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Perspectives On Social Science: Western, Post-Western' and 'Non-Western'
Perspectives On Social Science: Western, Post-Western' and 'Non-Western'
Key question
•are social sciences Euro-centric, resp. ‘Western’?
o modern social science emerged since the Renaissance foremost in Europe
o within the social sciences the U.S.A. have become dominant and largely
hegemonic (Kuhn and Yazawa 2012; Simpson 1998)
Key points
•social sciences as such are not an invention of the West
•all cultures had and have some kind of social theory
o often embedded within a religious context and framed via legal regulations
o culture is about values and all science is part of a given culture
Western and/or universal social science? (2)
o significant influence on modern social sciences came from the Greek
philosophy transmitted by the Romans and the Arabs
• reason against unfounded prejudice and faith came to the fore and
led to the bourgeois revolutions (Kant 1977)
o since the age of Enlightenment (i.e. about 1600)
o remained a limited reason (i.e. techne) as religion never died out
o embodied itself in rationality (Max Weber distinguishes between the
rationality of means versus those of targets (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972)
o rationality not only in industry, military and bureaucracy is a power
relationship (Flyvbjerg 1998)
Western and/or universal social science? (3)
Global vs universal (Bauman 1997, 1998)
o globalisation is a process dating back to early modern times (Széll 2005a)
o universalism corresponds to values
More questions
•where do values, ethics come from? (Zagzebski 1996)
o from religion, ideology, metaphysics (Staudinger 1987), Enlightenment (Zafirovski 2010),
common sense, mythology, tradition or/and science?
o are there competing values? (postmodernists declare there are no common values anymore)
•what is meant by ‘science’?
o the systematic search for new knowledge according to criteria, which allow to control and
eventually repeat the experiments (its target is ‘truth’)
o generally accepted criteria are: validity, reliability, objectivity and comprehensiveness
Western and/or universal social science? (4)
• what are ‘social sciences’?
o Roots of social sciences (see Széll 2018 Table 1)
o Fundamentals of human societies (see Széll 2018 Table 2)
o Types of social science theories (see Széll 2018 Table 3)
o Main social science theories (see Széll 2018 Table 4)
o Main social science methodologies (see Széll 2018 Table 5)
• what should be the target of all ‘social science’?
o the sustainable improvement of the quality of life for all human beings, in
Greek Phrónêsis, i.e. the ‘Good society’ (Aristotle 1984; Eikeland 2008;
Nussbaum 1992)
Western and/or universal social science? (5)
• what is the impact of social sciences?
• how to measure the impact of social sciences on society? (Bastow et
al 2014; Weingart and Schwechheimer 2010)
o Division of labour in social sciences (see Széll 2018 Table 6 & Table 7)
• what are the challenges for humanity?
o which ‘progress’ has been realized?
o are humans living better now than 200 years ago?
o the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). How far has it promoted
social justice, social, political, cultural, and economic rights? (Széll and
Cella 2002)
PART II
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (1)
o the Western powers imposed their economic and international regime on all premodern
states which have become socialized into modern national states
o ideological struggles of the modern world (i.e., the confrontation between communism
and liberal democracy leading to fierce wars
o ideologies have their source in the Western mind and are developed within the
framework of modernity
• modernity signifies a set of ideas and attitudes toward the world
o refers to the distinctive world view (Weltanschauung) and to the way of organizing
social existence that is different from a traditional one
o its defining ideas, as an ideological or cultural formation, include progress, rationality,
individualism, national unity, and states’ sovereignty
o the idea of freedom plays also an important role in the formation of modernity, but it is
questioned in critical thought which emphasizes equality
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (4)
Discourse on globalization
o filtered through the social science oligopoly of Britain, France, and the United
States
•an extension of the dominant (classical) modernization/development
paradigm critics identify as Orientalism and Eurocentrism
•the cultural and philosophical biases of the secularized Judeo-
Christian-based Western society are ingrained in all social science,
including communication (Gunaratne 2009)
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (2)
Anthropocentrism
•the belief that ‘progress’ involves emulating the West (center) by
the rest (periphery) as part and parcel of social science
o tends to project its European universalism as universal universalism
An alternative view of globalization
• possible through the perspective of Eastern, particularly Buddhist, philosophy
osees globalization as an ongoing dynamic process involving the entire
environment in which humanity is only one actor
oDaoism sees globalization as increasing diversity (engendered by the
interaction of yin and yang) in perpetual interaction within unity, which the
ineluctable Dao represents
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (3)
Concept of ‘globalization’ challenged
•‘debated since the 1960s lacks genuine ‘universalism’ because
