A cademy of the S ocial S ciences in A ustralia A nnual R eport 1991 A cademy of the S ocial S ciences in A ustralia Annual Report 1991 The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia CANBERRA Incorporated in the A.C.T. Address Garden Wing, University House CANBERRA ACT 2601 Postal Address: GPO Box 1956 Canberra ACT 2601 Telephone: (06)249 1788 Facsimile: (06) 247 4335 P residents of the A cademy 1943-1952 Kenneth Stewart Cunningham 1952-1953 Sir Douglas Copland 1953-1958 Sir Leslie Galfreid Melville 1958-1962 Sydney James Butlin 1962-1964 Wilfred David Borrie 1964-1966 William Matthew O’Neil 1966-1969 Percy Herbert Partridge 1969-1972 Richard Ivan Downing 1972-1975 Geoffrey Sawer 1975-1978 Fred Henry George Gruen 1978-1981 Alan George Lewers Shaw 1981-1984 Keith Jackson Hancock 1984-1987 Joseph Ezra Isaac 1987-1990 Peter Henry Karmel 1990- Peter Winston Sheehan President’s Report 5 The Year in Review General Report 8 The Academy and its Objectives 10 Academy Award 11 Australian-Asian Perceptions Project 12 1991 Workshops 15 Joint Academy Activities 16 A SS/l News 17 A dministration 18 1990 Annual Symposium 19 1990 Annual Lecture 51 International Activities Australia-China Exchange Program 56 Australia-Netherlands Program 59 Australia-Japan Program 60 Australia-Vietnam Academic Co-operation Program 61 A ustralia- Finland Memorandum 61 Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils 62 Publications 64 Fellows of the Academy 66 Obituaries 86 Financial Statements 100 Officers and Committees for 1991 Ex ec u tiv e O ff ic e r s P a n el C o m m it t e e s 1991 1991 Panel A President (Anthropology, Demography, Geography, Professor P. W. Sheehan Sociology, Linguistics) Executive Director and Secretary Dr G. J. R. Linge (Chairperson) Professor J. D. B. Miller Professor M. Clyne Professor O. O. G. MacDonagh Professor B. Cass (from 1 May 1991) Professor F. Jones Honorary Treasurer Professor G. Jones Professor Stuart Harris Dr M. Young Panel B (Economics, Economic History, Business Administration) Professor H. G. Brennan (Chairperson) Professor R. Blandy Professor D. Throsby Professor C. Schedvin Professor K. Wright Panel C (History, Law, Political Science, Social Philosophy) C o m m it t e e s o f t h e A c a d e m y Professor G. Bolton (Chairperson) 1991 Dr P. Jalland Professor P. Pettit Executive Committee Professor S. Macintyre Professor P. W. Sheehan (President) Dr D. Rawson Professor O. O. G. MacDonagh (Executive Director) Professor Stuart Harris (Honorary Treasurer) Panel D Dr C. Bell (Education, Psychology, Social Professor B. Crittenden Medicine) Professor P. H. Karmel Professor R. Taft (Chairperson) Professor G. W. Jones Professor R. F. Over Professor P. N. Pettit Professor W. F. Connell Professor J. Marceau Professor R. White Professor R. A. Williams Professor L. Mann Dr J. L. Bradshaw Membership Committee Professor B. S. Crittenden The President (Convenor) The Executive Director Professor H. G. Brennan Branch Convenors Professor P. Bourke Professor P. Groenewegen (NSW) Professor R. Day Professor A. Powell (Vic) Professor B. Raphael Professor G. Halford (Qld) Professor J. S. Western Professor P. Glow (SA) Professor A. Richardson (WA) Finance Committee The President (Chairman) The Executive Director The Honorary Treasurer Professor H. W. Arndt Professor R. L. Mathews Consultative Committee of the Australian Academies (ASSA Members) Professor P. W. Sheehan Professor O. O. G. MacDonagh S e c r e t a r ia t Professor Stuart Harris 1991 Award Committee Administrative Officer Professor P. W. Sheehan Barry Clissold ED, BA, MLitt Professor O. O. G. MacDonagh Dr G. J R. Linge Secretary Professor H. G. Brennan Wendy Pascoe Professor G. Bolton Project Officer Professor R. Taft Peg Job BA, PhD P resident’s R eport here are many serious challenges facing the Academy. Most of these relate to the nature Tand role of the Social Sciences in an era of massive change and some of them were canvassed by both Professor MacDonagh and myself in the last newsletter. At that time I talked particularly about the urgent need to address the infrastructure requirements of research and how the Academy should relate to the current deliberations of ASTEC on priority setting in research. Professor Peter Sheehan My purpose in this report is to signal in a broad way some of the major challenges facing the Academy in the medium- to long-term future. The first of these is the level of funding for research. Research funding is now at the point where approximately 70%-75% of applicants to ARC are unlikely to obtain the support that they require for excellent research. With the increased funds that Government has channelled to the ARC since 1989, the expectation of many is that the majority of worthy projects will be able to attract the resources that are needed. That is not true, however, and the Academy must relate to that situation in a thoughtful way in terms of its constituency. It