The Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought

La Société canadienne pour l'herméneutique et la pensée postmoderne

Bulletin

Fiat vol.15, no. 1, January / janvier 2000

Read this Introduction........................................................................ 1

David B. Allison & Mark S. Roberts: "The Munchausen By

Proxy Syndrome ‘Phenomenon’"....................................................... 2 – 21

Almost a year later, inquiries are still coming in about our session last year on Allison & Roberts’ Disordered Mother or Disordered Diagnosis? Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome. The authors have been kind enough to supply us with this description of their research, with an update on the current state of legal and medical/psychiatric affairs.

Messages from the HSSFC ................................................................. 22 – 35

We’ve here reproduced a series of email messages from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada for the benefit of our members not currently on the HSSFC mailing list.

Perspectives ....................................................................................... 36 – 44

"An electronic newsletter on research and science policy. A pilot project of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada"; some numbers also reproduced for the benefit of members not currently on the HSSFC mailing list.

Notices ................................................................................................ 45 – 49

Upcoming Conferences and Seminars:

• The Philosophy of Edith Stein, 10-11 March 2000, Dusquesne University
• Language, Truth, & Postmodern Culture: Heidegger, Rorty, & Derrida, 12-30 June 2000.
  • Cosponsors: The Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto) and Calvin College (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

 

Journals: New Nietzsche Studies

On-Line: The Philosophy News Service List

By now everyone should have received their copy of vol. III, no. 2 (Fall/Automne 1999) of Symposium, along with a Call for Abstracts/Papers and a Membership Fee Notice. This year we’ll again be meeting in association with the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, and this time it’ll happen at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, on Wednesday 24 May, Thursday 25 May, and Friday 26 May 2000. You should also have received by now the ‘REGISTRATION GUIDE D’INSCRIPTION’ from the Congress organisers in Ottawa, which has all the information you’ll need to schedule your trip and book a room. As for our program: I have to submit a preliminary program to the Congress Secretariat by 25 February, and that will be done. But I expect to be making numerous changes in the program well into March. The deadline for submissions, of abstracts and/or papers, is 29 February.

Our database currently lists 104 members, 60 of whom did not pay their fees last year. We’ve kept you 60 on the database, and we’ve continued to send you the copies of Symposium. We can’t afford to do so any longer. It takes money to do these things. I’m sorry, but if you don’t pay your dues, we’re going to have to strike you from the database and you’ll no longer receive anything from us. So please, if you would like to remain a member of the Society and receive Symposium and be notified of our meetings with the Congress every year, pay the fees. The year 2000 is a clean date to start a fresh database.

First principle: any explanation is better than none.--Friedrich Nietzsche

It may have escaped the notice of some, but more than 350 articles in a broad range of professional journals--as well as a half-dozen books--have witnessed the arrival of a peculiar new plague, a mystifying psychological disorder termed "Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome" (MBPS). Briefly, the syndrome, like all syndromes, is characterized by a number of unusual signs and behavior patterns in the subject, but, with MBPS, it is particularly alleged that the common factor consists of an individual (usually, a mother) inducing or feigning either physical or psychological symptoms--and sometimes, both — in another individual (usually, her child). Typically, in the course of the MBPS dynamics, the mother is said to produce a range of distressing symptoms in the child, but always in view of obtaining subsequent medical attention for her child. The MBPS mother then enjoins the physician to perform unneeded and extensive examinations, as well as invasive procedures, upon the child, thereby involving the doctor and hospital staff as unwitting participants in her deceptions. According to the standard descriptions of this syndrome, the mother typically denies any accusations of deception or abuse directed at her child. Nonetheless, psychologists, psychiatrists, medical practitioners, and various other health care and legal professionals, all are of a single voice in alerting the general public to the menace which this syndrome represents, in that it appears to constitute a major new form of child abuse. The warnings are indeed harsh, and medical authorities have attempted to mobilize public opinion so as to contain the damage wrought by this syndrome and to prevent its spread. Two researchers, who have been perhaps the most outspoken advocates for the diagnosis and aggressive control of MBPS, Herbert A. Schreier and Judith A. Libow, write: 

The illnesses that have been presented in MBPS cover a remarkable range of organ systems and physical complaints...[including] some 100 different factitious or induced symptoms for which children have been brought to the attention of physicians, including abdominal pain, apnea, bleeding, diabetes, diarrhea, eczema, fevers, infections, lethargy, rashes, renal failure, seizures, shock, tachycardia, vomiting, and weight loss. And the list is expanding all the time, as new cases are seen and described in medical journals. Unfortunately, since these "illnesses" are nonexistent or induced by other substances or manipulations, they generally fail to respond to the physician’s usual treatments, or show an unusual and unexpected course of recurrence or intensification. The medical picture tends to get progressively more complicated by the addition of new medications and invasive interventions as the physicians search for ever-more powerful treatments for these persistent "illnesses"(Schreier & Libow 1993, p. 15).

But the dire warnings do not stop here. To insure that these professional medical judgments be heeded by the greatest range of those who are responsible for protecting children, the FBI took the task upon itself to simplify and to disseminate this specialized information to law enforcement personnel throughout the U. S. In the official publication of the FBI, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, we are told that

Today, the consensus is that MBPS is not rare, is notoriously resistant to parental psychotherapy, and carries a very grim prognosis. Approximately 10 percent of MBPS victims die. Unfortunately, more police agencies and medical professionals will be confronted with this form of abuse in the future. Hopefully, the information discussed here will alert law enforcement officers, especially those who deal with cases of abuse, to the warning signs of MBPS and will assist them in identifying the perpetrators and helping the victims (Boros & Brubaker 1992, p. 20).

This information was communicated to social service agencies, family courts, counseling centers, and educational and health offices throughout the U.S. and elsewhere. At the present time, there is a burgeoning popular literature on the syndrome, and several television "talk shows" and TV "news magazines," have devoted time to its diagnosis, prognosis and its sufferers. The print media, in particular, have featured a multitude of stories on the syndrome itself, its effects on contemporary family life, as well as having covered some of the more spectacular court cases involving MBPS. In short, MBPS has arrived, both as a pathology and as a popular phenomenon.

Popular interest in MBPS is also reflected in numerous articles that have appeared in such widely read magazines as Newsweek, The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Th~ New Yorker, Redbook, etc. The syndrome has also been featured on the popular TV shows, "LA. law" and "The Justice Files," and was the subject of both a made- for-TV movie and a best-seffing mystery novel, Devil’s Waltz. An airing of the "Donahue" show was devoted to the topic of MBPS. "Larry King Live" also presented an account of the MBPS phenomenon, as did the "Montel" Williams show. A recent prime time episode of "Chicago Hope"--an NBC medical drama--featured yet another case of MEPS, induced by the child’s mother.

One of the most dramatic and widely covered of these cases was that of Ellen Storck. The New York Times, Newsday, and many other national and regional newspapers detailed her repeated court hearings from Oct. of 1992, through May of 1994. A single mother of four, Ellen Storck was accused in July of 1992 of having induced apnea episodes in her youngest child, Aaron, by a physician at the Schneider Children’s Hospital at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. The accusation was provoked by her response to the severity and aggressiveness of the use of a tracheotomy as treatment for a series of transient apnea episodes suggested by the physician. Following the outplacement of her son by Child Protective Services of Suffolk County, and a lengthy trial in Suffolk County Family Court, Storck was adjudged of having neglected her child and of routinely subjecting him to unnecessary medical treatment. She subsequently appealed to regain custody of her son, but she was denied custody and he was eventually transferred to live with family relatives in Ohio. Having consistently denied the charges of MBPS child abuse --Aaron himself likewise denied any abuse--and continually attempting to regain custody, Ms. Storck fmally took possession of Aaron from her relatives in Ohio, and subsequently fled with him to Florida. After several unsuccessful attempts to capture Aaron, a police SWAT team, entering through an air-conditioning shaft, finally cornered and recaptured the fourteen year old Aaron. He is presently returned to his mother, who is now bringing a legal suit against some of the principals in the original case.

Other popular exposure of the syndrome has centered around two similar high-proffle cases, those of Kathy Bush and Yvonne Eldridge. Bush’s daughter, Jennifer, had visited the White House and had appeared in a poster for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign in support of national health care reform, in the spring of 1992. It was later alleged that Kathy Bush was actually abusing her child by MBPS. The Bush case is still in litigation, and will go to trial in July of this year. Yvonne Eldridge, like the Bushes, was honored by the White House. In 1986, Nancy Reagan declared the Eldridges to be one of the six "great American Families" for their foster work in caring for severely ill children--children born to substance-addicted mothers, often suffering from H1V/AIDS and multiple physical and mental disorders. In 1992 Mrs. Eldridge was also accused of child abuse and neglect, with MBPS as a determining factor in her indictment. She was tried and convicted on the charge, but now awaits a new trial which is tentatively scheduled for sometime in 1999. Both cases were of national interest, and accounts of them have appeared on the CBS news program, "48 hours," NBC’s "Dateline," as well as on ABC’s "20/20."

Remarkably, Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome did not even exist as such until 1977, when a British pediatrician, Roy Meadow, published an article in The Lancet, bringing two brief case histories of the Syndrome to public attention. In doing so, he was incorporating a term and a tradition that was itself less than three decades old. Twenty six years earlier, another British physician, Richard Asher, anecdotally--with the fabulist, Baron von Munchausen in mind--coined the term "Munchausen"s Syndrome" in order to describe the fanciful behavior of three other individuals, who would previously have been diagnosed as malingerers, hysterics, or hypochondriacs. The original Baron von Munchausen was an 18th cen. German figure who was cast as the exaggerating story-telling hero of Rudoiphe Raspe’s novel, The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron von Munchausen (ca. 1789). The three subjects Asher discussed, repeatedly sought medical treatment for what he considered to be largely simulated and fabricated, i.e., nonexistent, illnesses. Thinking that such cases might prove to be costly and burdensome to administer until one could establish that the subjects were in fact not ill, and hence, didn’t need medical treatment--Asher deemed it important enough to bring these cases to the attention of hospital officials, if only to warn them that there were such subjects, and that they might be otherwise difficult to diagnose. In the end, Asher thought his effort to be a practical and helpful matter and that, almost as an afterthought, his notice might help facilitate the search for "a cure of the psychological kink which produces the disease [i.e., Munchausen’s syndrome]" (Asher 1951, p. 341).

From 1951 to 1977 the original Munchausen’s syndrome aroused sporadic suspicion and attention among medical authorities--much of which was centered around a series of published letters and brief papers responding to Asher’s original article. In the handful of technical articles that appeared during this period on the subject, Munchausen’s syndrome was treated as a more or less unspecified factitious disorder among others, and usually in relation to other types of common disorders, particularly, malingering, hypochondria, and hysteria. Once Meadow introduced the Munchausen syndrome by proxy, however, locating the new disorder in a nexus of transferences between parent and child, between patient and doctor, the by proxy syndrome seemed far more specific, and therefore far more accessible to analysis, understanding, and intervention. Given the immense increase in public awareness--and of the frenzied national reporting--of child abuse cases (familial, au pair, and especially, day care child abuse cases) in the 1980’s and 90’s, as well as the dramatic rise of reported cases or illnesses resistant to standard diagnosis, such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), Shaken Baby Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, various stress-related disorders, etc., MEPS became a focal point in the diagnosis of these confusing types of disorders, largely because it offered itself as a model through which empirically difficult to ascertain cases could be explained. It provided a flexible dynamic that could detail aberrant behavior, abuse, sexual perversion, molestation, etc., within multiple dyadic relations, especially those cases in which the subjects’ own motives could not be clearly recognized or understood. It remained for the professional literature, medical clinicians, and psychiatric diagnosticians to codify the syndrome, to give it a defining set of signs and symptoms, and to assign sufficiently generalized etiologies to the disorder, such that it might emerge as a publicly recognizable phenomenon, and hence, that appropriate intervention would be of great utility in lessening the frequency of this particularly insidious form of child abuse.

