Response to Martin’s “The Politics of Research”

Brian Martin’s, “The Politics of Research,” discusses the effect of powerful groups on knowledge and research.  Interest groups affect the way knowledge is made and used because they control funds, disciplines, hierarchy, and competition.  Research is “the process of testing existing knowledge and developing new knowledge.”  Funding steers research in a certain direction.  The majority of funding comes from governments and corporations.  Other producers of knowledge are universities and colleges who employ faculty to conduct research.  Research is generally only accessible by specialists and generated by specialists within the field that the research pertains to.  In universities and colleges, the production of knowledge occurs within separate academic disciplines and some disciplines are much more funded than others.  The more powerful groups are the ones who ultimately control the orientation of knowledge and research.  Interdisciplinary fields are less likely to receive funding unless a popular movement brings a certain interdisciplinary issue to attention.  Research within a discipline that presents a challenge to traditional respected theories within the discipline may be ignored.  To prevent this, Martin described his alternative vision of community participation, which would allow interested individuals to fund and join research projects without needing expert credentials.  Martin suggested strategies to challenge problems related to research dissemination and lack of funding.  These strategies include critical teaching, critical research, popularisation, community participation, independent scholarship, and research and social movements.  Critical teaching and research can be combined by having students participate in projects where they learn through research and interact with the community.  Critical popularisation can be used to make information more widely understood and accessible and can potentially have more of an impact on society than critiques written in scholarly magazines.  Independent research also has the potential to become prominent.  Martin advocates the need for social movements to “put research on their agendas.”