Professor Daniel Buor, Vice-Chancellor of the Valley View University, has called on government to improve upon research budgets to ensure that budgetary constraints would not suffocate world-class research.
He said in most instances research grants and budgets focuses on other aspects of the sciences, leaving out the social sciences, therefore their improvement in terms of performance has been slow.
However, most of the challenges facing the country would have been resolved if the needed attention and financial support were given for social science researches.
According to him addressing of such funding gaps would make the Social Scientist an important agent of change and development.
Prof. Buor, was addressing the first annual colloquium of the School of Social Science of the University of Ghana, in Accra on Thursday on the theme: “Theory and Practice of Social Sciences in a Changing World”.
The two-day event aims at providing a platform for an intellectual discourse for scientists, researchers and other practitioners to address contemporary challenges and changes in the social sciences.
It would also offer participants a unique opportunity to discuss evolving issues with regard to balancing theory, research, and practice in the social sciences.
Prof Buor said the dynamics of the changing world now revolves around issues including population, resources, environment, health, governance, religion, justice and security, therefore the role of social scientists in finding sustainable solutions to these contemporary challenges must not be downplayed, since they form the bedrock of possibly, sustaining the feared extinction and atrophy of the earth.
He challenged researchers to put in more efforts in finding practical solutions to the current contemporary national and global challenges.
This, he said was possible if they moved on from just focusing on publishing their research findings and recommendations, to making aggressive follow ups, engaging with, and pushing the requisite institutions responsible for policy implementation to act, in order to bring about the desired changes and development.
He also insisted that it was important Social Scientists adopt existing theories as important tools for understanding various situations, social events of society and behaviours, based on which they could develop their own practical solutions to problems locally.
Social, economic, cultural, political, religious and legal perspectives however have a role to play in creating the conditions for a decent global society where, in the midst of uneven distribution of wealth even in a class society, each person shall have access to the bare minimum of resources to sustain life in a flourishing environment that would promote health and longevity, he said.
Prof. Charity S. Akotia, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the University of Ghana, said them was chosen to reflect the importance of the need for research in the social sciences to be the nexus between theory and practice.
She said the world continue to change and therefore requires an adaptable social science that reflects these changes over time across cultures and space.
Closing the gulf between theory and practice is important in contemporary social science in order to make current practices relevant to the development of society.