Challenging the MBPS Claim

The principal theme guiding our book is that adult Munchausen’s syndrome and MBPS, by extension, are to be understood as diagnostic "constructions" or artifactual "fabrications" that reflect and embody institutionalized medical power; i.e., the unquestioned professional authority to create and legitimize what are oftentimes simply scientifically indeterminate constructions (such as those factitious disorders whose existence are solely determined on a diagnostic level). Our broader claim, then, is that MBPS and adult Munchausen’s are not self-standing, verifiable, and specifiable disorders at all, but rather, they are brought into existence through a set of historically evolved discourses and operations that stem from particular medical institutions and individuals. As such, these discourses and operations tend to cohere over a period of time and coalesce into a medical model, itself driven by a set of taxonomic classifications and an underlying set of perceived social threats and cultural biases. Once these classifications are refined, reified, set into the recursive domain of professional literature, supported by statistical data and by physician consensus, etc., the disorder becomes effectively "established." That is, it is established as a diagnostic "template." Or, as Jean Baudrillard has said, "it is the map that precedes the territory". The adult Munchausen and MI3PS "maps," the broad set of taxonomic designations and signs, furthermore, serve as a means to provoke our recognition of its alleged subjects. In this sense, the Munchausen "map" signifies or denotes a readily identifiable group of so-called sufferers--who, we should add, are by and large powerless to resist their own classification, and who have typically been traditional targets for the exercise of medical power and social control in any case: that is, women, the poor, "hateful patients," the homeless, drug abusers, the mentally ill, "derelicts," etc. It is in these respects, then, that MBPS is able to establish its legitimacy and its social urgency. If there are historical precedents, appropriate taxonomies, statistical quantifications, sufferers and victims, etc., then the disorder must be studied. And since it poses a real threat, it must be contained. But most importantly, and by the same imperative, it must exist.

Building the Model

One of the things we find to be particularly problematic about MBPS is the construction of the abovementioned spurious and inappropriately conceived model, which enables it to be articulated as a disorder in the first place. To begin with, the model itself, and the specifics it addresses, is largely the result of an extremely complex set of relations between individuals, public and private institutions, as well as between a variety of disciplines, discourses, and other types of what Michel Foucault has termed "power formations." Accordingly, in our view, MBPS is not so much a precise and objective mental disorder, possessed of a unique set of determinant characteristics. Rather, it has emerged as a generalized hypothesis advanced by a group of individuals and institutions with quite similar concerns and intentions, all of whom tend to collectively define and perpetuate its very existence as a disorder. The way in which it is treated, the organization of the various institutional formations constructed around it, its power to generate discourses, to mobilize various agencies, all serve to establish its uniqueness, its novelty, as a modern pathology. Thus, the constructed model, and even the informational claims initially made within the range of the professional literature, are mediated by a broad variety of social, cultural, political, economic and legal interests—interests which range from politically-inspired "aggressive prosecution" of suspected child abuse cases to the zealous pursuit of medical insurance fraud--interests which, forcibly, dictate methodological procedures and motivate criteria for nosological analysis and for active intervention. Hence, even the specification of the disorder is rendered problematic at the very outset.

It must be understood that this confluence of influences is in large part predetermined, if not simply pregiven. In much the way Nietzsche claimed that the "founders" of religion are rather "finders" of already existent patterns of life, language, values, behavior, ideals, and aspirations--and thus lend systematic coherency and direction to these social and cultural patterns, rendering "new" sects and denominations out of them--so does it become clear that not only MBPS, but many other "disorders" harbor deep historical and social predeterminations, underlying their appearance as "new" disorders.

The distinctive invention of the founders of religions is, first: to posit a particular kind of life and everyday customs that have the effect of a disciplina voluntatis and at the same time abolish boredom--and then: to bestow on this life style an interpretation that makes it appear to be illuminated by the highest value so that this life style becomes something for which one fights and under certain circumstances sacrifices one’s life. Actually, the second of these two inventions is more essential. The first, the way of life, was usually there before, but alongside other ways of life and without any sense of its special value. The significance and originality of the founder of a religion usually consists of his seeing it, selecting it, and guessing for the first time to what use it can be put, how it can be interpreted.

In seeking to illustrate some of the characteristic motivations underlying the formation of MBPS, we center upon two historically antecedent "disorders," namely, witchcraft and hysteria. The two cases are particularly relevant to an understanding of MBPS because they anticipate a similar pattern of dynamic construction. On the one hand, both of these disorders focus on their bearer, host, and purveyor: namely, women. On the other, and importantly, the disorders are held to threaten a fundamental (if only presumed) social stability --brought on by a dramatic eruption of what will be held to be evil or madness. With both witchcraft and hysteria, the fundamental expression of a cultural and psychological fear of women is magnified into a complex, necessary, and pressing social and political need.

In the case of witchcraft, an immense apparatus was engaged to rid the dreaded evil: witch hunters, witch prosecutors, judges, witchcraft torture, widely circulated confessional manuals, ecclesiastical bulls, well-established trial procedures, witchcraft-spot "prickers," witch dousers, paid wimesses, exorcists, etc., all were included in the drive to eliminate witches, not to mention the assistance lent by the provincial gentry, who stood to gain from the confiscation of witches’ tainted properties. All this was initially subtended by the concerns of the church--to eliminate heresy, devil-worship, and evil, generally--as well as, in later cases, continued by the interests of the state, which stood to gain from the quelling of disorders and the elimination of potentially dangerous political enemies. In this respect, even though witchcraft was a completely invented "disorder," it assumed the legitimacy of a dangerous public threat, which in turn generated an entire set of procedures to contain it--each of which was thought to be of important and real significance within the culture and society of the times.

In the millennia-old case of hysteria, the lines were similarly drawn between women and the institutional structures meant to contain them. What had traditionally been seen as women’s oftentimes disruptive, wanton, willful, and obliquitous behavior, was equated with a kind of generic--if not genetic --madness, one that threatened the stable life of the family unit, and by extension, the patriarchal social model as a whole. From ancient Egypt, through its Renaissance reconstruction, and well throughout the nineteenth century, hysteria was universally understood to be an "illness," and by this very token, medicine was entrusted with its remediation. Such remediation would include a variety of medical procedures, among which would number surgery, hospitalization, therepeutic techniques, medication, etc., which were, if not less repressive, were at least more humane than traditional folk or family treatment namely, physical abuse, enforced isolation, restraint, and the stigma of a generalized social opprobrium.

Charged to diagnose and to treat hysteria, medicine would proceed through a series of impasses, each of which would be "resolved" by continually expanding the medical model itself. While the authority of church and state remained relatively stable throughout the period of the "witch troubles," the medical model expanded dramatically from its initial diagnostic hypothesis of "womb displacements," to its explanation of the disorder according to the effects of the bodily humors, through the anatomically specific physiological and neurological models of "lesion-induced" behavior, up to the point of a relatively sophisticated medical understanding, which, at the close of the nineteenth century, realized that there was no organic cause at all of "hysteria." Hence, hysteria itself posed a dramatic challenge to the authority of the medical model. If an "illness" stubbornly persisted in women--with all its disruptive effects upon the individual, family, and community, notwithstanding the care given to these hysterics by all the attendant institutions devised to treat them, etc.,--and yet medicine could find no organic etiology whatsoever for this illness, then, what in fact was an illness, and how could medicine be charged to cure it, especially if no one could determine precisely what it was? To all appearances, this difficult issue was resolved by Freud, who reduced virtually all etiological problems of hysteria to ideational or psychodynamic causes--which causes could neither be empirically recognized nor dealt with by the patient herself. The construction of hysteria, which had fallen into rather perilous straits, was to a certain extent rescued by Freud’s invention of the unconscious and its unobservable, yet ineluctable logic.

In having to confront the broadened concerns of psychodynamics, introduced by nineteenth and twentieth century psychology and psychiatry (from Charcot, through Janet, Breuer, Freud, etc.), modern medicine would both have to extend its theoretical models of diagnosis, etiology, and treatment, and to offer the assurance of a cure, of remediation, to these new subjects. It was precisely this necessity, we argue, that afforded psychiatry a greatly expanded field of operation, a position that enabled it to generate a whole new set of determinations, classifications, disorders, etiologies, etc., and this would serve to extend the authority of medicine beyond its traditional areas of application into the determination and control of a vast number of heretofore, nonmedical "behaviors." This extension was supplemented and effectively confirmed by the creation of a series of authoritative nosological manuals--most prominently, the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Disease (lCD)--which gave the appearance of widespread reliability and validity to psychiatric practice. With its newly found authority and comprehensiveness, medical psychiatry was in a position both to construct a whole range of "disorders" and to direct their treatment. Aberrant, deviant, and unusual forms of behavior would henceforth be designated as psychiatric "disorders" — much as hysteria came to be categorized under the older medical model.

The individual who was formerly considered an academic "underachiever" would now be labeled as suffering from "Specific Academic or Work Inhibition" (DSM-III, 309.23 [DSM-1V, V62.3]), or those who occasionally "blew their top" were now classified as having an "Isolated Explosive Disorder" (DSM-III 312.35 [DSM-1V, 312.34]), and so on, ad nauseam. Obviously, and unfortunately, much of the nosological and taxonomic complexity introduced with this expanded authority over behavior--public and private--lacks serious scientific and medical foundations. Much of this classification is in fact a collection, a compilation, of individual and institutional affirmations and concerns, all subject to relations which, to a large extent, fall outside the field of medical science proper: in some of the more egregious cases, these concerns take the form of biases concerning sexual role behavior, gender determination, economic status, social class, race, education, social conformity, cultural convention, and indeed, what is so commonly understood to be behavioral "normalcy." Legend in this respect are such classified "disorders" as homosexuality (DSM-IIIR, 302.90), premenstrual dysphoric (DSM-1V Appendix), paraphilic rapism (DSM-IIIR, 302.84), histrionic personality (DSM-1V, 301.50), dependant personality (DSM IIIR, 301.60), disorder of written expression (DSM-1V, 315.2), noncompliance to treatment (DSM-1V, V15.81), etc. This is how, we submit, one such prominent new disorder--MBPS itself--comes to be constituted as a "major illness," a "disease," that affects women, mothers, nurses, foster mothers, grandmothers--and even, in some few alleged cases, fathers.

Historical and Methodological Concerns

To understand the construction of MBPS, we have endeavored to articulate the alleged historical antecedents of factitious disorders generally. In this respect, we critically examine certain central aspects of the tradition, arguing that many of its varying (and oftentimes, conflicting) interests and concerns testify less to medical science proper than to practical issues of administration, to the maintenance of social biases, to the exercise of punishment and social control, to the demand for theoretical hegemony, or simply, to the ordinary and uncomfortable persistence of personal conflict, etc. The strategy of criticism focuses on elaborating as wide a variety as possible of these extenuating concerns which, in sum, are claimed to constitute the tradition that precedes MBPS, as well as to legitimize it as a specific syndrome.

Our critique of the MBPS construction includes an examination of the work of George Cheyne and Hector Gavin, British physicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively. These figures serve to establish an initial focus for our own reading of MBPS, since they are frequently invoked as being among the most prominent early theoreticians of hypochondriacal and factitious disorders--particularly Gavin, who appears in virtually every text with pretensions to trace the historical provenance of both the adult Munchausen and the MBPS disorder. This trajectory leads us to examine the subsequent work of later nineteenth century figures, such as Sir Benjamin Brodie, and again, Charcot and Freud.

