MODULE 1: THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES:

ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

LESSON 1: THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Prepared by: Richell S. Gomez, LPT

Overview:

The social sciences, namely, sociology, anthropology, and political science, developed as a
result of the development of modern society. The rise and rapid growth of the natural sciences
influenced the direction of the social sciences. The social sciences borrowed mainly from the
natural sciences in developing their own concepts and method. However, in the 20th century,
the social sciences have become diverse and pluralistic. Nevertheless, they have never
abandoned the quest to be relevant to the people of the 20th century Social sciences today have
drastically changed from being Western-centered to having a more pluralistic orientation and
being multicultural in nature. This has to do with the efforts of social scientists from non-
Western countries to indigenize Western social sciences. Feminists, postcolonial theorists, and
postmodern scholars have also contributed to the questioning of the assumed universality of
Western concepts and theories of Western social sciences. In particular, Sikolohiyang Pilipino,
in the Philippines, is spearheading the move to decolonize psychology.

Module Objectives:

After completing the module, you are expected to:

1. Explain anthropological and sociological perspectives on culture, society, and
politics.
2. Explore the significant personalities that contributed to the development of the
social sciences.
3. Recognize the Western and colonial origins of the third world social sciences and
knowledge production.

Course Materials:

Read
The Historical Background of the Growth of Social Sciences

In the development and progress of human knowledge, the social sciences were the last
to develop after the natural sciences. And while the origin of the social sciences can be traced
back to the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, their development as
separate fields of knowledge only begun in the modern period (Collins 1994, p. 7).
Before the birth of modern social sciences in the West, the study of society, culture, and
politics were based on social and political philosophy (Scott 2006, p. 9). In return, social and
political philosophies were informed by theological reasoning grounded in Revelation based
on the Bible. This was largely due to the dominance of religious worldview and authority
during this time. While pre-modern social thinkers employed experiences and personal
observation, just like modern scientists, they fit them within the overall framework of their
philosophy and the overall religious scheme of the Church.
 Philosophy is different from Science. Science would have not developed if it remained
under the wings of philosophy and theology. Philosophy is based on analytic understanding
of the nature of truth asserted about specific topics of issues. It asks the questions: "What is the
nature of truth?", "How do we know what we know?" Unlike philosophy, the sciences are
based on empirical data, tested theories, and carefully contrived discover the truth about
specific causes of events and happenings in the natural world, It is inductive. It proceeds from
observing particular cases and moves toward generalizing the properties common to these
cases to other similar cases under the same specified condition.

This definition of Science is a very modern description. Before the modern period, the
growth of the sciences was slowed down because of the dominance of religious’s religious
power after the French revolution, the sciences grew steadily and rapidly to become the most
widely accepted way of explaining the world, nature, and human beings (Harrington 2006).

The Unprecedented Growth of Science

The Scientific Revolution, which begun with Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), refers to
historical changes in thought and belief, to changes in social and institutional organization,
that unfolded in Europe roughly between 1550 and 1700. It culminated in the works of Sir
Isaac Newton (1643-1727), which proposed universal laws of motion and a mechanical model
of Universe. The 17th century saw the rapid development in the sciences. Along with Sir
Francis Bacon, who established the supremacy of reason over imagination, René Descartes and
Sir Isaac Newton laid the foundation that allowed science and technology to change the world.
The discovery of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton, the mathematization of physics and medicine
paved the way for the dominance of science and mathematics in describing and explaining the
world and its nature. With the coming of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason, in
the 16th and 17th centuries, nature was to be controlled, "bound into service and made a slave"
(Capra 1982, p. 56). From the Medieval cosmology or model of the universe that defines it as
divinely ordained, people shifted to the model of the universe as a big machine. The triumph
of this model of the universe was facilitated by Newton's Physics. Descartes' separation of the
physical from the spiritual, the body from the mind, also led to the triumph of valuing the
physical over the spiritual. Once the physical universe is considered as a machine, it soon
became apparent that human beings can explore it according to science in order to reveal its
secrets (Merchant 1986).

