Tony

“Are NSF grants for anthropology a fetish commodity? Maybe.”

Ok, I see where you’re going now. To me this is an interesting conversation, even if it’s not what I was originally going for with this post. This could be a whole series of posts about how we get funding, why we do things the way we do, etc. I’d argue that this discussion could be extended to include a variety of the grants that anthro students apply for (I don’t think NSF is the only grant source that is being fetishized). There’s a lot of emphasis (and sometimes obsession) with getting these grants, but it’s good for people to really think about everything that goes into them and what they actually get out of it. In your first comment you mentioned getting a job in an interesting place and then just writing up articles (etc) without NSF or any other involvement. There’s a lot of merit to thinking along those lines. I think that sort of philosophy could in fact be applied toward graduate research (and research in general) in many cases.

“They also cherry pick their examples, and then generalize to a whole. This is a great rhetorical technique…”

It is. And it works. Until you start looking closer. But that doesn’t always happen when these kinds of things go public. Which of course is part of the problem–superficial arguments can actually do a great deal of damage before someone figures out it’s all nonsense.

“But I don’t think improved funding for NSF is going to improve the number of graduate stipends significantly. This indeed is a very worthy goal—but I can think of many more efficient ways of doing this than sending another 10% ($27 million) to the social science division, or to NSF as a whole.”

This could be another whole discussion–about how to improve graduate support/funding and so on. I’d be interested to hear about your suggestions. When it comes to funding grad students, I absolutely think there are other options and possibilities that we should look into. Maybe we should do a series about this sometime??? Ideas abound.

Having said that, I agree with you that Cantor and Smith are engaged in a bit of specious reasoning—they highlight the Bureau of SBE for political reasons. Their critique is as you put it, besides the point. They also cherry pick their examples, and then generalize to a whole. This is a great rhetorical technique, which is why they use it—but as you point out the logic is quite faulty.

I am ready to congratulate individual anthropologists for successful NSF grants. But I don’t think improved funding for NSF is going to improve the number of graduate stipends significantly. This indeed is a very worthy goal—but I can think of many more efficient ways of doing this than sending another 10% ($27 million) to the social science division, or to NSF as a whole.

Ha. Well, if you think that was the point of the post then you missed it by a long shot. I did include the disclosure about my DDIG because I figured that was the right thing to do all things considered. Anyway, my point was to highlight the *reasons* why Cantor and Smith are going after certain grants given to social science. It’s pure politics. I would have written the same post if they were going after some other funding source for purely political reasons. I have been following Coburn et al for a while now, and this bit by Cantor and Smith is more of the same crap.

“Let’s face it, support for NSF, NIMH, and others is primarily about the preservation of the privileges of the “hard” sciences and their labs, and the large overhead costs that the large Research I universities tack onto every federal grant.”

Ok…so what’s your point? That this is a non-issue since NSF is primarily about funding the hard sciences? That’s a weird argument.

“In the end, that thirty or forty page paper, which is the result of like ten rewrites of the thirty page grant proposal is the “product.” I’ve found it much more straight-forward to just get a teaching gig somewhere interesting, and then write up the 30-40 page article without the involvement of NSF et al.”

That’s an interesting point, but I think you’re heading off into a side conversation. A worthwhile conversation, no doubt, but not really what I was going for here. But I do think what you bring up is something to think about for anyone who is looking into the whole grant thing. There are definitely pros and cons to the whole process, that’s for sure.

“Which is a long way of asking, what is NSF really good for in the social sciences?”

I guess it depends on who you ask.

“But hey, I teach Marx now and then, which means that I wonder if these appeals to restore NSF funding are really just a form of false consciousness?”

It’s grant money, Tony. People try to get it in order to fund their research. It’s one option/source among a not so astonishing range of options. I don’t even think your Marx/false consciousness argument really makes much sense here. Are you saying that people who are arguing in defense of NSF are somehow fetishizing these grants and not really unable to perceive the fact that they are really just agents of their own exploitation/alienation because they have become enslaved by the whole process? Is that your argument? Hmmm. Well, how do you feel about a massive university system that pretends to be about “knowledge,” “learning,” and “humanity” yet manages to successfully produce a heavily indebted crop of graduates year in and year without ever skipping a beat? False consciousness, did you say? Heh. But we digress.