The specifically modern construction of MBPS--i.e., beginning with the emergence of the adult Munchausen syndrome--is subsequently examined through the texts of Karl Menninger (on "surgical addicts"), and Asher’s locus classicus, "Munchausen’s Syndrome," and is continued through the work inspired by this text. This literature is considerable, and it comprises a large number of letters and correspondence in the medical journals of the period, as well as articles and longer monographs. In carefully reviewing these texts, a remarkable pattern of coherency evolves, concerning the problematic nature of the physician-patient relation, brought about by the so-called "deceitful" and "dangerous" ministrations of the "typical" Munchausen’s sufferer, who seeks medical assistance. It was alleged that such patients had presented themselves as suffering a multitude of feigned and self-induced disorders, without any apparent motive for doing so, and this constitutes the principal axis of the adult Munchausen syndrome. Upon closer examination, however, we found that virtually every "Munchausen’s" patient mentioned in the literature had a panoply of already existing physical, behavioral, and psychological disorders, not to mention that many were driven to seek hospitalization and shelter for reasons having to do with drug dependency, substance abuse, homelessness, poverty, and quite simply, intense personal pain and suffering. In other words, what at first glance appeared to be a unitary syndrome defining a factitious disorder, plain and simple, at closer inspection turned out to be a veritable grab-bag designation of patients with a wide variety of empirically real and very severe troubles. Moreover, such patients would never be classified together outside of the putative logic of the superordinate description entailed in the adult Munchausen syndrome.

Following the critique of the precedent literature concerning factitious disorders and the adult Munchausen syndrome, we discuss a number of central problems which arise from the language and logic specifically related to the MBPS disorder: the problem of definition and recursivity (a procedure in which all present cases are defined in terms of previously accrued and constantly reiterated cases) in arriving at a classification, the formal understanding of what constitutes a syndrome or disorder, the logic of medical articulation, and questions of observation, validity and verification. In relation to the language of MBPS, we focus on the laxity of definition in psychiatric nomenclature in general, and particularly, in that of adult Munchausen and MBPS. Curiously, MBPS, which is simply stipulated as a syndrome by Meadow and others, assumes its medical and social "reality," its specific characteristics, largely on the basis of the initial stipulative definition. Indeed, it could be said that, in a certain respect, MEPS is defined "into" existence by virtue of the enormous amount of material written about it each professional paper, report, case history, and review thus serves to "verify" the initial definition, to confirm the existence of subsequent "cases," and to serve as a warning that the disorder is far more widespread and pernicious than had been originally suspected. The initial definition also serves as a means of ordination, since by definition, the term "syndrome" provides for a broad clustering of otherwise unconnected "signs and symptoms," taken up under a single category or classification. What we demonstrate in this respect is that the defined category itself, and not the observed medical reality, constitutes the received legitimacy of the MBPS disorder.

What complicates any understanding of the disorder is the remarkably repetitive series of accounts about adult Munchausen and MBPS and the striking recursivity of information (case histories, multiple diagnoses, etc.) used to describe it. The many cases are so routinely referred to one another, that a vague, all-encompassing model--characterized by an accreted stratum of so-called "fact" and a rhetorical nomenclature used to articulate it--eventually overwhelms the specificity of each new presentation. Thus, the later cases are interpreted only in the corresponding terms of earlier precedent, such that what should be relevant empirical considerations to the case at hand are progressively marginalized, if not eliminated. Such a trajectory of standard and routine interpretation raises two subsequent problems: with the progressive elimination of collateral empirical data--i.e., the failure to collect, to make use of, or even to take note of detailed medical histories, psychiatric records, specific socioeconomic conditions, informed personal histories, an understanding of marital relations, inquiry into possible spousal abuse, etc.--the case studies presented in the literature emerge as entirely abstract and anectdotal constructions, each of which, due to the absence of distinctive empirical analysis, corresponds to the vague profile of all the earlier cases. Hence, the second problem follows in turn: the inabffity of practically everyone writing in the field to devise even a remotely plausible etiology for the MBPS disorder. To put this matter another way, given the great diversity of the patients involved--the variety of their personal lives, histories, personalities, socio-economic situations, etc.--if the only thing they are alleged to have done alike is to injure their children to gain attention from physicians, then the question is why do they do this? if we cannot find a consistently coherent answer, then the behavior, if it does occur, is merely an indication of some unacceptable moral or psychological deterioration, no different in kind from other indications, and not worthy of being regarded as a syndrome at all.

The New MBPS Orthodoxy

With the appearance of Schreier and Libow’s definitive 1993 study of MBPS, however, the prospect of establishing a rigorous etiology for the disorder finally seemed forthcoming. Hurting for Love: Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome would argue that MIBPS was effectively a "perversion of mothering," one in which the MBPS mother would "fetishize" her own child in order to gain affection and admiration from her "caregiving" and "nurturing" physician. This claimed etiology permeates the entire work, which in turn becomes a somewhat labored exercise to establish its validity, to explain its agency, and thereby, to determine the overall management strategy of MBPS. Indeed, one of the main purported goals of the Schreier and Ubow text is to finally establish an objective basis for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disorder.

We devote a whole section of the book to analyzing these claims, to criticizing the underlying assumptions they rest upon, and to examine the methodologies and data upon which the authors’ account is predicated. What necessitates this approach is that since the appearance of Hurting for Love, it has become the definitive "handbook" of MEPS medical diagnosis and treatment, and most significantly, it serves as the principal theoretical frame of reference for the juridico-legal prosecution of MBPS, as well as in part constituting the guidlines for child protective and social service agencies. Thus, its influence has had enormous effects on both the professional and public mind. Due to the largely uncritical acceptance of the MBPS theses, children have been outplaced, mothers have been convicted of "MBPS" abuse, families have been dislocated and broken up, and an entire general framework for the continuance of the "Munchausen" daim has been established. Our critique is thus pointedly directed to reveal a number of weaknesses in the text, among which include the central role of Schreier and Ubow’s proposed etiology for MBPS, the unwarranted--and ahistorical--transformation of the traditional "doctor-patient" relation into the "mother-doctor" dyad, the inexplicable and often theoretically self-serving use of such core psychoanalytic terms as "perversion," "transferential," "sadomasochism," "mothering" (i.e., the psychodynamics of maternal behavior), "fetishism," etc., in elaborating the etiology and dynamics of the disorder. This unreflective construction of a theoretical etiology (out of such an array of ifi-defined concepts) occludes a whole range of considerations that might otherwise be crucial determinant factors in explaining the complexity of abusive parental behavior, and its great variety of forms--even those, like the alleged MBPS, which specifically occur within the context of otherwise seeking medical care and hospital supervision for the child. Among these occluded elements, the most striking are perhaps the virtual exclusion or real socioeconomic conditions of the "MEPS mother," as well as any real understanding of the traditional and contemporary situation regarding the relations between women and the medical profession. The latter extends to the attitudes held towards women by the profession as well as to the effective delivery of health care services to women. Another element in the formulaic construction of the Schreier and Ubow’s etiology, which bears on this, is their unreflective treatment of the ways popular images are communicated concerning the authority of the medical profession itself, the power and centrality of physicians, and the ways women are said to become "attached" to these presumably "powerful figures." The etiology is thus built up around the idealized role of the "loving, caregiving physician," who is held to be an all-powerful figure of affective fulfillment and personal salvation for what could only be termed an emotionally and intellectually eviscerated woman. It is on the basis of such a disproportionally structured dyad of abject dependency that the woman is said to offer up her child as a fetish, or more plausibly, as a sacrifice, to the physician (obstetrician, gynecologist, pediatrician, etc.,), as a (de-) sexualized token of her willing submission to his authority.

Granted, the above account of the authors’ etiological argument is but an initial sketch, but the centrality Schreier and Ubow attribute to their etiology oddly serves to deflect what seems to be the original aim of the book--namely, that MBPS be understood, that its diagnosis and prognosis be clarified, so as to treat its victims, and prevent its occurrence--in favor of advancing an extraordinary model of medical hegemony over women and their behavior. What results from the elevation of the medical model of MBPS advanced by Schreier and Libow is the effective, if unintended, devaluation of the women who reportedly suffer from the disorder. In consequence, the "MBPS mother" progressively becomes understood in more criminalized terms as the "perpetrator" or as the "suspect parent."

The child, likewise, is effectively reduced to the caricatured status of a fully defenseless "victim" of abusive MBPS behavior, becoming evermore "infantiuized" in the course of their account. In the dynamics of what had initially been a factitious disorder by proxy, wherein women sufferers were said to be fairly typical of the population at large, and where children ranged from neonates to teenagers, these children become almost exclusively referred to as "preverbal infants," who are incapable of articulating their needs, fears, or life-threatening dangers. Hence, in the evolution of their discussion (which parallels the historical discussion of adult Munchausen and MBPS), what had originally been understood as a deviancy of womens’ behavior, or even as an "uncommon disorder" in relation to real childhood disease, which might indeed result in induced or feigned ifiness, etc., this unusual disorder now becomes rhetorically transformed into a nationwide criminal assault upon helpless, inarticulate infants.

With the dangers of MBPS so remarkably overdramatized, and with the subtending social and economic realities of women so completely understated, Schreier and Ubow urge the medical and legal systems to wage a regulatory war against these mothers--all of whom are possessed by a disorder which, in each case, is now affirmed to be potentially lethal. Given these stakes, the authors call for the creation of local and regional "intervention teams," directed by fully-informed MBPS specialists, composed of health care professionals and social service personnel, who will be empowered as "private parties" to conduct surreptitious surveillance of the MBPS "perpetrators," who will seek court-mandated custodial outplacement of the MBPS children. These teams will likewise seek to mandate psychiatric therapy for the MBPS mothers; they will explain the MBPS dynamics to the civil and criminal courts, to the prosecutors and defense counsel, in the course of determination. The authors finally propose the formation of a "national electronic network" for tracking mother-perpetrators, etc.

Thus, by the end of Hurting for Love, the circle is effectively closed. Like witchcraft and hysteria before it, MBPS (and adult Munchausen as well) emerges as a fully, though differently, constructed disorder, one testifying to a broad range of real and imagined social and institutional concerns, a disorder which constitutes a threat to the health and general well- being of the society at large. Just as in the case of witchcraft and hysteria, however, one of the emerging objectives of the Schreier and Libow MBPS construction is the maintenance of a certain discursive and punitive power through social controls. With MBPS, one is confronted by a disorder which threatens the wellbeing of children, of family life in general, as well as the social and cultural values which are thereby entailed. Remarkably, since MBPS is a factitious disorder, it can only be diagnosed by the medical specialist who is professionally trained to do so. The mother, the child, the larger unit of family and friends are said to be simply incapable of even recognizing the disorder — as are other less well informed members of medical, social service, and legal professions. It is precisely due to their ignorance about this "much underdiagnosed disorder" that the imperative to diagnose and contain it be conducted from the informed standpoint of those specially trained individuals who are fully capable of understanding it. This position of active intervention, of course, is exclusively occupied by the authority of medical power, which is the compelling but unstated goal of the artifactual construction called Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.

Fortunately, due to recent court decisions, this arrogant abuse of medical power has been checked--at least in part. Two cases in particular deserve mention: Lyda / Martinez vs. United States, and Kathleen Bush vs. the State of Florida. In both cases the diagnosis of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy was disallowed as scientifically admissable evidence. The judges in both cases, Federal District, and State Circuit, ruled that the diagnosis was too broad and in itself constituted grounds of prejudice against the defendants.

This new critical attitude towards MSbP has recently gone beyond the precincts of the courtroom and has been adopted by specialists in a variety of fields, including psychology, health care, sociology, and child protection agencies. In particular the work in psychololgy by Dr. Eric Mart and that of Helen Hayward Brown in medical anthropology, has been extremely critical of the various theoretical models generated by the various MSbP "experts," and their contributions have led public authorities to assume a skeptical position about the traditional claims and fears of MSbP. Most notably, several "convicted" mothers are appealing their cases due to the patent invalidity of their earlier diagnoses. There has also been international recognition of the problematic nature of the MBpS diagnosis and the flawed methodology it involves This is particularly evident m the case of the Bntish Munchausen "expert," Dr. David Southall, who is presently the subject of at least four government investigations.

The MSbP diagnosis, although still widespread in the medical and public mind, appears at last to have lost much of its credibility, and is thankfully beginning to appear on the endangered species list. Its continued existence as a diagnosis depends in large part on the results of current litigation and the prospects of a critically informed medical and psychiatric community.

