A place for research in the humanities and social sciences. Some notes on the current situation

Abstract

What place should we imagine and build for research in the humanities and social sciences when the meanings of the public and the common are being deeply contested by the new right wing? In a social and political conjuncture marked by controversial macroeconomic and cultural transformations that have altered democratic life as a whole and particularly impacted on the full exercise of the functions of the public university, it is necessary to reflect, among many other questions, on what research can mean and contribute in relation to the problems and challenges that this moment imposes on us. Indeed, it is necessary to ask under what conditions and assumptions university research should be configured at a time when access —individual and popular— to the public university is denied and challenged as a universal human right and a social public good that states must guarantee. It becomes unpostponable, for example, the task of reaffirming, resignifying and recontextualizing what has been conceived as the “right to research” (Hunziker and Smola, 2016) in the broader framework of the “right to higher education” (Rinesi, 2020). Taking into account the different dimensions —personal and collective— involved in the exercise of such rights, the notes we have gathered here intend to articulate some conceptual and contextual considerations from which research experiences can be tested to contribute, mediately or immediately, to the democratization of common life.