HUMANITIES: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. If so, it would be appropriate to single, out the humanities in this way. But is this something modern-day, academics do in the humanities? It is also useful. Or, as we have already indicated, one of the social benefits of the humani-, ties is critical thinking and innovation is often closely associated with, economic and social value. For instance, in, Europe over the last three or four centuries there has been a substan-, a close and sustained correlation between manslaughter and alcohol, Linguistics clearly influences the fields of psychology and sociology, through social linguistics and psycholinguistics. tion that came out of the revised question. We identified a hybrid form of this approach, where the curiosity-, based pursuit of knowledge can actually lead to significant instru-, mental benefits. How should we think about them, analyze them . value of the humanities in a social context: As2: I would just say that it is only in the humanities and social, sciences that we still produce a ‘critical discourse’. Another good example is environmental policy, which can, draw upon many different disciplines – history, archaeology, Several of our interview respondents from different regions noted the. influence policy makers in their decisions. It seems. constructed through language, literature, artefacts and performance. From the Renaissance down to a hundred years ago, the humanities… Humanities scholars should always be on the alert not to become, their own worst enemy. Critics complain that humanities disci-, plines are irrelevant to the workplace and try to promote STEM subjects, instead. Both these responses suggest that interest in the, humanities may lie just beneath the surface, even in an impatient inter-, locutor; they merely need ‘reminding’. the way research can. Again, this is a context in which humanities research is, Here are three interview responses that raise some of these issues, from, ME2: We have an ongoing and deep conflict with national history, as perceived by the state, the government, and the public opinion, negative view of the humanities, which is shared by the great, majority of the population: unless they espouse nationalist histo-, riography, scholars are seen as snobbish intellectuals or even trai-, tors, kowtowing to Western demands. . Cultural heritage and social value clearly overlap in important ways. Understanding and promoting national heritage may provide social. 2020 Elements of Business Skills Normal(Technical) Syllabus (749kb.pdf) We have learned, happily, that the answers may not be as troubling as they can seem. The potential impacts of this proposal have relevance for further interdisciplinary integration of Irish Research Council research categories. We, also wish to show how support for these values is weighted differently. Which. Cover Story. Humanities 101 Art Appreciation 1. It is important, and interesting for other reasons, to be aware. Perhaps this reflects something, we mentioned earlier, that the economic argument is viewed with, suspicion in academic circles. This problem can be understood using two terms we have found useful in thinking about evidence in the digital humanities: signal and concept. Also, in connection with visual studies, new media (there’s a New Media, Center here), visual studies, sound and music and culture, which, would also include literature, history and anthropology. 0004, 6th Floor Arts. Progress is made when one researcher takes on the conclu-, sions of another and subjects them to close and critical scrutiny. Literature opens up our, imaginative potential, as do the arts more generally, thus making us. and to proceed as if one is pursuing it for its intrinsic value. In effect, we were asking as much about the rhetoric of, justification as the justification itself. More importantly, this work will depend on humanistic methods. Here are two exceptions, both, NA11: I would remind [an impatient and potentially hostile audi-, ence] first, that the way they live their lives and the pleasure they, get from the world, some high percentage of that comes from their, education in the humanities. If innovation is to thrive, it must exploit the knowledge from the. ‘the iconosphere’). The different branches of philosophy of science –, physics, mathematics, and biology – can also, in principle, contribute. The same. PDF. This allowed us to distinguish what the respondents themselves thought, about the value of the humanities from the dominant discourse in their. . Another aspect of the social value of the humanities concerns deci-. This has implica-, tions for how this knowledge is created and shared with others. researchers pass on such virtues to their students. meaning and a sense of shared community with each other. to analyze encoded digital texts from select databases and digital archives. (Creating Subject) Philosophy: Man is the starting point of knowledge. In the UK, for instance, prominent academics and others spoke, out against what they saw as a naïvely nationalist curriculum being. With the growing dominance of English, governments of non-Anglophone countries have felt the need for a, language policy, and here the expertise of humanities resear, Here are some interview responses, mainly from Europe, that high-, Af1: The humanities are our heritage. As indicated above, after conducting 45 interviews, we added a compo-, nent to the questionnaire, which gauged respondents’ reactions to the, values we have been discussing in this chapter. He studied the biographies of German prisoners of war and ethnic, Germans, Soviet citizens interned in the post-war years in the, Af8: I’m working with questions related to memory that are a decon-, Understanding and negotiating other cultures, In addition to understanding, promoting or challenging one’s own, culture, humanities research can enable one to understand other, cultures. Such basic qualities of humans gain. Nobody can ignore this, even though most, people might rarely think about this in their daily life. applies to the responses regarding critical thinking and innovation. NA7: Neuroscience, for example, is at the cutting edge of contem-, porary understanding of the diseases that plague societies with, increasingly ageing populations. include a historical dimension or subdivision, whether political, legal, social or economic. typically approach many humanities disciplines in the same way. health, environment, or security). These categories are precisely, those to be discussed in Chapter 5 under the heading of ‘translation’. research, for example in publishing, media, tourism and, of course, © Poul Holm, Arne Jarrick and Dominic Scott 2015, the training humanities scholars provide to their students, who go. responses from five interviews with MONK users to examine the ways in which MONK has been most commonly philosophical research in bioethics. So it is, interesting that, with two exceptions, our group of interviewees steered. Meaning of Humanities 1.1. But our task is not to reconcile these tensions, but to articulate. tators such as Stanley Fish and Martha Nussbaum are also well-known, Several humanities disciplines contribute significantly to the social and, natural sciences. in the arena of cultural, heritage, governments can misuse the humanities in order to invent, Looking at our interview responses, it is interesting that few people, mentioned innovation unprompted. 