This essay is part of “The Argentina Chapter” of the b2o Review‘s dossier “The University in Turmoil: Global Perspectives”.
Beyond Utility: A Defense of The Social Sciences and the Humanities[1]
Mariela Cuadro and Sol Montero
The Argentine scientific system and public universities
The Argentine scientific and university system is based on two pillars: the set of decentralized national science and technology organizations, including the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), and the university system comprising 64 national public universities. The two systems reinforce each other, and this is for two reasons. Firstly, universities provide workplaces for many researchers in the Science and Technology system to conduct research. Secondly, many of these researchers work as professors on university campuses. Consequently, changes related to national scientific development also affect the functioning of national universities, albeit indirectly.
Argentina’s scientific-university system has been closely linked to scientific progress and broader models of economic and social development. Established in the 1950s to support the government’s developmentalist strategy of the time, the scientific system has historically been tied to oscillations between developmentalist/heterodox strategies and neoliberal/orthodox approaches. While the former were driven by governments that encouraged national scientific development, the latter sought to undermine science and development through defunding and discrediting. Despite repeated attempts to dismantle it, the system has remained standing.
The Argentine university system’s status as free and publicly funded places it in a unique position within the global context of right-wing attacks on universities, particularly on the social sciences and humanities. Since many Argentine university students come from working-class backgrounds, the discourse prevalent in other countries that university students are part of an elite ‘privileged’ class is ineffective in Argentina. Consequently, right-wing discourse in Argentina has sought to create divisions between professors and students. Categorized as ‘the caste that lives off the state,’ professors and researchers are accused of ‘indoctrinating’ students.
The government’s ‘cultural battle’ narrative frames the argument: professors at public universities are labelled ‘socialists’ and accused of forcing students to think the same way. Consequently, universities are no longer viewed as spaces for debate, exchange, and the free circulation and production of ideas. Instead, they are discursively constituted as hierarchical and authoritarian structures that obstruct free thought.
If the main issue that the right-wing government identifies in university life lies in the realm of ideas, it should come as no surprise that its discourse particularly targets the disciplines that are concerned with them. Hence, they become the objects of continuous attacks, mainly directed at questioning their utility. “What use are the social sciences and humanities?” their critics ask. In their defense, many have tried to highlight their contributions to public policy. In this text, however, we argue that the social sciences and humanities are far more than mere tools for public policy. Due to their ethical and political dimensions, we view them as products of collective and historical debate, enabling us to reflect on our past, question our present, and imagine alternative futures.
Right-wing discourses and the issue of universities
Since the 2000s, universities have been targeted by reactionary and conservative movements. In countries such as the United States, England, and France, programs and departments adopting postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist, or environmentalist theoretical perspectives have been accused of indoctrinating students, restricting pluralism, and threatening Western values. These seem to be the theoretical origins of a ‘virus’ spreading across university campuses worldwide: wokism, cancel culture, and the tyranny of political correctness.
Attacks on the university system also lie at the heart of the Argentine libertarian right’s discourse and project. Since the beginning of his presidency, Milei and his supporters have devoted themselves to attacking CONICET and public universities in two main ways. Firstly, they have discredited the intellectual, theoretical, and practical framework of the social sciences and humanities, accusing professors, intellectuals, and scientists of belonging to an elite of dilettantes and privileged individuals. Secondly, they have cut funding for universities and science, which has a tangible impact on the lives and work of teachers and students.
In this context, the alleged uselessness of the social sciences and humanities is key to delegitimizing these disciplines. Compared with the indisputable usefulness of the natural sciences, history, anthropology, philosophy, and classical literature, to mention only some of the vilified disciplines, are accused of being a ‘pure (useless) expense’ in a context of scarce resources. Due to their supposedly ‘elitist’ nature, they are also dismissed as mere entertainment — a privilege enjoyed by a select few and financially supported by the masses.
The topic of usefulness as a measure of the value of scientific knowledge has become so prevalent in public discourse that even defenders of the social sciences and humanities often resort to this argument to demonstrate the value of their disciplines: they highlight the tangible, material, and immediate benefits these disciplines contribute to society. The impact of sociology, political science, gender studies, and communication sciences on public policies, development, and the advancement of social programs is therefore often emphasized, among other areas in which these disciplines can demonstrate their performance and productivity.
The fact is that this approach to scientific knowledge does not always fulfil its promise of productivity within a short timeframe. In times of precarity and acceleration, when frustrations mount and people seem increasingly replaceable, demonstrating the effectiveness of the social sciences and humanities is becoming increasingly complex. Nevertheless, human beings will continue to address and identify social, political, and economic problems and produce ideas to solve them. The ethical-political question is who will be able to do this: a select few financed by private interests or world powers, or the many financed by our own informed public decisions?