René Descartes (1596—1650) was a French philosopher/ mathematician,

and writer who is considered the father of modern philosophy. Descartes
advocated the use of rigorous philosophy analysis to arrive at truths rather
than basing them on dogmas.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Renaissance-era mathematician,

astronomer, and Catholic canon who formulated a model of the universe
that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the universe.
The Secularization of Learning and Education

The modern period marked the growing triumph of scientific method over religious dogma
and theological thinking. The triumph of Reason (specifically Western Reason) and science
over dogma and religious authority began with the Reformation. The Protestant movement led
by Martin Luther eroded the power of the Roman Catholic Church. It challenged the
infallibility of the Pope and democratized the interpretation of the Bible. Then, there was the
Enlightenment. This was largely a cultural movement, emphasizing rationalism as well as
political and economic theories, and was clearly built on the Scientific Revolution (Stearns
2003, p. 70). In the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers led by Immanuel Kant challenged the
use of metaphysics or absolute truth derived mainly from unjustified tradition and authority
such as the existence of God. Kant advocated the use of reason in order to know the nature of
the world and human beings. In 1 784, Immanuel Kant wrote his famous essay, "What Is
Enlightenment?" Kant heralded the beginning of the Modern Period when he defined
Enlightenment as the courage to know.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher and one of the

central Enlightenment thinkers. Kant's comprehensive and systematic works
in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of
the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to
make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage
when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without
direction from another. Sapereaude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"—that is the
motto of enlightenment.

Whereas in the Medieval Period, universities relied mainly on religious tradition and the Bible
to explain the nature of the universe and the place of human being in the grand scheme of
things, the modern universities started to rely on science and its method to interpret the world.
Max Weber, one of the leading figures in modern sociology, described this process as
rationalization. Rationalization means that social life is more and more subjected to calculation
and prediction. Calculation and prediction can only be achieved if human beings and society
rely on regularities established by modern science. Earlier people explained diseases through
divine intervention. With the discoveries of germ theory and the development of vaccination
by Louis Pasteur, people relied more and more on medical knowledge to deal with diseases.
As French sociologist Francois Lyotard (1984) points out, Science triumphed because it
provided reliable results.

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864 – 1920) was a German sociologist,

historian, jurist, and political economist, who is regarded among the most
important theorists on the development of modern Western society. His
ideas would profoundly influence social theory and social research.
 Louis Pasteur ForMemRS (1822-1895) was a French biologist,
microbiologist, and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles
of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization.

Jean-François Lyotard (10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French

philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary
discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the
human body, modern art and postmodern art, literature and critical
theory, music, film, time and memory, space, the city and landscape, the
sublime, and the relation between aesthetics and politics.

Another element of rationalization is the separation between different social spheres,

especially between the Church and the universities. The collapse of religious authority and the
gradual erosion of religious domination over social life of the people led to the use of classical
humanistic resources such as ancient philosophy and humanities to advance human
knowledge independent of Revelation (Zeitlin 1968, pp. 3ff).

The Rise of Universities

Education is the single most important factor in the rise of social sciences. The growth of
universities also contributed to the triumph of science. Secular subjects or subjects dealing
with natural world proliferated in the universities. Merchants and capitalists supported
universities and institutions of secular learning because they became the hub of training future
scientists, technocrats, and technological innovators. Durkheim, one of the founding "fathers"
of sociology, for instance, lectured on the need to secularize education and base the curriculum
on the need of nation-state—to develop citizens necessary for the modern world (Collins 1994,
p. 1 1).

The Dissolution of Feudal Social Relations

With the intensification of commerce and trade in the 17th century, many medieval guilds or
workers ‘cooperatives were dissolved and absorbed into the emerging factory system. The
factory system and the unprecedented growth in the urban centers due to trade and
commerce, attracted a lot of agricultural workers and mass of rural population to migrate to
urban centers. This created the modern cities. This development forced many social scientists
during this time to study the effects of the dissolution of feudal relations on the social life of
the people.
 Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), a German sociologist, and
contemporary of Max Weber, lamented the passing away of
gemeinschaft or community because of urbanization. Tönnies' classic
book Community and Society (1957) showed how the modern way of
life had drastically changed the way people relate to one another.
Whereas in traditional communities people had warm relationships
with the members of the community, in modern cities or
gesse/lschaft, individualism gave way to cold and calculated social
relationships. As capitalism replaced agricultural economy, people
began to see their relationships with other people as mere economic
transactions rather than as a form of personal relationships.

Trade and Commerce

Livres des mervei//es du monde recorded the travels of Marco Polo, an Italian merchant from
Venice. This book introduced the Europeans to Asia and China, and inspired Columbus' five
journeys to America (1492-1506). From Marco Polo's travels (1276-1291) to Magellan'S
circumnavigation of the world (1519-1522), the travels of this period fed the imaginations of
the Europeans with vivid descriptions of places whose very existence they had so far been
unaware of, These travelogues had not only inspired European merchants and governments to
explore the non-Western world but also provided the social scientists the raw data to create a
universal model of social development.