1.2. approaches to the understanding of human experience and activity. into the job market across a wide range of professions. Y, of engineers and artists and humanists with everyone sharing each, This move, the intrinsic questioning purpose of the Humanities, was, summonsed both as a means of overthrowing dominant understand-, ings but also of advancing the Enlightenment belief that questioning, [sc. Whether or not this actually happens, and to what extent, is a question for later chapters. Here, we are merely, pointing out that humanists tend to think that, in principle, their disci-, One could illustrate the point in more specific terms by looking either, at individual disciplines, or at areas of policy (e.g. The digital version of The Humanities Matter! The idea of preserving or rediscovering a heritage raises a number of prob-, lems. approach applies as much to the natural sciences as to the humanities, it may actually be easier to apply in the case of the humanities, as the, subject matter is somewhat closer to people’s concerns. So justi-, ficatory appeals to economics are likely to divide humanities advo-, cates from one another. ME3: The humanities are essential for building strong institutions. What exactly were we seeing here? personal and spiritual wellbeing through the study of different texts. tive life as human beings, or to collective decision-making (e.g. Since then it has seen more development in a variety of forms – starting out as a pdf document, and then evolving into a static set of WordPress pages and finally now as a book written in bookdown and hosted at GitHub. These comments act as a salutary reminder when it comes to advocacy. It could be a, matter of individual citizens being equipped to contribute to public, debate, to vote, or make decisions in their place of work. A major concern for the Russian scien-, tific community has caused a politically motivated prosecution, of Arkhangelsk historian Mikhail Suprun, who the court found. | Department of History, University of Texas, Arlington. Introduction to Philosophy: Logic. : humanities research has a value in and of itself. Humanities was a fine accoutrement of the civilizing mission of a victorious imperial power throughout the last half of the twentieth century, but balances of world power impose new exigencies. What do we do with this kind of evidence? the ‘alternative academia’ of biography and non-fic-, Humanities research is about values, the meaning of exist-, In the rapid development of high meaning in Asia, the first, Overall we found that most respondents made some sort of refer-, Only a handful of respondents mentioned the economic value of the. Our Impact The curricula in these areas have no element of criticism, making it difficult for them to contribute to the formation of critical, citizenship. Also, the use of language is essential to business, so, both literature and linguistics are important. At any rate, those who advo-, cate innovation as a value typically see the humanities as promoting, innovation in a way that complements the sciences and cannot be, replaced by them. But on 21 February 2010, the two of us sat staring at a computer screen dumbfounded by a kind of text that for once we had no idea how to read. Even if these are interests, that most people pursue in their pastime and/or as concerned, citizens, they are important in their own right, and we therefore, need people who study these subjects professionally and in that. the learning of Chinese, but also a wider appreciation of Chinese culture. The essential problem of quantitative evidence, then, is in deciding how to bridge the perpetual distance between the signals we have and the concepts we want them to represent. above more closely, adding in some critical remarks where appropriate. xenophobia. This call for collaboration and partners aims to produce, promote and disseminate research from integrated networks in environmental change and society, environmental humanities, human geography, geographical information science (GIS), distributed computing, media, communications, networks, and information society. This knowledge nourishes the UK’s cultural existence, and inspires, creative behaviour, as well as innovative goods and services. Finally, we turn to a meta-issue arising from the interviews. Expressions of Interest racism, aggressive behaviour, addiction and fanaticism. Download full-text PDF. On the other hand, there is a relative alignment between attitudes on, thing many humanities scholars espouse, though more think that it is, something society expects of them. A number of prominent figures in the UK have founded, the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) partly to, promote an understanding of the broader value of universities (not just, sciences in South Africa makes a trenchant critique of those who appeal. qualitative data to explore the usage of MONK as a research tool: the author analyzes eighteen months of web analytics data This ought to have invited them to make use of whatever arguments, tunity to mention economic value. It is broad in its coverage, with questions on all periods from classical to contemporary and in many different fields: poetry, prose, philosophy, art, architecture, music, dance, theater, and film. for the love of them without any ulterior object’. The link between the humanities and social cohesion can be clearly, made for specific disciplines. In fact, this point was made, Many humanities disciplines study religious and spiritual traditions, through their histories and their texts. If scholars wish to find a single value to unite rather, than divide them, they should persist in articulating it. Not if the findings are, to be taken as the final word of wisdom. about justification, simply assuming that it is something worth doing? More specifically, the, humanities contribute crucially to particular kinds of industry. The humanities are the stories, the ideas, and the words that help us make sense of our lives and our world. We need to give some account of ourselves, to those who fund us and it would be wholly impractical to disengage, altogether (even if a few critics are beyond the pale). capacity are able to transmit knowledge to the rest of society. One point of difference was the level of generality, Some were broad-brush, others gave specific examples to illustrate the, value of humanities research. Intrinsic value may seem highly problematic as a way of defending the. 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