humanities and social sciences essay

A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences

(8 reviews)

Dan Allosso, Bemidji State University

Salvatore F. Allosso

Publisher: Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project

Language: English

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Reviewed by Aaron Lefkovitz, Professor, City Colleges of Chicago on 5/4/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This writing manual the author wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis is very comprehensive. It reviews multiple aspects of how to get started with writing, such as analyzing texts and taking notes, discovering a topic, preparing for discussion, creating a thesis, ordering evidence, building an argument, coherent paragraphs, effective sentences, appropriate words, revising, and a revision checklist. Also, it has a valuable appendix and even references to such philosophers as Aristotle, so it is comprehensive in both a practical and theoretical sense.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content of A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences is accurate, error-free, and unbiased. This can be read in the “Analyzing Texts, Taking Notes” section, where the author begins with unbiased, clear questions, such as “what is a text?” The author then goes on to quote from such sources as author W.H. Auden (1907-1973), English-born poet and man of letters who achieved early fame in the 1930s as a hero of the left during the Great Depression.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does represent relevance and longevity, in the sense that its chapters can be carried down from one generation to another without much variation, for example read in the “Discovering a Topic, Preparing for Discussion” chapter. Here, the author mentions that texts students work with at the college level of their education are mostly givens, as far as English classics, History primary and secondary sources that are important to understand a particular event and period, as well as the ways texts were chosen out of multiple texts in that they fit together and lead to a particular place.

Clarity rating: 5

There is a great deal of clarity in A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as this text makes difficult subjects easier to understand for most students, simplifying such potentially daunting topics as “creating a thesis”. In this chapter, the author asks a variety of questions, including what interpretation is the author trying to persuade the reader is valid, what are the reasons for this interpretation, how is the interpretation different from other interpretations, and what part of the text will be examined and emphasized, as well as what are the author’s assumptions and potential objections. These clear questions provide a sense of clarity for the reader and add to the text’s strengths.

Consistency rating: 5

This text is very consistent. Each chapter starts with an interesting quote that frames the chapter narrative in a compelling way. Then, the chapters start with very first-hand/direct testimony given to readers who can read the paragraphs in a way that is meant to speak to them rather than use jargon and difficult to understand sentences. Chapters follow similar structures in terms of longer paragraphs followed by definitions and clear statements that function to provide additional information with regards to the content and theme of the chapter discussed.

Modularity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does have easily and readily divisible sections that are useful to the reader in that they break up the narrative and provide all sorts of additional information in an aesthetically pleasing way that can be assigned at different points within the course. There are not enormous blocks of text without subheadings and the text does not seem to be overly self-referential. Instead, there are all sorts of references and data from disparate sources that provide for an interesting and informative read.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

This text is full of effective, concise, and clear sentences, and is organized well in terms of the ways chapters are structured, starting with a quote that has a particular relevance to the chapter theme, including boxed reminders that set themselves apart from the general narrative, and including various bullet points and examples from literature.

Interface rating: 5

Everything that I have read in this textbook signals that it is indeed free of any kind of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Additionally, the text seems to be free of grammatical errors even as it does seem to contain some spacing issues but that could be on my computer only.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

As far as the text’s cultural relevance, it does seem to rely quite heavily on dead White European philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, to add to and accentuate a point, however it is not offensive in the sense that it does not go out of its way to denigrate a particular race, ethnicity, or other cultural background.

This text does a fine job of introducing students to basic essay writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences, its brevity functioning as a strength in that it keeps things fairly simple while adding philosophical and historical contexts to stay academic as well as relevant and consistent.

Reviewed by Megan Anderson, Assistant Professor, Limestone University on 12/7/21

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

As the title suggests, the content is sparse, but it appears accurate.

While there are various theories on the teaching of writing in terms of pedagogy, writing skills do not really change in the sense of timeliness. The examples used are relatively common references from history and literature.

Clarity rating: 4

Again the content is minimal, but the material is written in a clear, easy-to-understand manner that would work for even first-year students.

The text is consistent in terms of terminology and framework, and even tone.

Modularity rating: 3

Each chapter is very short so they are easily assignable. And while there are headers, each chapter appears as one long page. Splitting up the content into just a few pages and spacing out the material a little more would be preferential.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

While I believe that the text covers many of the essential elements of writing, the chapters appear out of order to me. I would have the chapter on "Effective Sentences" before the one on "Coherent Paragraphs". It is also problematic to me to have a chapter on "Ordering Evidence, Building an Argument" listed before the chapters on basic writing components.

Interface rating: 3

The interface could be easier to navigate. There is no next button to move to easily move from chapter to chapter and to access the nine chapters, you have to click on a plus sign linked to what is called "I. Main Body". It is not very difficult to figure out, but it is just not as thought out as it could be. Like having a Roman Numeral I without a Roman Numeral II is a little odd. It also cannot be saved as a printable PDF.

I do not see any grammatical issues.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

While I do not see any references that are culturally insensitive, there is also no real attempt at diversity or inclusion. Examples are really all from canonical texts, meaning white male authors, like Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Melville.

Reviewed by Anthony Accardi Jr, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 5/30/21

In the text "A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences" by Salvatore and Dan Allosso the authors present a simple, easy to follow guide for students to use when organizing, planning, researching, and writing an essay. In addition to essay structure, the authors also provide help with the “basics of effective writing”, including paragraph writing, sentence writing and avoiding common grammatical errors.

The concise format of the text requires that the author’s stay “right on point” which they do effectively and accurately.

By following each step outlined in this text, a student would undoubtedly improve his/her essay writing skills. Each topic the authors address is relevant to the development of a good essay. The strong emphasis put on the steps for writing an essay make this text a guide students will surely refer to again and again throughout their academic careers.

The conversational style used by the authors makes this text easy to read and understand. Most students find writing a nerve-racking ordeal. The authors deal with this by using straightforward language to explain concepts and reinforce the explanations with simple, easy to understand examples.

The authors have designed a textbook consistent from chapter to chapter and "as a whole". In general, each chapter begins with a quote from a famous author about writing, followed by an explanation of the chapter’s topic, followed by a working example. The authors' down to earth writing style is consistent in every chapter of the text.

The short length of the chapters makes them ideal to be read as individual assignments and their compartmentalized structure is suited well for associated writing assignments.

The structure of this text is one of its strongest points. The authors have organized the chapters in a logical order that students should follow when writing an essay.

The text interface is easy to navigate with no issues noticed.

The text is free of grammatical and syntactic errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The authors have created a text that shows an awareness of the need for cultural sensitivity and is inoffensive and completely class appropriate. . The Chapter titled “Appropriate Words” touches on avoiding the use of “Sexist Language”, which indicates concern for gender respect. Improvement could be made by using a more diverse group of authors for the opening chapter quotes.

I think this text is an excellent source for helping students understand the basic steps needed to write a good essay.

Reviewed by Aerie Bernard, Adjunct Faculty, Humanities, College of DuPage on 4/20/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This short text provides an approachable primer for novice essayists and reminder of standard practices of academic writing for more experienced writers. Rather than go into great depth, the chapters briefly outline the process of writing academic essays at the high school or undergraduate level. The text is comprehensive in that it is organized linearly to guide the writer from taking notes and developing a thesis through writing drafts and revisions. There is no index or glossary provided; however, the table of contents and short chapters ensure that the text is easy to navigate.

The content is accurate and error-free. The text is written by educators who attempt to address what they identify as common errors in student writing. As such, the bias present reflects a preference for standard English and traditional structure in academic writing.

Because the text focuses on standard practices in academic writing such as writing strong topic sentences, creating arguable theses, and avoiding passive voice, I doubt the text could become obsolete anytime soon. The text speaks to current trends in academic writing by including tips such as how to use gender neutral language and gears itself towards the high school and undergraduate level by modeling and promoting the use of a conversational tone in academic writing. Short, well-organized, worksheet-like chapters allow plenty of room for one to add to, update, or adapt this text.

The authors advise student essayists to use language and style that illustrates “genuine human conversation.” The text successfully models a balance of accuracy of language with a conversational tone. It is a pleasant read.

The text is consistent in its use of terminology, framework, and voice.

Short chapters with limited scope provide introductions and jumping off points for further discussions and activities related to academic writing in the humanities and social sciences.

The chapters are arranged to illustrate a start to finish approach to writing essays. Each chapter focuses on an element of essay writing. The organization is clear and logical.

Interface rating: 4

I had no difficulty accessing or reading the text online with my laptop and my phone. I was not as successful viewing the EPUB as a download to my phone. The text was too small in Bluefire reader and the app would not allow viewing at a larger font size. I do not know if the limitation was due to the EPUB or the reader app.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

The text addresses the importance of avoiding problematic language in academic writing in the chapter “Appropriate Words” and cautions that writers avoid repetition and wordiness, cliches, jargon, pop culture references, empty words, words with contested meanings, code words, and overextended/mixed/misapplied metaphors. I notice the absence of resources, strategies, and discussions about words relating to race, ethnicity, background, or identity. Also, examples throughout the text are primarily Western, male, and white. Steps towards inclusiveness are present, such as strategies for gender neutral writing, but there is room for improvement.

Reviewed by Sarah Fischer, Assistant Professor, Marymount University on 2/1/21

The book is *short* and useful. It gives excellent advice for how students can and should select strong evidence, how to write effective openings and closings, and discusses many common grammatical errors. However, the book does not spend enough... read more

This book is well-researched and contains no errors (in terms of subject matter, usage, or grammar).

Very relevant, especially because so many books on writing are long, and the longer they are the less likely students are to read them. This book does very impactful work in a very limited number of pages.

Clarity rating: 3

The book is very clear and accessible for professors and advanced students. Many of the examples from English and History papers utilized in the book would be quite difficult for many first-year students to follow, however.

Formatting is quite consistent; terminology is consistently and appropriately used.

Sections of this book are small, easy to understand, and not overwhelming for any level of student to read.

This book's organization flows in a logical way.

I did not notice any interface issues.

I did not notice any grammatical errors in the text.

The authors took care to be culturally sensitive.

A few short exercises at the end of each section, which instructors could create for their classes, would help students practice the book's lessons as sort of intermediary step between reading about possible pitfalls and working on their own to eliminate issues from their writing.

Reviewed by Deirdre Sullivan, Adjunct Faculty, English Department, Berkshire Community College on 6/27/20

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Salvatore Allosso and Dan Allosso is a comprehensive and concise work on how to write good essays on the humanities and the social sciences by clearly defining the definitions of those disciplines. I have not seen many indexes and/or glossaries with these online books, so I don't think it is really necessary for the comprehension of the text.

The content was accurate, without error, and unbiased in its content, syntax, and point of view.

I think the light tone, conversational style, and relevance to all who practice the art of writing is both timely and long-lasting. There is a universal appeal to this approach, and while language is always changing, the rules for written work have more longevity.

The book is written in such a way as to engage even the most reluctant reader into a kind of conspiratorial allegiance on how to approach the art of reading well and writing with lucid accuracy, technical prowess, and enlightened awareness.

The text incorporates terminology into the structure and framework of its chapters with clarity and consistency.

The text is proportionate to reasonable reading and writing assignments. In each chapter, there is a clear way of recognizing and analyzing concepts on writing for use toward student outcomes in a writing course.

This text is logically organized to support and sustain its thesis and the thorough exploration of its guiding elements.

There are no significant interface issues, problems with navigation, or distractions to confuse potential readers.

There are no grammatical errors to my reckoning.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. The book embraced multi-culturalism with quotes, questions, and persuasive argument as to how a writer must be objective, open-minded, and thoroughly engaged in standing by their work.

I really loved the conversational style between authors and readers. This father-son duo has clearly taken delight in sharing their love of the world through the art of writing. I really liked the quotes they chose to support their ideas. Perhaps one day, I will use their book in my composition classes. A truly remarkable discovery!

Reviewed by Dayle Turner, Professor, Leeward Community College on 6/27/20

The text covers fairly well the important considerations of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The authors assert their intention of taking students “step-by-step through the process of writing essays for an upper-level high school class or a college course.” The steps of which they speak include analyzing texts, note-taking, formulating essay topics, creating theses, ordering evidence, building arguments, writing coherent paragraphs, composing effective sentences, using appropriate diction, and revising. The text lacks an index and glossary and the inclusion thereof would certainly strengthen the comprehensiveness of the work.

The content of this text is accurate and the steps covered are mostly applicable for first-year college students and high school juniors and seniors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The content appears up-to-date. Text is devoid of visual imagery, making it potentially less appealing to contemporary/millennial students, but its structure invites relatively easy updating, and all links were accurate.

The text is mostly clear and provides adequate examples to explain the application of material discussed in each chapter.

Consistency rating: 4

The text's consistency would be excellent if an index and glossary were included.

Modularity rating: 4

This text is organized in such a manner that students can be assigned short readings without having to jump hither and yon between chapters or different parts of the book.

There are nine chapters in the text. They are presented in a logical and purposeful order. Critical reading and note-taking comes first while a revision checklist is available at the end. This makes sense as it is important to provide students with suggestions for information-gathering and revision.

The interface is free of any distracting issues. The text is mostly easy to navigate.

I noticed no grammatical errors.

The text successfully represents a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Examples are sensitive and free of stereotypes.

