Sri Lanka needs development oriented research

A text of a speech delivered by Prof. Wiswa Warnapala - Minister of Higher Education at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute on October 17, organised by National Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (NCAS).

This is a special kind of seminar devoted to the study of development issues in the context of a rapidly changing society, and it, therefore, is of special significance to a country engaged in formulating policy for the purpose of achieving Millennium Development Goals.

I do not propose to focus attention on the issues discussed in the research papers; instead I would like to devote my attention to two main principles on which research needs to be done in the Universities as the traditional role of the University is to generate knowledge for the betterment of a society.

One principle is the contextuality and the second principle, which needs to guide research in any discipline, is the relevance, which, in my view, could be described as social and development relevance. I need to explain this fact largely because of the reason that functions of higher education need to be discussed in relation to social change.

Research, scholarship,training

We need to bear in mind that higher education includes all kinds of educational institutions of a very wide range and there is an integral connection between the functions of institutions of higher education and the stage of social development in the country. In differentiated societies of today, the various expectations of institutions of higher education include research, scholarship, the training of scientists and scholars, training for other professions and vocations, and offering direct service to society as critics or innovator. In my view, and I presume that it is the view of all academics who are present here today, the chief function of Universities should be that of innovator and instrumentality of social change. The major function of a University could be categorised under three headings: (a) the development of the individual (b) the promotion and advancement of culture, and (c) the maintenance and further development of technology. It is in this context that one can examine the importance and relevance of research, which, today, assumes importance as Universities have emerged as main centres of research; all disciplines, irrespective of their relevance to society, encompass the research profile of the modern University.

By relevance, most people mean ‘social relevance’. It is this aspect which needs to be addressed as there are rising expectations that the universities would be able to do something to tackle the issues of poverty; this means that the university, whatever the setting in which it operates, can do a great deal to improve society, but what it can do by way of direct action to change the conditions of the rural poor, is limited. The University’s involvement in the matter is certain to result in right social and economic policies. In other words, by making this kind of indirect intervention, the modern University can serve directly the interests of some segments of society such as agriculture, industry and all activities related to development and change-university can serve such interests by undertaking the relevant research in the field.

The relevance and utility of research has been a topic of interest in the last several years, and the question is whether the research done by the universities have been made available to the multiple and diverse users, for instance the policy-makers. The quantum of research depends on the availability of funds; for instance, the USA, UK and Japan spend nearly 2 percent of the GDP on research whereas India and China spend nearly one percent on R and D. The developing countries, specially one like that of Sri Lanka, lags behind purely because of the paucity of resources for research. The research undertaken in many countries in our part of the world depend on the interests of academics who have been trained in the developed countries, and they, on many an occasion, undertake research which has no immediate relevance to the issues facing the country. In other words, a research culture adopted to the local needs did not emerge, and this was entirely due to the intellectual dependence on Western models research, and this was very much related to disciplines which did not take into consideration the contemporary realities of a given society.

Since I am a social scientist, I would like to focus my attention on certain aspects of social science research in Sri Lanka. In the initial phase of our University development, the research studies of the period focused on traditional disciplines, and it, to a great extent, fell in line with the thinking of the colonial intellectual elite of the period. It was during this period that research in Sri Lanka focused on Oriental Languages and Oriental Culture but this trend underwent a change in the post-independence period where more attention was paid to research in social sciences. But emphasis and approach remained in the old colonial mould and it, as Ralph Pieris rightly analysed, remained within the ambit of Western-oriented theories and methods in social sciences. The over-dependence on Western theories and methods of research and the display of open servility to such theories led to the allegation that a form of academic colonialism was interfering with the indigenous research enterprise in the country. This kind of research, which came to be strengthened with the establishment of NGOs - one important example is the ICES which has been investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee, and the hidden agenda of this organization, which claims that it stands for research, came to the open with Dr. Mani’s case; this was a person, through this organisation, was trying to interfere with our national sovereignty. My purpose in mentioning this was to highlight the fact that such research oriented NGOs successfully prevent the University sector from getting funds from legitimate sources. This is the latest kind of academic colonialism which needs to be defeated in the name of independent scholarship in this country. I refer to the assistance through NGOs, as I explained above in respect of the ICES which has now appointed a new Board of Directors to cover up its misdeeds and achieve intellectual respectability, could be only at the risk of distorting the normal process of scholarship in a given society.