Subject: Federal Support for Research Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999

From: "Fedcan" <fedcan@hssfc.ca>

To: @hssfc.ca

Dear Colleague,

To increase federal support for Canadian universities and double the SSHRC budget, the Federation is currently lobbying Members of Parliament and Public Servants in Ottawa. To be more effective, however, we need the active support of researchers across Canada.

 Please take a few minutes to write to your own MP and explain why additional funds are needed to adequately support research in the humanities and social sciences and how those funds will benefit you and your colleagues in their constituency. To assist you, we have posted a model letter on our web site(www.hssfc.ca) under "announcements". Please feel free to tailor the letter to more closely to your own research interests and the concerns of your university. All we ask is that the final message be clear: increased federal support for Canadian universities and a doubling of the SSHRC budget are urgently needed.

Please send the letter to your MP, with a copy to the Federation and the Honourable John Manley, Minister of Industry. Mr. Manley is ultimately responsible for all SSHRC funding. No postage is necessary when writing to a Member of Parliament. You can write to your MP and Mr. Manley at: House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6.

Thank you, in advance, for your support. Your participation in this campaign will significantly increase our impact in Ottawa.

Sincerely,

Louise Forsyth

President

Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada/Federation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales

=========================================================================

Subject: New funds for research (health related) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999

Special Notice for Researchers: How to Apply for Canadian Institutes of Health Research Transition Programs

Humanists and Social Scientists conducting health-related research will soon be able to access a new and important source of funding. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), announced in the 1999 Federal Budget, will be established on April 1, 2000.

Guidelines and processes for applying for support under transitional programs (applicable in 2000-1 while responsibility for funding health research transfers from one granting council or another to the CIHR) may vary depending on the agreements reached by the partners and the agencies that will manage these programs. Each Request for Applications will outline its process and provide instructions for the application and decision process.

For more information on the Request for Applications for these programs please contact:

The Medical Research Council ( www.mrc.gc.ca) which is the lead organization for the following programs: Interdisciplinary Health Research Teams (IHRTS); Regional Partnership Program; and the Health Research Partnership Fund

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (www.sshrc.ca) which is the lead organization for the following program: Community Alliances in Health Research

SSHRC and the National Health Research and Development Program (www.hc-sc.gc.ca/iacb-dgiac/nhrdp) which are the lead organizations for the following program: CIHR/SSHRC/NHRDP Health Career Awards

Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (www.chsrf.ca), which is the lead organization for the following program: Capacity for Applied Developmental Research and Evaluation (CADRE) in Health Services and Health Systems.

Note: Information on all transition programs as well as the Request for Applications have been posted on the CIHR website (www.cihr.org) and each Request for Application provides more detailed contact information.

Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada

Federation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales

=========================================================================

Subject: President’s report to the General Assembly Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999

PRESIDENT’S REPORT TO THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

NOVEMBER 1999

It Has Been an Exciting and Challenging Year!

One year ago I became President of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada. I had already served for a year on the Executive as President-elect, and I had behind me an earlier term on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities (CFH). So I knew in advance, somewhat, what I would have to do. I took on the job of President because I care passionately about what we and our students are about and because I believe that Canadian society and culture need to share in the ideals, vision and knowledge of the social sciences and humanities if they are to flourish, provide conditions for intellectual, economic, creative and spiritual well-being, and move toward the goal of equal opportunity for every individual.

So, as I have already said, I thought I knew in advance what I would have to do. But what I didn’t realise from the start is that things have changed tremendously-- things, that is, involving the conditions within which we are able to do our research and teaching, things, as well, involving the Federation’s range of activities. Since the merger of the two federations to form the present HSSFC in 1996, led by the dynamic leadership of my predecessor as president, Chad Gaffield, the academic world has been in a spin. The challenges have been and continue to be so great!

It Has Been a Good Year!

It would have been impossible for me to even begin to understand all the Federation’s activities, leave alone deal with them effectively, without the knowledge and commitment of Louise Robert, Executive Director, Paul Ledwell and Irene Sullivan, Directors, the outstanding professionalism of the staff at HSSFC, and the incredible good will and rich talents of many colleagues from universities across the country who have agreed to bring their expertise to bear on the many projects that are integral to our juggling act. Thanks to the bold initiatives and informed engagement of Louise, Paul and Irene, the humanities and social sciences community has a respected and recognised profile among policy makers, with SSHRC and in the country broadly. The community is recognised for its ability to identify, address, analyse and provide credible answers for complex issues, the likes of which have never before been known in institutions of higher learning.

Have you read the Literature Reviews on Performance Indicators recently posted on the HSSFC Website? This is a project undertaken by the Federation with the support of SSHRC. The lengthy and detailed reviews were done by a team from OISE, one from UBC, and one by James Beaton. You really ought to read them and discuss them fully with colleagues. For they go to the very heart of what we do in our professional lives and how current values and practices are determining the ways in which our teaching and research are evaluated by the institutions in which we work. They bring important understanding to the climate of Angst that prevails in the lives of many faculty members and students.

Another of the Federation’s special projects currently underway, partially funded by SSHRC and equally striking in its expected findings, is that one-publishing, being done by colleagues from the universities of Calgary, New Brunswick and Alberta (Faculté and Bibliothèque Saint-Jean). What do new technologies and rapidly changing cultures mean for scholarly research, publishing, dissemination and archiving?

I hope, as well, that you, your colleagues, your university administrators and the public representatives with whom you speak, enjoy and find useful the issues of the electronic journal Perspectives, written by Wayne Kondro with a perceptive eye to bringing us the story "behind the news" of what is appening in the country that cannot fail to have an impact on our activities whether positively or negatively. Many of us heard it first from Wayne that 20% of the 1,200-2,000 recently announced new 21st Century University Research positions to be created with federal funds will be reserved for the humanities and social sciences. This is good news indeed.

The Unending Struggle to Obtain Adequate Resources for Research and Teaching

And by the way, the Federation has been very busy again this year as a member of the Steering Committee of the Canadian Consortium for Research (23 granting agencies, AUCC, CAUT and other organisations, 50,000 researchers represented) lobbying for, among other things, the doubling of SSHRC’s funding over three years. Each of our Breakfasts on the Hill is a significant event. We are listened to when we present a brief and appear before the Finance Committee. We proudly claim responsibility for a significant portion of the success we have met in gaining the respect of the other granting agencies; informing MPs, bureaucrats, media representatives and the public about the interesting and important research our members do in preserving our past and providing the spirit, imagination and vision for the future; seeing SSHRC’s budget restored to 1995 levels; achieving a re-definition of "health" in the legislation for the Canadian Institutes for Health Research so that our research is seen to be central in this new granting agency; watching our ideas take off in the explosion of support for the Community-University Research Alliances. Our Canadian Research Information Data Base (originally "Challenge ‘98) is an increasingly effective resource for media and others needing to know who is doing what kinds of research in areas of current interest; its entries continue to grow, and it will soon be entirely searchable. We are strongly supportive of the joint initiative currently underway between SSHRC and Statistics Canada to establish the Canadian Initiative on Social Statistics, with its infrastructure program of a system of Research Data Centres. We provided as strong support as we could to the Canadian Historical Association in its battle to liberate and protect access to 20th century census data, in opposition to the recommendations of Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, and we are delighted with recent national media interest in this issue of critical importance to the protection of our knowledge about the roads we have travelled together in this country for the past 100 years. In light of what members of our community are doing, how could anyone legitimately claim that research done by humanists and social scientists is not relevant? How could anyone credibly accuse our members of lack of accountability?

Yet we still need our association and university members to use our template letters posted on the HSSFC website or to create their own for writing to their MPs and MLAs in order to address current issues that matter to us and to keep our activities and priorities on the public forum.

We appeared before the SSHRC Council in May to account for what the Federation had done in 1998-99 with the funds SSHRC provides annually (matching university and association membership income) for the promotion of teaching, research and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. We were pleased to learn that, as the minutes of the meeting record, "Council members were impressed with the range of activities supported with the SSHRC funds". This three-year grant is up for renewal in 2001, and we are hoping to persuade Council to remove the upper cap of $300,000 in its level of support. We hope that its members will agree with us that there is much work still to be done, and that the Federation is an ideal organisation to carry much of it out.

Many Challenges Remain

Despite our encouraging successes, the horizon for the future remains disturbing and troubled. Understanding and respect for our work is not always evident. Material support remains inadequate. For example, while SSHRC provides the avenue of research support for about 53% of Canada’s faculty members, it receives only 12% of the total budget for the three granting agencies. What is more, the creation of enormous new funding organisations such as the Canada Foundation for Innovation skews in a very significant downward direction the percentage of federal funds available to support the research of members of our community and also has a depressing impact on allocations of provincial and university resources.

The Strength of Our Founding Activities

When the two federations were merged in 1996 to form the present HSSFC, three major portfolios were created, each with a Vice-President: 1) External Communications, 2) Research Dissemination, 3) Women’s Issues.

Vice-President Livio Di Matteo (External Communications) has written several papers and, with the independent initiatives and strong support of Communications Officer Garth Williams, shaped the Communications portfolio so that it encompasses – in ways that hold the promise of being magnificently effective -- all of the Federation’s activities: internal and external communications, exchanges among member associations and universities, relations with the press, advocacy and lobbying on behalf of the entire community. We are strong and respected interlocutors among those who are making critical decisions on Canada’s social, cultural, intellectual and artistic future.

Have you consulted the HSSFC web site recently? It is updated regularly with news on projects and activities, copies of documents and reports, names and addresses of contacts. The web site lists the names of all our member associations and universities, with hot links to all of these members who have their own web sites. This means that associations can easily stay current on what they and other associations are doing. They can post announcements, calls for papers, conference programs on a regular basis. We encourage all associations to use this efficient, inexpensive and rapid means to stay in touch with their own members and the Federation community.

The portfolio of Vice-President Michael Owen (Research Dissemination) includes the annual Congress, responsibility for which is in the capable hands of Director Paul Ledwell. The transition over the past two years to put in place a permanent secretariat has been achieved with outstanding success and a minimum of inconvenience for Congress participants. We must all now continue to work together in making the Congress what we need it to be: a gathering of discipline-based learned societies, a once-in-a-year opportunity to meet and talk to colleagues in our own and other disciplines, an exciting moment when we highlight for our own and the public’s interest our interdisciplinary innovation and bring our powerful insights to bear on current issues of public policy, a once-in-a-year opportunity to browse in the delights of scholarly books and to revel in the celebration of our community’s research productivity, and a more general time to occupy the national stage through high profile scholarly events. For many of us, the Congress, which is the largest multi-disciplinary gathering of social scientists and humanists in North America, is the high point of our academic year. For the Executive, Louise Robert and Jacqueline Wright (our Executive Assistant who handles relations with members with such warm and accurate skill) the Congress is a vital moment when we are able to touch base with each of our participating associations. These visits with members of associations provide needed contact and information. We believe that the Congress provides, at least once a year, that ever-so-necessary opportunity to come together and share ideas and socialise with colleagues from other universities. It is at these moments that some of the most exciting new initiatives among our members come into being. In order to ensure that this opportunity remains and is significantly enhanced, we are strongly encouraging SSHRC to review its travel grant policy, which has not been revised for many years, which does not usually provide information in a timely way before the Congress, and which has some glaring inadequacies and omissions.

Planning for Congress 2000 at the University of Alberta is already advanced. Scholars are at work; associations have put out their calls for papers; interdisciplinary fora are taking shape; many special events (such as the one SSHRC has agreed to support jointly with the National Research Council on creativity and innovation) are planned; publishers are signing up for the Book Fair, and the practical details are being handled expertly by Suzanne Dagenais and the many others with whom she is working.

