By Sara Ortega Ramírez
“When I say, bluntly, that I am interested in learning how citizens in two countries make sense and care for the problem of nuclear residues, I can notice that they seem initially fascinated by the topic… but nevertheless, they don´t fully understand many things, such as why I want to know that… and perhaps the hardest question, what is the purpose of this? What is its utility?”
What do you do for a living? is a common question when meeting new people. A question not easy to answer if you are working in academia while doing a PhD, and the person asking this is not at all familiar with the academic world. Facing this question and the following one, such as, what is your PhD subject? has brought me serious challenges when trying to answer it, leaving me wondering to myself about the sense and the purpose of working as a researcher in social sciences.
It took me one full year to finally build my PhD project —my exposé— to be able to present it in front of the doctoral school board of social sciences and be accepted. I can attest how the nebulousness I experienced during the first months when trying to explain to other people what I was doing started to become clearer, and I ended up feeling comfortable and being able to put into words what my subject and research interest is. However, this clarity doesn´t seem to reach others —relatives or strangers— who are not related to academia.
When I say, bluntly, that I am interested in learning how citizens in two countries make sense and care for the problem of nuclear residues, I can notice that they seem initially fascinated by the topic (I guess this is because they heard the word “nuclear”); but nevertheless, they don´t fully understand many things, such as why I want to know that, what I do in order to know that (what I do in a regular workday), and finally, and perhaps the hardest question, what is the purpose of this? What is its utility?
If I am sincere, I´d just reply to the latter question that the relevance for me is to start to discuss, to mobilize among people, complicated issues that must be discussed collectively because they affect in several ways ours and others´ ways of living. Furthermore, as at any point in time decisions should be made concerning this kind of issues, it is better for us, as citizens, not only to be just informed but to have discussed this as a collective. But when I reply this, it still seems like this type of job remains at an abstract level. I am justifying knowledge by knowledge, as in a vicious circle.
This type of knowledge —i.e. how people think about nuclear residues— may be relevant for academia, but how does this matter to the economy of a country? To the well-being of the citizens? This does not sound like something useful in the sense of other jobs such as cleaners, doctors, designers, garbage collectors, lawyers, etc.
This had made me wonder about the characteristics of “research” as a job, and not just as practice and passion. I cannot pinpoint specifically the usefulness of my job as I cannot have any type of certainty about how and by whom this knowledge will be used, and this can be disappointing, as it touches the ethical dimension, and the responsibility implied in the research enterprise. I believe I cannot have a final answer to this.
I may have not the tools to fully explain (or perhaps convince?) to people not related to academia the importance of my job; nevertheless, it is still highly important —and valuable— at least for me, my supervisor, colleagues and the STS department, and hopefully it will be to some extent for academia as well. I guess we are just all performing different ways of valuing things.