Later in the 18th century, trade and commerce greatly accelerated. Charles Tilly, a historian,
believed that this was one of the major factors in the large-scale change in European history
that also determined largely the direction of the social sciences. Both domestically and around
the world, European merchants played a growing role in trade and commerce.
Anthropologists also began to compare the differences between rural life and city life, between
the civilized life and the supposed "savage" life of non-Western people. As many travel
accounts reached the Western world, especially in the accounts of Harriet Martineau, a British
political economist and sociologist, social scientists shifted their attention to non-Western
world as a model of the early stage of Western civilization.

The Rise of Individualism

The intensification of commerce and trade gradually replaced barter with the introduction of
money and banking system. Soon banking system provided merchants and capitalists the
leverage to extend credit and transactions. The introduction of money enabled people to deal
with people in an impersonal manner, Money made possible the reduction of human
interaction to mere business-like transactions devoid of any warmth and personal touch. This
led George Simmel (1858-1918), a German sociologist in the
early 20th century, to decry the growing depersonalization of
life due to the introduction of money. Money economy
transformed individuals to autonomous consumers who were
released from attachment to local contexts and traditions.
Hence, the dominance of money in social life paved the way
for individualization of lifestyle and the birth of plural
relationships. This condition became an important focus of
social scientists. It compelled them to explain how the "new economy," which was industrial
capitalism, that replaced the traditional feudal relations, had drastically shaped human
character and traits. The transition from feudal economy to industrial capitalism heralded the
creation of people who no longer relied on traditional norms and prevailing culture. Modern
individuals asserted their freedom to choose. Through education and the spread of scientific
worldview, people saw their lives as no longer at the mercy of fate or destiny. Individualism is
simply the recognition of the power of the individual to assert ones freedom against the given
norms and structures of society.

The vast intensive and extensive growth of our technology which is much more than just
material technology entangles us in a web of means, and means towards means, more and
more intermediate stages, causing us to lose sight of our real ultimate ends. This is the extreme
inner danger which threatens all highly developed cultures, that is to say, all eras in which the
whole of life is overlaid with a maximum of multi-stratified means. To treat some means as
ends may make this situation psychologically tolerable, but it actually makes life increasingly
futile.

The Birth of Social Sciences as a Response to the Social Turmoil of the Modern
Period

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that deals with the scientific study of human
interactions, social groups and institutions, whole societies, and the human world as such. Of
course, sociology also addresses the problem of the constitution of the self and the individual,
but it only does so in relation to larger social structures and processes. Sociology, therefore, is a
science that studies the relationship between the individual and the society as they develop
and change in history. Sociology does not only study the existing social forms of interactions
but also pursues the investigation of the emergence of stable Structures that sustain such
interactions.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), a French philosopher and

mathematician, is the founding father of sociology. He coined the
term "sociology" but he originally used "social physics" as a term
for sociology. Its aim was to discover the social laws that govern
the development of societies. Comte suggested that there were
three stages in the development of societies, namely, the
theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage.
Comte's sociology has always been associated with positivism or
the school of thought that says that science and its method is the
only valid way of knowing things.

Unknown to many students of sociology, however, there were

also women scholars who were responsible for the development
of sociology. The "founding mother “of sociology is Harriet
Martineau (1802-1876), an English writer and reformist. With
physical disabilities, Martineau traveled a lot, especially in the
United States, and wrote her travelogues. In her accounts
expressed ethnographer, was political writer, fully expressed. She also wrote on political
economy and was influenced by J. S. Mill, David Ricardo, and Adam Smith.

After Auguste Comte, the German philosopher and

revolutionary Karl Marx (1818-1883) further contributed to the
development of sociology. Marx introduced the materialist
analysis of history which discounts religious and metaphysical
(spiritual) explanation for historical development. Before
Marx, scholars explained social change through divine
intervention and the theory of "great men." However, Marx
advocated the use of scientific methods to uncover the deep
structural tendencies that underlie great social transitions for
instance, from agricultural to modern industrial capitalist
society. Marx belonged to the realist tradition of social sciences
that believed in the power of scientific reason to know the
nature of society and human beings. Unlike any other
sociologists, Marx stands out as the sociologist who combined
revolutionary activity with scholarly passion.

