Professor Rhodes (Tasmania and ANU) gave this paper (Download Rhodes) at a conference in Manchester in April this year. It provides an overview of a book that will be published later this year as part of an APSA project.
Rhodes portrays Australian political studies as spilt between a British (humanities and history) tradition and an American (social sciences) tradition. And some radical critics. First, Marxist and socialist in the 1970s and 1980s.
Australian political studies as starting after the second world war and originally being run along Oxbridge lines with the American social sciences / behaviourist approaches coming later.
Interestingly for us, he says (p10) that while survey research methods have become very popular the formal analysis of rational choice has not. He says this 'dilemma' is particularly evident in debates about training of PhD candidates where there is a contest between the Oxbridge model (novice scholar learning at the feet of the God professor) and the American model of 2 years formal training in theory and methods. I guess we're pretty much still in the Oxbridge model at Sydney!
He also discusses the sub-fields. I'm looking forward to reading the chapter on Carole Pateman because I did her first honours year feminism and political theory course back in 1981. Back then the Government department had a much greater emphasis on political theories. Pateman, originally from England, split her time between Sydney and Stanford (which I also visited once - OMG the facilities were magnificent - including Rodin's Burghers of Calais set out on the lawns). Patemen was a genuine world-class scholar. There's a lot to be said for the Oxbridge model!
Rhodes also has some interesting stuff to say about the challenges of being a public intellectual and an academic / scholar - mostly a bleat about citations and the 'dilemmas about speaking truth to power' (might lose your career prospects I guess)
Rhodes says that, besides political theory, Australia also commands some respect in other countries for some of the work done by Australian scholars in international relations, political parties, pressure groups, public administration and public policy, executive studies. Not a bad little list, and there are others, but Australian political science is also seen as patchy with sub-fields being better than others.
God professors, Rhodes says, were more important to the development of Australian political science in the early days then they are now. Two of these god professors were at Sydney when I was an undergraduate: Henry Mayer and Dick Spann.
I found this article very interesting and I'm looking forward to the book.
Comments