[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-595390-105":59,"doc-detail-595390-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","australian-universities-review-high-society-an-article-examining-unengaged-critique-in-social-sciences","A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W - High society - an article examining unengaged critique in social sciences","","The paper asks whether Australia’s government can benefit from the humanities, creative arts, and especially the social sciences, responding to Stuart Cunningham’s argument about exclusion from the nation’s innovation system. Focusing on the social sciences, it warns that some practitioners undermine policy relevance through “unengaged critique”, a style that targets modern Western governments as imperfect yet tries to do “the politically unattainable best”. It explains this tendency via the abundant reason-natural morality view of “the social”, and proposes the rival politico-legal understanding as a way to avoid it.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/australian-universities-review-high-society-an-article-examining-unengaged-critique-in-social-sciences/595390/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/australian-universities-review-high-society-an-article-examining-unengaged-critique-in-social-sciences/595390.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Blitz","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-01","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is “unengaged critique” and why does the paper consider it harmful?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It is a criticism style that targets modern Western governments as insufficient without supporting constructive engagement. The paper argues it reduces governments’ willingness to support social science research and teaching.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the paper explain the tendency toward ceaseless criticism?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It attributes the tendency to one of two understandings of “the social” available to the social sciences: the abundant reason-natural morality understanding. This view links society to moral perfectibility.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What is proposed to avoid the problem identified in the paper?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The paper recommends using the rival politico-legal understanding of “the social” to counter the unengaged critique approach.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},595390,1792211182,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":39,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":46,"preview_page_count":4},24464137899374,"https://us-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W  \nHigh society  \nAre our social sciences as relevant to government as they might be?  \nGary Wickham Murdoch University  \nTaking up a theme raised by Stuart Cunningham in a recent issue of the AUR – that the innovations of Australia’s humanities, creative arts, and social sciences are not getting the recognition that they deserve from the nation’s government – this paper, dealing only with the social sciences, offers a cautionary note. If the social sciences are to hold the serious attention of the government of any modern Western nation, including Australia’s, they cannot continue to fall prey to the tendency, displayed by too many of their practitioners, to criticise ceaselessly such government. That is, to employ a style of criticism called here ‘unengaged critique’. This style of criticism targets modern Western governments because they are not seeking perfection, because they are seeking only to do the best they can with the resources they have at hand. The paper offers an explanation of the basis of this tendency, an explanation focusing on one of two understandings of‘the social’ or ‘society’ available to the social sciences – the abundant reason-natural morality understanding – and it offers a means of avoiding it, by using the rival to this understanding – the politico-legal understanding.  \nIntroduction  \nIn a recent contribution toAUR,in which he argues that Australia’s humanities, creative arts, and social sciences are excluded from the nation’s ‘innovation system’, Stuart Cunningham (2007: passim) offers a number of telling points towards the proposition that researchers, teachers, and students within the disciplines that comprise this grouping have a lot of innovation to offer policy makers and funding bodies. In line with this assessment, Cunningham lobbies hard, in his capacity as President of the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, to have the policy makers and funding bodies recognise the relevance of these disciplines to the activities of modern Western governments, particularly to those of the Australian government.  \nMore power to his arm, but I worry that at least some of the social sciences for which he speaks are effectively working against this aim, albeit mostly inadvertently. Particularly worrisome is an approach within some social science disciplines to that most  \nbasic of objects,‘the social’itself, often under its more common name,‘society’.This approach – certainly the dominant approach in Australian sociology, but not without influence in anthropology, political science, social psychology and socio-legal studies – uses the very notion of the social, or society, as a platform for ceaseless criticisms of modern Western governments. By this approach, modern Western governments, in serving as modern Western states under the rule of law, are always found wanting.They are found wanting because, instead of seeking perfection, as the approach thinks that they should, society being for it a realm of moral perfectibility, they seek only to do the best they can with the resources they have at hand.These social science critics, as Stephen Turner puts it, use ‘the politically unattainable best’ as ‘a stick with which to beat the attainable good’(Turner 1995: 397) .  \nThis is not to say that criticism per se is the problem.Australia, like all modern Western states operating under the rule of law, requires a certain style of criticism to maintain its ‘social’, its society, as a domain of  \nvol. 50, no. 2, 2008 High society, Gary Wickham 25  \nA U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W  \nrelatively free and safe interaction. Such a tradition of criticism helps to ensure that this type of state does what it is supposed to do by way of delivering this package of freedom and safety, and does not itself become a threat to the package. The criticism I am dealing with in this paper, however, is not criticism of this sort, it is a fa","cbCaieeYygPqDQKM","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieeYygPqDQKM","pdf",147775,"English","# Introduction\n## Unengaged critique and government\n## Competing understandings of “the social”\n## Toward a politico-legal alternative","[{\"question\":\"What is “unengaged critique” and why does the paper consider it harmful?\",\"answer\":\"It is a criticism style that targets modern Western governments as insufficient without supporting constructive engagement. The paper argues it reduces governments’ willingness to support social science research and teaching.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper explain the tendency toward ceaseless criticism?\",\"answer\":\"It attributes the tendency to one of two understandings of “the social” available to the social sciences: the abundant reason-natural morality understanding. This view links society to moral perfectibility.\"},{\"question\":\"What is proposed to avoid the problem identified in the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper recommends using the rival politico-legal understanding of “the social” to counter the unengaged critique approach.\"}]","A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W - High society - an article examining unengaged critique in social sciences | PDF",1792081051]