should continue to ensure that the nature and character of the Social Sciences are properly understood by Government, and it must press for more funding for research, this being particularly urgent given the fact that the total funding package for research in Australia is about to be determined beyond 1994. The current situation of ‘steady state’ support (though helped by the recent announcement in the 1991 Budget of 2,000 more scholarships and a $26m boost to ARC grants over 3 years) can’t continue without placing at risk significant advantages which have been gained since the ARC was formed. Another major challenge facing the Academy is the anticipated annual shortfall between additional staff required in the higher education system beyond (and up to) the year 2000 and the potential recruitment of higher degree holders. Although substantial increases have occurred since 1980 in staff who have higher degree qualifications, many staff still do not have higher degrees, and there will be substantial requirements for additional staff over the next decade which will be aggravated by those whose retirement stems from the expansion of the 1960s. Government is currently advising that the Australian higher education system should formulate other ways of recruiting and training academic staff and we will no doubt be asked to examine traditional methods of recruitment and consider methods of training that are much less research-oriented than the PhD. The Academy will need to relate to these questions, but in responding it should be careful not to undermine the value of research and the Academy’s essential role in reinforcing its significance. The problem of recruitment that faces us ahead is not at all one that is appropriately met by any argument that the research culture of the country has been overemphasised and therefore needs to be reduced. As the AVCC has argued, the Australian higher education system will suffer if replace­ ment staff in the future are not well qualified in research and do not themselves actively practise research. The third major issue I wish to target is postgraduate training. Graduate training is a prime function of the higher education system and relates, of course, to the issue of the projected shortfall of qualified academic staff that I discussed earlier. There is now a general awareness of the need for more postgraduate research students, but there is no accompanying movement in the system that guarantees that appropriate policy and suitable procedures for quality training are in place. The immobility of postgraduate students and the general lack of capacity of institutions to share students with each other remain major impediments to growth. The rights of postgraduate scholars are also not yet fully recognised and currently play too little a part in formulation of institutional (and indeed national) codes of ethics. Further, both the number of scholarships available (even considering the increases just announced) and the stipend associated with them are probably still too small to provide the country with the best possible basis for its research reputation in the decade ahead. The Executive of the Academy is currently examining the Academy’s objectives in order to assess how better the Academy can fulfil its mission. The above issues will be part of its deliberations in the future. Peter W. Sheehan President T he Y ear in R eview General Report he calendar year 1991 has been a period of consolidation rather than one of initiatives in the affairs of the Academy. It has, however, responded Tconstructively to the initiatives and proposals of Government as well as organised inter-disciplinary workshops on important public issues and, within the limits of its resources, accorded high priority in developing its international contacts. Moreover, the year has been remarkable for the launching of one major research initiative, the Academy’s Australian-Asian Perceptions Project. This should serve as the ‘flagship’ of the Academy’s efforts to establish the relevance and importance of the social sciences in Australia’s future. Following lengthy planning the Project was launched in March this year with a view to publishing the results of its research early in 1994. The Project seeks to find answers to the broad cultural challenges Australia must face as its society moves closer to those of its regional neighbours (see pages 12-14). This year two Academy workshops, Australian—Asian Perceptions and Aboriginal Employment Equity by the Year 2000, contributed to the developing data bank for the Project. The important findings of the Aboriginal Employment workshop were published in a monograph series and presented to the 1991 AASSREC Conference (held in Manila in August) which had provided the original spur to this inquiry. The earlier workshop on Australian-Asian Perceptions, was convened to plan the possible scope and direction of research for the Project.