Another French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), made possible

the professionalization of sociology by teaching it in the University of
Bordeaux, Durkheim was responsible for defending sociology as an
independent discipline from psychology. As a social realist, Durkheim
argued that society possesses a reality sui generis (that is, its own kind, or a
class by itself, unique) independent of individuals and institutions that
compose it. Durkheim famously argued that society preexisted the
individuals and will continue to exist long after the individual is dead. His
main contributions are in the field of sociology of religion, education, and
deviance.

Another founding father of sociology is Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber stressed the role of
rationalization in the development of society. For Weber, rationalization
refers essentially to the disenchantment of the world. As science began to
replace religion, people also adopted a scientific or rational attitude to the
world. People refused to believe in myths and superstitious beliefs. In this
way, modern individuals became dependent on science to order their
lives. And the greatest application of scientific way of life is in
bureaucracy, which Weber saw as a mammoth machine that will
eventually curtail human freedom. Because in bureaucracy efficiency is
considered as the supreme value, other values such as personal
relationships and human intimacies are gradually discarded.

Anthropology

Anthropology as a scientific discipline originated from social philosophy and travelogues of

Western travelers. It grew out of the encounters of social with the non-Western world.
According to Allan Barnard (2004), "anthropology emerged as a distinct branch of scholarship
around the middle of the nineteenth century, when public interest in human evolution took
hold. Anthropology as an academic discipline began a bit later, with the first appointments of
professional anthropologists in universities, museums, and government offices"(p. 15). Many
pioneers in anthropology built a universal model of cultural development patterned according
to Darwin's evolutionary theory that locates all societies in the linear evolutionary process.
Like sociology, anthropology developed during the years of two World Wars (Barnard 2004, p.
37). Four great anthropologists helped to formalize and advance anthropology as a discipline,
namely Franz Boas (1858-1942), Bronistaw Kasper Malinowski (1884—1942), Alfred Reginald
Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955), and Marcel Mauss (1872-1950).

Franz Boas is often considered as the father of modern American

anthropology. He was the first anthropologist to have rejected the
biological basis of racism discrimination. He also rejected the popular
Western idea of social evolution or the development of societies from
lower to higher forms. This kind of theory influenced by Darwin was
rejected by Boas in favor of historical particularism, In this doctrine,
each society is considered as having unique form of culture that
subsumed under an overall definition general culture.

Another anthropologist who contributed to the development of

modern anthropology is Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. He was a
Polish immigrant who did a comprehensive study of Trobriand Island.
Based on his field study, he developed what social scientists now call
as participant observation. It is a method of social science research that
requires the anthropologists to have the ability to participate and blend
with the way of life of a given group of people. He is also considered
as one of the most influential ethnographers in the 20th

Ethnography is literally the practice of writing about people. Often, it is taken to mean the
anthropologist's way of making sense of other people's modes of
thought, since anthropologists usually study cultures other than
their own. Another influential anthropologist is Alfred Reginald
Radcliffe-Brown, He did fieldwork in 1906—1908. On the
Andaman Islands east of India, and published his reports in the
diffusions style, but later shifted his theoretical orientation. In
1937, he became the Chair in Social Anthropology in Oxford.
Unlike Malinowski, but similar to Durkheirn, Radcliffe-Brown
advocated the study of abstract principles that govern social
change. He saw individuals as mere products of social structures.
This view led to the establishment of structural-functionalist
paradigm in anthropology. According to this view, the basic unit
of analysis for anthropology and social sciences are the social
structures and the functions they perform to maintain the equilibrium of society.
Political Science is part of the social sciences that deals with the study of politics, power, and
government. In turn, politics refers to "the process of making collective decisions in a
community, society, or group through the application of influence and power" (Ethridge and
Handelman 2010, p. 8). Political Science studies how even the most private and personal
decisions of individuals are influenced by collective decisions of a community. Divorce, for
instance, may be a very personal matter among couples, but the decision and the rules on
divorce are shaped by collective decisions arrived at through conflict and antagonism of
different interest groups within society, especially religious groups. As women's rights
advocates often claim, "The personal is political."

Whereas other social sciences have a quite clear history, political science has a complex history.
Its earlier form can be traced backed to the ancient Greek political philosophy of Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. Later it developed into a religious-oriented tradition beginning with
Augustine, and later secularized by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. The
preoccupation of these modern political philosophers is to explain the transition of Western
societies from savagery toward democratic commonwealth. Their works, highlighting the
social contract theory, became the foundation of modern democratic theory.