This book would have been beneficial to me as an undergraduate. Most of what it covers are things I had to learn by experience, and the quality of my earliest scholarship would have been much improved with the benefit of these lessons. The text has value as a supplementary or recommended material, particularly for students whose plans include graduate school or writing-intensive professions. Students who are most prepared will get the most out of it, but the text also offers good examples

Reviewed by Matilda (Tillie) Yoder, Librarian, Goshen College on 7/10/19

The scope of this text is very clearly outlined in its title - it aims to guide students through the process of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The Allossos succeed in creating a work that does just that, discussing techniques and strategies for writing well but assuming that readers will have a reasonable familiarity with English grammar. Contents included how to develop ideas, how to formulate effective arguments, how to identify weak points in writing, and how to revise effectively. It is worth noting that the authors are not concerned with formatting, emphasizing the writing process and not the finicky details of citation structure, title page layout, or font size.These issues are easily addressed on a great many websites and reference works; more concerning is that there is no real discussion of plagiarism or how to manage citations and references, which is an important part of any humanities or social sciences essay that requires research and not a single text.

There is no glossary or index for this work, though the table of contents lays out chapter topics very clearly. An index would be quite useful for instructors and students wanting to use the book in its entirety. Similarly, a reference list with links to related works and websites might also be of use for those who would like more in-depth information on particular techniques not elaborated on in this short work.

The content of this guidebook is accurate, although its narrow focus does mean that is not comprehensive (and it does not intend to be). The strategies outlined in it are standard practice and are conveyed succinctly. Quoted authors are all referenced by name but not in any further detail; simple citations for these quotes would model best practices for the students reading the material.

The content of this guidebook is general enough in nature to remain relevant for some time. The examples given throughout the book reference works of classic Western literature or established understandings of history that American schools are likely to continue to teach - Shakespeare’s plays, the history of slave uprisings in the Americas, the Civil War, and Hemingway all feature. Notably, references are only discussed in the context of example passages, and so no knowledge of the events or plots is necessary to understand what the authors are saying.

The Alessos practice what they preach in this instance, writing directly and clearly. Jargon is almost non-existent, and where it does exist it is always defined and explained. Concepts are clearly illustrated with multiple examples and outlined step by step. The overall vocabulary and level of writing is appropriate for students in grade 11 or above.

Key terms are used continually throughout this work; in particular, the authors emphasize the importance of unity, coherence, and emphasis in effective writing. Vocabulary terms are introduced and used consistently, although alternative terms are listed to ensure understanding.

This guide could be easily divided into distinct sections useful for a wide variety of classes throughout the humanities and social sciences. History and English classes would find it particularly relevant, but introductory writing teachers, writing tutors, and academic support offices would also find much that is useful here. The sections on how to construct a thesis and the revision checklist are particularly applicable to me in my work as a writing tutor. I can see myself having students read specific sections of this book depending on what their particular roadblocks to writing are.

The organization of this text is logical, beginning with the process of note-taking and brainstorming, and moving on to persuasive argument building, thesis construction, essay structure, writing, and revision. The revision checklist at the end of the textbook is also organized in such a way that it leads students to look for major issues in their writing before the minor ones.

Overall, the guidebook displayed well and is easy to navigate. There are no images included, and although images are not strictly necessary for this sort of topic, I believe that the text would benefit from some formatting changes. Some of the lists could use better visual clues in their subdivision, and example paragraphs would benefit from being presented in a diagram format where specific portions could be highlighted and remarked on more directly. Unfortunately, this title is not available in PDF format, which would be useful for anyone wanting access to the book without an internet connection. Epub format would be useful as well.

I noticed no grammatical errors or typos in this text.

All references to culture in this text appear in example writing passages. Because of this, no deep understanding of the referenced work or work is needed, because it is the writing and not the content of the passage that is the focus. However, almost all of the references included are focused on classic works concerning Western literature and history (Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Beowulf, etc.). A broadening of examples would be welcome, but as it stands the text is inoffensive and reflects what is taught in many English classes in American schools.

Getting Started Writing
Chapter 1: Analyzing Texts, Taking Notes
Chapter 2: Discovering a Topic, Preparing for Discussion
Chapter 3: Creating a Thesis
Chapter 4: Ordering Evidence, Building an Argument
Chapter 5: Coherent Paragraphs
Chapter 6: Effective Sentences
Chapter 7: Appropriate Words
Chapter 8: Revising
Chapter 9: Revision Checklist

Ancillary Material

About the book.

A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

About the Contributors

Dan Allosso , Bemidji State University

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These essays are usually some type of analysis or interpretation which require that you develop a thesis and then prove that thesis in the body of the paper. These are the types of papers (in contrast to lab reports or marketing proposals) closest to the style you have written in high school and UNIV 190. However, avoid doing some of the things that are common in high school papers: 1) data dumping, 2) spending too much space on summary 3) using a strict five-paragraph structure or 4) using an unintegrated comparison or counterargument.

Thesis driven

Because these papers are thesis driven, you must spend time and attention on your thesis. Here are some of the most common problems:

Ensuring that the thesis addresses the prompt
Ensuring that the thesis is analytical or interpretive so that it is not simply a fact, but is a unique position that you’re staking out and will need to defend.
Ensuring you are using the right style for your class. Some professors and fields prefer very bald styles: e.g. “In this paper, I argue…” They may also ask for an outline of the paper with the thesis. E.g. “I will first define the term, then demonstrate….” While other professors and fields require that you NEVER use words like “In this paper I argue…” nor give an outline. In the humanities, that is considered extremely bad style.

Analyzing a topic requires that you consider all of the following and then focus only on those which are the most appropriate:

Comparison – consider what you main idea/thesis can be compared to. It is useful to compare to something completely different and to something quite similar. If a large portion of your paper requires comparison, be sure to use an integrated comparison. Don’t just talk about one item in one paragraph and the other item in another. Compare both according to some point in EACH paragraph.
Classification–this is an extension of comparison. You classify when there are many similar items to compare. It is also a sort of vertical comparison. What broader or more general category does your idea/topic belong to?
Cause/Effect, Reason/Result — Look for relationships
Problem/Solution — This can be related to cause/effect or to comparison. What caused the problem? What effect will the solution have? Compare the alternative solutions to decide which is best.
Ethos/Pathos/Logos/Kairos — Have you analyzed your topic from all perspectives? Ethos = Credibility including your analysis of the counterarguments, Pathos = Values, Logos =Reason, Kairos=Timeliness/Current Relevance
try to use three different pieces of evidence to support each major point
use examples of specific actions, people or places
use quotes–be sure to integrate these by adding a sentence before or after to explain how you are using the quote as evidence. Many students make the mistake of paraphrasing or rephrasing the quote. That is not useful and doesn’t count as explanation. In fact, if you can paraphrase it, then there’s no point in quoting it. You use a quote because the words that author used are exactly the right words; i.e. there’s no better way to say it. In fact, you may use some space to explain why those words are so great.
use numbers or facts

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In defense of the humanities: Upholding the pillars of human understanding

This essay is part of a series exploring the enduring importance of the humanities. Stay tuned for more insights on why the humanities still matter.

Loss and literature

Maria and her grandmother, 2003.

Often, the shortest stories are the most resonant.

In 2020, I lost my maternal grandmother. “Maternal,” in her case, was more than a qualifier–she quite literally played the role of “mother” in my life. My first words, my first steps, and the most formative milestones of my childhood and adolescence happened in her care. She bore the brunt of my insufferable teenage angst, offering a consoling embrace when life seemed to get ahead of me. When I lost her, a chapter of my life ended.

To lose such a constant in one’s early twenties is to lose a tether to one’s reality. The years after my grandmother’s death have been fraught with uncertainty. How could I possibly recover from such a loss? How are my accomplishments meaningful if she is not present to witness them? And, perhaps most disconcerting: who will I be by the time my own life begins to wane?

Everyone copes with and experiences loss differently. For me, it was acutely alienating. My relationship with my grandmother was singular, making my perspective on loss unique. I operated for what felt like ages on the assumption that no matter how much support I had, I could not possibly be seen.

That is, until I picked up A Very Easy Death . This brief, 112-page memoir by Simone de Beauvoir details her mother’s final days from an honest, compassionate perspective. Laden with recollections of a mother-daughter relationship and personal confrontations with mortality, it resonated with me in a way that no other text had. The acts of death and grief are explored in her memoir as though de Beauvoir were sitting across from me at a bistro recounting the experience. For the first time since my own experience and despite preceding me by thirty-six years, someone had finally seen me.

The humanities: Studies of the human condition

The connection I achieved through literature highlights the critical importance of the humanities. Encompassing history, literature, philosophy, art, and more, the humanities provide a lens through which one can view one’s personal experiences–making the universal personal and the personal universal.

The humanities and humanism have evolved significantly over centuries. In Western society, humanism traces back to Greece in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE. Sophists saw humanism as a cultural-educational program, aiming for the development of human faculties and excellence, as noted in Perez Zagorin’s “On Humanism Past & Present.”

Agrippa: Human Proportions in Square. n.d. Wellcome Collection.

In Rome, the concept evolved into “an ideal expressed in the concept of humanitas … [which] designated a number of studies–philosophy, history, literature, rhetoric, and training in the oratory.” Most influential, though, was the humanism that emerged from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that was “centered increasingly upon human interests and moral concerns rather than religion.” Its purpose was to cultivate a population of Christian men who were well-spoken, literate, and capable of integrating with high society.

Growing more secular over time, humanist values began to compete with the physical and biological sciences, the social sciences, and other modern subjects which comprised nineteenth century liberal education. Zagorin suggests that scientific and empirical research approaches overtook human-centered perspectives, particularly after the massive loss of life in World War I and the disillusionment that followed.

“Through de Beauvoir’s philosophical inquiries into life and death, I was able to confront and process my own grief more profoundly. Her reflections on mortality and the mother-daughter relationship resonated deeply with me, helping me to navigate my personal loss while also offering insights into the universal human condition.”

Scholarly perspectives on the importance of the humanities

Scholars argue that the humanities are essential for comprehending complex social dynamics and ethical questions. In “The Power of the Humanities and a Challenge to Humanists,” Richard J. Franke argues that humanistic interpretation “contributes to a tradition of interpretation.” Franke posits that human emotions and values are at the core of humanistic study, offering the ability to explore domains that “animate the human experience.” This is precisely how my engagement with Simone de Beauvoir’s memoir, A Very Easy Death, provided a foundation for evaluating broader human concerns.

Le Brun, Charles, 1619-1690., and Hebert, William, fl. 18th century. A Man Whose Profile Expresses Compassion. n.d. Wellcome Collection.

Through de Beauvoir’s philosophical inquiries into life and death, I was able to confront and process my own grief more profoundly. Her reflections on mortality and the mother-daughter relationship resonated deeply with me, helping me to navigate my personal loss while also offering insights into the universal human condition. This connection underscores the humanities’ power to transform personal experiences into a deeper understanding of shared human emotions and values.

Moreover, Franke postulates that subjects under the humanities all lend themselves to critical thinking, which he defines as “that Socratic habit of articulating questions and gathering relevant information in order to make reasonable judgements.” Through the humanities, one can approach topics from varied vantage points to develop a holistic understanding of them.

In a study published in 2018 by the Journal of General Internal Medicine , medical students across institutions suggested that exposure to the humanities had an appreciable influence on their “tolerance of ambiguity, empathy, and wisdom.” The study’s discussion section further indicates that both the performance and observance of drama increase empathy, and that “even good literature prompts better detection of emotions.” These findings highlight that studying the humanities cultivates essential skills and attributes that have practical applications in real-world settings.

Scholarship, then, suggests that the humanities teach us to be human, whether through the ability to form nuanced questions or to feel empathy. I experienced this firsthand while reading Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death. Her detailed account of her mother’s final days helped me navigate my own grief. It also gave me a deeper understanding of the emotional complexities involved in facing mortality as a concept. These characteristics—developed through engagement with the humanities—can improve interpersonal relationships and foster a more empathetic and accepting society.

The impact of the humanities extends beyond personal growth; it influences professional practices and societal outcomes. The empathy and wisdom nurtured by humanities education can enhance the quality of patient care in the medical field, as evidenced by the medical students’ testimonies. Similarly, professionals in law, education, and public policy benefit from the critical thinking and ethical reasoning stimulated by humanities education. By emphasizing these real-world applications, we can better advocate for the continued support and integration of the humanities in various sectors of society.

Challenges affecting the humanities: Economic pressures and academic isolation

Even in light of their demonstrated value, the humanities face significant challenges that threaten their vitality and relevance. In “ The Decline of the Humanities and the Decline of Society,” Ibanga B. Ikpe describes how today’s labor market increasingly demands qualifications for specific sectors. Courses in the humanities that are not tailored to particular career paths put them at a disadvantage in universities.

Ikpe also attributes the decline in humanities education to the fact that “economic rather than academic motivations have become the primary basis for decision making in universities.” He raises the notion that the humanities and similar disciplines cannot be elucidated into digestible pieces of information, which makes them more difficult to sell. The more defined the subject, the more profitable. Thus, funding for humanities programs at educational institutions has reduced significantly. This has both limited resources for teaching and research and signaled a devaluation of the humanities as a whole.

Finally, Ikpe presents the argument that humanities scholars are partially to blame for the current state of the humanities. He raises the accusation that humanities scholars have become withdrawn from greater society, sequestering themselves in academia. The niche views and dialogues they produce in this environment may sever their connection with a broader audience.

Sustaining the humanities today

The future implied by the above rings grim, but there are still significant opportunities to advocate for the humanities by highlighting their interdisciplinary relevance to contemporary issues. For example, the study of ethics in philosophy can provide crucial insights into debates on artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Similarly, understanding historical contexts can help policymakers make informed decisions about current social and political challenges.

Organizations like JSTOR play a crucial role in preserving and promoting the humanities. JSTOR’s vast digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources ensures that humanities scholarship remains accessible to students, researchers, and the public, advancing knowledge, strengthening critical thinking, and supporting interdisciplinary studies.

