I'm trying to really understand this, but I'm having difficulty. I've taken a course on right-wing movements before, and I've known professors who study them. I think though, what the author of the original piece wants is some kind of "conservative studies" which is equivalent to a queer studies or women's studies program. I don't believe that this is possible.
No, I don't deny that there is a rich historical background to conservative thought. Studying the history of right movements is an illuminating endeavour, one that shows how such movements have come and gone throughout history. So yes, I think there certainly is a place for the study of conservatism and right movements, and I doubt many in academia would disagree with me on this point. There is no "banned list" of conservative texts that are off-limits. Indeed, anyone doing research on, to use an English example, Enoch Powell, without having read the "Rivers of Blood" speech is probably not going to be taken too seriously.
What I don't think is possible or desirable is a kind of conservative studies which seeks to defend or promote conservative thought. Conservatism is not an identity in the same way as being gay or being black or being a woman is an identity. Furthermore, despite the cries of right-wing Christians everywhere, conservatives are not -- and have not been -- oppressed in the same way as these groups, if at all.
Calls for a conservative studies program remind me of calls for free speech and balance, and accusations of censorship, mostly from white dudes on feminist blogs. The problem is that if you are a conservative, things have pretty much been going your way for a while now. Certainly you do not have claim to the kind of historical realities that faced minority groups, who, you know, actually have been barred from scholarly pursuits. College, to my mind, is supposed to be about exposing students to views they might not otherwise have encountered. Do we really need another place repeating the traditional, conservative message we can hear in so many other places?
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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I was thinking about this recently, myself. It came up in conversation that most sociologists I had read or heard of were on the more leftist or liberal end of things, and I added that I figured that if you're okay with the way things have been traditionally, you don't feel the need to study why they are (or were) that way. (It's pretty easy to see why they've changed.) So maybe in some (awesome) future where the country, as a whole, is an equal society, there will be room for
ReplyDeleteconcervative studies.
I do want to toss in a question/comment, though: while whiteness is often taken for granted and is, obviously, the oppressing group, I do think there's room for white studies programs - not in furthering racism, but in breaking it down. "This is a white cultural thing" is an important disctinction to make, because it means acknowledging that "this isn't a normal/natural/All American thing."