Social scientists face restraints

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.