ITHAKA, the parent organization of JSTOR, is also increasing the utility of this knowledge. More than a mere repository, ITHAKA uses technology to analyze and contextualize vast amounts of information, making it more accessible and meaningful. By doing so, they help transform scholarly resources into practical tools that can drive real change in society. Their initiatives facilitate connections between research and practice, allowing the humanities to inform solutions to contemporary challenges.

By leveraging the support of organizations like JSTOR and embracing technological advancements, we can turn the tide in favor of the humanities. Advocating for their interdisciplinary relevance and addressing contemporary social issues will ensure that these vital disciplines thrive. The humanities are not relics of the past—they are essential to navigating the complexities of the present and shaping the future.

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Humanities vs. social science: exploring the dichotomy

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The difference between humanities and social science isn’t always immediately apparent. Although both disciplines focus on the human experience, they each view it from a unique lens. This article provides an overview of the different approaches, areas of study, and career paths for your humanities vs. social science consideration so you can pinpoint which option best aligns with your goals.

What are the humanities?

Through the critical study of literature, art, language, history, and philosophy, humanities allow us to develop a deeper understanding of the human condition and how it is documented.

The origin of the modern idea of the humanities can be traced back to the mid-5th century BCE, with the Classical Greek “paideia,” a course of general education, as well as in Cicero’s “humanitas” (which means human nature).

With a focus on the power of human expression and shared experiences, the humanities provide an opportunity to cultivate empathy and create dialogue between people of different beliefs and perspectives.

Unlike the social sciences which focus on observable patterns, humanities focus on abstract or theoretical ideas when examining everything from ethics and poetry to how to live a life of meaning. Students of the humanities primarily employ a qualitative research approach, making analytical, moral or speculative interpretations regarding the traditions, creations, and cultures of the past and the present.

By studying forms of art, literary works, historical events, philosophical ideas, and spiritual practices, practitioners of the humanities seek to better understand the individual within the broader context of human culture and society.

Areas of study

The humanities encompass many engaging fields within a comprehensive liberal arts education. For example, philosophy involves the logical, abstract, and methodical consideration of fundamental truths such as the nature of reality, knowledge, and human existence.

The study of history focuses on the cultural, social, political, economic, religious, and other changes in society over time, while art history and theory courses may take a critical eye to everything from painting, drawing, and sculpture to photography, filmmaking, or music.

Literature studies, such as ENLT 1200: Writing about Literature and Culture at Penn LPS Online, provide an overview of foundational skills and strategies to write clear, concise, and persuasive critical analyses of different form of literary texts.

Other examples of common areas of study within the humanities include the classics, drama and music, gender studies, regional studies, ethnic studies, and religious studies.

Career paths in humanities

The critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills that you develop by earning a humanities degree may be applied to a wide variety of career paths, depending on your preferences and goals.

If you’re interested in teaching at the pre-school, elementary, or high school level, you’ll have a chance to put your skills in communication, empathy, and resourcefulness to good use. Keep in mind that you will also need to obtain certification or licensure to practice in addition to your bachelor degree.

Communication, media, and publishing

In the fields of communications and publishing, roles such as copywriter, editor, author, journalist, technical writer, public relations professional, or communications specialist require many of the competencies developed while studying the humanities, including creativity, research abilities, writing, and critical thinking.

History and the arts

If you’re passionate about history or the arts, you may want to pursue a career as an archivist, curator, conservator, or museum technician. These professions all require sound organizational, research, and analytical skills, which are critical in determining the origin, history, and relevance of records, documents and artwork. Some employers may require that you earn a master’s degree to be considered for these roles.

What are social sciences?

Social science is the study of how humans behave and interact within societies, and key branches include anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology, and economics. It began to emerge as a distinct field in the early 19th century, making it a relatively new discipline compared to the humanities.

Social scientists investigate government, the economy, family structures, and social institutions to gain insight into what drives human behavior and what conditions allow people to flourish. Not only do the findings of social science inform education programs, public policy, and urban planning, they also help spearhead strategies to create more inclusive and effective institutions within society.

Unlike the natural sciences, which study the physical world through fields such as chemistry, biology, and physics, social science examines the relationships and cultures within the constructed world of human beings.

Social science frequently employs a scientific approach of quantitative data analysis to study different facets of society. For example, sociologists research and collect data on crime and poverty, analyze it, and draw conclusions that are used to guide public policy.

However, social scientists may also use qualitative approaches (such as interviews or focus groups) to increase their understanding regarding the motivations and interactions of individuals and groups.

Two fields most commonly associated with social science are sociology and psychology. Sociology is the scientific study of patterns of human social behavior, relationships, and interactions, including how they are shaped by social institutions. Psychology explores how people’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are affected by actual or imagined interactions with others.

Anthropology is a broad discipline that delves into the history and development of human societies and cultures, including their languages, belief systems, material goods, and social structures.

Economics is concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services with a focus on decision-making by individuals, governments, and businesses.

Political science examines topics such as political theory, ideologies, and international relations to help understand how local, national, and international governments function and impact societies.

There is some disagreement as to whether history, geography, law, and linguistics should be classified as part of the humanities or social sciences—and consequently viewed from a theoretical or scientific perspective.

Career paths in social science

The analytical, research, and problem-solving skills obtained while pursuing a degree in social science can be applied in a wide range of professional paths, including the role of a social scientist.

Social scientists use the scientific method to study how particular aspects of human society and relationships function, change, and coexist. Examples of different types of social scientists include economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, and geographers.

The entry-level education required to become a social scientist is typically a master’s or doctoral degree. Below are other professional opportunities to consider if you earn a bachelor’s in social science.

Counseling, therapy, and social services

If you’re interested in helping others prevent and cope with challenges in their everyday lives, in-demand roles that you may want to pursue include social worker, social and community service manager, and substance abuse, behavioral disorder, or mental health counselor.

Job growth for these rewarding career paths is expected to increase by 9% , 12% , and 22% , respectively, by 2031, all of which are faster than average.

The combination of strong analytical and research skills with knowledge of what drives human behavior can be applied to multiple facets of business, including data analysis, marketing, communications, management, and human resources.

For example, market research analysts help companies understand consumer buying preferences and demographics, while business intelligence analysts create financial and market data reports. Demand for these roles is expected to increase 19% and 11% , respectively, by 2031.

Government and public administration

Robust communication, interpretive, and critical thinking skills—and expertise in political science and sociology—may open opportunities in government or civil services positions, including policy analyst, public affairs specialist, campaign manager, or communications officer.

If you earn an undergraduate degree focused on political science, psychology, history, or economics, you may want to consider furthering your education by earning a Juris Doctor (JD) degree from an accredited law school, taking the bar exam, and pursuing a career as a lawyer.

Why study the humanities or social sciences?

A degree in the humanities is generally less career-focused or specialized than in social sciences because you’ll explore topics from a historical or theoretical perspective, rather than a practical one.

However, whichever discipline you choose, you’ll have the opportunity to develop valuable skills that can be applied in your personal and professional life.

Analytical abilities: Obtain strong analytical skills including logical reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. And learn how to reach logical conclusions through both qualitative and quantitative analyses of numerical data, survey results, and written sources.

Creativity and empathy: Learn how to come up with original ideas and solutions to problems, while obtaining an understanding and appreciation for the feelings and viewpoints of others.

Critical thinking: Develop your ability to make rational connections between ideas, recognize and develop arguments, find solutions to problems, and consider how your own assumptions may affect your interpretations.

Written and verbal communication: Learn how to clearly and concisely author persuasive essays and research papers and deliver compelling evidence-based arguments in discussions and presentations.

Research: Discover how to identify and analyze reputable sources, extract important evidence and data, and present sound conclusions based on qualitative and quantitative research.

Ready to enhance your professional skill set?

With lessons from expert practitioners and strategies for self-knowledge, the concentration in Leadership and Communication for the Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences (BAAS) program at Penn LPS Online will help you unlock your leadership potential.

This interdisciplinary Ivy League degree provides the practical knowledge and critical thinking skills needed to develop career-advancing leadership and communication skills. Tailor your program to your personal strengths and professional interests as you combine analytical and reflective studies with practical introductions to data analysis and strategies in global leadership.

The BAAS in Leadership and Communication also prepares you to:

Apply leadership lessons from the humanities and social sciences
Discover how to integrate positive psychology into your leadership style
Explore competing perspectives on leadership ethics
Learn how to use quantitative data in decision-making
Develop strategies and skills to persuade via verbal, visual, and written communication
Understand and apply research insights in economics, psychology, and other social sciences

If you haven’t already, apply to Penn LPS Online today and register for the Leadership and Communication concentration for the B AAS degree , or explore our Certificate in Leadership and Communication . You can also view our course guide to learn more about what’s available in any upcoming term.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/humanities/what-is-humanities/ https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-a-humanities-major https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-science.asp https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/what-is-social-science/

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The Importance of Studying Humanities

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Published: Sep 12, 2023

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Understanding the human experience, appreciating cultural diversity, engaging with complex social issues, developing a well-rounded education, promoting lifelong learning, challenges and opportunities.

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Key concepts in humanities and social sciences

Why did I choose HUMSS?

Alynna Marie Apolinar

Humanities and Social Science, I’m studying this strand for the humanity. I want to explore, be open minded, and expand my knowledge and understanding in the fields of understanding our culture, politics, society, and our own selves. Yes, there are times that I questioned myself on why did I chose this strand where there’s no chill time, we have loads of paperworks, and new requirements after submitting the other one. My friends from other strands here in our university were enjoying their vacant and chill times, while there’s me and my current classmates who can’t even have our sleep. I’m not saying that HUMSS is more stressful than other strands, but there are students who were from STEM, ABM or TVL that expresses their “ ahay luoy man ” comments for their HUMSS-taker friends in our university.

What I like being here, is even though we are flooded with works, we are surely learning from our requirements. Indeed, all those reflections, reaction papers, reviews, journal, argumentative essays, debates, skits; there will be the time where we can actually apply what we have learn about those things. I am glad that my friends from STEM asks for my help when it comes to essays, speeches or anything written-related stuffs; and I’m even happier when they help me with my Math! Not all HUMSS students are idiot when it comes to Math though, so why do some people assume in that way? Generalizing and stereotyping, eh? However, I still don’t like Math hahaha, nah, not my cup of tea.

I did choose HUMSS because I personally think that my likes, skills, and personality suit this strand the best. So if you’re thinking about taking this strand, think about it carefully. You might be really stressed out, but everything’s worth it. Future Psychologists, Educators, Police, Lawyers, Journalist, etc., the HUMSS Strand will prepare your path!

Written by Alynna Marie Apolinar

Text to speech

Insight – Charles Sturt University

Why we still need to study the humanities

The story of us – Homo sapiens – is intriguing and complex. We’re unique creatures living in a rapidly changing world and we continue to face new challenges and opportunities. The study of humans, and all we’ve done, has always been of value. But studying the humanities now is probably more important than ever before!

We chatted with Charles Sturt University’s Jared van Duinen, who’s been teaching humanities for more than 15 years, and asked: what exactly are the humanities and why is it so important to study them in the 21 st century?

So, what are the humanities ?

First things first. When you sign up to learn about humanities, what sorts of topics will you study?

“Well, traditionally, the humanities are those disciplines that deal with human interaction, society and how humans get along in society. So think history, sociology, philosophy, politics, English literature and Indigenous studies.”

Why is it so important to study humanities?

Learning about ourselves – through the various humanities – helps us to create a better world.

“It’s the human in humanities that is worth studying. Humanities can tell us about ourselves, how we interact and get along and why we sometimes don’t!”

“Studying the humanities helps us to better understand who we are, our identity as a people, a society and a culture, and how to organise our societies so we can achieve our goals.

“Importantly, the study of humanities is a wonderful way of exploring our Charles Sturt ethos of Yindyamarra Winhanganha.

“Obviously STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – has a role to play in creating a world worth living in. But the study of humanities can help create a better world, just as much, if not more so, than scientific and technological innovation.”

Tackling the world’s issues

Jared believes that understanding the humanities can help you deal with all sorts of issues and problems facing the world. Big, small and ‘wicked’ ones! How? By taking you behind the human scene, giving you an insight into some really valuable information, and equipping you with a unique set of skills.

History. Studying the past helps us understand where we’ve come from and learn lessons to help us deal with the future.
English literature helps us explore the great themes of human interaction and better understand each other.
Sociology helps us to understand human behaviour, culture and the workings of society.
Philosophy helps us to think well, clearly, ethically and logically.
Politics. Learning about political processes and their impacts will help us understand how social and political change occurs.
Indigenous studies is especially important because Australia has an Indigenous population. If we’re trying to create a world worth living in, a fuller understanding of the perspective of our Indigenous population is essential.

A practical reason to learn about the humanities – the ultimate skill set!

The other super valuable reason to study humanities is more practical. Studying humanities will give you knowledge and skills that you can use all throughout your working life! And grads who study in this field are catching the eye of more and more employers.

“People who study these disciplines are really important to employers. They gain these important, sought-after skill sets:

effective communication
critical thinking
creative thinking
emotional intelligence
working well in teams
cultural understanding
problem solving.

“Humanities grads have always had these skills in abundance, but for a long time these skills were disregarded or overlooked because they were generic. They didn’t speak to a particular vocation.

“But the world of work is changing, becoming more unpredictable. It’s suggested that a lot of graduates coming out of uni now will change careers five to seven times. So those more well-rounded, transferable or soft skills you gain from studying history, philosophy or English literature will really become important. Having them is now seen as a strength because you can carry them from one occupation to your next. And recent studies highlight that these types of soft skills – the ones humanities graduates gain – are what helps them land jobs.

“Employers say these skills matter. They can teach technical knowledge, but they don’t always have the time or know-how to teach employees these vital soft skills. They look for employees who have these skills well-honed and are ready to work.”

