by Ron Roizen, Ph.D.

June 1998

I read with interest and appreciation Dorothy Lonewolf Miller's column on researching the poor  in the April/May issue of Research Light. A major problem underlying social science research today is that the national research establishments in effect define for us, as a nation, what our important "social problems" actually are. Because they are structured and defined, first and foremost, around their own problem definitions, they leave remarkably little room for one of the most important enterprises that American society -- and its complement of social scientists -- must pursue, namely that of renewing our conception of our social problems with changing social circumstances and new experience.

The present institutional arrangement leaves little room for thought and research outside the prescribed institutional problem domains, and generates a research environment that is especially constrictive for social scientists, most notably those of us dealing with the dynamics of social problem definitions and focuses. Since the economic survival of social research comes to depend on the established institutions, social scientists in due course may actually forget about their duty to act as critics and reshapers of social problem definitions.

Perhaps a national conference on social problem definitions in the National Institutes -- hosted, say, by the Society for the Study of Social Problems -- might offer an outlet for bringing to light the scope and seriousness of this important structural problem. Another avenue for change might be afforded by a conscious effort to lobby for new social research support via the generalist arms of government-supported science -- e.g., the National Science Foundation.

Still another useful enterprise would be a serious attack on the spread of institute-funded research support in the universities, where, I understand, social science faculty are increasingly under pressure to bring in outside research funding and pay for part of their own salaries. This trend further tends to co-opt the tenured segment of the social science establishment into research problem definitions provided by the prevailing institute structure.

Finally, the institutes themselves might be encouraged to be more mindful and more critical of the stasis-producing and tacit problem-definition marketing they inevitably foster. Honest folk within such structures may be an important source of change, and for example might see the merit in dedicating a certain amount of the extramural research budget for work that is critical of current problem definitions.

Nothing like this will happen of course so long as social scientists themselves sit on their hands and happily drink down the trough of support that institute-structured research proffers. And yet even the most satisfied member of the conventionalist research establishment these days must be aware that the superstructure of this institutional arrangement is beginning to show signs of wear and fraying.

We are a people who value and even define ourselves around an open-society ethos and its free avenues of discourse about social problems. What an irony and shame it is that the very institutions we have crafted to explore, openly and freely, some of our worst putative problems should in the end become significant barriers to re-definition and change.

Read Dr. David Kallen's Commentary in response to this Commentary.