ABSTRACT
What is the point of social science? Outside the academic sphere people sometimes refer to the ‘ivory tower’ of scientists, implying that what we occupy ourselves with is something divorced from reality and not very relevant to life in the rest of society. Even scientists sometimes talk about what happens ‘in real life’, thereby accepting this sheltered image of themselves. Then again, there is the opposite view where one maintains that knowledge with high demands on veracity is power, and that power entails oppression (perhaps no one has expressed this view more clearly than Foucault). Here science – as one of many forms of knowledge – becomes an instrument of oppression and nothing else.