Studying humanities gives you a swag of soft or transferable skills. That means you’ll be the employee who is more flexible. You can pivot from one role to another and adapt faster to changing roles. You become an asset. Now – and definitely into the future!

What jobs are there in humanities?

So, guess you want to know what sort of career you could go into? Studying humanities with Charles Sturt can really take you places – even if you’re not sure where you want to go just yet.

What sort of jobs, you ask?

Public service – in local, state and federal government. (History grads often end up in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade!)
Non-governmental organisations, not-for-profit groups and advocacy groups
Corporate sector – management and marketing, publishing and media
Social work
Policy work

“Studying humanities through our revitalised Bachelor of Arts allows you to study a wide range of disciplines. And that’s especially ideal for those who aren’t quite sure what career path they’ll go down. Those who don’t necessarily know what job they do want, but know they want to study.”

But what about the rise of job automation. How will studying humanities protect you from losing a job to a robot? It all leads back to those very special skills that you’ll build!

“With the increasing automation of many industries, those skills that are resistant to automation, such as critical thinking, cultural understanding, and creative problem solving, are going to be in greater demand.”

Set yourself up for success – now and in the future!

Want to explore the humanities and build a degree that’s meaningful to you and sets you up for career success? Keen to develop the ultimate soft skill set that will help get your first job – and your second and third and fourth? Check out our Bachelor of Arts and let’s get to work!

Bachelor of Arts CRICOS code: 000649C

The place of the humanities in today’s knowledge society

Rosário Couto Costa ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7505-4455 1

Palgrave Communications volume 5 , Article number: 38 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Over the past four decades, the humanities have been subject to a progressive devaluation within the academic world, with early instances of this phenomenon tracing back to the USA and the UK. There are several clues as to how the university has generally been placing a lower importance on these fields, such as through the elimination of courses or even whole departments. It is worth mentioning that this discrimination against humanities degrees is indirect in nature, as it is in fact mostly the result of the systematic promotion of other fields, particularly, for instance, business management. Such a phenomenon has nonetheless resulted in a considerable reduction in the percentage of humanities graduates within a set of 30 OECD countries, when compared to other areas. In some countries, a decline can even be observed in relation to their absolute numbers, especially with regards to doctorate degrees. This article sheds some light on examples of international political guidelines, laid out by the OECD and the World Bank, which have contributed to this devaluation. It takes a look at the impacts of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities, both inside and outside of the university, while assessing the benefits and value of studying these fields. A case is made that a society that is assumed to be ideally based on knowledge should be more permeable and welcoming to the different and unique disciplines that produce it, placing fair and impartial value on its respective fields.

Introduction

In August 2017, the World Humanities Conference took place in Liège, Belgium. The theme was Challenges and Responsibilities for a Planet in Transition , and it was organized in cooperation with UNESCO. The rationale for this conference can be summarized as follows:

“The humanities were at the heart of both public debate and the political arena until the Second World War. In recent years their part was fading and they have been marginalized. It is crucial to stop their marginalization, restore them and impose their presence in the public sphere as well as in science policies Footnote 1 ”

I participated in this event and it gave me hope that it would be possible to reverse the general trend of devaluating the humanities, something that has been going on since the early 1980s, namely in the UK and in the USA (Costa, 2016 ). Such a phenomenon has coexisted with an acceleration in globalization and a widespread rise of neoliberalism, two trends which have been gradual and simultaneous in their origins (Heywood, 2014 ). In regard to the growth of neoliberalism, while in the 1980s only four countries had what could be reasonably categorized as neoliberal governments (Chile, New Zealand, the UK and the USA), at the beginning of the 21 st century that number had multiplied all around the world (Peck, 2012 ).

This marginalization of the humanities has been a gradual process that manifested itself at different times throughout the countries in which it can be observed. A global approach was used for studying this process (Costa, 2016 ), along with available OECD data which consisted of a subset of thirty countries and recorded the period between 2000 and 2012 Footnote 2 . Under these circumstances, “graduates by field of education” Footnote 3 is arguably one of the few relevant indicators that we can establish. On analysing it, one can conclude that despite some variance in tendencies for each individual nation, there is an overall shift that allows us to confidently corroborate such a devaluation when we compare figures for the year 2000 with those of 2012. This approach was further complemented with the analysis of case studies and existing academic literature on the topic (Costa, 2016 ).

With that in mind, it seems paradoxical that in a so-called knowledge society, one that should be ‘nurtured by its diversity and its capacities’ (UNESCO, 2005 , p.17), not all knowledge fields would be valued in an equitable manner. So why does it happen and why namely at the expense of the humanities? Conversely, what are the reasons for looking at the humanities in a more positive light? These reasons have long been known, but can nowadays lack sufficient recognition. The goal of this comment is to address these questions.

The way to find the answers to these discussion points begins with an analysis of political documents written within the framework of international organisations such as the World Bank and the OECD during the transition into the 21st century. This analysis identifies some political guidelines that have plausibly influenced the global shift in the number of graduates by field of education occuring between 2000 and 2012. Afterwards, we take a look at the impact that these guidelines have had both within and outside of the University. Once done, we reflect on the benefits of studying the humanities and on the complementarity of the various knowledge fields within society.

The political constraints of the devaluation of the humanities in an academic context

Taking into account the already long history of the University, its most recent transformation has been marked by the principles of neoliberalism and the pace of this change has increased since 1998 (Altbach et al., 2009 ). It is in this particular institutional context that the devaluation of the humanities has been taking place. If we pay attention to the general guidelines that have been at the core of this paradigm shift, we can see that the humanities have been confronted not so much with a direct and explicit denial of their benefits, but with the exalting of skills and traits strongly connected to other knowledge fields, such as business administration. This reasoning is based on the following analysis of some specific documents that are enlightening examples of this occurrence.

At The World Conference on Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century , organized by UNESCO in 1998, in Paris, two talks expanded on how the University was already undergoing a process of transformation—one from a practical point of view, and the second from a conceptual one.

In the first talk, titled The Financing and Management of Higher Education: a Status Report on Worldwide Reforms (Johnstone et al. 1998 ), the authors explain how the World Bank implemented its political agenda in order to reform the University throughout the 90s in several countries. A political decision to reduce public investment fundamentally altered the financial and managerial scenarios of the University. A result of this was that the academic sector was steered towards the markets, with an explicit mention in the report that this shift was meant to align with neoliberal principles.

The consistency of this reform has been hailed as remarkable by the cited authors. It has followed similar patterns across all countries independently of existing differences between them with regards to political and economic systems, states of industrial and technological development, and the structuring elements of the higher education system itself.

In the other talk, titled Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century , Michael Gibbons ( 1998 ), counselor to the World Bank, affirms the urgency of a new paradigm for the University, and theorizes such a transformation. Accordingly, the main mission of the University would be to serve the economy, specifically through the training of human resources, as well as the production of knowledge, for that purpose. Other functions would be cast into the background. In order for this institution to adjust to its new priorities, the author affirms that a new culture would have to impose itself on the University: a new way of considering accountability—so called “new accountability”—with financial accounting at its core; the dissemination of a new practice of highly ideological management (“new public management” or “new managerialism”); and a new way of utilizing human resources with the goal of maximizing efficiency. In short, an entrepreneurial outlook on the concept of “University”.

A few years later, the document The New Economy. Beyond the Hype (OECD, 2001 ) essentially anticipated the impact of the then new model of University on the prioritization of the various fields of knowledge. The success of this “New Economy”, where a noticeable rise in investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) was apparent, required individuals qualified not only to work with these technologies but also fit to answer the new organizational challenges brought about by them. Due to this, areas such as ICT and management began to become promoted more strongly, namely in higher education and research, and the connection between higher education and the job market strengthened.

An indirect discrimination of the humanities was thus induced, with real-world consequences. One of the symptoms relating to such a social phenomenon has been a progressively lower relative representation of graduates in humanities and, in some countries, also of the absolute representation, especially with regards to doctorate degrees. For instance, in the period between 2000 and 2012, while the number of humanities graduates rose by a factor of 1.4—and that of total graduates by a factor of 1.6 overall—those in the area of business administration increased by a factor of 1.8 Footnote 4 . For perspective, this accounts for virtually a fifth of total graduates. In other words, although academia within the humanities is growing, it is doing so at a disproportionately lower pace than when compared with other fields.

As Pierre Bourdieu had already outlined in Homo Academicvs (Bourdieu, 1984 ), alterations in the relative representation of students of certain areas, and thus of respective University staff, have an impact not only on power balances within the University, but also on its influence on society itself. The author saw these as morphological changes—a point of view that shapes the following considerations.

The impact of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities

With regard to the internal impact of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities, we can identify several clues as to how the University has generally been placing a lower importance on the humanities Footnote 5 :

Cuts in the financing of research and teaching;

a lower share of the space and structure within the University, through the elimination of courses and even departments;

undervalued human resources (fewer job offers, falling wages, overloaded work schedules, aging staff, lack of opportunities for the young);

a decrease in library resources and the like;

the use of evaluation methods typical of scientific activity and which are unadjusted to the specificity of the humanities, indirectly resulting in pressure to change communication practices specific to these fields and weakening their social impact;

the extent to which some fields in the humanities are weakened, reaching dimensions so residual that they become at risk of disappearing.

These phenomena, even when not simultaneous, contribute to paving the way to further devaluation as they ultimately work together to make the humanities look progressively less attractive. In an academic context we are essentially confronted with a vicious cycle of devaluation. The next two sections deal with a series of reasons for why it becomes urgent to break such a cycle.

If on the one hand we are witnessing a shrinking of resources within academic departments of the humanities, on the other we can see a clear reduction in the relative representation of humanities graduates entering the job market. Without going too much into detail on the interdependence between these two phenomena, they stand as symptoms of a clear loss of influence of the humanities on society itself – perhaps the result of a growing incomprehension of their usefulness. Indeed, the field appears to be held hostage to a way of appreciation that is overly focused on the economy, established by those who govern and apparently accepted by most of those governed. Governors in particular tend to have a peculiar, restricted and limited way of evaluating, classifying and neglecting the humanities, even if opinions amongst themselves are not always in agreement. Through this lens, the field can be pretentiously seen as a luxury, as economically irrelevant, or even as useless - worse still, as an obstacle to access the job market Footnote 6 .

These dynamics make it even more difficult for academics in the humanities to convince others of the relevance of their area. Therefore, when competing with other areas for resources, the overall trend has been to deprioritise the humanities.

In the above-mentioned report titled Towards Knowledge Societies , UNESCO recognized that political choices tend sometimes to place a high importance on specific disciplines, namely ‘at the expense of the humanities’ (UNESCO, 2005 , p. 90). These words are coated with a subtle yet sharp sense of loss. But what is in fact lost when the humanities see their presence in society diminished?

The benefits of studying the humanities

An analysis of several sources of information, such as surveys, studies and websites, has made it possible to understand the point of view of different social actors who believe there are advantages to graduating in the humanities (Costa, 2016 ). Students (Armitage et al., 2013 ), graduates (Lamb et al., 2012 ) and researchers (Levitt et al., 2010 ) in the humanities share their opinion on what the main advantages are, and their takes coincide with the way humanities courses are promoted on the websites of the universities that were taken into account in the analysis Footnote 7 . As it would turn out, these advantages match the profile of the ideal employee as outlined by a group of employers as a condition to achieve success at their companies, according to a separate study that is unrelated to the humanities in particular (Hart Research Associates, 2013 ). In other words, even neoliberal standards and concerns are adequately addressed.

At its core, this acknowledgement of the value of the humanities can be looked at in three independent, mutually reinforcing levels: the comprehensive knowledge, skills and mindset that come with studying the field, and which are not easily outdated. These assets represent the genuine and specific character of studying these disciplines, and substantially differ from the priorities set by the political guidelines mentioned earlier. The following picture clarifies the scope of each of these levels (Fig. 1 ).

Benefits of studying the humanities. Source: adapted from Costa, 2017 , with permission of the Portuguese Association of Professionals in Sociology of Organizations and Work–APSIOT. The figure is not covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

The attraction of studying the humanities lies precisely in that which one sets out to know and experiment with when one opts to study them. History, philosophy, languages and literature, to mention a few, are nuclear subjects that give us direct access to knowledge on that which is fundamentally and irreducibly human.

The challenge that this knowledge presents us with, and the effort of interpreting and attributing meaning to ourselves and that which surrounds us, are enhancers of the skills and mindset highlighted in the above graphic and their value is undeniable. Critical thought, acknowledgement of others, the ability to adjust to different realities and so forth are indispensable traits in any situation—in any institution, organization, government or company. It would thus follow that the humanities should be as explicitly and directly promoted by public policy as is specialized knowledge that directly serves firms and markets.

In spite of the value that can be recognized in studying the humanities, it stands that in the last few decades education in the field has been reduced to an almost insignificant dimension relative to other areas. It should be noted that demand in higher education is representative not just of the expectations of the students, or even of their educational and social backgrounds. It is also conditioned by the choices of a large group of social actors, interdependent amongst themselves Footnote 8 , such as decision makers – be it national or international, political or institutional –, employers and parents. But this depreciation has not been exclusive to higher education only. It has led to generalized deficits in knowledge, sensitivity and imagination, cognitive resources which are necessary to the acknowledgement of real problems within society and likewise to the development of possible solutions. The ability for citizens to possess and demonstrate a mindset of critical thinking has in this way been undermined.