Michael Owen and Management Board Chair Judith Herz, share responsibility for the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, a vital programme funded by SSHRC that has been making scholarly publication possible in Canada for the past 50 years. The ASPP has been through a period of transformation during this past year, with HSSFC Executive Director Louise Robert managing the Programme, the departure of two long-term and esteemed Programme Officers (Michelle Legault and Isabelle Bossé) and the arrival of two new energetic and gifted Programme Officers (Nadine May and Simon Lapointe), the implementation of a flat subvention fee of $7,000 per manuscript, and the study of the Programme’s operations by a committee of highly respected scholars: Principal Janyne Hodder (Bishop’s), Laurie Ricou (UBC), David Smith (Saskatchewan). The transformation has been achieved while coordinating an exciting Book Fair, selecting and publicising the works of the four Book Prize winners, and maintaining maximum manuscript approval efficiency on a regular basis. This success has been the result of the commitment of the Programme Officers, the extraordinary contribution of the specialist readers in our communities, the organising skills of Louise Robert, and the involvement of Judith Herz and the ASPP Management Board.

Michael Owen’s vision and leadership in moving along our research infrastructure project and in enhancing communication and exchange with Vice-Presidents (Research) and other senior academic administrators have been invaluable.

As the agenda shows, Vice-President Cynthia Alexander (Women’s Issues) has worked this year to ensure that the Women’s Issues Network functions in universities coast to coast as a lively network for exchange and planning. A year ago the HSSFC reaffirmed its commitment to integrate women’s issues into every aspect of its ongoing activities and special projects. This is not an easy challenge. However, under Cynthia’s leadership we are moving ahead. Despite some successes in recent years, the Executive remains concerned that demographic patterns do not show noticeable change.

How Do We Plan to Pay for the Work That Must Be Done?

As I said at the beginning of this report, I have been amazed this year at the number and complexity of the activities organised by the Federation, the ongoing and emerging issues that must be addressed, the networks and data bases that must be developed and maintained, the public relations and lobbying that are key to all our endeavors. The Federation has responded with incredible vigor to the challenges encountered since the merger in 1996 of the Social Science Federation of Canada and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities. The merger was precipitated by SSHRC’s announcement that it planned over a three-year period to withdraw ongoing funding from the two federations, at the same time funding would be withdrawn from learned societies. It was a time of trepidation. But the colleagues who set up the new Federation built well, and the collaboration across the entire range of the social sciences and humanities community has proven gratifying and fruitful, even under conditions requiring extreme belt-tightening.

Not only was SSHRC funding for the Federation eliminated (and subsequently re-negotiated on a term basis reduced by almost 50%), but contributions from universities were reduced from a total of $.41/FTE student to $.31/FTE student. At the same time associations were strapped to maintain their affiliation with the Federation because their own financial support was cut. It is an eloquent tribute to the first President of the new Federation, Chad Gaffield, and every single member of the staff, each of whom have felt the cruel bite of financial exigency, with a warm salute as well to first Executive Director Marcel Lauzière and current Executive Director Louise Robert, that we have achieved the incredible level of activity and effectiveness that we have at the present time, and that we have the highest participation of universities and learned societies ever (69 universities and 68 associations).

We have reached an exciting plateau, and we must now plan to move on. However, we cannot see our way clear to doing so at the current level of financial support. To speak frankly, the budget is simply inadequate, and we must now take the necessary steps to remedy this situation. We cannot afford to let the Federation fail. If it were to do so, every professor and every student in the humanities and social sciences would be significantly handicapped, as would SSHRC. And so we must plan to move boldly forward.

Enhancing the Resources Available to the HSSFC

The human resources upon which the Federation can and does draw are rich and varied. These resources are made available to us from many sources: gifted and dedicated personnel, committed and engaged scholars in our social sciences and humanities communities, associates in SSHRC, colleagues in cognate fields, a range of friends in the community, including members of the media. The value to us of these human resources is enormous, far surpassing the amount of our annual budget.

The Federation takes full advantage of the knowledge, skills, commitment, vision, analytic acumen, critical insight, and capacity for innovation of this rich pool. In order to be able to do so, it must have a sound infrastructure that is supported financially at a level to ensure its ongoing viability. In order to achieve this, we are taking the following initiatives:

The Board passed the following motion at its March meeting:

THAT THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS APPROVE THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE TO RETURN UNIVERSITY FEES TO THE 1995 LEVEL, THAT IS .41 CENTS PER FULL-TIME STUDENT

The motion is being implemented at this November 1999 meeting. We are confident that our member universities will support this initiative, particularly since there will be no further increase in membership fees in the near future.

The first three-year agreement with SSHRC, Connections, will terminate in May 2001. Connections provides for SSHRC Council to agree to match HSSFC’s membership revenue dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $300,000. In our report this year to SSHRC Council on our achievements under the provisions of Connections, we plan to request renewal of this agreement, and also to request that the cap be removed. This would mean that every new dollar raised through membership fees would result in an increase of $2 for the Federation.

We are examining the level of annual fees paid by individuals to the Federation through their own associations. These fees, which have remained unchanged since 1996, are currently set at $7. We know that any suggestion that the fees be raised runs the risk of causing great difficulties for scholarly associations whose subventions from SSHRC have been cut and who are struggling themselves to maintain the necessary level of service for their members. Still, it is my firm belief that the $7 investment in the Federation brings returns to members, their associations and their universities that far surpass the cost. I hope that this report provides useful information on the range of ways in which this is demonstrably the case. Further, I agree strongly with outgoing President Chad Gaffield when he affirmed, with conviction, that we need to invest more than the equivalent of one modest breakfast a year by way of a stake in our professional well-being. Chad believes -- I don’t think the suggestion is out of line -- that the price of a lunch is not an unreasonable goal. In addition to this objective, we would like to work energetically with member associations to rebuild and enhance our membership base.

The Executive of ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English) expressed its strong support for the work of the Federation at its most recent meeting held during Congress 1999, following the annual conversation that all associations have with Jacqueline Wright, Louise Robert and members of the HSSFC Executive:

These HSSFC reps all knew that they did not have to spend a lot of time persuading any of us of the advantages of Federation membership, nor of the importance of Federation lobby work. But it is valuable to meet with the Federation whenever possible, as well as to seize the opportunity both to gripe about and to applaud certain features of the Congress organization. (President Noreen Golfman, ACCUTE Newsletter June 1999, p. 7)

The ACCUTE General Assembly decided in 1999 to go beyond this expression of moral support by giving fiscal weight to it. Noreen’s Report continues as follows and provides the text of a formal motion that was passed implementing a policy that enables a voluntary (opt-in) $5.00 fee directed annually to the Federation:

In an effort to shore up solidarity with the HSSFC and to demonstrate by example to other associations that continuing, indeed, even increased support for the Federation is desirable, the following motion was passed at the ACCUTE AGM:

That ACCUTE members have the opportunity to contribute a voluntary (opt-in) $5.00 fee directed annually to the Federation.

This fee would be collected until such time as the Federation raises its association membership for an equivalent amount. Such a levy, because it would qualify to be matched by SSHRC, would actually raise for the Federation double the amount levied – approximately $9,000. It would also send a signal to our sister societies that ACCUTE members care about the future of the humanities and social sciences in Canada – care enough to invest their own money in it. If the other associations were to follow our lead, we would have managed to increase the Federation’s operating budget by at least $200,000, and to have greatly increased the chances that the kinds of scholarship we value will prosper and be valued in the coming century, and that our associations will continue.

ACCUTE has been a very active association, providing exemplary leadership to its members and to the larger community through its own projects and activities, its interdisciplinary collaboration and outreach to "Allied Associations" at the Congress and throughout the year, its organisation of interdisciplinary symposia, its informed and challenging participation in Federation activities. Through its representatives, ACCUTE has had a powerful, positive, and innovative impact on policy direction at HSSFC.

We are overwhelmingly delighted with ACCUTE’s statement and move of support for the Federation. They matter to us. This support is urgently needed. For reasons of planning and strategy for the Federation, it could not come at a better time. In addition, it is gratifying to know that there is solid conjunction between the priorities and objectives of the Federation and those of its member associations, such as ACCUTE.

It is our strong hope that other associations will agree with the ACCUTE membership that they "care about the future of the humanities and social sciences in Canada – care enough to invest their own money in it".

Conclusion and Good Wishes

I am looking forward as I write this report to the year ahead and to meeting for guidance and direction at the AGM with colleagues from universities and associations across Canada. We have a good deal to talk about. The agenda is heavy. But it has been set up to allow a lot of room for debate and discussion. The challenges facing all of us are enormous, even the challenge of identifying what new issues are facing us and what form they are taking. I offer as an example of this need to anticipate what’s coming a few questions that have been much on my mind recently: what is the meaning and likely impact for us in the social sciences and humanities community of changes in federal policy regarding the funding of post-secondary education and research? How are these changes likely to affect us in our universities, in our communities, in the eyes of the public, in our ability to function as engaged intellectuals? It is clear that the federal government no longer wishes to support universities through transfer payments to the provinces. At the same time, the federal government wishes to be seen to be providing strong support for research and post-secondary education. Significant decisions or announcements have been made to this effect in recent years: restoration of funding levels of the granting councils to 1995 levels, creation of new research infrastructure programs expected to cost billions of dollars (Canada Foundation for Innovation, National Centres of Excellence, Canadian Institutes for Health Research), the Millennium Scholarship Fund, the 21st Century Research Chairs.

What does the federal government’s new approach to funding research and teaching mean for the kinds of research done by humanities and social science scholars? What does it mean for the university infrastructure on which we depend? What does it mean for ongoing availability of resources to do our teaching? What does it mean for allocation of human and financial resources within universities? These new approaches frequently require partnering with the private or public sector. What effect is such pressure to work with partners likely to have on research in our community? (By the way, did you know that private sector support for research in the natural and bio-medical sciences is eligible for Federal Research and Development Tax Credits of 25%-30%, while support for research in the social sciences and humanities is explicitly excluded from tax credit provisions?) Could requirements for research support from other sources impose constraints and limits on what research can be carried out? where and how results can be disseminated? Finally, what changes in the distribution across Canada of post-secondary funding do we expect these new federal initiatives to have?

* * * * * * *

I hope that you have had a rewarding and profitable fall semester. I wish you well as you move toward the end of term. And, on behalf of the HSSFC Staff and the Executive, I thank each one of you for your support and wish you joy for the holiday season, along with a dazzling entry on the stage of the new millennium.

On behalf of every one of us, I express the warmest of thanks to Chad Gaffield, whose vision, determination, commitment and infectious good humor have got us this far. As he leaves us to get on with other things in his life and career, finally to be liberated from the Executive Committee, I wish to assure him that it is the greatest of honors for me to continue to bear the torch, as well as the burden.

Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada

Federation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales

=========================================================================

Subject: Re: hssfc meeting Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999

Hello:

I am unsure whether this is a matter which can be discussed with any effectiveness because the details are scanty at them moment. But, today’s Toronto Star carries an article on possible further cuts to education by the Mike Harris government (I use the term loosely). While the entire situation is alarming, two items in particular in the article caught my attention: further cuts to research at selected universities, and cutting off funding to university courses which do not score 75 per cent on a scale of so-called performance indicators devised by the government. (Star 17 Nov p A8)

I can imagine quite easily that the largest number of such courses might be in humanities.

While this is an Ontario situation at the moment, I am wholly conscious of the manner in which governments have been taking steps based on methods in another province, so-called successful methods. Should Harris be successful, he would serve as a model.

Richard Plant

Dept of Drama, Queen’s University

and

Graduate Centre for Study of Drama,

University of Toronto

=========================================================================

Subject: Federation Elects Future President Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999

Ottawa - Members of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada have elected Dr. Patricia Clements (Alberta) to become its next President. She will serve one year on the Federation’s Executive as President-Elect, before assuming the position of President in November 2000 with a two year mandate.

