Capacities, capabilities, and the societal impact of the humanities

Eiríkur Smári Sigurðarson

Research Evaluation, 2020, vol. 29, issue 1, 71-76

Abstract: This article explores new theoretical directions for understanding societal impact of the humanities and in a wider context. Arguing from the position that current evaluation policies and practises are in many cases ill-suited to research in the humanities, with risk of goal displacement, it takes up the debate about what the proper goals of research in the humanities are. Asking: If we risk goal displacement, what are the proper goals researchers are being led away from? Using Miranda Fricker’s theory of epistemic justice and Amartya Sen’s capability approach, it argues for the need for a ‘capability theory’ for social capacities to understand societal impact. On the basis of this, a better understanding of the societal impact of research in the humanities can be developed, as well as new ways of assessing (ex ante and ex post) the societal impact of research projects and programmes in the humanities.

Keywords: humanities; societal impact; social capacities; epistemic justice; capabilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reseval/rvz031 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rseval:v:29:y:2020:i:1:p:71-76.

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().