Some encouragement towards 'relevance' and constructive engagement is not a bad thing, especially while university access is still biased towards privilege.
However the wording of the new requirement does not necessarily suggest a 'constructive' engagement
Along with the perceived problem of academic work that has little to say to the world or doesn't try to apply or communicate itself, the more serious problem is that of engagement that is not constructive because it is politicised, that is academic work that is one step on from the half-hidden agendas of funded think-tanks. Prestigious universities per se have most potential for pulling the wool over people's eyes in this way; their research is most readily accepted without question.
Grant authorities, from their pivotal position, are also not immune to political agenda manipulation. And most of their research funding goes to prestigious universities.
Why would any of this be left to chance?
It seems to me that these new requirements neither necessarily encourage productive engagement, along the lines you are suggesting here, nor preclude the politicised use of research funding.
Linda Kaucher
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From: A forum for critical and radical geographers on behalf of Simon P J Batterbury
Sent: Sat 9/26/2009 3:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: In defence of 'pointless' university studies
Then again- Britain has the luxury of thousands of geographers working in a relatively secure discipline. Elsewhere this not the case. Relevance matters , although it may be broadly construed, and some courses and Departments are manifestly not prospering or surviving.
As I was ambling up the MerrI Creek in Melbourne, I saw flood information (ie which way to run if the creek floods, to save life and property). Who though of those? Geographer Gilbert White. He also said
"What shall it profit a profession if it fabricates a nifty discipline about the world while that world and the human spirit are degraded?" (Gilbert White, geographer, 1972: 104, borrowing from the Biblical passage, Mark 8: 36).
And more recently from 2 human geographers
The overriding motivations of our project are to improve practice and social transformation rather than the 'production of knowledge'. Or in the words of Italian Marxist, Antonio Conti, 'the goal of research is not the interpretation of the world, but the organization of transformation'. (Autonomous Geographies Project 2008 - Jenny Pickerill and Paul Chatterton et al )
And on getting a balance
Dianne Rocheleau (2008: 717), The publication of Piers Blaikie's Political Ecology of Soil Erosion (1985) nearly a quarter century ago, at a time when she was working in East Africa as a researcher for ICRAF, "meant that I need not (and perhaps should not) choose between academic, practical and policy roles... "
Dr. Simon Batterbury, Director,
Office for Environmental Programs,
University of Melbourne, 3010 VIC, Australia.
+61 (03) 8344 5073 Fax: +61 (03) 8344 5650
http://www.environment.unimelb.edu.au <http://www.environment.unimelb.edu.au/>
&
Associate Professor, Dept. of Resource Management and Geography,
(rm L2.33, 221 Bouverie St)
+61 (0)3 8344 9319 Fax +61 (0)3 9349 4218
simonpjb@ unimelb.edu.au http://www.simonbatterbury.net <http://www.simonbatterbury.net/>
Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm
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