One can thus argue that, at the very least from a social standpoint, much could be lost here. Martha Nussbaum warned in 2010 about the dangers this poses to democracy itself. The number of billionaires has nearly doubled as wealth has become even more concentrated in the last ten years since the financial crisis, worsening social inequalities (OXFAM, 2019 ). A society of consumption and uncontrolled, unregulated and acritical exploitation of natural resources is hindering sustainable development. Perhaps somewhat ironically, even the market economy registers some losses of its own in this scenario. The University of Oxford studied the career path of a group of their graduates in humanities, who had been students from 1960–1989, and subsequently produced a report that ‘shines a light on the breadth and variety of roles in society that they adopt, and the striking consistency with which they have had successful careers in sectors driving economic growth’ (Kreager, 2013 , p. 1). This conclusion contradicts the vision, or perhaps the bias, according to which graduations within the humanities are considered useless and of no value, especially for the economy and the labour market in general. The TED Talk Why tech needs the humanities Footnote 9 (December 2017) addresses this issue in the light yet personal manner of someone who has experienced it first hand.

On the complementarity of the various knowledge fields within society

In contrast to the trend within the humanities, from 2000 to 2012 and as previously mentioned, graduates in the area of business administration grew both in numbers and in relevance. Georges Corm ( 2013 ) considers that a new wave of employees, trained in accordance with the neoliberal ideas, has emerged in the job market. In his opinion, this is noticeable for instance in the case of MBAs, which in general have a similar format in use in the best schools around the world. Engwall et al. ( 2010 ) had already come to the conclusion that these graduates have become the new elite, taking up the leadership positions within organizations, replacing graduates namely in law and in engineering.

According to Colin Crouch ( 2016 ), ‘financial expertise has become the privileged form of knowledge, trumping other kinds, because it is embedded in the operation of […] the institutions that ensure profit maximization […]. Under certain conditions this dominance of financial knowledge can become self-destructive, destroying other forms of knowledge on which its own future depends’ (ibid., p. 34). Indeed, ‘serious problems arise when one kind of knowledge systematically triumphs over others’ (ibid., p. 35), a sentiment the author illustrates by giving examples related to engineering and geology. It can be argued that such a large pool of graduates and post-graduates in business administration has severely disrupted the balance and the complementarity of wisdom in society.

The environmental disasters and social crises that have marked the last decade, and which we have all witnessed, mean that the priority which had been given to some fields of knowledge is a concern not just of the academic community, but that it should instead be seen as an issue for all of society. If we start discrediting certain kinds of knowledge, we might end up discrediting all which are not in accordance with the interests that prevail in society at any given point in time, interests which in turn might not necessarily have the common good as their priority. This would be akin to opening a Pandora’s box.

Where has this led us? For instance, few of us are unaware of the difficulties that scientific evidence faces today in order to be appreciated and accepted by people who are farthest from the world of science, and who will more easily trust populist discourses (Baron, 2016 ; Boyd, 2016 ; Gluckman, 2017 ; Horton and Brown, 2018 ). Current disinvestment in the teachings of philosophy, particularly in the young, pulls us away from the basic foundations of knowledge and science, ultimately furthering the establishment of a post-truth society.

Concluding remarks

The process of devaluation of the humanities fortunately has not been enough to nullify the voice and ongoing work of their community. The World Humanities Conference, mentioned at the very beginning of this text, is a sign of the vitality and pertinence that this field still holds. When we look at the topics discussed at this conference, they are undoubtedly of great relevance for the society of today: ‘Humanity and the environment’; ‘Cultural identities, cultural diversities and intercultural relations: a global multicultural humanity’; ‘Borders and migrations’; ‘Heritage’; ‘History, memory and politics’; ‘The humanities in a changing world. What changes the world and in the world? What changes the humanities and in the humanities?’; and ‘Rebuilding the humanities, rebuilding humanism’. Events like this conference allow for the hope that a new and virtuous cycle for the humanities could be on the upswing for the benefit of all of society. One which will be more permeable and welcoming to all knowledge and skills, valuing all of its fields in a fair and impartial manner. Ultimately, the hope is to have a society that is zealous and proactive in the protection of a rich diversity of knowledge from the establishment and dominance of political hierarchies.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Understanding the societal impact of the social sciences and humanities: remarks on roles, challenges, and expectations.

1 Research Program Knowledge and Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany
2 German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin, Germany
3 Research Area Research System and Science Dynamics, German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies, Berlin, Germany
4 Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
5 Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

Science is increasingly expected to help in solving complex societal problems in collaboration with societal stakeholders. However, it is often unclear under what conditions this can happen, i.e., what kind of challenges occur when science interacts with society and what kind of quality expectations prevail. This is particularly pertinent for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), which are part of the object they study and whose knowledge is always subject to provisionality. Here we discuss how SSH researchers can contribute to societal problems, what challenges might occur when they interact with societal stakeholders, and what quality expectations arise in these arrangements. We base our argumentation on the results of an online consultation among 125 experts in Germany (representatives from SSH, learned societies, stakeholders from different societal groups, and relevant intermediaries).

Introduction

Societal impact is an increasingly important evaluation paradigm in science governance. This trend can be seen in the implementation of large-scale impact agendas in various research and innovation systems over the past decade. Examples include the Research Excellence Framework in the United Kingdom, the Standard Evaluation Protocol in Netherlands, or the Excellence in Research framework in Australia ( van der Meulen and Rip, 2000 ; Geuna and Martin, 2003 ; Bornmann, 2013 ). Consequently, research is no longer assessed according to its scientific relevance alone but also according to the value it appears to generate for society. In Germany, where the present study was conducted, the societal impact of research is also at the top of the agenda of policymakers and research funders, although under a variety of terms. The German Ministry for Education and Research, for example, argues in a policy paper that a dialogue with society must become part of the logic of scientific reputation ( BMBF, 2019 ).

This gradual evolution of societal impact as an evaluation paradigm was preceded by a shift in the scholarly conception of the relationship between science and society, which can be summarized as a shift “from deficit to dialogue” ( Bucchi, 2008 ; Davies et al., 2009 ; Reincke et al., 2020 ). According to this view, science no longer provides knowledge to resolve a deficit but should develop “socially robust knowledge” together with societal stakeholders ( Nowotny et al., 2001 ). This shift in the conception of the science-society interface implies that societal impact requires interaction between scientific and societal stakeholders. As a result, evaluation frameworks increasingly focus on processes rather than outcomes, thus rely more heavily on narratives and on formative methods more than summative ones. An example of the latter is the SIAMPI approach, which focuses on ‘productive interactions’ between science and society ( Molas-Gallart and Tang, 2011 ; Spaapen and van Drooge, 2011 ).

The focus on societal impact in science governance and on interaction as a means to achieve this is particularly controversial for the social sciences and humanities (SSH), which we conceive of here as all research disciplines and subdisciplines that deal with social, societal, and cultural matters. On the one hand, from an internal scientific perspective, SSH disciplines investigate social life itself. This implies that subjects, investigators, and audiences tend to merge with one another and that value judgments might play a particularly important role ( Davies et al., 2008 ; Cassidy, 2014 ). As a result, when SSH researchers interact with societal stakeholders, questions of demarcation and boundary dissolution might arise ( Gieryn, 1983 ; Benneworth and Olmos-Peñuela, 2018 ). On the other hand, from an external perspective, evaluation exercises have rarely considered the particular epistemic conditions and specific utilization logics for SSH research ( Reale et al., 2018 ). Critics have noted the mismatch between indicators and SSH notions of quality, the lack of consideration for contributions that are critical rather than solution oriented, and the overly simple framing of societal impact as economic outputs, such as the number of patents or spin-offs ( Benneworth, 2015 ; Ochsner et al., 2017 ; Fecher and Hebing, 2021 ). Generally, established models for knowledge transfer do not do justice to the complexities of the diverse SSH disciplines and their many publics ( Davies et al., 2008 ).

Arguably, SSH research makes important societal contributions, but these are not well understood—at least not in the governance of science. We therefore recognize a need to better understand the societal impact of SSH disciplines in terms of a) the role they might play for societal challenges, b) the problems that might arise in interactive settings that involve SSH scholars and societal stakeholders, and c) the (possibly conflicting) quality expectations that are placed on their interaction. These objectives motivate our exploratory study, which consists of an online consultation with 125 experts (i.e., SSH researchers from different disciplines along with relevant societal stakeholders). Here, we report on the results of this consultation and reflect on the implications these might have for research evaluation.

Research Interest

The role of social sciences and humanities disciplines in response to societal problems.

There is some controversy about the role that SSH research can play in tackling societal problems: While some scholars argue that these fields should augment and emphasize their transformative potential ( Sörlin, 2018 ; Sigurðarson, 2020 ), others attribute a rather passive role to them, suggesting that they should create system knowledge (i.e., knowledge that increases understanding of a social issue) or orientation knowledge (i.e., knowledge that helps to determine possibilities for action) ( Becker, 2002 ; Jahn et al., 2012 ). One could furthermore argue that the public value of SSH research is not necessarily captured by their usefulness in solving problems but rather by their capacity to critically reflect on the problem itself and its potential solutions ( Olmos-Peñuela et al., 2015 ). In this regard, the societal impact of SSH research may also be counterintuitive if one expects clear-cut solutions to problems formulated in advance. Critics of an overly narrow conception of impact as research utilization have also pointed out how social science knowledge tends to be used in diverse ways, many of which are implicit ( Davies et al., 2008 ; Meagher et al., 2008 ; Stehr and Ruser, 2017 ). Weiss (1980) , for example, observes that expertise can “creep in” as conceptual knowledge that influences ideas and decisions. Compared to the natural and technical sciences, the impact of the SSH is thought to be more indirect and less visible. While utilization of SSH might be discreet, it can also be symbolic to the extent that it is used to justify political decisions that are already made ( Weiss, 1980 ; Albæk, 1995 ; Amara et al., 2004 ).

In summary, it is possible to identify quite different (often normative) perceptions of the societal role of SSH. Accordingly, the notion of socially relevant knowledge attributed to SSH disciplines varies: from more transformative and instrumental knowledge, to more indirect conceptual knowledge, to more counterintuitive critical knowledge. The different kinds of knowledge evoke quite different understandings of the role that the SSH should play in addressing societal challenges, which motivates our first research question (RQ1): What role is attributed to the SSH in addressing societal challenges?

Challenges for Collaborative Arrangements Involving the SSH and Societal Actors

In the sociology of science, the shift from deficit to dialogue is associated with concepts like “Mode 2,” “post-normal science,” or “triple helix” ( Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1992 ; Gibbons et al., 1994 ; Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz, 1998 ). These concepts all describe knowledge production as a mode of collaboration between scientific and societal stakeholders. According to a concept of transdisciplinarity, the main challenge for such collaborative arrangements is the integration of differences between actors on an epistemic, social-organizational, and communicative level ( Jahn et al., 2012 ). As already observed above, at the epistemic level, boundaries between subjects, investigators, and audiences have a tendency to become blurred in SSH research ( Davies et al., 2008 ; Cassidy, 2014 ). In collaborative arrangements that involve SSH researchers, questions of boundary work might therefore be of particular relevance ( Gieryn, 1983 ). Furthermore, within the diverse SSH disciplines, there is little consensus on research questions and suitable methods, which poses challenges to the robustness of findings ( Ochsner et al., 2017 ). Regarding the socio-organizational level, the structures that support societal exchange in universities are mostly centrally organized and focused on broad public communication ( Peters, 2013 ; Marcinkowski et al., 2014 ; Fecher and Hebing, 2021 ). Questions arise as to how adequate these might be for anticipating the complexities of science in general and of the SSH in particular. Furthermore, the focus on economic indicators as a means of measuring societal impact in the past might have led to structural discrimination against SSH disciplines in organizational efforts to promote societal engagement ( Benneworth and Olmos-Peñuela, 2018 ; Fecher and Hebing, 2021 ). Jacobson et al. (2004) suggest implementing an array of organizational measures that are believed to be more suitable for SSH disciplines, from increasing resources to fostering the skills of individual researchers. Regarding the communicative level, SSH researchers have frequently been accused of using overly specialized and obscure terms ( Alvesson et al., 2017 ; Healy, 2017 ). At the same time, because the social sciences—and to a lesser degree, the humanities—investigate social life, they must deal with the everyday observations and ad hoc assumptions of the individuals with whom they engage (cf. Cassidy, 2014 ).

Some researchers argue that a consensus on values is not the only necessary condition for facilitating cooperation between heterogeneous actors; more importantly the conditions and structures for cooperation must be created ( Star and Griesemer, 1989 ). For SSH disciplines, this might come with particular challenges that are not yet well understood. This motivates our second research question (RQ2): What hinders interaction between SSH researchers and societal stakeholders?

Quality Expectations Regarding the Interaction Process

If our aim is to grasp the collaborative settings of knowledge production, we will likely need to go beyond criteria that are either purely academic or targeted towards science communication through the media ( Secko et al., 2013 ; Rögener and Wormer, 2017 ). The term “socially robust,” meaning that knowledge should be scientifically robust and socially useful ( Nowotny et al., 2001 ), is now used frequently to describe quality in these settings. Rather than bridging a cognitive gap (as purely academic projects would do), these new modes of knowledge creation aim to bridge social gaps, i.e., they are geared towards potential users, political decision makers, and entrepreneurs ( Maasen and Lieven, 2006 ). The authors argue that in these settings, actors must develop social accountability procedures collaboratively. This undertaking produces social demands that differ from those made in disciplinary research because the researchers need to work outside the set of scientific norms that would otherwise guide their practice ( Merton, 1973 ; Mitroff, 1974 ). This creates new requirements vis-à-vis the outcome. These outcomes are not easily located on a disciplinary map but instead suit the context of application ( Gibbons et al., 1994 ). This will most likely be accompanied by processual requirements to bridge the above-mentioned gaps and to deal with the specific contexts that are addressed by these arrangements.