Dr. Louise Forsyth (Saskatchewan), the current President, announced the election results at the Federation’s Annual General Meeting in Ottawa, November 18-21. She welcomed Dr. Clements and six newly elected members of the Board of Directors: Dr. Noreen Golfman (Memorial), Dr. Jennifer McRobert (Acadia), Dr. Anthony Northey (Acadia), Dr. Claude Paradis (Laval), Dr. Carlos Prado (Queen’s) and Dr. John Williams. "I am excited about working with Dr. Clements and our new Board Members," said Dr. Forsyth. "The tremendous energy generated at our meetings reflects a renewed sense of determination among researchers in the humanities and social sciences to play a leading role on the national and international stage. In many ways, humanists and social scientists set the stage for civil society and in times of rapid change our work is more vital than ever."

"I am delighted and eager to be part of this work," said Dr. Clements. "We are in a period of profound social and cultural transformation. Never before has Canada more urgently needed our universities to be a strong base

for research in human and cultural issues, and never before have we more needed graduates who are broadly educated social thinkers. The Humanities and Social Sciences Federation has a critically important role in ensuring that our resources for dealing with human social and cultural issues are strong."

The Federation is a non-profit organization that promotes teaching, research, and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and a better understanding of the importance of such work for Canada and the world. It represents 68 learned societies, 69 universities and colleges, and over 24,000 scholars and graduates active in the study of all humanities and social sciences disciplines.

For more information, please contact:

Mr. Garth Williams, Director, Public Affairs

Telephone: 613-238-6112 extension 306

Fax: 613-238-6114

E-mail: gwilliam@hssfc.ca

=========================================================================

Subject: Federation Celebrates Major Gains, Sets Priorities for the Future Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999

Ottawa - Recognition of the major gains made by the humanities and social sciences community over the past two years was the order of the day at the recent Annual General Meetings of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada. The Federation played a leading role in securing an increase of $19.5 million in federal funding for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. It helped secure eligibility for humanities and social sciences research in the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the soon to be established Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In addition, it lobbied for increased travel grants, reinstated time release stipends and over $1 million in federal support for scholarly journals.

"These are real gains for humanists and social scientists that are a direct result of Federation efforts," said Dr. Louise Forsyth, President of the Federation. "Our increased visibility and advocacy efforts have helped put

us on the government’s agenda in Ottawa," she said, noting that fully 400 of the recently announced "21st Century Chairs of Research Excellence" will be allocated to the humanities and social sciences.

Representatives from most of the Federation’s 68 Association and 69 University members from across Canada heard presentations by Dr. Marc Renaud, President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

and Dr. Henry Friesen, President of the Medical Research Council and Interim Chair of Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In addition, they addressed a number of important issues affecting the research community and set priorities for the future.

Participants in the "Roundtable on Research Infrastructure" remarked that federal government definitions of research infrastructure should be broadened to reflect the needs of researchers in the humanities and social

sciences. As primarily text based disciplines, books, libraries, time and travel as well as electronic tools have quite different research applications, as compared to the sciences and engineering. For humanists and social scientists, these tools represent fundamental research supports, equivalent to laboratory equipment in the sciences, and are essential both for individual scholars and those working in teams. There are urgent needs for networks of specialists working in universities across the country. The "Humanities Roundtable" emphasized the importance of teaching and research in the humanities for Canada’s future in a knowledge-based economy. The humanities community must protect its non-utilitarian values, set its own research agenda, and define its own research needs, while explaining itself well to the public.

A large group gathered for the "Women in the Academe Roundtable" to discuss historical experience, the present situation, and, above all, the systemic factors that perpetuate traditional demographic patterns and create

obstacles to the full participation of women in universities and communities. Some progress has been made, but much remains to be done.

In setting priorities for the year ahead, delegates focussed on the need to double the SSHRC budget, increase federal and provincial support for post-secondary education and secure access to the Federal Research and

Development Tax Credit for humanities and social sciences research. The Federation will also ask SSHRC to increase support for doctoral fellowships, emphasize the need for continued and increased travel support

for attendance at annual meetings of learned societies and insist that research support be evenly distributed between small and large institutions.

As organizers of the annual Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, the Federation noted that the Congress will be held at the University of Alberta, from May 24-31, 2000, and take place at l’Université Laval in 2001 and the University of Toronto and Ryerson University in 2002.

The Federation also announced the winners of the Aid to Scholarly Publication Programme Book Prizes at the meetings. The Harold Adams Innis Prize went to Linda Freeman for The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years (University of Toronto Press). The Jean-Charles Falardeau Prize went to Dominique Marshall for Aux Origines de l’État-providence : Familles québécoises, obligation scolaire et allocations familiales, 1940-1955 (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal). The Raymond Klibansky Prize (English) went to Susan Glickman for The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape (McGill-Queen’s University Press). The Raymond Klibansky Prize (French) went to François-Marc Gagnon for Chronique du movement automatiste québécois (Éditions Lanctot).

"We owe a debt of thanks to our out-going Past-President, Dr. Chad Gaffield, out-going Board members, and those on the General Assembly who are leaving us at this time" said Dr. Forsyth. "They have done a marvellous job! I look forward to the same success in working with our new President-Elect, Dr. Pat Clements, and our new Board members."

For more information please contact:

Mr. Garth Williams

Director, Public Affairs

Telephone: 613-238-6112 ext. 306

Fax: 613-238-6114

E-Mail: gwilliam@hssfc.ca

=========================================================================

Subject: Report on the Annual General Meeting Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000

From: "Fedcan" <fedcan@hssfc.ca>

To: @hssfc.ca

The Federation would like to thank Dr Livio Di Matteo, Vice-President, External Communications, for preparing the following report:

HSSFC ANNUAL MEETINGS: REPORT

The annual meetings of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada were held at the Lord Elgin in Ottawa over the weekend of November 20th to 21st, 1999. The gathering of representatives of over 25,000 humanities and social sciences researchers was both a celebration of victory as well as preparation for battles to come. Federation President Dr. Louise Forsyth opened the General Assembly with an address chronicling the challenges we continue to face with respect to research infrastructure, funding and demonstrating our relevance to Canadians.

The Federation is an organization representing the interests of humanities and social science researchers at the national level and supports their activities via the annual Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities and the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme. As a grass roots representative organization and with its lobbying efforts and research policy initiatives, the HSSFC is an important partner with and complement to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Granting Council that funds research in the humanities and social sciences. The Federation’s advocacy contributed to the following developments:

- Securing increases of $19.5 million in federal funding for research in the humanities and social

sciences;

- Obtaining 20% of 21st Century Chairs for Research Excellence for these disciplines;- Ensuring that the Humanities and Social Sciences are eligible for Canadian Foundation for

Innovation (CFI);- Ensuring that CIHR funds are directed to social sciences and humanities research;

- Securing a 46 percent increase in the Travel Grants Program and reinstating Release Time

Stipends at SSHRC;- Continuing protection of postal subsidies for learned journals and financial contribution to learned

journals.

Along with a variety of stimulating activities and presentations, a number of important issues and initiatives were discussed at the annual meetings. At the meetings of the Standing Committees, the Electoral Colleges and various roundtables, as well as the General Assembly, concerns were expressed about the narrow definitions of research infrastructure. It was agreed that they need to be broadened to be inclusive of the needs of researchers in the humanities and social sciences especially given that they make up 54 percent of faculty and enrollments at universities across the country. As primarily text-based disciplines, it is important that books and libraries as well as time and travel receive recognition as components of or inputs to research infrastructure. In the social sciences and humanities, we have to set our own agendas and we have to define our

research needs for ourselves.

As well, we need to be alert to the continued shifting of resources internally within universities away from humanities and social sciences as universities scramble to match funding from programs such as CFI. The commercialization of research also received some attention and the opinion was expressed that, as a matter of principle, we needed to fight commercialization as a fourth mission of the university. Researchers in the humanities and social sciences are advised to make use of the Federation’s Model Letter to MPs to draft their own letters expressing concerns about research needs in the humanities and social sciences. As well, university and association representatives to the HSSFC are encouraged to make use of our Listservs to convey concerns and maintain discussions.

Members of the HSSFC listened to separate presentations by Dr. Henry Friesen, President of MRC and Chair of the Interim Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and Dr. Marc Renaud, President of SSHRC. Dr. Friesen, an internationally renowned medical scientist and educator and a driving force behind the creation of the CIHR, informed a lunchtime audience that Bill C-13 will create the CIHR with an implementation date of April 1st, 2000. Dr. Friesen outlined the organization of the governance structure of the CIHR and emphasized that the transition to CIHR is rooted in a long-term evolution of medical research to a broader definition of health. As a result, research in the social/cultural and economic determinants and dimensions of health will be within the mandate of each of the individual institutes created and will afford opportunities to researchers in the humanities and social sciences. The CIHR is a recognition that some of the problems in Canadian health care result from an under-investment in health research and its creation aims at the "creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians". The CIHR will create 10-15 research institutes which will translate into 100 new research teams and eventually generate 20,000 new jobs in health. Each institute will have an Advisory Board, Scientific Director and a small core of support staff.

Dr. Renaud regaled an evening reception with his account of where SSHRC has been and where it is going and the exciting new initiatives and challenges it faces. The granting council has now revamped its governance structure and has a full board and five standing committees. SSHRC’s communications division is also growing because of the importance of public awareness of what humanists and social scientists do (Among other things, SSHRC is looking into the creation of a national publication for the humanities and social sciences as a device to showcase our disciplines). With respect to other initiatives, there is a Social Statistics Project underway which will see data centers being established along with the training of the next generation of statistics researchers. SSHRC also is working on reinstating financial support to Masters students as well as increasing funding for PhD students. Among other things, Dr. Renaud also mentioned that he felt it important that the HSSFC begin to take some steps on the provincial level in its lobbying efforts.

Roundtables were held which covered Research Infrastructure (chaired by Dr. Ian Lancashire, President of COCH/COSH), Women in Academe (chaired by Dr. Cynthia Alexander, HSSFC Vice-President, Women’s Issues), and the Future of the Humanities (chaired by Dr. Pat Demers, Vice-President, SSHRC). All the roundtable discussion groups reported back stimulating discussions to the General Assembly and we urge our members to keep watch for reports of each group to be posted on the HSSFC Web Site.

The sites for the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities have been announced. Many universities are bidding to host the 2003 and 2004 Congress as the presence of upwards of 5,000 academics on one’s campus is a very prestigious event. Moreover, there are significant economic spillovers to the host community. The sites are:

2000 University of Alberta

2001 Université Laval

2002 University of Toronto and Ryerson University

Congress 2000 in Edmonton will take place from May 24-31. The themes for the Congress will be: (1) Globalization, Societies and Culture, (2) The North and (3) Law, Culture and Society. As well, Congress 2000 will include a forum on globalization, Societies and Culture, a Symposium on Creativity, a Symposium on the Future of Graduate Students in the Arts, and a one-day Colloquium on Women in the Academy. The schedule and registration information will be mailed to individuals the first week of January.

The ASPP 1999 Book Prizes were announced. The Harold Adams Innis Prize went to Linda Freeman for "The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years"(University of Toronto Press). The Jean-Charles Falardeau Prize went to "Dominique Marshall for Aux Origines de l’Etat-providence : Familles quebecoises, obligation scolaire et allocations familiales 1940-1955" (Les Presses de l’Universite de Montreal). The Raymond Klibansky Prizes (English) went to Susan Glickman for "The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape" (McGill-Queens University Press). The Raymond Klibansky Prize (French) went to Francois-Marc Gagnon for "Chronique du movement automatiste quebecois" (Lanctot editeur). The awards will be officially presented and celebrated during a ceremony at Congress 2000 in Edmonton.

The HSSFC is also pleased to announce the election of Dr. Patricia Clements as President-Elect of the Federation. Dr. Clements comes to us from the University of Alberta where, along with a distinguished academic career as a professor of English, Dr. Clements also served as Dean of Arts for 11 years. Dr. Clements is also currently the director of the Orlando Project at the University of Alberta which is a CFI funded digital technology project in the humanities. We look forward to her contributions to the Federation.

If there are any questions regarding Federation activities, do not hesitate to contact us at fedcan@hssfc.ca.We look forward to seeing everyone at Congress 2000!