Economics and History dominated

In the field of social sciences in Sri Lanka, including other countries in the developing world, Economics was the subject which came to be established in the Universities, followed by Sociology and Political Science. They, as you know, dominated the intellectual life of the Universities; for instance, the Department of Economics, both at Peradeniya and Colombo, dominated the intellectual activities of the period and a great deal of research was done. History, though it was not large as Economics too played a key role through a galaxy of reputed scholars. The impact of Sociology, as Ralph Pieris succinctly explained, had an impact on scope and method of social science research. It encouraged both micro and macro research on developmental issues, which in the end, helped the makers of public policy. In my view, the Disintegrating Village, edited by N. K. Sarkar and S. J. Tambiah, was such a seminal publication which, despite the years, still remain a classic piece of research. Ceylon Economist, in its early years, displayed a similar interest. Alfred Marshall (1824-1924) once wrote that the ‘economist should know philosophy, should be able, that is, ‘to take a bird’s eye of thought, to know how one science is related to another’. Our early economists were well aware of this fact. For Alfred Marshall, Kant was the ‘only man I ever worshipped’. His view was that economist must be in touch with the political and commercial movements of his time.

Harold Laski

Therefore research in this field, as Alfred Marshall stated needs to be based on the dictum that ‘economic doctrine is not a body of concrete truths, but an engine for discovery of concrete truths’. The study of economics treats really matters that enable us to understand some aspects of the individual in society. For Harold Laski, there was a sense of purpose embodied in the Modern State, and he saw the State as an organisation for enabling the mass of men to realize the social good on the largest possible scale. The State, therefore, does not set out to encompass the whole range of human activity. There is a difference between the State and Society, and this distinction is fundamental to the understanding of the existence of the Modern State. The performance of the State is significant to each of us and it is why it needs to be studied. According to Max Weber, State cannot be defined in terms of its ends; ultimately the State can be defined in terms of the specific means, namely the use of physical force.

Trotsky, for instance, said that every State is founded on force.

According to Max Weber, State is a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, and some researchers in Sri Lanka, in the course of their partisan-oriented research, seek to challenge the role of the State.

Relevance to public policy

In doing research on the role of the State, this needs to be kept in mind as the relevant research needs to be prescriptive - oriented, by which I mean that whatever research, which we undertake, needs to have some relevance to the formulation of public policy. One can say that such research needs to be linked to the process of public policy making. Yet another requirement that University research needs to be innovative in character, by which we mean that research must result in innovations in the respective field. In Germany, innovative research is given extra-funding by the respective Lander and Higher Education is the responsibility of the respective State. It is only on the basis of innovations that the required policy initiatives could be made by the Government engaged in development. In my view, multi-disciplinary problem-oriented research needs to be encouraged and it is through such a strategy that the research profile of a University could be enhanced. With such strategies, the modern University could serve the society directly; applied and pure research is always highly specialized. What we need is action-oriented research that can grapple with social problems than the usual academic research based on theoretical models or research which falls within conventional designs. Most faculty members tend to resist research activities based on social relevance, and the reason is, I am told, that established scholarly disciplines could not be fragmented into different parts.

On the basis of these comments, I now need to draw your attention to the need for a Social Science Policy, through which the Government, of course with the active participation of the academic community, could identify the immediately relevant priority-areas in social science research. The lack of such a policy initiative resulted in all social scientists specializing on the ethnic question and conflict resolution, which, in my view, cannot be treated as a separate discipline. In this country, degrees are awarded for this subject, the intellectual dimension of which is very limited. Such courses have been introduced on the basis of their personal agendas, and by such ad hoc decisions, the University Senates have given in to academics, who are active NGO Wallahs in this country. It is unfortunate that this country has produced a set of academics who research according to the agendas of the NGOs and it this which resulted in a kind of intellectual retardation among the academic community. Social Theory, as G. D. H. Cole described, covers anything that forms part of the effective framework of a society, and evidently societies begin to change and this transformation needs to be examined. All institutions within a society experience this change, and therefore a theory is necessary to study and examine this process of transformation. The main problem is how to achieve social good through social institutions. In the last century, social science evolved into a necessary element in development and this gave the social scientist a dominant position in the area of development decision-making. Yogesh Atal has given expression to this point of view; and the social scientists have assumed the role of adviser and consultant on public policy

Objectivity important

The critical social scientist is essentially concerned with both social analysis and interpretation of changing social phenomena and it is here the question of objectivity become important. Gunner Myrdal, in his work titled-’Objectivity in Social Research’- stated that-’this implicit belief in the existence of a body of scientific knowledge acquired indpendently of all valuations. I soon found to be naive empiricism. Facts do not organize themselves into concepts and theories just by being looked at; indeed, except within the framework of concepts and theories, there are no scientific facts but only chaos. There is an inescapable a prior element in all scientific work. Questions must be asked before answers can be given. The questions are all expressions of our interest in the world; they are at bottom valuations’. What Myrdal was trying to say was that the social sciences need to search for objective truth. He, speaking further on this matter; stated that - even if one begins with views distorted opportunistically on a particular problem, the pursuit of social research itself will gradually correct these views. Facts kick, as I sometimes say. In that sense, social science has demonstrated power of self-healing’. He was critical of the new terminology in social science, and the American academics were the enthusiastic inventors of terminology. In the Political and Administrative Development, edited by Ralph Baribanti and others, one can see a plethora of new terminology; one such reference was tonic polity, anatomic and isotonic politics. Fred Riggs, who was a Public Administration theorist, coined such terminology, which, according to Myrdal ‘impaired the ability to understand each other’.