In this sense, the question of the usefulness of social and human disciplines can be compared to that of democracy, which does not always fulfil its promises either. Is this reason enough to discard it? So, what are the social sciences and humanities for? What is democracy for? What are universities for, beyond their often unfulfilled promises of utility and productivity?
First, we should acknowledge that our ability to question the usefulness of human inventions is a direct result of democracy, universities, and the social sciences. These institutions enable and encourage this type of inquiry, and it is through them that we address it. As the epigraph to Nuccio Ordine’s The Utility of the Useless Manifesto states, “It is precisely the task of philosophy to reveal to men the utility of the useless, or, if you will, to teach them to differentiate between two different senses of the word utility.”
In his Manifesto, Ordine argues that there are forms of knowledge that are not a means to an end but ends in themselves. In hostile contexts, the value of useless knowledge “is radically opposed to the dominant notion of utility which, in the name of an exclusive economic interest, progressively kills the memory of the past, the humanities, classical languages, teaching, free research, imagination, art, critical thinking, and the civic horizon that should inspire all human activity. In the universe of utilitarianism, in fact, a hammer is worth more than a symphony, a knife more than a poem, a wrench more than a painting.”[3] The exercise of these non-instrumental forms of knowledge and practice is unique to human beings and, to that extent, distinguishes us from other creatures. But calling them useless does not mean that they lack social, political, or cultural function. Precisely because of “their gratuitous and disinterested nature—far removed from any practical or commercial purpose—these forms of useless knowledge and practice can play a fundamental role in the cultivation of the spirit and in the civic and cultural development of humanity”[4], says the Italian writer.
Secondly, usefulness is undoubtedly a slippery category. It invites us to ask infinite questions: Useful for whom? For what? And when? This brings us immediately to the problem of capitalism and money. If the financier is the state, one might ask: Useful for whom? For the state? For the country? For its people? Then, we should ask ourselves, “What is the state? What about the country? What about the people?” These are precisely the questions for which we need the social sciences and humanities.
As social scientists, it is crucial for us to navigate this quagmire without seeking our own salvation but rather to highlight the specific knowledge produced by our disciplines and practices. To do so, we must change the question and shift our perspective. So, we should rather ask: what do the Social Sciences and the Humanities do? Here, the question of ‘doing’ has a double meaning: firstly, how are the social sciences and humanities done? In other words, what is our daily practice as researchers? But also: what effect do the humanities and the social sciences have on the world in which we live? What do they make happen?
“La pregunta por el oficio”: Narrating our practices
The social sciences and humanities deal with subjects that are part of our everyday lives. We are all familiar with the issues of political science, international relations, linguistics, economics, or sociology. How often do we find ourselves discussing populism, the role of a particular country in a war, or the use of the letter ‘e’ in inclusive language in everyday situations? Our disciplines are grounded in a shared language and common sense, which connect us to our society, politics, and history.
In fact, the distinction between doxa (the realm of common sense and opinion) and episteme (the structured body of knowledge that shapes our scientific understanding) is necessary in the scientific field. However, we cannot detach ourselves from the interaction between expert and lay discourse or between native and analytical discourse. The discourse that actors produce within a social practice shapes and influences the specialized and analytical discourse that we produce in our academic disciplines. For this reason, researchers in the social sciences and humanities are inevitably immersed in the social reality they study, and their work has a public impact in that it concerns the public and the common good. This is why they are often accused of being ‘politicized’ or even ‘partisan’, i.e., biased and influenced by ideology.
In Argentina, in particular, the accusation of ideological ‘indoctrination’ in public universities is a ghost that the current government has repeatedly invoked. The Argentinian president himself has mocked and publicly denounced teachers for ‘indoctrinating’ students in matters of gender or national history. These suspicions assume that there are sciences that could be exempt from ideology and politicization. Not coincidentally, these are the sciences considered more ‘useful’, productive, and strategic. The accusation of ‘indoctrination’ also has an instrumental and strategic outlook. It suggests that there is a hidden interest in changing the minds of our students and readers, which is hidden behind the ‘façade’ of our research and classes. As if we too sought instrumental utility and benefit.
From this utilitarian perspective, nobody could imagine that our work involves rules and methods, that it is a job with highs and lows, that we are sometimes overwhelmed by bureaucracy, and generally affected by the same precariousness as our societies at large. However, our work is also often full of desire, enthusiasm, and passion. In fact, it is the love of knowledge and the intellectual pleasure we derive from reading, writing, thinking, and discussing ideas that essentially drives and sustains the generation of knowledge, even in contexts of precariousness and systematic attacks.