=========================================================================

PERSPECTIVES will appear at regular intervals throughout the year and will be posted on the Federation web site: http://www.hssfc.ca/Pub/PublicationsEng.html. Please address your comments and suggestions to Jacqueline Wright, Executive Assistant, at: jawright@hssfc.ca.

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 3, Number 3) November 5, 1999

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:

1) Working Group on the Humanities

2) Genesis of the Working Group

3) Departure point

4) Long-term objectives

SSHRC WORKING GROUP TO ARTICULATE ROLE AND VALUE OF THE HUMANITIES

National Humanities Conference to be Held in Toronto next Fall

Enough of this ‘poor cousin of the weak sister’ stuff.

The humanities in Canada have an important role to play, and a valuable contribution to make, in understanding the realities of modern society, says the chair of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council’s new Working Group on the Humanities.

The eight-member Working Group, struck last May by SSHRC’s governing council, is charged with developing a "statement" articulating the nature of humanities research and with assessing whether there’s a need for SSHRC to develop a strategic research program for the humanities.

The Working Group also hopes to convene a nation-wide conference at the University of Toronto next fall to promote more public awareness about the value of the humanities.

"What we want to do is really explore the ways in which humanists make sense of our creative world, of our languages and literatures, our music and our visual arts, the events in the past and systems of thought, secular and religious," says Dr. Patricia Demers, chair of the Working Group, vice-president of SSHRC and professor of English at the University of Alberta.

But Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada president Dr. Louise Forsyth says the Working Group must go well beyond defining the value of the humanities and should explore such "challenges" as the changing nature of the humanities research; its relationship to the community-at-large; and the need to develop a program in support of research infrastructure.

"The research tools and methodologies of the humanities produce information and knowledge that is vital in understanding current social issues and in addressing complex policy questions in ways that is not produced by any other scholarly approaches," Forsyth noted.

At a time when many researchers in the humanities feel under siege because of budget cutbacks and pressure to reform their disciplines so that they’re more relevant to society, Forsyth argued there’s also a need to ensure that research programming helps to maintain a "balance between the new analysis and the protection of the traditional values of the humanities."

GENESIS OF THE WORKING GROUP

Demers says the impetus for the Working Group came from SSHRC president Dr. Marc Renaud’s request that the humanities community provide him with an overview of their activities in preparation for negotiations with the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities regarding potential areas of cooperation.

"He wants to know what it is we do," Demers says. "Why should a 17-year-old student consider the humanities? What makes sense about the humanities?"

"Renaud is a social scientist and I think he wants to understand better the humanities and where we come from and the differences in our kind of research," adds Working Group member and University of Toronto professor of English and Comparative Literature Dr. Linda Hutcheon. "We also want to bring a higher profile to the humanities, who tend to get left out, or feel they get left out, when money is being given to very targeted research topics that tend to be socially oriented, rather than culturally oriented."

To that end, the Working Group has already crafted a first draft of a statement articulating the modes and values of humanities research and training. It was presented to SSHRC’s governing council on October 23 but, after vigorous debate, was sent back to the Working Group for further consultations. A revised version is expected to be considered by council at their next meeting in March.

DEPARTURE POINT

The statement is intended to serve as the foundation for the Toronto conference next fall aimed at promoting the humanities and developing allies to ensure adequate public support of research within its disciplines, Demers says. "We’re convinced that there are many allies of the humanities who simply haven’t declared themselves and I guess what we want to do is to get them to declare themselves."

A series of position papers will be crafted for discussion in workshops at the Toronto conference. Although the specific topics haven’t been selected, "we’re talking about ways in which humanities research can be promoted, the hurdles that it faces in the current situations and the ways in which problems can be obviated."

In furtherance of developing a new vision for the humanities, the Working Group also hopes to arrange several sessions at next spring’s Congress of the Social Sciences and the Humanities, to be hosted by the HSSFC and the University of Alberta in Edmonton, to discuss humanities research needs.

Having organized humanities colloquia at previous Congresses in a bid to raise the profile of its disciplines and having actively campaigned for initiatives like an infrastructure program for the humanities and social sciences, Forsyth said the HSSFC would be "delighted" to organize a series of sessions on the humanities in Edmonton, "particularly if it’s a point of departure point for organizing real action and activities."

LONG TERM OBJECTIVES

Ultimately, Demers says the Working Group plans to submit some form of recommendations to SSHRC in the winter of the year 2000 or 2001 outlining "a series of initiatives to champion and promote the humanities."

But it’s far too early to say what form those initiatives might take, she adds. "It’s possible that we could devise programs or a program which could be, not distinct or unique, but of particular interest to humanists."

In planning for the future needs of the humanities, Demers noted its vital that such factors as increasing humanities enrollments; low faculty growth rates; and the high level of student debt are taken into consideration.

Given their current tension between "disciplinary specializations and interdisciplinary approaches" to research, it’s also important to assess what impact the move towards interdisciplinarity will have on undergraduate curriculum and graduate programs, Demers says.

With universities reassessing their role and responsibility in society, "I don’t think we (the humanities) can just rely on the tired old rhetoric of being the heart and the core. While it’s important, and while I think we are the core, we have to demonstrate that."

Forsyth noted other critical challenges which must be addressed include the impact of new technologies on research and pedagogy, as well as the need to devise a means of ensuring that adequate research and infrastructure support is provided to the humanities.

To that end, the HSSFC has already created an advisory committee comprised of representatives from academe to determine the "specific and particular" needs of the humanities community in conducting their research.

"We have to engage in a dialogue about the need for a nation-wide infrastructure program that would address the needs of the humanities, the information needs, the library needs, the communication needs. How can the humanities effectively continue to do their research when the cutbacks in the libraries are just so devastating? And the cutbacks in the universities too, are reducing the resources available to humanities scholars," Forsyth noted.

The HSSFC, in co-operation with Learned Societies like the Canadian Philosophical Association, is also establishing several academic working groups to craft recommendations to SSHRC regarding humanities-friendly strategic themes which could be included in future targeted SSHRC programs.

Editor:

Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa. The former Editor of the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy, he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and "The Lancet".

=========================================================================

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 3, Number 5) January 5, 2000

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:

1) Highlights

2) The Selection

3) The Measure of Success

4) The Highest Form of Flattery

5) The Winning Networks

SSHRC UNVEILS 22 WINNING COMMUNITY-UNIVERSITY RESEARCH ALLIANCES

Federation earns plaudits for developing initiative

University research administrators are lauding the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council’s creation of 22 new Community-University Research Alliances (CURAs) as a major step forward in connecting the campus

and the community.

The $13.6-million/three-year program "clearly is one of the ways of seeing the dissemination of our research findings out to communities that we serve where it can really make a difference," University of Toronto

vice-president (research & international relations) Dr. Heather Munroe-Blum says.

"It’s also a very strong recognition that the social sciences and humanities have a role to play in innovation, in developing programs for communities, for provinces, and for the country," Munroe-Blum adds.

SSHRC’s December 1st announcement of the 22 winning CURAS in its competition to create joint research ventures between university and community partners should also lead to new research opportunities for the

social sciences and humanities, Brock University associate vice-president (research) Dr. Jack Miller says.

"The community links are the key thing here," Miller says. "It’s just a significant influx of funding on the social sciences side of things that I think will lead to a lot of additional work, both contract and basic research grants."

The CURAs announcement also earned plaudits for the Humanities & Social Sciences Federation of Canada, (HSSFC).

It’s time for the HSSFC to take a bow after years of steadfast advocacy in promoting the creation of innovation centres to promote knowledge transfer in the social sciences and humanities, (see Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 4)

says Memorial University dean of arts Dr. Terrence Murphy.

"The Federation deserves enormous credit for developing this idea, which then SSHRC took up and adapted to its needs and now I see the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is transparently imitating. So I think

it is a major accomplishment and a major feather in the cap of the Federation."

THE SELECTION

In keeping with SSHRC’s plan to focus the program on thematic areas, the research programs of all 22 winning CURAS are targetted at resolving specific issues such as the development of alternative dispute resolution

mechanisms for mediation in family and human rights cases, (a complete list follows below).

Similarly, SSHRC’s earlier decision to expand eligibility beyond universities to directly include community groups (see Perspectives, Vol. 2 No. 5) resulted in the creation of three non-university based centres.

The trio included one at Montreal’s McCord Museum of Canadian History, which will seek to integrate historical resources into curriculum at elementary and secondary schools, as well as one at the Youth Services

Bureau of Ottawa-Carleton, which will seek to prevent recidivism among young offenders through "spiritual, educational, vocational, cultural, family, health and leisure" programming. A third, located at London’s Thames Valley Children’s Centre, will examine means of improving the quality of life of school children with special needs.

Each of the 22 CURAs will receive roughly $200,000 per year over the next three years and were selected strictly on the basis of the quality of their scientific programs and partnerships, with the proviso that no more than one CURA could be located at any one university, SSHRC president Dr. Marc Renaud says.

"There was real, real appreciation of the quality of the bonding between the partner and the university researcher that was put forward," Renaud says.

The decision to limit each university to one CURA was intended to ensure the benefits aren’t confined to a few major research universities, Renaud adds. A similar rule will be applied to the next CURAs competition.

Although SSHRC plans to conduct a second competition, Renaud says that may be problematic without a significant budget increase. Having committed itself to increasing the success rate of its basic research operating

grants competition to 43% from 30% "there’s no way we’re going to push forward for the CURAS" should the federal government fail to increase the base budget, Renaud says. "But that again will create a break with the

voluntary community which has started to bond with us on that."

Still, Renaud said he’s hopeful Ottawa’s forthcoming budget will move to redress the historic discrepancy in the social sciences and humanities funding and thus allow SSHRC to address the pent-up demand represented in the 178 CURAs applications it received, as well as the $300-million worth of applications it has received for its new $13.5-million strategic grants competition in the areas of ‘social cohesion; the challenges and opportunities of a knowledge-based economy; and society, culture and the health of Canadians’.

"The proof is in the uptake," Renaud says, adding that he’s hopeful non-profit organizations won’t become discouraged by failure to achieve success in the first CURAs competition. "There were a lot of applications that weren’t funded. But it’s not because they’re weren’t good. It’s just because we didn’t have the money to pay for them."

THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS

Over the long-term, the measure of a truly successful CURA will be its ability to effect "social change," Renaud says. The measure of success will be the knowledge the CURAs bring to bear in areas like social work, law or public policy related to such issues as developing sustainable fisheries in coastal communities.

HSSFC president Dr. Louise Forsyth adds that programs like CURAs will also help to demonstrate the value of all forms of humanities and social sciences research to the general public.

While support for basic research must be maintained, "the humanities and social sciences community has been challenged frequently in the past to show its relevance and its ability to be accountable to Canadian society and I think the CURAs are an outstanding illustration of how relevant our research can be."

But universities must modify their merit systems to reward participation in collaborative ventures like the CURAS if they’re to be successful, Forsyth adds.

"The way that universities have appraised the quality of research has been based on the premise that academic research is evaluated by peers, disseminated in scholarly journals or monographs and very frequently the quality of the research is assessed by things like citation indices," Forsyth said, adding that such traditional measures will not "give fair recognition to the kind of research that the CURAs represent."

It’s equally important the new partnerships be given adequate time to iron the kinks out of the collaborative process, Forsyth says. "These are new modes of collaboration and new modes of research and it’s going to be very, very important that those who are in a position to control any aspect of a CURA recognize that we have to look at them with fresh eyes and not use old paradigms."

THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY

If it’s true imitation is the highest form of flattery, the CURAS program officially became a tremendous success in October when the Medical Research Council’s governing board moved to create six similar innovation centres in the area of health and health care under the rubric of the new CIHR, which are expected to become operational April 1.

The new agency will make $4-million available in the latter half of 2000-01, (or $8-million in a full fiscal year once the program is operational) for new Community Alliances for Health Research, which will be established for a period of 1-5 years.

Letters of intent must be submitted by January 17. According to the requestfor proposals, the new alliances will be "based on equal and active partnerships" between non-profit organizations and research teams.