the oligopoly of the social sciences (incl. communication science)
has excluded the discussion of globalization from the perspective
of non-Western cosmologies’ (Gunaratne 2009)
•the social science oligopoly is an impediment to restructuring
the social sciences to accommodate non-Western perspectives
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (4)
•‘social science’ exists under the guidance and control of three former
imperial powers—Britain, France and the United States—constituting the
center and other rich countries—Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Italy
—constituting the semi periphery
o the academic and publishing domains in these countries determine the axiology,
epistemology, and ontology relating to each of the social sciences through an
elaborate system of peer-reviewing and adherence to (Western) norms
Defining key terms
globalization, social science, and communication science
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (5)
The term ‘globalization’
•‘a cluster of related changes (incl. but not limited to economic, technological,
cultural, and political realms) that are increasing the interconnectedness of the
world’ (Croucher 2004)
o from an Eastern philosophical or the quantum theory perspective, interconnectedness of the
world is a given
o applies to human action alone and implicitly claims the supremacy of humankind over nature
•refers by some primarily to economic globalization
o the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign
direct investment, capital flows, migration, and spread of technology (Bhagwati, 2007)
o while others have used it ideologically to refer to the neoliberal (Reagan/Thatcher) form of
economic globalization
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (6)
Globalization discourse
• the term ‘globalization’ refers to—internationalization, liberalization,
universalization, and Westernization (Scholte 2003)
• internationalization ‘refers to increases of interaction and interdependence
between people in different countries’
• liberalization denotes a world ‘without regulatory barriers to transfer resources
between countries’
• universalization refers to the wider spread of people and cultural phenomena
across “all habitable corners of the planet’
• Westernization is associated with the process of homogenization wrought by
post-colonial imperialism (Scholte 2003)
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (7)
onone of terms examines how it affects the ongoing natural globalization process that
links the human species with all other species and elements within the global
cooperative
•the globalization debate has given the short shrift to the Eastern / Buddhist perspective
oeven on the economic dimension the debate has failed to link the realized and potential
effects of human action (Spirit or Geist) on Nature
•if the discourse had been about the ongoing natural process of globalization relating
to the entire biosphere it would have focused on issues such as the following
othe effect of human action to overpower Nature that can upset natural checks and
balances and cause the extinction of human species from earth sooner rather than later
othe ways humans can adopt to live in harmony with Nature to achieve true
globalization and avoid potentially disastrous consequences
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (8)
Is there a bias of ‘social science’?
•arises from limiting the meaning of social and society to humanity only,
and the presumption of the supremacy of humanity over Nature
•social science has paid little attention to onto-cosmological issues
immanent in Eastern philosophy such as the need to live in harmony
with Nature in contrast to the Hegelian will to control it
•the globalization discourse, filtered through the social science oligopoly,
inherently contains the very cultural and philosophical biases of social
science, a creation of the West for application in Western society
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (9)
• the values associated with the main themes of the secularized Judeo-
Christian cosmology embedded in the social sciences (Gunaratne, 2007)
o self (individualism/ freedom/ competition/equality/ rights)
o Nature (rationality/control of Nature)
o space-time (divided world/ bounded time)
o knowledge (efficiency/ atomism/ deductivism)
o the transpersonal (Supreme Being/Value)
• imperialism and colonialism enabled the West to propagate its values in
most parts of the world through the introduction of social science
o ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’ (Nye 1990)
A non-Western perspective on ‘social
science’ (10)
•the West considered these values to be universal - yet a stage upward from the traditional
accounted for the backwardness of the colonized
•this presumption is behind the ongoing meta-theoretical allegations of Orientalism
and Eurocentrism against the social science oligopoly
Operational mechanics of this oligopoly
•created the environment requiring the periphery’s dependence on it for ideas
o the media of ideas (the structure of ownership and control of publishing houses, journals, working paper series
and Web sites)
o technology of education (computing facilities, audio-visual aids, laboratory instruments)
o funding for research and training, direct educational investment in the developing world
o deployment of the pool of under-used brainpower available in the developing world to carry out projects
conceived by the oligopoly
PART IV
‘Post-Western’ social sciences (1)