Some scholars argue that political science is a unique American invention. Hence, its focus has
always been the narrative of democracy. The science of the political during the 19th century
was organized around the concept of the state as elaborated by German émigré Francis Lieber,
who taught at Columbia University In the 20th century, the discipline of social science shifted
from state-centered to pluralism as evidenced in the works of Lawrence Lowell (Public
Opinion and Popular Government, 1913) and, later, Walter Lippmann (The Phantom Public,
1925)' Pluralism led to the emphasis on analyzing group interests rather than the state. In this
view, society is viewed as being composed of several competing groups with different
interests that generate conflicts.

Later, political science will be dominated by behavioral orientation that defines the discipline
as an empirical science. This shift was advanced by David Easton in his work The Political
System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (1953). This was also the beginning of
liberal tradition in political science. Liberal tradition champions individual freedom as best
embodied in democracy. Like in sociology, critical tradition in political science was not
marginal to the discipline. The works of Herbert Marcuse and the members of the Frankfurt
School became a loud critique within political science itself.

In the 20th century, political science has moved from behavioral approach that emphasizes
scientific method towards doing research on more pressing social problems. Today, political
science is composed of diverse paradigms and interpretations.

The Colonial Origin of the Social Sciences

The Clamor for Decolonization of Social Sciences

Social sciences spread from the center to the peripheries of the world. Most of their
observations, mainly from anthropology, were clothed in the cultural beliefs and attitudes of
the fair European. It cannot be denied that social sciences as they developed in the West were
employed by colonizers in order to further subjugate the inhabitants of the non-Western
world. As Simale and Kincheloe (1999) observed, “The denigration of indigenous knowledge
cannot be separated from the oppression of indigenous peoples. Indeed, modernist science,
anthropology in particular, has been deployed as a weapon against indigenous peoples”.

Social Darwinism, which proclaimed the survival of the fittest, was used to justify the
domination of native people as well as the exploitation of the underclass in industrial societies.
In fact, most travelogues and descriptions of the European travelers were full of factual errors
and had belittling descriptions of natives. When European explorers, just like social scientists,
encountered the natives, they found themselves different from the natives. Most Westerners
looked at the natives as savage, illiterate, and incapable of rational thinking. And these
colonial biases were also echoed in the social sciences during that time. For instance, in the
development of societies, European social scientists placed the non-Western world in the
lowest point in the evolutionary process. This kind of attitude also led to colonialism and the
destruction of indigenous cultures, language and traditions.

Complicit with the invading military, US academics were appointed to implement the
systematic “tutelage” of the Filipino subject. One example is Dean Worcester, professor of
anthropology at the University of Michigan, who wrote one of the first sourcebooks of
knowledge about the Philippines and its people. He participated in the first Philippine
Commission in 1899 on the basis of his expertise on zoological specimens collected in the
archipelago. As Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, Worcester became notorious for
denouncing the “barbaric” practices of slavery and peonage of the Muslims, thus judging
Filipinos unfit being recognized as a people of nation.

Because social sciences were imported from the rich Western countries, many scholars in
former colonies and developing countries are now clamoring for decolonization of the social
sciences. As two scholars rightly observed, “The story of the Scientific Revolution in Europe
itself is framed in the ethnocentric West-is-best discourse of colonialism.” Social scientists
advocating decolonization or de-Westernization of science believed that the methods and
concepts, the epistemology, and the philosophical worldview that inform Western social
sciences are not as universal as Western civilization. Outside the Western Civilization, there
are other existing alternative medical systems that are even much older than Western
medicine.