There are general preconceptions about how collaborative modes of knowledge production might consolidate the quality conceptions of all parties involved. Still, these often remain at an abstract level, which motivates our third research question (RQ3): What do scientific and societal stakeholders perceive as the conditions for good interaction?

Data and Methods

The study is exploratory in that it aims to better understand the societal impact of SSH disciplines by an empirical examination of the role ascribed to SSH research in addressing societal challenges, as well the quality expectations arising in collaborative processes involving SSH researchers. Our findings are based on an online consultation of SSH researchers, societal stakeholders, and intermediaries. We subsequently discussed the results of the consultation with SSH and science researchers in two workshops, where we further scrutinized their implications for assessing the societal impact of SSH.

The selection of participants in the consultation process was deliberate and targeted a) researchers from different SSH disciplines who had experience of knowledge transfer and b) societal stakeholders from politics, media, business, culture, civil society, and public administration who had experience in collaborating with SSH scholars. In order to ascertain that participants did indeed have experience of collaboration, we conducted preliminary interviews, researched specific collaboration projects, and, in the case of researchers, asked learned societies for nominations. The deliberate selection of participants was necessary in order to ensure that respondents could legitimately provide answers to the partly normative questions. Our final sample consists of 125 responses, of which 36 are SSH scholars, 71 societal stakeholders, and 18 intermediaries. Of the SSH scholars, four participants came from core humanities disciplines (philosophy, legal studies, history), four from economics, thirteen from other social sciences, and one each from pedagogy, linguistics, and design research. Twelve of the researchers did not indicate their disciplinary background. Further, our sample includes a group we describe as “intermediaries.” These are individuals that are involved in managing and enabling collaborations between SSH researchers, for example communications officers at universities or independent science communication consultants. We chose to include this group in the consultation because we assumed that they would be uniquely positioned to observe and thus reflect on the conditions of these interactions. Table 1 illustrates the final expert sample by group membership.

TABLE 1 . Sample of the online consultation by group membership.

The consultation consisted of an online survey that comprised both a close-ended section on sociodemographics and a set of mainly open-ended questions about individual experience in collaborative settings involving SSH researchers. Our analysis of the three research questions is based on five open questions in the survey ( Table 2 ). One of the questions refers to the Covid-19 pandemic ( Table 2 ; RQ1). We chose to include this because the pandemic is a complex societal challenge and is thus relevant to the subject of the study.

TABLE 2 . Research interest and survey questions.

We conducted a structuring content analysis in order to analyze the textual data. This technique corresponds to the inductive technique of qualitative content analysis ( Mayring, 2000 ) and takes into account Kuckartz’s structuring method by using an interpretative initial processing to then iteratively form consistent categories ( Kuckartz, 2014 ). Quotations in this paper are the authors’ translations from the original German responses into English.

We encouraged the experts to publish their names and responses because we consider them relevant for further research: 103 agreed to publish their responses, 68 agreed to publish their names and institutions, 27 to publish only the name of their institutions, and 30 wished to stay anonymous. The survey instrument, the anonymized MAXQDA file, as well as the full answers of those who granted permission, can be found on the project website.

This study had limitations regarding the selection of participants in the consultation: Despite every effort being made to recruit a diverse and relevant set of participants, the selection can hardly reflect the diversity of SSH researchers and its many specialized societal stakeholders. Further research is necessary to understand the manifestations of the generic categories presented here in different contexts.

From the survey responses, we first identify topics that SSH research is associated with and the role SSH research fulfills within society. Second, we present the challenges that are mentioned when SSH researchers and societal stakeholders interact. Third, we turn to quality expectations in this interaction. In each results section, we will report on the findings by referring to the number of codes ascribed to a category in brackets and use exemplary quotes where suitable.

Role of Social Sciences and Humanities Researchers

From the responses regarding the societal issues that SSH expertise is relevant for, we were able to identify 31 societal issues that span nearly every aspect of social and natural life, as well as technical innovation. Broadly, these can be assigned to the following categories: “politics” (45), “economy” (47), “culture” (6), “education” (26), “ecology” (56), “civil society” (131), “health” (34), and “technology” (42).

The answers likely relate to the respondents’ particular interests and expertise and do not represent those areas of real-world problems that the SSH contribute to. However, the issues show that the spectrum of topics ascribed to SSH disciplines goes far beyond narrow disciplinary couplings (e.g., educational research that deals with education or economics that deal with economic growth) and includes contemporary and frequently transformative topics, such as climate change, migration, or the current pandemic. The ubiquity of potential issues for SSH engagement is expressed in this quote from a journalist:

“Every topic has a societal component—from fundamental questions of democracy and politics to questions concerning nature and technology. Basically, each question that requires social action and regulation” (Media_ID103, 10).

While these issues provide some indication of the wide topical range for potential SSH engagement, the participants’ perception of the role of SSH research in addressing these societal issues might provide a more accurate picture of how that engagement might actually unfold. We coded the answers to the question of how participants assess the role of SSH research in solving societal problems accordingly. In total, we identified six distinct societal roles that are frequently referred to by the experts: explaining, reflecting, educating, signaling, foresight, and informing ( Table 3 ).

TABLE 3 . Societal functions of SSH knowledge.

We found indications that each of these six functions correspond to different types of knowledge. For example, the “explain” category relates to system knowledge needed to understand a social issue because it contains statements from participants that are geared towards contextualizing social issues without suggesting any concrete instructions for action. By the same token, the “educate” category contains knowledge used to build competence in a specific issue area. The category “foresee” relates to knowledge needed to determine possibilities for decision-making as it contains statements from participants that refer to future developments. For example, one person working in public administration describes SSH research as an “early warning system for problems that have not yet become apparent” (PublicAdmin_ID61, 9). According to this statement, SSH disciplines should assess the societal implications of social change. These include, as several respondents state, the implications of artificial intelligence on the future of work.

The “inform” category is closely linked to what is referred to as the instrumental use of SSH knowledge, i.e., it is used directly for decision-making. Both the “reflect” and the “signal” categories resonate with what might be considered critical knowledge. Statements in the “reflect” category do not refer to the provision of expertise for problem solving but to interpreting and analyzing the problem and the solution. The “signal” category includes statements that, according to the participants in the consultation, refer to issues that receive too little attention but are considered relevant to public discourse or policymaking. Accordingly, the role of SSH disciplines is to point to these problematic aspects and to act as a critical observer. In relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, the participants mentioned that SSH researchers emphasized the psychological, social, and cultural consequences of pandemic control. Some experts believe SSH expertise is not given enough attention in current political strategies, others like this intermediary describe their influence as lagged but present:

“Whereas at the beginning it was mainly the virologists who were heard, in my opinion the social sciences have now made themselves heard in many respects and have pointed out numerous important aspects of economic and socio-political relevance. For example, the fact that the daycare centers and schools have not yet been closed again is not only due to the virological assessment that children are less likely to spread the virus, but also due to the indications of the problems for working parents and for the children whose educational disadvantages have been exacerbated” (Intermediary_ID110, 24).

The statements from politicians in our sample frequently referred to the “foresee” category, but other than that there were no striking quantitative variations in the distribution of codes.

With regard to the roles attributed to the SSH in solving societal problems, we identified different levels of activity, from a rather passive, contextualizing role (e.g., “explain”) to a more active, influencing role (e.g., “inform”). This leads us to conclude that the SSH provide a diverse range of problem-relevant kinds of knowledge for societal challenges. From a solution-focused point of view, SSH knowledge is partly counterintuitive because it does not necessarily aim to contribute to a solution but seeks to question the problem and its solution. Moreover, rather than producing knowledge that might itself stimulate change or even transformation, SSH disciplines are more frequently attributed the role of producing “cohesion knowledge,” that is, knowledge that helps anticipate change. In this regard, SSH research fulfils a moderating role in complex change processes by helping to establish and maintain social order, cohesion, and equality. In our view, the multiple roles attributed to SSH disciplines could amount to a moderating role that would involve taking into account the complexity of issue formation in change processes as well as attempts to tackle these. Therefore, SSH disciplines are in a position to consider overarching issues of social cohesion and equality. The capacity of SSH research to address questions of cohesion is strongly reflected in the frequency of references to issues: the terms equality or inequality are mentioned 79 times by the respondents, democracy is mentioned 32 times, and cohesion or similar terms are mentioned 28 times.

Interaction Challenges

In order to understand where difficulties arise in the interaction between SSH scholars and societal stakeholders, the participants were asked about the problems and challenges they experienced in previous interactions and—in order to assess organizational aspects—the role of universities in supporting science-society interactions. We identified four kinds of interaction challenges in the answers: 1) translational challenges that relate to different modes and logics of interaction, 2) institutional challenges that relate to the governance and organization of science, 3) epistemic challenges that relate to knowledge creation processes of SSH disciplines, and 4) uptake challenges that relate to the use of SSH expertise by different societal stakeholders. Table 4 presents these challenges and their subdimensions.

TABLE 4 . Interaction challenges.

Translational Challenges: Conflicting System Logics and Boundary Work

Translational challenges relate to different modes and logics of interaction between involved parties. The category comprises statements made by respondents that refer to semantic aspects and systemic differences between science and other social systems that hamper meaningful interaction. The statements in this category can be split into two categories: “language barriers” (27) and “conflicting system logics” (73).

Some participants perceive the language of SSH scholars to be complicated, as this journalist describes:

“As a journalist, it strikes me that social science researchers very often and unfortunately quite naturally use terms that are hardly used or understood by the general public” (Media_ID159, 13).

Differences, however, can be found in the assessment of language barriers. Some see the use of technical concepts as a necessity for describing social phenomena in a differentiated way, while others see it as unnecessarily complicated prose that is a hindrance to productive exchange. In general, references to language barriers are mostly made by participants working in the private sector or in the media.

A second challenge can be described as “conflicting system logics.” Statements in this category refer to three closely related aspects of incompatibility: 1) temporality of SSH research (i.e., SSH research takes time and cannot satisfy needs immediately), 2) conflicting notions of relevance (i.e., societal relevance of SSH is not based on immediate societal needs), and 3) self-referentiality of SSH research (i.e., SSH research refers to itself and not to what others consider social problems). The conflicting system logics resulting from these are well expressed in a quote from an SSH researcher, who on the one hand calls for SSH researchers to anticipate different societal contexts (here the media) but on the other hand reports that this can lead to conflicts among academic peers:

“Scholars should recognize that they move in a different system logic when they communicate with the media, for example. I experience a lot of criticism of the portrayal of science in the media, which I consider inappropriate. Of course, there is a decrease in length, but that is also completely okay.” (SSHscholar_ID138, 16–17)

In general, the participants often refer to different system logics, usually to explain why an exchange could not take place from their specific perspectives. In this quote, for example, a politician reports on the context of his decision making and the associated lack of time to deal with SSH research:

“Science is a different system than politics; there is a democracy proviso; being an elected official does not give me enough time to read or receive scientific literature.” (Politics_ID196, 17)

Different system logics explain the translational challenges between SSH researchers and members of other social subsystems, specifically with regards to language usage, the notions of relevance, and time and content-related use considerations. This explanation can be problematic when functional differentiation of social systems is used as a pretext for not engaging in interaction at all. It might be more fruitful to think of the interaction between societal stakeholders and scientists as one where boundaries between science and nonscience are contextually and continuously dissolved and redrawn.

Institutional Challenges: Mismatch Between Aspiration and Resources

Institutional challenges relate to the governance and organization of science. In this respect, we identified three types of challenges in the statements. These are “lack of resources” (19), “lack of organizational support” (19), and “lack of rewards” (20).

In most cases, references to lack of resources refer to limits concerning SSH researchers’ time and skills. One social scientist mentioned the need for training for research staff when explaining the latter:

“[We] are not trained to do this; we usually do basic research and teach basic science at universities—we need knowledge transfer” (SSHscholar_ID68, 15).

A second institutional challenge relates to the lack of organizational support. Respondents often refer to a decoupling of transfer infrastructures at universities and the researchers working there, or to necessary investment in transfer capacities at research organizations. The latter becomes clear in this statement made by a participant who works in public administration:

“In my opinion, scientific institutions should invest more in public relations—these positions are often sparsely staffed and funded [...]. The relevance of the job/intermediary function is recognized more and more, but this is (often) not yet reflected in the structures” (Intermediary_ID229, 13).

A third challenge in this category is the lack of rewards for societal engagement, which the participants link to the academic reputation and funding system. Another social scientist describes what she perceives as an undervaluation of engagement as follows:

“[There is a] lack of reputation for this activity as opposed to third-party funding and high-ranking publications. [Engagement] is only an “add on”” (SSHscholar_ID44, 13).

The notion of “engagement as an add-on” (i.e., not a main task) is mentioned frequently and especially by SSH scholars in the consultation. However, the participants discuss the matter of recognition with significant differentiation: One expert describes societal impact as an additional pathway for scholarly work, alongside scientific impact:

“Since publication excellence can hardly be mitigated, they could instead create funding lines that can only be used if the relevance to the SDGs is laid out clearly,” (SSHscholar_ID65, 28).

Lack of recognition for public engagement activities and a lack of resources to carry them out are not specific to SSH disciplines per se. However, they may be more pronounced here because knowledge transfer is even less rewarded and incentivized in a dominant framework focused on economic outcomes. If strengthening societal engagement is a science policy priority, the results here suggest that there is a perceived mismatch between this aspiration and the resources allocated to it.

Epistemic Challenges: The Illusion of Stable Social Sciences and Humanities Knowledge

The epistemic challenges category describes challenges that relate to the knowledge creation of SSH disciplines. It includes two subcategories, “ambiguous results” (23) and “conflicting paradigms” (9).

