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In response to Tony Brewer:
Of course, the word 'ideology' has its particular lineage, and it is
because some people find it problematic, that social theorists now use the
term 'discourse' instead.
Reading or commenting on the HES list is hardly of the same calibre as
ignoring a genocide, but to paraphrase and adapt a famous quote, we need to
maintain the distinction between a bicycle accident and the collapse of a
civilization.
Ideology is not simply any belief, ideology as a term refers to beliefs
that systematically operate mostly in the privileged interests. students
often find helpful simple illustrations of ideology in some chapters of the
book 'embodying the social constructions of difference' by esther saraga.
And there is no sustainable distinction between ideology and science on
this account. science is also an interested and ideological activity that
needs to situate its own givens. See Bruno Latour's 'we have never been
modern' (1993) for a detailed analysis of the way in which 'only what
breaks forever with ideology is seen to be scientific'. The argument that
science cannot be an ideology operates in the same realm as West cannot be
only one culture amongst many, or that white is not seen as a colour (the
term 'coloured' people being reserved for non-whites).
When I said economists disguise ideology as science, I
implied 'science' (science within inverted commas).
As for the claim that most economics works to protect the interests of
privileged in society. I dont think that there is much complication in
that. We dont even need to get to 'suppose the ruling classes want to use
economics this way', privileged interests in society _have_ dictated the
development of economics, as with all disciplinary knowledge. The
connections of economics with anthropology, with colonialism and empire,
with capitalism and so on are not hypothetical statements requiring
syllogistic proof, they exist for all to see in the development of the
discipline.
No doubt, funders will fund the questions thay think are important, and if
managing the red threat or some such is high on agenda, then the politics
of that will determine what work gets done. This is the same as what I had
said: Of course, academic knowledge in cold war US would be linked to
capitalist interests. My addendum was that this is not an apolitical
coincidence, but a systematic feature of knowledge construction. And in
doing work that fits the funder's agenda, researchers are not happening to
do value neutral work but are participating in a political and ideological
exercise of knowledge construction which fits in with the governance
objectives of the time. To take your own example, witness how the current
funding priorities
(of ESRC etc.) explicitly require research around a european identity and
the research focus on security in recent times.
As for activities funded by US military in the 1950s and after, 'weird and
wonderful' is not the term I would use to characterise them. Weird they may
be, but hardly wonderful. The internet may result as one offshoot, but
think of how much more benefit could be had if instead of the self-serving
interests of the military-industrial complex, it
was provisioning that had guided how the money was spent.
For consolation, economics is not uniquely the handmaiden (sic) of power,
almost all knowledge is. Economics has a special place because increasingly
it is presented in scientistic terms that disguise the value-ladenness of
what is being said or advocated, and thus can most easily be brought in as
a legitimating mechanism.
As for Tony Brewer's use of 'paranoia', repeat my earlier statement about
'conspiracy theory'!
Nitasha Kaul
University of the West of England
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