What science means is not always clear to everyone, so to many people the idea of a social science can be doubly confusing – if not downright irrelevant – when it comes to questions about how to live, what to do and believe. This is a regrettable state of affairs in a country, region, and continent all sorely in need of more not less knowledge.

‘Social science’, like ‘science’ generally, is a shorthand way of referring to practices constrained by (changing) rules about how to infer or derive justified conclusions from controlled observations. In other words, science of all kinds is concerned with developing conclusions, based on strong supporting evidence, and derived through following a repeatable method (so that others can follow the same path and check the reported conclusions against different or more evidence).

In the case of people studying people (which is what we mean by ‘social science’) we have to acknowledge three particular complexities: firstly, that people and their actions have history (i.e. display changes/differences over time and place), language (we express a great deal through words that are not as simple as saying ‘2 + 2 = 4’), and self-understanding (being studied by a scientists does not remove how that person or community regards themselves).

These complexities demand a great deal from social scientists and also make their findings open to ongoing challenges to what we can (and do) know about ourselves and others. They do not, however, licence an ‘anything goes’ attitude; and the complexities of doing social science properly also do not licence our blind acceptance of the mountains of rubbish, non-sense, un-sifted personal anecdotes, and cynical self-promotion which masquerade as knowledge on the internet and in bookstores.

Placing oneself in a position to choose wisely and well between the latter and the former can begin with reading the recently released World Social Science Report (WSSR) (visit: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/resources/reports/world-social-science-report).

The 2010 ISSC WSSR was officially launched on 25th June 2010 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France (visit: http://www.worldsocialscience.org/?p=1257). A local launch took place in Kleinmond on the 11th of October, as part of the 4th Annual Kresge Institutional Leadership Retreat (visit: http://www.inyathelo.org.za/events-45).

More knowledge for a better world

A better understanding of people is a firm foundation for any successful, professional intervention into the lives of others. This is particularly true with respect to education, because all learning and teaching, from the most basic skills development to extensive, career-guided training, and from acquiring the ‘3-Rs’ to the advanced, academic literacies demanded by participation in a global, knowledge-driven economy, has to do with deliberate intervention; that is to say, taking what is naturally, biologically given and transforming this ‘package’, over time.

This can be done through focused cognitive development, opportunities for practice, modeling, apprenticeships, explicit learning-teaching, deliberate exposure to problem-solving, and ongoing, critical engagement with peers, or through any number of other ways depending on the task at hand; but what all of these have in common is deliberate intervention.

To some degree, the goals of intervention are always dynamic and open to debate, but there are also some constants. For instance, the fact that each new-born has to travel the long road through various forms of formal and informal education to become fully human, i.e. ‘enculturated’, is certainly not at issue. My point here is that how to intervene so that each new-born will reach his/her potential, demands knowledge (in general) and knowledge of people (in particular). If these bodies of knowledge are lacking, the intervention will suffer as a result.

Lastly, while education is a prime example of intervention, it is clearly not the only institution where more knowledge of people separates successful interventions from less successful ones. For instance, we can think of interventions aimed at helping people to overcome poverty through better farming methods; or to address climate change through better daily practices; or to stick to their treatment programs or health regimes through an improved grasp of causal chains (‘If I don’t take the prescribed medicine, then the disease will worsen’) are further instances where more knowledge is better than less.

A divided world

If social science offered only diagnoses of the ills and evils of our divided or unequal world, we might be in a better position to understand (and forgive) the tendency to rush to rubbish: after all, it is easy to conflate a promised outcome with a plausible one when facing a specific problem. However, it is possible to resist this tendency through more reliance on strong supporting evidence and less on glib talk.

The WSSR includes many interesting projects (also reports on work by local researchers) regarding our world and what to do (and has been done) about the problems we encounter. In addition, it is concluded with many ideas regarding future lines of action that are worth thinking about (download the executive summary of the 2010 report at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001883/188395e.pdf).

One of their recommendations seems particularly pertinent to my way of thinking about knowledge and the local situation, and that is to motivate, promote and create free and open access to knowledge. We (that is, people and institutions globally) nowadays have the technical means to overcome knowledge divides, and to prevent situations where only those with enough money to buy knowledge are able to access and use knowledge.

But the technological means to do so must be made more effective: access to knowledge should become cheaper, not more expensive; and more widely disseminated, dispersed and used, not less so – if we are to overcome some of the reasons/causes for the unequal world and the unfair distribution of various, crucial resources (see www.worldmapper.org).

Robert Darnton (University Professor at Harvard), at the opening of a conference to discuss the possibility of creating a National Digital Library, had the following to say:

1. ‘“Knowledge is the common property of mankind” (quoting Thomas Jefferson), but in reality, ‘most of humanity has been cut off from the accumulated wisdom of the ages’; and

2. ‘The Dutch are now digitizing every Dutch book, pamphlet, and newspaper produced from 1470 to the present. President Sarkozy of France announced last November that he would make €750 million available to digitize the nation’s cultural “patrimony.” And the Japanese Diet voted 12.6 billion yen for a two-year crash program to digitize their entire national library’ (The New York Review of Books, October, 2010, pp. 4; visit: http://www.nybooks.com/).

Now, clearly, South African institutions and the country as a unit are not situated in the economic spaces occupied by Harvard, the USA, the Netherlands, France, or Japan, but the one thing we must acknowledge in order to act on it, is that technology has – potentially – liberated us all from being confined to one particular, bounded spot on earth.

It no longer matters ‘where’ such a library will physically exist, what will matter more and more is having access to ‘the accumulated wisdom of the ages’ and the capacities (individually and institutionally) to contribute to these, digitized riches (e.g., through recording our indigenous languages, local stories, and context-specific evidence).

With access to and the appropriate use of the available technology, the dream of free access to knowledge can become a reality. This will create a better world, at least, through better social science, and more evidence-based and, thus, better interventions into the lives of people.

The immediate task before all of us is therefore to motivate and promote this kind of endeavor; we have to work much harder to get government, knowledge-activists, all actors and organizations involved in education as well as other institutions concerned with creating a better, more just world, through deliberate intervention in the lives and affairs of people, and the beneficiaries of our techno-minded age such as cell phone companies to motivate, promote and create free, open access to knowledge everywhere for everyone. Is it not so that once there is a will, there is a way (or one will be found)?

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