Among the criteria for success will be the degree of involvement of community partners in formulating the research program, conducting the research and disseminating the findings.

THE WINNING NETWORKS

By region, program title; lead organization; head of CURA; and general description of scientific program; the 22 successful applications in the CURAS competition were:

THE WEST - (4)

-Alternative dispute resolution: a program of research and training; U.B.C.; Dr. John Hogarth. Will examine alternatives to adversarial approaches to legal disputes.

-A cultural property community research collaboration; University of Victoria; Dr. Martin Segger. Will seek to integrate art and cultural artifacts into high school curriculum.

-The Daghida Project: language research and revitalization in a First Nations community; University of Alberta; Dr. Sally Rice. Will conduct linguistic study of Chipewyan language and seek to promote its reintroduction into daily life at Cold Lake First Nations reserve.

-Creating a community-university institute for social research: a partnership to forge health communities through research; University of Saskatchewan; Dr. James Randall. Will examine community health determinants; economic development and quality of life indicators.

ONTARIO - (8)

-Partnerships for children and families project; Wilfrid Laurier University; Dr. Gary Cameron. Will examine means of improving child welfare and children’s mental health services throughout the country.

-Enhancing the life experiences of school-aged children with special needs who receive therapy services; Thames Valley Children’s Centre; Dr. Gillian King.

-Urban/rural municipal/regional infrastructures, climatic change and epistemic communities in Eastern Ontario; University of Ottawa; Dr. Philippe Crabbe. Will examine municipalities’ capacity to adapt to changes in water resources caused by climatic change.

-Youth in conflict with the law: alternative responses and community-based decision making; Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa-Carleton; Dr. Mark Totten. Restorative justice programming aimed at preventing recidivism among young offenders.

-Enhancement of youth resiliency and reduction of harmful behaviours leading to health lifestyle choices; Brock; Dr. John Yardley. Will examine factors influencing "positive lifestyle choices in areas such as substance

abuse and gambling, as well as physical activity, sexual activity and academic achievement."

-Voluntary sector capacity: building through development of solutions to the evaluation challenges faced by the sector; Carleton; Dr. Katherine Graham. Development of performance indicators for voluntary organizations.

-Promoting community sustainability: linking research and action; University of Toronto; Dr. Beth Savan. Focus includes projects "linking research and action and ranging from assessing capacity for urban food growth, through expanding the role of non-profit organizations in environmental governance, to providing professional development for sustainable learning."

-Bridging the solitudes: a CURA linking education and labour market access; York; Dr. Carla Lipsig-Mumme. Will "explore new ways of moving beyond the tenacious systemic barriers preventing traditionally marginalized groups from participating fully in the labour market and society."

QUEBEC - (8)

-Native knowledge and sustainable development: a new approach to decision making; Institut national de la recherche scientifique; Dr. Carole Levesque. Particular focus on land-use planning and wildlife resource management within the Cree communities of James Bay.

-Valin-Otish mountains mid-north axis of recreation and tourism development; Université du Quebec à Chicoutimi; Dr. Jean Desy. Feasibility study on establishing a recreation and tourism in industry in segment of

Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.

-Equality, plurality and solidarity: new challenges in social relations between men and women; UQAM; Dr. Francine Descarries. Will study "the family, the economy, and politics and citizenship" from a feminist

perspective.

-CURA on the social economy; UQAM with Concordia, and the Universities of Québec at Hull and Chicoutimi; Dr. Benoit Levesque. Will examine local and regional development; employment; specialized services like home care; housing and "initiatives with Native people and cultural communities."

-Memory and history in Nunavut; Université Laval - groupe d’études inuit et circumpolaires; Dr. Francois Trudel. Focus is on "shamanism and Christianity; communities and identities; life stories, oral history and

ethnohistory) of the Nunavut Inuit.

-Research group on social and health aspects of substance abuse; Université de Montréal; Dr. Serge Brochu. Focus on "often neglected factors in substance abuse such as the socioeconomic dimensions of the family,

community and professional environments."

-The Laurier Project: museum resources for the teaching of Canadian history; McCord Museum of Canadian History; Dr. Nicole Vallières. Focus on integrating museum-based resources into school curriculum through

traditional and technological approaches.

-Gender and safety/security issues; McGill; Dr. Rosalind Boyd. Will examine programming aimed the integration of female refugees into Canadian society.

ATLANTIC - (2)

-Coastal communities and sustainable fisheries: building harvester research and ecosystem resource management capacity; St. Francis Xavier; Dr. Anthony Davis. Undertaken in conjunction with Mi’Kmaq nation.

-Newfoundland archaeological heritage outreach program; Memorial; Dr. Peter Pope. Will both examine the archaeological and non-archaeological reasons which drive the development of sites, with an eye towards understanding the social, cultural and economic development of communities.

Editor:

Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa. The former Editor of the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy, he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and "The Lancet".

=========================================================================

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 3, Number 6) January 17, 2000

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:

1) Highlights

2) Dispelling myths

3) The numbers

NEW STUDY CONCLUDES HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES EDUCATION INTEGRAL TO ECONOMY

U.B.C. Economist Dispels Myth that Trade Training is Superior

Analytic skills taught in the humanities and social sciences are as valuable to the knowledge-based economy, if not more so, than an education focused on the production and operation of new technologies, concludes a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council-commissioned study released December 6, 1999.

"Education in the humanities and social sciences is meeting the needs of the Canadian economy because the widespread utilization of computers and information technology has revolutionized the organization of business and government bureaucracies," U.B.C. professor of economics and current visiting professor of economics at Harvard University Dr. Robert C. Allen argues in a report entitled ‘Education and Technological Revolutions: The role of the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the Knowledge-Based Economy’.

The changes wrought on the economy by information technology increase demand for "general intellectual abilities" developed in humanities and social sciences programs, such as the capacity to "understand the information generated by computer systems, analyze it, relate it to the world, and act on it." In sectors transformed by information technologies, such as manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, finance, business services and the government, the necessary skills of workers have

"profoundly" changed.

Allen adds "The issue is not whether an employee knows how to operate Excel, so much as it is whether the employee can apply a model to a problem, deal effectively with clients and members of a management team, write and speak clearly, and make informed and independent judgments. The

reason these skills are in high demand is because business organization has been revolutionized to take advantage of cheap information. That revolution increases the demand for social sciences and humanities graduates."

DISPELLING MYTHS

Dispelling so-called " technik" arguments that there’s a greater economic need for technically trained graduates (such as engineers, scientists, and students enrolled in one-or-two year trade programs at colleges) than there is for arts graduates, Allen’s study argues the prevailing paradigm of educational value may be unsuitable to the needs of the modern knowledge-based economy.

"While techniks are right that the demand for technically trained workers is growing, the same is true for graduates in education, the humanities and the social sciences," the study says.

"Contrary to what people say, there is a place for the humanities and social sciences," adds SSHRC president Dr. Marc Renaud.

Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada president Dr. Louise Forsyth adds that the findings are an encouraging affirmation of the value of a social sciences and humanities education.

"An education and research in the humanities and social sciences is a good way to go to get a job and to make a positive contribution to society," Forsyth says.

THE NUMBERS

On the premise that the value of educational programs should be measured by their contribution to economic development, as determined by the output per worker in the economy, Allen concludes the rate of return on an investment in a humanities and social sciences education is as high as that of sciences and engineering.

Using 1991 and 1996 census data, Allen’s study says that unemployment rates are lower, and wages are higher, for all university graduates than those holding trade certificates or college diplomas. The same holds true the higher the level of educational attainment, with Ph.D graduates finding more and better-paying jobs.

While graduates in nursing, health, education, engineering, physical sciences, in the 25-29 age group, are more likely to hold professional or managerial jobs, (all over 80%), graduates in the humanities and social sciences have an equal chance as those in commerce or the biological sciences (roughly 70%) of holding such positions. But as they age, "arts graduates often catch up with, and then surpass, people in other fields."

Allen’s study also indicates that average incomes for both men and women with university degrees are higher than for those holding college diplomas.

However, there continues to be an enormous disparity in the income earned by university-trained men and women. In engineering, that gap is about $20,300 less per year for women undergraduates. In commerce, the gap is about $17,800, while in the social sciences, it’s about $11,500.

That continuing gender discrepancy is "extremely disturbing," Renaud noted. "I had thought that was slowly being solved."

Editor:

Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa. The former Editor of the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy, he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and "The Lancet".

=========================================================================

1. Upcoming Conferences

The Philosophy of Edith Stein

Language, Truth, & Postmodern Culture: Heidegger, Rorty, & Derrida

2. Journals

3. On-Line: The Philosophy News Service List

Subject: [PNS-List] A Call for YOUR Participation

Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 17:32:31 -0500

From: Philosophy News Service * richard jones <richard@PhilosophyNews.com>

Reply-To: pns-list@eGroups.com

Organization: http://www.PhilosophyNews.com

To: Philosophy News Service List <PNS-LIST@eGroups.com>

Dear PNS-LIST Subscriber:

Welcome to the year 2000! We hope this year is for you a time of great peace, personal and professional development, and philosophical progress.

The Philosophy News Service (PNS) enters this year determined more than ever to become the preferred news source for philosophers – and philosophy buffs! -- throughout the world. This means we are working to provide the most extensive and daily coverage of news that is important to the global community of philosophers. If you see the need for this type of service, and surely you must, then please inundate the "Newsdesk@PhilosophyNews.com" with any or all of the following:

* * timely articles, press releases, story ideas, tips, and links to information about newsworthy people, events, and ideas that might be important or interesting to philosophers and philosophy students. This includes news from your philosophy department or organization...

* * philosophical articles or essays about contemporary issues...

* * promotional material (e.g., publishers’ blurbs and tables of contents) for new philosophy books and journals, reviews of recently published philosophical writings, and information about job openings, calls for papers, and other opportunities and resources for philosophers and philosophy students...

We also invite you to join our volunteer staff of WHiP ("What’s Happening in Philosophy") writers, who provide monthly updates on the most recent and important developments in their respective areas of philosophical expertise. To learn more about making this kind of invaluable contribution, please contact "WHiP@PhilosophyNews.com" or visit http://www.philosophynews.com/whip/index.htm

PNS-LIST is now used to distribute general updates regarding new content, services, features, and opportunities at the Philosophy News Service. Therefore, you probably will need to join one or more of these additional eGroups, which make it possible for you to receive just the announcements and messages you want to receive:

PNS-CFP (Calls for Philosophy Papers/Participants). Join this list for information about philosophy events or speaking and publishing opportunities. Subscription address: "pns-CFP-subscribe@egroups.com".

PNS-JOBS (Jobs for Philosophers). Join this list if you want to receive announcements about all kinds of jobs for philosophy teachers and students. Subscription address: "pns-JOBS-subscribe@egroups.com".

PNS-TOC (Philosophy Tables of Contents). Join this list if you want to receive information about new philosophy books and journals. Subscription address: "pns-TOC-subscribe@egroups.com".

PNS-DISC (Philosophy News Service Discussion Group). Join this list for thoughtful, insightful, and courteous discussions about the news, articles, and essays posted to the PNS Web site <http://www.philosophynews.com>. Subscription address: "pns-DISC-subscribe@egroups.com".

Thank you very much for using and contributing to PNS’ Web site and eGroups.

If you have any questions or comments for PNS, please do not hesitate to send them to "richard@PhilosophyNews.com".

Sincerely,

richard jones

Owner, Philosophy News Service

Moderator, Philosophy News Service eGroups

richard@PhilosophyNews.com * http://www.PhilosophyNews.com

SPECIAL NOTE: The Philosopher’s Magazine <http://www.philosophers.co.uk> has written a very kind and informative article about the Philosophy News Service, which you can read online at http://www.philosophers.co.uk/archive/internet9.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAILY NEWS @ http://www.PhilosophyNews.com

FREE EMAIL @ http://www.Philosophers.net

------------------------------------------------------------------------

eGroups.com Home: http://www.egroups.com/group/pns-list/