Introduction: Reframing the ‘value’ debate for the humanities

Abstract

Monographs and edited volumes on the state of the humanities that analyse, reflect on, and cast aspersions on the hostile environment in which they have to survive constitute one of those publishing genres of evergreen popularity. Chapter 1 of this volume attempts a taxonomy of the inspiration behind these numerous publications, and identifies two main strands of writing in this area. One dwells on the seemingly ineluctable (and ongoing) demise of the humanities as an academic area of scholarship in the context of a progressively more and more marketised higher education sector. The other (which often is motivated by an advocacy intent) makes exorbitant claims for the benefits of a humanities-based education and for the wealth-creation and social-regeneration potential of areas of work unfairly presented as obscure, rarefied, and engrossed in an irrelevant love affair with either the past or with opaque French theoretical constructs, or as the privilege of the wealthy (Foskett 2010; Shorris 2000). Despite their longevity, there is little doubt that both strands of publishing have enjoyed a brisk surge in popularity in the United Kingdom and in the United States, in response to recent developments in education policy and severe cuts to higher education funding, which - particularly in the United Kingdom - have appeared to target funding towards lab-based scientific disciplines at the expenses of teaching in the arts and humanities and the social sciences.