“Would anthropology, sociology, or other fields really suffer that much, except maybe at ten or so Research I universities, if the NSF vanished off the face of the earth?”

I still think you’re missing the whole point. To me this is about the fact that two US politicians–and others–are targeting research and ideas that they find politically disagreeable for one reason or another. The NSF just happens to be one convenient–and public–place to try to gain some political ground. That’s the issue. If you don’t think that’s something to get “enthusiastic” about, well, I’m not sure what to tell you.

What is more, I found during the couple of times I have tried to play the grant game with the “big boys and girls” to be underwhelming. As I recall it involved writing a thirty page grant proposal, with the less-than-helpful observation that most such grant take two or three iterations to get right/funded. Then if you get funded, you still have to do the research, satisfy the auditors, and finally submit something to a journal where you will need to deal with yet another set of reviewers. My university (Chico State) also takes a 40% overhead cut—the big kids I understand do a lot better. In the end, that thirty or forty page paper, which is the result of like ten rewrites of the thirty page grant proposal is the “product.” I’ve found it much more straight-forward to just get a teaching gig somewhere interesting, and then write up the 30-40 page article without the involvement of NSF et al.

Which is a long way of asking, what is NSF really good for in the social sciences? That it funds a bit of good work here and there I have little doubt. But hey, I teach Marx now and then, which means that I wonder if these appeals to restore NSF funding are really just a form of false consciousness? Would anthropology, sociology, or other fields really suffer that much, except maybe at ten or so Research I universities, if the NSF vanished off the face of the earth?

(For what it is worth, my sense is that anthropology would suffer more if Savage Minds disappeared than if NSF disappeared!)

Anyway, that’s my contrarian opinion, at least for this evening. I remain hopeful that one of you can turn me around.

I’m not a political analyst (not even a pretend one online), but I get the sense that fellows like Representatives Cantor and Smith are trying to speak to certain types of people and maybe rope in a few more with this pittance of a cause. I call it a pittance not on account of funding for the sciences being unimportant: I choose that word, because their false complaint happens to be about an infinitesimally small portion of Federal money. These guys should have bigger financial concerns to spend their time on. They also inflate things by transforming it into a patriotic issue. So we get the Founding Fathers and great inventors of the good old days. Or, as in a video in one of your links, Do you think the tax dollars of 75 families should be spent on soccer players? It’s all rather dishonest and stupid.

“But once the government approves a certain amount of funding to the NSF, the decisions about how to allot that money, and how to judge and refine priorities from year to year, must be solely up to scientists and the peer review process. That is the essence of scientific culture. To insert politics any further into prioritizing scientific research is, by definition, anti-scientific.”

Exactly.

Still, I do think their argument could be read as a “reasoned” attempt to discuss these issues, especially by folks who are not quite as invested in what all of this would mean. And to me that’s one of the primary reasons why it’s time for social scientists to step up and demonstrate just how wrong and unreasonable all of this is.

I find their use of Franklin, Edison, Ford etc to be pretty interesting–they are only interested in research in so far as it results in products. So, right from the start they are heading in a fundamentally different direction than the NSF mission.

Good point, too, about the fact that there are plenty of agencies that do support just the kind of research Cantor and Smith prefer. They seem to completely ignore this…but again I think it’s pretty clearly because they are just building up a range of facade arguments in order to cover up the fact that this is, at heart, a campaign to discredit and defund research that is, as you say, “politically inconvenient.” That’s something that has to be confronted directly, even if these two are anything but up front about what they are doing.

Thanks again.

You could also turn the Cantor/Smith argument back on itself, and stress the importance of free enterprise. Much of what they regard as important, useful research could be undertaken by private industry, since its usefulness can often be translated into commercialization.The value of NSF is that it can support research on interesting, not merely useful, research: projects that have no commercial potential, but increase knowledge and understanding. Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Henry Ford didn’t need federal funding for R&D that would produce profitable inventions.

Finally, you should highlight the fact that there are numerous Federal agencies that support the kind of ‘useful’ research that Cantor/Smith prefer, some located with DOD (e.g. DARPA, or ONR), others, such as NIH, within HHS or other departments. There are very few agencies that support social science research. The implication that NSF has to fund the ‘useful’ research on its own is bogus, and reinforces the ultimate point, that the Cantor/Smith agenda is to defund research that is politically inconvenient.

Thanks for this excellent post about an extremely important issue.