False perceptions of reality

The great tradition in social science was to express reasoning as clearly as succinctly as possible, and any attempt to close it with elaborate and strange terminology often distorts intellectual discourse. The criticism is often made that social scientists are biased and his view was systematic biases are inevitable. While referring to South Asia, Myrdal said that ‘I have found that all principal concepts, theories and models have been biased in colonial times’. The biases, though inevitable in the setting in which you undertake your research, often lead to false perceptions of reality and faulty policy considerations. In our part of the world, the social conditions play such a decisive role in the choice of fields for research, and the approaches we choose in research and theories we use, and the way in which we arrange the material lead to biases. This, however, should not discourage our social scientists from undertaking research on controversial social and economic issues. All these comments, which I made in respect of social sciences, whose intellectual enterprise is well established in this country, show that the country needs a well thought out social science policy. The function and the role of the social sciences need to be spelled out in order to understand its potential applicability to the social and economic problems of the country. There is no point in doing research in isolation; research needs to be done with relevance, it needs to be made meaningfully relevant to the process of change in the country. It needs to be linked to the process of policy-making. The relationship between the researcher and the policy-maker vitally influences the identification of the problem and the social scientist must learn to understand the policy-making process if he is to make an impact with his social sciences research. What is this relationship? In my view, the social scientist is essentially the provider of knowledge, and it is through this that relationship of science to policy could be promoted. It needs to be based on a shared system of values.

It needs to be emphasized that policy-making is also learning process; the policy-maker is expected to understand the issues. Therefore, any country needs social science manpower and Sri Lanka, through all Universities, can easily make use of this social science manpower for policy-making in various fields of governmental activity. By social sciences, we mean the complex of disciplines concerned with the behaviour of man in society and of social institutions.

These include Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, Demography, Social Anthropology and Social aspects of legal, historical and geographical studies.

Each of these disciplines have their specialized boundaries and each has its own intellectual and methodological approach. In these disciplines, Sri Lanka has produced an intellectual community whose services could be used for the purpose of formulating public policy. It is a common fact that the goals of research vary from country to country, depending on the socio-economic and political environment of each country and they, in many a country, constitutes highly qualified manpower.

The scientific study of politics still attracts students and academics but still there is much confusion about what a theory of politics is about; then there is both skepticism and controversy among those who work in the field, whether the subject matter can be treated in a scientific manner.

The important matter, over which I have been pondering for years, is whether it is right and proper to look for general laws of human behaviour in politics, specially when men are so diverse and the conditions in the States are so varied. Political Science, as a discipline, has improved the understanding of the world, and the man still remains a political animal. In Britain, the word ‘science’, specially in relation to both social science and political science, is used more restrictively.

The British Political Scientists formed themselves into British Political Studies Association while the American counterparts organised themselves into what it called the American Political Science Association. Bernard Crick, a distinguished British Political Scientist, writing on this distinction, stated that - ‘American science of politics has become a highly distinctive discipline, employing considerable resources in the development of methodologies which have only recently begun to be imitated on this side of the Atlantic.

The devotees of this science have, in fact, largely divorced the study of politics from the disciplines with which it has been traditionally associated-history, philosophy and law’. This, in short, means that there can be a science of political behaviour; today study of politics has been converted into a scientific discipline. I hope that my erstwhile colleagues in the field would give due recognition to this fact in the course of their research into politics.

In concluding, I need to say that political science research is fundamental to the understanding of the modern world, and what requires is valid and relevant research in the field so that a given country could improve the capacity and efficiency of its political institutions.

The institutional studies of the 19th century paved the way for behaviourial studies, which, through comparative studies, have become the major form of academic inquiry in political studies.

What did Max Weber say in his study of politics as a Vocation? What do we understand by politics? The concept is entirely broad and comprises any kind of independent leadership in action.

We wish to understand by politics only the leadership or the influencing of the leadership of a political association, hence today, of a State’.

Through institutions or behaviour, we still try to understand the role and function of the State. For Max Weber, Politics, just as economic pursuits, may be a man’s avocation or his vacation. One may engage in politics to manage power and influence the distribution of power.

Whatever research we undertake as social scientists or political scientists, it needs to be made on a commitment to society, and it is this commitment which deserves to be highlighted in the course of research of a scholar.