Abstract
While I was reading the book Return to Meaning penned by Mats Alvesson, Yiannis Gabriel, and Roland Paulsen, my university inbox filled up with e-mails: about two scientific conferences indexed in a key database, a message about workshops for young researchers that will unveil the way to build a successful career, an e-mail from an international academic and trade publishing company reminding me about the deadline for submitting a book proposal, and an e-mail from the book editors informing me about the need to introduce a ‘major revision’ to the chapter I was co-writing. Therefore, a few hours spent reading had corroborated the arguments put forward by the authors of the book. I became even more convinced that the massification of scientific work and the unwarranted pressure to publish, often with no regard for quality or meaning, concerned me personally. The microcosm of academic milieus, which consist of inward-looking ‘micro-tribes’, as the authors call them, is trapped in a cluttered galaxy of ‘lonely papers’, hedged around with scores, grants, publishing houses, and conferences. It is high time we took a critical look and sounded the alarm bells, although Mats Alvesson, Yiannis Gabriel, and Roland Paulsen’s initiative is not the first of this kind. It follows the footsteps of Alvesson’s (2013) earlier book entitled The Triumph of Emptiness and Stefan Collini’s (2012) What Are Universities For?
As signaled on the initial pages, the book is intended to have a practical dimension and trigger tangible actions aimed at improving the condition of social sciences, so that they have ‘something to say’, as the subtitle reads. The intention of the authors is to find a way to clip the overpopulated branch on which they are sitting without damaging the tree or its often forgotten roots and to arrive at fair selection methods that will allow the best to climb higher and all the rest to make a fairly soft landing in other areas (including academic teaching), but with their dream of a career in science dispelled. In the aftermath of these deliberations, the book is divided into two complementary parts: ‘Loss of Meaning’ and ‘Recovery of Meaning’.
The first part summarizes the status quo in the social sciences, which are being gradually deprived of seminal ideas and the potential to address real problems. The titles of subsequent parts of the book reveal the authors’ attitude. ‘So much noise, so little to say’ and ‘Researchers making sense of meaningless research’ lead to the core argument—the need to ‘become better at questioning the meaning of what we do’ (p. 12). The simplicity of this approach shows how much social sciences have deviated from the need to build meaning, often making up for it by merely making sense, which, as the authors observe after Karl Weick, is not the same. As a result, the question ‘What can science offer to society?’ has been replaced with the reversed perspective—‘What can society offer to science?’ (p. 9), moving the egos of researchers into the foreground. Hence, their analysis of the pathologies in science that focuses on several basic factors: cynicism, overproduction of scientific papers, and a dwindling interest in didactics or in teaching students critical thinking skills. This is followed by a discussion of the political and economic system generating this illusion that science is stuck in, convinced of its own raison d’être on the basis of parameterized indicators. Next, the authors scrutinize large publishing houses, which often impose research trends and inhibit the freedom of scientists by forcing them to churn out papers in a flash and conform to reviewers’ demands. It makes sense that the publishing houses provide infrastructure for academics and universities involved in the publishing drama. But in most cases, the whole game is meaningless.
It is not difficult to agree with the authors that the problem they identify exists and has spread throughout many areas of the academia. What is much more challenging is their discussion of ways out of this predicament. Even if one feels part of this system, it requires tremendous effort to reflect self-critically and perhaps to realize that the research in which one believes, and works so hard at, has little meaning. I can see this in my own work. During the breaks from my reading, I sent three e-mails: one to the management of my institute with a request to reduce my teaching hours in the upcoming semester, one to a colleague in Sweden with an idea for comparative research, and one to the editors of a scientific journal with a suggestion for a special issue. It turns out that all such moves are covered by the authors’ critical analysis and perhaps they could be classified as actions devoid of any meaning. As the authors say, ‘meaningfulness is not the same as interest, popularity, or fashion’ (p. 20). In social sciences, meaningfulness refers to a small space where individual, group, and general aspirations meet, beyond the interest of particular milieus. The authors provide a figure (p. 19) with overlapping spheres of meaningfulness to show where the real value lies. It may be a subject of another discussion if their own work hits ‘the bull’s eye’; nevertheless, the second part of the book is the most promising one. It serves as a catalog of practical tips about how to revitalize social sciences on several levels: individual, institutional, and policy-making. To clarify their solution, the authors emphasize that instead of calling for a revolution they want to inspire people to take numerous small steps (pp. 85–86).
In the context of individual actions, they suggest, for example, moving across many research areas and combining perspectives in order to generate unique knowledge. They refer to this approach as ‘polymorphic research’. It stands in opposition to the orthodox way of thinking represented by the ‘formulaic research’ that has dominated social sciences (p.90). The promoted diversity does not have to refer only to topics but can also concern methods, writing styles, and target audiences of research results. In a nutshell, these postulates can be called mobility of the scientific imagination. That corresponds with the essence of our profession. As the authors say, ‘Being a scholar as an identity and a mode of working means reading and thinking more than managing data’ (p. 86).
Next, the authors examine the possibilities of recovering meaning in the context of the scholarly community. In this part, the essential role is ascribed to greater openness to audience. This encompasses both the need for full transparency of the peer-review process, including the opportunity to read many versions of one paper, and the inclusion of non-expert reviewers. In addition, the authors call for a more serious approach to special issues, which should manifest bold thinking in a given field instead of creating even more hermetic groups. The debate on the possible modifications at the policy-making level is, in fact, a repetition of the earlier postulates, with particular emphasis placed on reducing red-tape procedures.
In conclusion, it is easy to agree with the theses put forward in the second part of the book, even if several solutions may raise some reservations, depending on the reader’s career stage, past achievements, gender, or even the geographical area of work. Although the authors mention English as the lingua franca of modern science, they do not focus on the idea of giving greater value to publications in national languages that have the potential to become an important element of the dialogue with non-specialist audiences, even if only on a small scale.
Alvesson, Gabriel, and Paulsen are aware of the flaws of their propositions and of the fact that they are in a comfortable, established position. In the final part of the book, they address the eight objections they themselves formulate, showing self-criticism and awareness of their role in system to be changed. The arguments, however, offer not only legitimate solutions but can also serve as inspiration as they reveal that impotence stems from passivity and opportunism is taking the place of passion. Despite some obviousness to it, their timely, insightful, and sometimes ironic yet funny book should become a compulsory reading for contemporary researchers (not only in the social sciences), publishers, politicians responsible for science, and all those interested in a creative dialogue with scholars. We all should look critically at what comes into the university inbox and take responsibility for what we send from our outbox.