With respect to “ambiguous results,” statements often contain comparisons to the “hard” natural sciences, where results are perceived by some participants to be clear and unambiguous. In contrast, results from SSH disciplines are often described as vague. For example, for a respondent who works as a researcher and in the media, this is the main reason why results from the natural sciences are preferred:

“Questions and research designs are often too vague, the results too ambiguous. Therefore, journalists prefer communicating results from the natural sciences” (SSHscholar_ID142, 16).

The “conflicting paradigms” category contains statements that emphasize how different schools of thought within SSH disciplines result in different ways of understanding and assessing the same issue. A social scientist in the consultation interpreted the heterogeneity of SSH disciplines as an impediment to communication:

“Distinctive disciplinarity and families of methods in SSH disciplines prevent common problem-oriented communication” (SSHscholar_ID206, 22).

While the heterogeneity of SSH disciplines is often described as normal and indeed as an asset by the participants, some point to a problem, namely that this lack of consensus can also be perceived by the public as a lack of scientific rigor. This can lead to a loss of reputation and trust.

“One challenge is the question of how issues that are scientifically controversial can be presented to the public in such a way that the reputation of science does not suffer and, ideally, this heterogeneity can even be used productively” (SSHscholar_ID179, 13).

Of course, conflicting paradigms and ambiguous results are not purely SSH problems. However, they manifest in specific ways there. In general, SSH disciplines comprise very different approaches, research questions, and epistemological premises. Moreover, their results are often strongly dependent on context. These characteristics are echoed in our respondents’ view of the ambiguity of SSH results, which they describe as a challenge when interacting with societal stakeholders.

Uptake Challenges: Lacking Appreciation and Public Attention Dynamics

The category uptake challenges includes statements from participants that relate to the use of SSH expertise by societal stakeholders. We identified three types of uptake challenges. These are: “lacking public appreciation” (27), “public attention dynamics” (13), and the “risk of instrumentalization” (5).

Regarding “lacking appreciation,” SSH disciplines are, again, often contrasted with the natural sciences by participants. Many of them describe the natural sciences as having a comparatively higher public status, which becomes obvious in this statement from an SSH scholar:

“From my point of view, we offer many research topics that are of interest to a broader public, but we are not yet perceived and treated equally with the natural sciences” (Intermediary_ID229, 16)

This observation is backed up by a journalist who explains that while disciplines such as medicine, physics, or engineering are met with fascination, SSH disciplines are not:

“While the natural sciences and medicine are often met with widespread fascination for their subjects in society, this is often lacking in social science. Physics and technology are sexy, other disciplines are not” (Media_ID159, 16).

The “dynamics of public attention” subcategory subsumes statements that describe SSH research as being out of kilter with the public interest. In general, this refers to a perceived mismatch between the utilitarian perspective of societal stakeholders and the supply of knowledge that SSH disciplines can provide. Often, participants refer to the fast pace of social media, which SSH research cannot keep up with. Some participants even describe adverse effects when SSH researchers adapt their communication to the dynamics of publicity, which is made obvious in a quote from a humanities scholar, who explains how attention might trump relevance in public communication:

“Provocation is better “received” than factuality; “loud” colleagues are simply better seen and heard” (SSHscholar_ID67, 13).

The “risk of instrumentalization” category is rarely referenced. We list it nevertheless, because it is often mentioned in the literature and is distinct from the other listed challenges. The category subsumes statements that refer to the misuse of SSH expertise for political interests. For instance, a representative working in the economy and for an NGO states:

“Politicians must not misuse scientific findings for their own agendas and thereby partly discredit them” (Economy_ID96, 18).

Taken together, when SSH results are discussed by the public, they appear to not be appreciated in the same way as natural science results. Instead. they are made subject to attention dynamics and might be instrumentalized. This negative perception might be linked to the subtle nature and multiple ways in which SSH expertise reaches the public and political decision makers. If media attention factors determine whether SSH results are noted by the public, the scientific and societal relevance of SSH expertise might recede.

Quality Expectations

The third research question addresses quality expectations, i.e., conditions for a good exchange between societal stakeholders and SSH researchers. To this end, we asked the participants open questions about their expectations for a good exchange and about the specific conditions that might apply to SSH disciplines. From the answers, we are able to identify eight distinctive quality expectations that can be divided into three main categories. These are 1) process-related, b) outcome-related, and c) person-related quality expectations ( Table 5 ). Engagement with society, albeit an aspiration of many research organizations, seems to be difficult in current organizational structures according to our respondents.

TABLE 5 . Quality expectations.

Process-Related Quality Expectations

Process-related quality expectations refer to the interaction between SSH scholars and societal stakeholders and includes the codes “comprehensibility” (26), “pertinence” (13), “inclusivity” (26), and “form” (25).

“Comprehensibility” encompasses statements that refer to the mutual understanding between actors. Typically, these statements refer to comprehensible and clear communication of results on the part of SSH scholars and the adaptation to interlocutors. Accordingly, complex contents should be conveyed in such a way that those involved in the dialogue are able to follow and respond in an informed manner. The code “pertinence” refers to statements that suggest that knowledge should be used in a problem—and solution-oriented manner. This is illustrated by a statement made by a politician:

“For the policy sphere, I would like to see more focused exchanges that bring in key research findings” (Politics_ID237, 19).

“Inclusivity” refers to the actors involved in an interaction. We distinguished between two types of inclusivity. The first is selective inclusivity, which means that appointed experts who can contribute relevant and specific expertise should be involved. The second is universal inclusivity, which implies broader participation involving those who are possibly affected by the issue. Some participants point out that diverse expertise is needed to achieve viable results. Lastly, statements coded as “form” typically refer to the existence of an interaction format that is adequate for exchange and problem-solving.

It is impossible to meet all of these expectations of the interaction process. One SSH scholar puts it in these almost utopian terms:

“The goal should be to communicate complexity, reflexivity, and provisionality simply, clearly, understandably, and plausibly” (SSHscholar_ID205, 15).

It can be assumed that the more complex a problem is and the more diverse the parties involved in the interaction process, the more difficult it will be to arrive at some form of shared meaning. In this regard, there are expected tensions between inclusivity, pertinence, and comprehensibility, while formality might imply a strategy to meet these expectations in the best possible way.

Outcome-Related Quality Expectations

Outcome-related quality expectations refer to the results of an interaction process between SSH scholars and societal stakeholders. This category comprises the codes “transparency” (30) and “relevance” (31).

The code “transparency” indicates statements that refer to two kinds of transparency: 1) method transparency and 2) motivation transparency. In this article, we use method transparency to refer exclusively to SSH disciplines and signal the requirement of communicating uncertainties and clearly describing methods as necessary for good exchange. Motivation transparency refers to the communication of motivating factors (e.g., personal interest, dependencies, client expectations) and pertains to both SSH scholars and societal stakeholders. This is made obvious in a statement from a social science scholar:

“As part of society, scientists perceive and research socially relevant topics—politics should make the use of scientific research results transparent” (SSHscholar_ID68, 18).

“Relevance” includes statements that refer to the practical implications of the interaction process. We distinguished between individual and societal relevance. Individual relevance signifies the benefits for the individuals involved and is described by some as a motivating factor for partaking in the interaction process. Societal relevance is usually viewed in a differentiated way as referring either to benefits for individual citizens or benefits for specific groups and sectors of society. In some statements, such as the following made by a politician, societal relevance is framed as a return on societal investment in publicly financed research:

“Society makes a considerable contribution to the financial security and freedom of science, not least through public budgets. It can therefore expect science to take an interest in societal issues and to make its contribution to solving societal problems [...]” (Politics_ID234, 18).

However, achieving both transparency and relevance might be difficult, as this statement from an economics scholar shows:

“The greatest challenge in communicating social science research is often to openly acknowledge the uncertainty inherent in its findings while convincing people that they nevertheless contain important information” (SSHscholar_ID157, 16).

In this case, transparency is seen as a hindrance for relevance. Further tensions might arise when personal and societal relevance do not correspond, or when transparency (in the sense of replicability) cannot be achieved. There might also be a conflict between different quality expectations in the outcome of the interaction process.

Person-Related Quality Expectations

Person-related quality expectations refer to the individuals involved in the interaction process. They subsume the codes “empathy” (67) and “disinterestedness” (14).

“Empathy” indicates statements that refer to the mutual acknowledgement of all parties involved. Most statements in this category refer to acknowledging the position of the other parties involved in the interaction process. Typically, the social position of an individual comes with certain concessions, for example, journalists are granted reporting duties, politicians have decision-making power, and SSH scholars possess research autonomy. The reciprocal nature of the expectation of empathy is made clear in this quote from a journalist in the consultation:

“When researchers recognize that the media are their partners—in discourse, in presentation, in criticism. That means being available for media inquiries, discussing issues of relevance with a journalist, and sharing material. It also means tolerating exaggerations, even if one’s own business is differentiation” (Media_ID114, 16).

Some participants state that empathy should not be blind but informed. This is made obvious in a quote from a participant who works in public administration:

“It is important that the results of SSH disciplines can be properly assessed. Excessive claims in the social sciences, in the sense of objective truths, can easily produce disappointment and lead to a deviation, which in the worst cases can then leave the impression of arbitrariness of the decisions and actions under discussion” (PublicAdmin_ID167, 15).

The code “disinterestedness” is used for statements that emphasize that actors should not pursue their own interests but act for the benefit of society. This is often combined with the expectation that personal opinions should be separated from facts and that the conversation should be devoid of emotions and self-promotional intentions. Responding to the question of what constitutes a good collaboration between science and society, one SSH scholar states:

“In my view, a good exchange is characterized above all by the fact that it is not primarily guided and inspired by the self-promotional intentions of individual scientists or scientific organizations” (SSHscholar_ID37, 16).

There are conflicts between disinterestedness and empathy, for instance when it comes to the proclaimed necessity of leaving emotions aside. In addition, there may be potential cross-category tensions between person—and outcome-related quality expectations, for instance in relation to disinterestedness and the individual relevance described above. The same holds true for informed empathy and inclusivity. Remarkably all participants, researchers as well as societal stakeholders from different fields, name the quality expectation empathy most frequently as a condition for exchange. Reflection on ones own position seems crucial for science-society-interactions.

In this article, we used an expert consultation to examine the societal impact of SSH disciplines, i.e., the role of SSH research in addressing societal issues, as well as the resulting challenges and quality expectations. The results shed light on the conundrum of addressing societal issues while being part of the subject matter.

Social Sciences and Humanities Knowledge as Cohesion Knowledge

The societal issues that SSH disciplines relate to are broad and transcend disciplinary couplings. The quasi ubiquity of SSH impact areas resonates with recent research findings (e.g., Bastow et al., 2014 ). The roles ascribed to SSH disciplines in addressing societal problems are likewise diverse and range from more instrumental tasks, such as informing a policy decision, to more contextualizing activities, such as explaining the social implications of a problem. The latter resonates with Stehr and Ruser’s (2017) description of social scientists as “meaning producers,” i.e., their knowledge does not focus on practical choices but on processes of meaning, which may give rise to decisions. In addition, we find evidence of a more counterintuitive role for SSH disciplines in addressing societal challenges, namely critiquing the definition of a problem and the envisaged solution. This finding resonates with Burchell (2009) who proposes that, from a societal perspective, the social sciences might best be interpreted as a “critical friend” (see also Davies et al., 2008 ). Participants in the consultation describe the relevance of this critical capacity, for instance, in discussing the social, cultural, and psychological implications of the Covid-19 pandemic, which some feel have not been sufficiently considered in policy decisions.

Along with these roles, we identified different types of knowledge that SSH disciplines can provide to help resolve societal challenges. These range from overview and system knowledge, as described by Becker (2002) , to instrumental knowledge ( Fähnrich and Lü ; Stehr and Ruser, 2017 ) like the kind that is used to inform political decision-making processes. This differentiation resonates with ( Weiss, 1980 ) who suggests that the contributions of SSH research to decision-making processes are much wider than a narrow idea of knowledge utilization suggests. Moreover, “critical knowledge,” i.e., knowledge that enables us to question societal decisions, appears to be an essential contribution of SSH disciplines to societal issues. This positions SSH researchers as a critical corrective in addition to its contextualizing and co-creating capacity. At a higher level of abstraction, we observe that SSH disciplines are rarely associated with “transformative knowledge” that causes change ( Becker, 2002 ) but instead with knowledge that helps us anticipate societal transformations and to deal with change (see also Sigurðarson, 2020 ). We refer to this kind of knowledge as “cohesion knowledge.”

Continuous Boundary Work

In the scholarly debate, dialogue between representatives from both science and society is understood as a condition for “socially robust” knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is both scientifically robust and socially useful ( Nowotny et al., 2001 ). Consequently, we conceptualize interaction as a prerequisite for societal impact (see also Spaapen and van Drooge, 2011 ). This motivated us to interrogate challenges in interactive and problem-oriented settings involving SSH disciplines. The challenges we identify can be categorized as translational, institutional, epistemic, and uptake challenges, and they thus correspond roughly to the framework suggested by Jahn et al. (2012) . While many of the challenges we identified point to contingent issues, some results stand out.

