8 the state of science in south africa
H U M A N I T I E S A N D S O C I A L S C I E N C E S
academics] acting as organic intellectuals renewal and of rediscovery – all the features
of the home-grown liberation movements” which place the humanities at the very cen-
(Burawoy, 2004a:11). In the early 1990s the tre of the human experience.
humanities in South Africa seemed all but
on the edge of an age of retreat. The explanation begins with the issue of
timing. The end of apartheid occurred
Ten years later, all this had changed, as re- at a moment of enormous international
search into the ‘employment prospects’ for change. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved
graduates attested. the way for the collapse of Socialism, en-
tirely removing those Archimedean points
of reference – east and west – that had
The employability picture is bleaker for
dominated thinking about the social world
graduates from the faculty of humani-
for forty years. In important, though as yet
ties. Commenting on learners’ chances of
undocumented ways, the apartheid experi-
obtaining a job after graduation, deans
ment was over-shadowed by the Cold War
said: `not anything significant’, `not with
and, as has been seen, individual disciplines
the current programmes’ and `not wide-
often lent themselves to its ideology. In the
spread within the faculty’. They realised
changing South Africa the contest over ide-
that, so far, the programmes offered in
as about the social world was heightened
their faculties are less demanded by em-
by increasing violence, which was linked
ployers and have a lower exchange rate
to the deepening political contestation.
in the market place, which puts students
The holding power of the Marxist Moment
at a disadvantage. University funding for
quickly disappeared for two reasons. First,
the faculties of humanities is yearly be-
the collapse of the socialist states com-
ing reduced while funding for faculties
pelled political and social discourses to en-
that promise to produce more employ-
gage with neo-liberal social thought, which
able graduates is increased, so efforts are
had been wholly ignored. Second, there
being made to turn the situation around.
was a flight of intellectuals from the acad-
Innovative programmes like communi-
emy towards policy research, consultancy
cation science and sport development
or into the institutions of the state.
are being introduced and strengthened
(Maharasoa and Hay, 2001).
As a result, the increased influence of (what
some called) ‘the change-industry’ used
Formulating the answer to the question of the self-styled ideas around ‘freedom’, on
what had happened provides a window on offer by free-market economics, to hone
the humanities in the post-apartheid years. and stabilise an imaginary visioning of a
It is a story of confusion, of lost opportuni- ‘New South Africa’ based on the idea that
ties, of crass instrumentalism and power- history had ended with the fall of the Ber-
point managerialism, of government pres- lin Wall. This Hegelian-centred argument
sure, and, not surprisingly, of despair. But it embraced the idea that liberal-democracy
is also the story of resistance, of rebirth, of had emerged as the most desirable form of
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