Like anyone else, professors and researchers have political views, but that doesn’t mean we’re devoted to teaching those political visions in classrooms. Still, our practice is also framed by rules, verification mechanisms, and evaluation and demonstration processes, as is any other scientific practice. In this sense, we regularly submit our ideas and progress for evaluation by our peers in formal and informal settings (which, incidentally, are not exempt from productivity criteria). Thus, for example, in faculty competitions and in the evaluation of our publications, colleagues and experts intervene by assigning scores and accepting or rejecting our proposals. As the academic and scientific world has public and explicit rules about research methods, it is an egalitarian and democratic system that allows us to learn from shared knowledge and criticism. Of course, this system has been widely criticized for its colonial, disciplinary, and restrictive effects, and there are forces within academia that are contributing to its transformation. However, here we want to highlight its normative function, precisely because it enables certain equalization, hierarchization, and evaluation.
In this sense, the social sciences and humanities are not deprived of techniques – methodologies for researching, speaking, transmitting, and teaching. However, they do not necessarily adopt a technicist approach to the phenomena they address. In other words, not all social scientists seek to solve problems. Instead, much of our work focuses on identifying issues, problematizing what is taken for granted, and highlighting the historicity of what is considered natural. This critical view is fundamental, as it enables us to innovate and create possible futures. It allows us to imagine new worlds that may not materialize immediately –or ever– but which enable us to overcome inertia and modify history. This is where the ethical and political nature of scientific knowledge lies.
In contrast to the uniformity imagined by those who attack the social sciences and the humanities, the scientific and university fields are traversed by opposing forces, conflicting interpretations, and crosscutting arguments. This is why the rules that structure research are valuable, as they provide a framework within which we can build knowledge and community together.
The effects and the affects: What the social sciences and humanities do
The contributions of the social sciences and humanities are valuable in themselves. They address questions about what constitutes us as humans and as a community; the construction and challenge of common sense; the defense of, and opposition to, different forms of political and social organization; the tracing of history; the exploration of identity, difference, and justice; the understanding of beauty and usefulness; and the debate around freedom and equality. At the same time, they question all that seems obvious, evident to us. The topics of our disciplines are ever-changing, evolving alongside societies and humanity. However, they are also timeless, as specific issues persist and resurface.
We argue that humans cannot and should not be reduced to mere survival, as human characteristics far exceed notions of functioning or utility. Consequently, matters concerning society, politics, aesthetics, language, history, and ideas cannot be considered mere accessories or ornaments added accidentally to the ‘essential’, i.e., the purely reproductive, tangible, and material.
Attacks on the social sciences and the humanities (as well as culture and the arts in general) are rooted in an ethical-political position that treats humans as mere pieces in a mechanism whose sole function is to increase profits (‘for whom?’, the critics ask). This impoverished view of humanity enables the idea of utility, which questions the social sciences and humanities. As Piovani says, this is “a merely practical utility, which implies that knowledge can be immediately translated into a tangible product, into something that can be traded on the market, that can be priced, bought and sold”.[5]
This does not mean that there are no researchers in these disciplines who are devoted to producing knowledge in response to demands from others (the state, political parties, economic actors, or social organizations). However, the social sciences and humanities are not restricted to this. From our point of view, it would be undesirable for them to lose their critical, creative, and questioning functions. The problems posed by our disciplines extend into the future in an open, unpredictable way in science. In this sense, the social sciences and humanities may not always be immediately helpful. Still, they undoubtedly contribute to the formation of a “we”, a historical, political, social, and human community.
Mariela Cuadro is a researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina) and a professor at EPyG-UNSAM (the School of Politics and Government at the National University of San Martín). Her work focuses on Critical International Relations Theory, Global South theories, and Middle Eastern politics. She is the author of several articles on these debates, with a research agenda centered on critical thinking and knowledge constitution.
Sol Montero is a researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina) and a professor at the EPyG- UNSAM (School of Politics and Government at the National University of San Martín). Her work focuses on the intersection of discourse and politics, and her latest book is Avatares en el poder. Claves sobre el discurso político en redes (UNSAM EDITA, 2024).
[1] We are grateful to Paula Salerno (Escuela de Humanidades, UNSAM) and Nicolás Viotti (Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, UNSAM) for their collaboration. Their reflections provided essential input for composing this text. Nevertheless, the authors alone are responsible for the ideas presented here.
[2] Pierre Hadot, Ejercicios espirituales y filosofía antigua, quoted in Ordine, Nuccio, La utilidad de lo inútil, Acantilado, Madrid, 2023, p.2.
[3] Ib. p. 3
[4] Ib. p. 1
[5] Piovani, Juan Ignacio, “Sobre la utilidad de las ciencias sociales en tiempos de neoliberalismo y posverdad”. En Brugaletta, F., González Canosa, M., Starcenbaum, M., Welschinger, N. (ed.), La política científica en disputa: diagnósticos y propuestas frente a su reorientación regresiva. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación UNLP- CLACSO, 2019, p. 123.