When it comes to translation, reducing linguistic complexity without being accused of triviality and commonplace hypotheses is a core challenge for SSH disciplines. Some of the societal stakeholders in the consultation describe SSH disciplines as self-referential and the language used as unnecessarily complicated at times. Bridging the “social gap” ( Maasen and Lieven 2006 ) between science and society thus means that SSH scholars must adapt their language (e.g., their use of terms), although at the risk of compromising their epistemic authority. A problem-oriented interaction with societal stakeholders, however, might contribute to increased “methodological efficiency” as a form of continuous external validation ( Woolgar, 2000 ). Regarding institutional challenges, we find initial evidence for a structural disadvantage of SSH disciplines. This might be explained with reference to the fact that the established entrepreneurial heuristic of societal impact carries little significance for SSH disciplines ( Benneworth and Olmos-Peñuela, 2018 ). Epistemic challenges mostly concern the heterogeneity of SSH disciplines and their approaches, intermittently conflicting paradigms, and the dynamic object of study, i.e., society as a moving target ( Dayé, 2014 ). It follows that SSH disciplines produce knowledge that is highly context-dependent, situated, and dynamic ( Gattone, 2012 ; Fähnrich and Lüthje, 2017 ). Hence, there are serious limitations regarding the extent to which objective, stable, and context-independent knowledge can be expected from SSH disciplines ( Davies et al., 2008 ). This finding is consistent with the self-conception of many SSH disciplines as critical, reflective, and contextual. When it comes to the uptake of SSH knowledge, the consulted representatives note how SSH expertise is not always fully appreciated and may explain to a certain extent the lack of appreciation for SSH research. For example, in the consultation, SSH research is often contrasted with natural science and technical disciplines, whose results are not only perceived as more stable but often as more exciting, too. This resonates with Knudsen (2017) , who found a deficit framing for the humanities in Danish print media. Cassidy (2014) explains this lack of appreciation with the close relationship of SSH disciplines to everyday life: “Unlike most natural sciences, where the specialist training, knowledge and equipment of scientists grants them largely uncontested expertise, social scientists’ expertise is often about matters of everyday experience and common-sense knowledge” (p. 190).

Taken together, these challenges suggest a twofold implication: The calls for more resources and recognition are on the one hand contingent issues that can give impulses to the governance of science. On the other hand, our results illustrate how the position of the SSH in society is a matter of ongoing negotiations. The identified challenges show how the SSH are caught up in boundary work in their interactions with extra-academic fields ( Gieryn, 1983 ). They speak of troubles of SSH researchers to claim their authority, which is linked to epistemic dynamics, that find expression in language usage, specific temporalities and context-specific results. How the SSH position themselves towards their moving target, the society, becomes even more of a challenge in collaborative formats.

Contextual Quality Configurations

Our empirical findings indicate a three-dimensional framework for ensuring quality in collaborative arrangements involving SSH researchers and societal stakeholders. The first is process-related and describes the expectations of the exchange itself. The second is person-related and describes the expectations towards the people involved. The third is outcome-oriented and includes the expectations of the outcome. In collaborative settings, there will most likely be contradictory expectations of what entitles persons to participate, how interacting partners should behave, and what constitutes relevant knowledge (see also Kropp and Wagner, 2010 ). This leads to conflicts between different expectations of quality that are difficult to avoid, for instance between disinterestedness and empathy, but also within categories, for instance, regarding different understandings of relevance (e.g., how can scientific demands for relevance be reconciled with demands for utility?). At times, the participants in the consultation offer solutions to these conflicts between quality expectations, for instance when they say that there are conditions for participation in the interaction such as having a basic understanding of the other interaction partner. This is in line with Bromme’s (2020) concept of “informed trust,” according to which it needs not only trust in public scientific statements but also knowledge on the system of science to make an informed judgement. Our findings add a nuance to this hypothesis by suggesting that informed trust must be reciprocal, i.e., researchers participating in a dialogue must also understand the societal stakeholders they engage with.

Generally, we can safely assume that the more diverse and complex the setting for a dialogue is, the more difficult it may be to document expertise and to establish transparency. If being affected by an issue legitimizes participation in a dialogue, then it may be more difficult to enforce pertinence as a premise. If expertise legitimizes participation, there is also a risk of exceeding the level of fact. It follows that there must be legitimate reasons for trade-offs between different quality expectations. These should depend on the aim of the interaction, the individuals involved, and the chosen interaction format. It follows that quality expectations in collaborative settings should not be understood universally, unilaterally, and statically. Instead, they should be considered within their specific context, reciprocally, and dynamically. Hence, we propose that quality itself must be an object of these interactions, i.e., there should ideally be deliberation about the appropriate quality configuration for the problem at hand. This could be particularly relevant for SSH disciplines, which, as discussed above, have to engage in continuous boundary work due to their position in society. The outline of a quality framework as proposed here can be a basis for deliberating on the quality of these arrangements. That said, for particularly established forms of interaction (e.g., scientific policy advice), there may already be recognized default settings from which it is possible to extrapolate.

Our results show, that the societal impact of SSH disciplines can be counterintuitive and precisely not aimed at solving a problem. Instead, they often seek to challenge both the problem and its solution. Nor does SSH research necessarily strive for transformation but instead seeks an understanding and a moderation of social change. Therefore, the impact of the SSH is often discreet, indirect, and conceptual. Thus, the quality of the societal impact of SSH disciplines can only be understood in relation to their specific context, in the sense that it is person-, problem-, and time-dependent and must take into account different field logics as it takes place in a “space between fields” ( Williams, 2020 ). For these reasons, a rigid, purely quantitative assessment of societal impact of SSH disciplines should generally be avoided, especially with regard to how assessment shapes and stabilizes underlying values ( Espeland and Sauder, 2007 ; Williams, 2020 ).

Our results provide some arguments for so-called formative evaluations of the societal impact of SSH disciplines. Formative evaluations focus on the process (e.g., an interaction, a program, or a project) while the activities are ongoing. They are geared towards learning and goal adjustment. The SIAMPI approach ( Spaapen and van Drooge, 2011 ) as well as the Agora model ( Frederiksen et al., 2003 ; Barré, 2010 ) or Public Value Mapping ( Bozeman and Sarewitz, 2011 ) are promising examples of such formative assessment concepts. Using the concept of “productive interactions,” the SIAMPI approach focuses on the individual’s contributions to an interaction rather than reactively assessing its outputs. With its emphasis on productivity however, it cannot capture the counterintuitive contributions outlined above, which do not focus on the solution to a problem but instead question the problem.

Nonetheless, this at times counterintuitive impact of SSH disciplines may not be suitable for evaluation at all. Instead, it might imply that additional measures such as capacity building are needed to support the interaction between science and society ( Sigurðarson, 2020 ). The integration of science communication, and with it the reflection on boundaries, must become an integral part of science education. This is underlined by the trend towards public legitimation of research funds and a new social contract for science not as hasty obedience to a political desire but as a basis for an informed discussion of perspectives and implications. In that sense, it seems reasonable to reflect on and gain a more nuanced understanding of the societal impact of SSH disciplines within research communities and learned societies.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author Contributions

All authors certify that they have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, including participation in the concept, design, analysis, writing, or revision of the manuscript. BF supervised, carried out the analysis, editing and data collection together with FK. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

This study was carried out with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (under grant numbers 01PW18008A and 01PW18008B BMBF).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: impact, knowledge transfer, science-society interfaces, scientific advice, research utilization

Citation: Fecher B, Kuper F, Sokolovska N, Fenton A, Hornbostel S and Wagner GG (2021) Understanding the Societal Impact of the Social Sciences and Humanities: Remarks on Roles, Challenges, and Expectations. Front. Res. Metr. Anal. 6:696804. doi: 10.3389/frma.2021.696804

Received: 17 April 2021; Accepted: 18 June 2021; Published: 01 July 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Fecher, Kuper, Sokolovska, Fenton, Hornbostel and Wagner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Benedikt Fecher, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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humanities , those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself. As a group of educational disciplines , the humanities are distinguished in content and method from the physical and biological sciences and, somewhat less decisively, from the social sciences. The humanities include the study of all languages and literatures , the arts , history , and philosophy . The humanities are sometimes organized as a school or administrative division in many colleges and universities in the United States .

The modern conception of the humanities has its origin in the Classical Greek paideia , a course of general education dating from the Sophists in the mid-5th century bce , which prepared young men for active citizenship in the polis, or city-state; and in Cicero ’s humanitas (literally, “human nature”), a program of training proper for orators, first set forth in De oratore ( Of the Orator ) in 55 bce . In the early Middle Ages the Church Fathers, including St. Augustine , himself a rhetorician, adapted paideia and humanitas —or the bonae (“good”), or liberales (“liberal”), arts, as they were also called—to a program of basic Christian education; mathematics , linguistic and philological studies, and some history, philosophy, and science were included.

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The word humanitas, although not the substance of its component disciplines, dropped out of common use in the later Middle Ages but underwent a flowering and a transformation in the Renaissance . The term studia humanitatis (“studies of humanity”) was used by 15th-century Italian humanists to denote secular literary and scholarly activities (in grammar , rhetoric , poetry , history, moral philosophy , and ancient Greek and Latin studies) that the humanists thought to be essentially humane and Classical studies rather than divine ones. In the 18th century, Denis Diderot and the French Encyclopédistes censured studia humanitatis for what they claimed had by then become its dry, exclusive concentration on Latin and Greek texts and language. By the 19th century, when the purview of the humanities expanded, the humanities had begun to take their identity not so much from their separation from the realm of the divine as from their exclusion of the material and methods of the maturing physical sciences, which tended to examine the world and its phenomena objectively, without reference to human meaning and purpose.

Contemporary conceptions of the humanities resemble earlier conceptions in that they propose a complete educational program based on the propagation of a self-sufficient system of human values. But they differ in that they also propose to distinguish the humanities from the social sciences as well as from the physical sciences, and in that they dispute among themselves as to whether an emphasis on the subject matter or on the methods of the humanities is most effectual in accomplishing this distinction. In the late 19th century the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey called the humanities “the spiritual sciences” and “the human sciences” and described them, simply, as those areas of knowledge that lay outside of, and beyond, the subject matter of the physical sciences. On the other hand, Heinrich Rickert , an early 20th-century Neo-Kantian, argued that it is not subject matter but method of investigation that best characterizes the humanities; Rickert contended that whereas the physical sciences aim to move from particular instances to general laws, the human sciences are “idiographic”—they are devoted to the unique value of the particular within its cultural and human contexts and do not seek general laws. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum emphasized the crucial importance of education in the humanities for maintaining a healthy democracy , for fostering a deeper understanding of human concerns and values, and for enabling students to rise above parochial perspectives and “the bondage of habit and custom” to become genuine citizens of the world.

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Humanities and Organizations in Dialogue

Hermeneutic inquiries, ghislain deslandes.

Administrative practice and science are currently undergoing a profound reassessment. The terms "stress", "burn-out", or "meaningless jobs" give us an idea of the reasons why the commitment to work is at half-mast today, which is rather worrying for the economic development itself. Faced with the added complexity of various technological, environmental, and geopolitical disruptions, managers are ultimately called upon to completely reinvent the way they work and think. In an attempt to transform our conception of management, the method proposed in Humanities and Organizations in Dialogue: Hermeneutic Inquiries is based on the study of contemporary humanities. Consequently, Ghislain Deslandes comments on numerous essays to provide managers with a unique way of understanding what is happening. The approach reintroduces a measure of philosophical reflexivity into a world where it is all too often absent, in order to understand business administration with new perspectives and new tools, especially in terms of language. It also seeks to better understand how managers should respond, with subtlety and tact, to the socio-economic and environmental challenges facing organizations.

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Academic Dishonesty Among Students in Higher Institutions of Learning: Implications for Quality Education

24 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2024 Publication Status: Under Review

Kahsay Hailu Negash

Adal Medical University

Velisiwe Gasa

University of South Africa (UNISA)

This research was undertaken to understand the implications of academic dishonesty on quality education. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations. The study finds that students cheat during examinations for several reasons. If the cheating practice is left unattended, the students will leave universities ill-prepared and with low-quality education. This calls for higher institutions of learning to understand the root cause of the practice so as to come up with intervention strategies. Therefore, this paper outlines the causes of academic dishonesty, the implications of this practice on quality education, and provides some strategies to curb this practice.

Keywords: Higher Education, quality education, Academic Dishonesty, examination cheating

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Kahsay Hailu Negash (Contact Author)

Adal medical university ( email ), university of south africa (unisa) ( email ), do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on ssrn, paper statistics, related ejournals, social sciences & humanities open.

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A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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In defense of the humanities: Upholding the pillars of human
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A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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Humanities and Organizations in Dialogue: Hermeneutic Inquiries
The book shows that in the context of social sciences and the humanities the meaning of management reflection can be seen and appreciated. Indeed, while some business schools have been dedicating themselves to building castles of managerialism, scholars and managers have been increasingly more concerned about the futility of such hollow ...
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A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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Thesis driven

In defense of the humanities: Upholding the pillars of human understanding

Loss and literature

The humanities: Studies of the human condition

Scholarly perspectives on the importance of the humanities

Challenges affecting the humanities: Economic pressures and academic isolation

Sustaining the humanities today

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Humanities vs. social science: exploring the dichotomy

What are the humanities?

Areas of study

Career paths in humanities

What are social sciences?

Career paths in social science

Why study the humanities or social sciences?

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The place of the humanities in today’s knowledge society

Introduction

The political constraints of the devaluation of the humanities in an academic context

The impact of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities

The benefits of studying the humanities

On the complementarity of the various knowledge fields within society

Concluding remarks

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Introduction

Research Interest

Challenges for Collaborative Arrangements Involving the SSH and Societal Actors

Quality Expectations Regarding the Interaction Process

Data and Methods

Role of Social Sciences and Humanities Researchers

Interaction Challenges

Translational Challenges: Conflicting System Logics and Boundary Work

Institutional Challenges: Mismatch Between Aspiration and Resources

Epistemic Challenges: The Illusion of Stable Social Sciences and Humanities Knowledge

Uptake Challenges: Lacking Appreciation and Public Attention Dynamics

Quality Expectations

Process-Related Quality Expectations

Outcome-Related Quality Expectations

Person-Related Quality Expectations