Indigenization of Social Sciences in the Philippines

In the Philippines, social sciences after World War II simply perpetuated colonial
knowledge production from American social sciences. Many Filipino social scientists such as
Virgilio Enriquez, a psychologist; Zeus Salazar, a historian; and Prospero Covar, an
anthropologist advocated for the indigenization of social sciences. Moreover Prospero Covar, a
former professor at UP Diliman, recalled that the clamor for indigenization was done through
Sikilohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) that manifested its beginnings in the 1960’s when
the UP Community Development Research Council challenged the applicability of Western
concepts, theories, and research tools, and subsequently embarked upon researches on Filipino
concepts and indigenous cultural form.
Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) is borne out of this move to indigenize social sciences in the
Philippines. Two leading exponents of SP, Narcisa Paredes-Canilao and Maria Ana Babaran-
Diaz, wrote:”Sikolohiyang Pilipino refers to the psychology, are very much a product of the
common sense concepts and lived daily realities of the white male fathers of psychology, their
respective communities, and local histories.” Thus, Carolyn Sobritchea (2002) argued that the
strategies for collecting information as suggested by SP are very useful for doing feminist
ethnography in the Philippine context such as pagmamasid (observation), pakikiramdam
(feeling your way through), pakikilahok (participation), pagtatanong-tanong (informal
interview), pakikipagkwentuhan (informal conversation), and sama-samang talakayan (focus
group discussion). The current direction of SP can also be applied to decolonization of Filipino
social sciences. It was a movement that systematically critiqued the theories and
methodologies of Western psychology, and on a more constructive plane, it aimed to create a
psychology relevant to and based on Filipino indigenous ways of knowing, living, and
valuing,” in short, a psychology that is appropriate and significant to Filipinos”.
Indigenization comes after decolonization. Reconstructing Filipino psychology tailored-fit to
Filipino local experience can proceed in two levels: from within and from without.

Social Sciences in the Era of Globalization

While science may be considered as a universalizing form of knowing, it has to be

sensitive to the local cultures of the people that adopt it. Social sciences, in particular, because
they study cultural meanings and social change, must be able to address the concerns and
problems of the local communities rather than being merely a tool to continue the control of
Western worldview on local cultures. In the era of globalization, the strongest weapon against
being swallowed in the vortex of homogenization of culture is to rely on its traditions and
collective memories of its people. Such collective memories empower them against being
swallowed by the torrent of Western values.
In the era of globalization, social sciences face the problem of plurality of paradigms
and methods. According to Gerald Delanty (2006), a British sociologist, “The current
situation,” of the social sciences, “is characterized by post-disciplinary developments and a
related plurality of theoretical and methodological approaches”. “These tendencies tend to
undermine the venture of grand theory that was part of the classical social theory.” Gone are
the days when social scientists dreamt of creating an all-encompassing theory to explain large-
scale historical upheavals and social change.
With globalization, social sciences welcomed the proliferation of different social
theories and ideological orientations. The critique of Eurocentrism of traditional social sciences
allows indigenous cultures and other non-Western “subjugated knowledge’s” to reclaim their
voices. Other than decolonizing Western social sciences, the social sciences are also being
transformed by feminism and postmodern currents. Henrietta L. Moore (2010) defines the
feminist reorientation in anthropology:
Feminist anthropology is concerned with critically examining relations between women
and men, and investigating how gender, embodiment and sexuality are produced through
complex relays of power involving ideologies and social institutions. Its focus of analysis has
shifted over time, moving from an initial emphasis on women to a concern with gender
relations, issues of difference and identity, and sexuality and heteronormativity [strict
distinction between male and female sexes.
Feminist approaches in social sciences question the gender biases inherent in traditional
social sciences. They do not only challenged the exclusion of women from the “male-stream”
(as mainstream) disciplines of anthropology, sociology and political science, but also more
radically, they questioned the unacknowledged male-bias (or androcentric orientation) of
many theories and measurements. In particular, classical women sociologists approached the
task of analyzing society from their distinctive knowledge and experiences as women, and that
this standpoint gave them particular advantages as students of society. One of the most
significant contributions of women in social sciences is the rejection of the theoretical stance in
which the theorist locates herself or himself outside and apart from what she or he analyzes,
speaking as a disinterested and omniscient observer. This is reflexivity or the awareness of the
social scientists of the ideological, political, and social biases of their standpoints when doing
research and publishing their works for the wider public. Feminists argue that many male
social scientists, including women, in most instances, are never aware of the gender biases of
their studies and research. When social scientists, for instance, study IQ or intelligence, they
usually make generalizations that do not discriminate between the experience of women and
men.

Activity No. 1
Application for Major Concepts
1. There are very few women included in the history of the development of the social sciences-
--sociology, anthropology, and political science. Do a research on the contributions of women
to the development of the social sciences in the early 18th century. Make sketches or gather
pictures of these women and write about their contributions below the pictures.
2. From your history classes, how did the Spaniards and American colonizers describe and
view the native Filipinos? How will you assess these images and representations of native
Filipinos and their way of life?
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References:
Understanding Culture, Society and Politics by Gerry M. Lanuza and Sarah S. Raymundo