Social scientists face restraints

By Arief Budiman

SALATIGA, Central Java (JP): Addressing a national congress recently President Soeharto criticized Indonesian social scientists saying "it is rare to find analysis which helps clarify and settle a problem. There is a lot of hasty analysis and even speculation with no strong base and not supported by facts".

The President was speaking at the seventh congress of the Indonesian Association for the Development of Social Sciences (HIPIIS) in Medan, North Sumatra. He was referring to the recent spate of unrest in the country and called for increased professionalism of social scientists.

It is difficult to deny that the standard of many of our social scientists are quite low. But of course there is a substantial number of highly qualified professional social scientists.

Anthropologist Prof. Dr. Koentjaraningrat is one of them. The professor has published 22 books which have been translated into several foreign languages. Prof. Koentjaraningrat received an award at the congress for his efforts.

Previous award recipients include Selo Soemardjan, the late Soedjatmoko and Sartono Kartodirdjo. These highly qualified social scientists have made substantial contributions to the development of Indonesian social science. Some junior social scientists, mostly graduates from respected universities abroad, can also be included in the list.

But, in general, the President is correct in saying that the standard of many social scientists are quite low, including those who have "big names". There are several indicators of this:

1. Many social scientists in Indonesia do not write scientific articles. Many well-known social scientists have become popular after their views were published on the front page of newspapers.

But when we look at their scientific publications, it is obvious many of them have had few of their works published. Their Ph.D dissertations are usually the last scientific work they have ever written.

2. We can't blame the social scientist entirely for a lack of articles in scientific journals. The problem is few scientific journals exist in Indonesia. Several years ago there was a respected social science journal Prisma which was published by LP3ES in Jakarta. English language versions of selected articles were also published from time to time.

The journal still exists now, but it is not as prestigious as before and it doesn't come out regularly. Maybe it is time HIPIIS started to publish a highly qualified and respected social science journal. Foreign scientific journals are also very difficult to gain access to. Hence, many Indonesian social scientists are not involved in the global scientific debate.

3. The lack of national and international journals is perhaps the reason why many Indonesian social scientists are not interested in different theories. This is one of their weaknesses. When they do conduct research, they basically collect the data and try to make sense of it. Indonesian social scientists rarely use highly theoretical discourse.

Fortunately, some young people have become interested in theoretical discourse following the establishment of the Driyarkara School of Philosophy and the opening of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Indonesia. Prior to this, only Gadjah Mada University had a department of philosophy.

In this way, Indonesian social scientists are basically only known in the international community for their specific empirical knowledge on their country, not because of their contribution to existing theories.

4. Parallel to this, research conducted in Indonesia is mainly empirical research aimed toward the government or other institutions for "policy implementation". Pure theoretical research is very rare, and difficult to find funding.

A few years ago, Ignas Kleden and his friends established the Society for Political and Economic Studies (SPES) funded by the German foundation Fridriech Naumann Stiftung, with the purpose of stimulating discourse on theories and funding "non-policy implementation" research.

However, when leadership of the foundation changed they stopped giving funds to SPES because this kind of research was considered non-strategic and not very useful. Efforts to get funding from some Indonesian institutions have not been successful. A lot of empirical research funded by the government and business enterprises have also been kept secret from the public. There have been few open public discussions, and little accumulation of knowledge in the academic society.

5. In the Indonesian academic society, there is no strong tradition of public or peer criticism. It is very rare that the work of a social scientist is criticized strongly and publicly by his or her colleague.

This is the current situation of Indonesian social scientists. It is still not easy to become a good social scientist in Indonesia due to many obstacles. These include:

1. There are many problems in conducting research in Indonesia, especially when it deals with sensitive political issues. It would be difficult to research the opinion of public servants being "called on" to vote for Golkar, if it was not done by social scientists from the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

When they announced recently that many public servants would prefer to have more freedom to join the political parties of their own choice, LIPI was strongly criticized by the government. LIPI were also criticized after they announced their findings on the not-so-positive attitude of their respondents toward the military "dual function" concept. The courage of this LIPI team in announcing their research findings is evidence that Indonesia still has many professional social scientists.

Research findings should be made public and prepare scientists for constructive criticism.

2. Science needs criticism. The more criticism a scientific work receives, the more chance it has of being improved. Therefore, in scientific endeavor, open dialog is essential.

But in the present political situation it is difficult to conduct open discussion, especially when it concerns sensitive political and religious issues, even within the university campus. There are cases of social scientists being admonished by the university chancellor for expressing their critical views on political issues or being blacklisted by the state security forces. Thus, many social scientists prefer to play it safe by not expressing or publishing their views at the expense of social science.

The poor quality of Indonesian social scientists is a result of the political condition of this country. This explains why "non-political" sciences such as engineering, medical science, management, language and others are much easier. These are branches of science which can be discussed openly, and have the capacity to improve the quality of social scientists.

The writer is a sociologist and researcher based in Salatiga.