay for the same purpose in a different course? You’re a fine one to gripe about academic dishonesty and propaganda, you are.)
No, I didn’t miss anything. But I am pushing you to be more specific. You’re using a broad brush. You have been as vague as “some of the social sciences” and then suggested any field with ‘studies’ on the end.
According to my understanding of disciplinary development, the concept of area studies started in the 1970s, not in the last decade as you’re claiming. I also would like to know which field or fields developed in a way that could (even cynically) be called “Flavor of the month.”
It seems to me that you have an interesting idea that could be debated. But you’re all over the map. Once again, could you be more specific? Despite your fear that you are “all alone,” this type of thing is seriously debated among scholars. But if we’re going to do that, I think we need to be a little less vague than “fields with studies tacked on the end.” Look at kimstu’s list.
I minored in Peace and Conflict Studies, which is basically about international relations. We studied everything from water use disputes between the US and Mexico and in Central Asia to historical and modern guerrila warfare to human rights treaties and other light international law (if that can be said to exist). It is the course that got me passionate about foreign relations.
Roger, you’re mixing apples and oranges (in “Fruit Studies”? ;)) here.
The term “studies” is very applicable to a cross-disciplinary examination of a given area of interest. For example, “Middle Eastern Studies” can bring together the sociology, cultural anthropology, history, philosophy, art, and music of the region ranging from North Africa to Iran and the Central Asian republics to Turkey (I was fishing for a proper descriptor besides “Middle East” for that, and there isn’t really one – Arabic-speaking omits important parts of the region; Islamic extends beyond the described culture area). Duke has courses in “Queer Studies” (that’s what they call it!) that include the psychology, sociology, art and literature of the gay “subculture” (disgusting term, but it’s sociologically correct).
What you’re disturbed with is the hijacking of this usage to describe a cross-disciplinary course or program, in order to promote a particular sort of activism. Barb was repelled by the one-sidedness of the Women’s Studies class she took – it was blatant advocacy rather than being an objective exploration of the roles and contributions of women to society.
Abuse of a term never precludes accurate use of it. I think that applies here as well.