Scholarly Objectivity Research Articles

Hinduism to Hindus in the Western Diaspora

AbstractThis article reflects on some of the methodological issues pertaining to situations in which both instructor and students belong to the same religious tradition as that about which the course is taught. It is framed within questions of scholarly objectivity and privilege to represent religious traditions. In a political atmosphere in which it has become increasingly suspect for "Outsiders" to teach traditions that they do not personally confess, this article engages the reverse scenario: what pedagogical challenges confront the professor who is an "Insider" to the tradition she teaches?

The Historian as Judge

IN THE YEAR 1824, the patriarch of the modern Western historical profession, Leopold von Ranke, became embroiled in a famous debate with another historian, Heinrich Leo, over a profound matter of historical methodology. Ranke had just published his first book, the Hidtoriem of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, in which he made the bold declaration that the controversial political philosophy of Nicolo Machiavelli, as set forth in his famous book The Prince, should not so much be condemned as understood as the product of its particular historical circumstances. As Ranke declared in a remark that was to become a maxim of modern historical scholarship, the task of the historian was not to the but to show what (wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist] ).' Heinrich Leo disagreed, and in a critical review of Ranke's book argued that Machiavelli needed to be seen as an amoral individual who had flirted with evil ideas and who should be viewed from an ethical perspective in order to appreciate his status as a figure of world historical importance. It was not sufficient merely to show what happened in the past, Leo concluded, the historian also had to judge it.2 As is well known, Leo's criticism of Ranke did little to prevent the latter from going on to become one of the giants of Western historiography. But the basic issue at the core of the debate between the two scholars has become fundamental to all subsequent historical writing in the modern era: is the historian's primary task historical explanation or historical judgment? Both strategies possess merits, of course, but they also entail various risks. Historians who set out to explain the past pride themselves on adhering to certain norms of scholarly objectivity; but they frequently end up producing sterile histories lacking in both moral resonance and relevance for present-day society. By the same token, historians who set

Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. x + 283 pp. $29.95 cloth; $12.95 paper.

Capital Moves is an important book written with a clear scholarly and political objective. Working in the mid-1990s, after the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization's (AFL-CIO) defeat in the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) debate, Jefferson Cowie sought to discredit a conception of workers and labor held not only by union leaders', but far too often by their allies in universities, politics, film, and literature as well. In this older conception, white men employed in the United States' auto, steel, and related industries struggled mightily for decades, in cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit, to improve and defend their conditions and rights at work, only to lose their jobs because the President and the Congress did not prevent their employers from moving their factories to Mexico and Asia.

Engaged Universities: Lessons from the Land-Grant Universities and Extension

Engagement is the vogue of relevant scholars into the twenty-first century. Yet there are concerns that scholarly objectivity requires detachment from society. The American experience with scholarly engagement comes from Land-Grant universities and extension. The Land-Grant principle emerged from the mandate to the Land-Grant colleges to improve the nation’s agriculture. Agricultural science has been hugely productive because of the Land-Grant principle. The principle is general to all scholarship. The Land-Grant principle gives both intellectual and political power to engagement. Scholarship is made better substantially through the test of workability, a dimension of scholarly objectivity. The scholar is also made more skillful. The engagement making possible the test of workability makes the scholarship more relevant. Institutionalized access to the workable, relevant knowledge for those who need it generates substantial political power. At a time when universities, particularly public research universities, are seeking public support for more than their teaching, the strategies suggested by the Land-Grant principle are instructive.

Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia (review)

Reviewed by: Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia Guluma Gemeda Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia. Paulos Milkias. Youngstown, New York: Cambria Press, 2006. Pp. xx, 364. Maps. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Paper. Much has been written about the Ethiopian Revolution, which ended the centuries-long monarchy in 1974 and plunged Ethiopia into a period of violence, famine, and political repression. Many Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian scholars have examined the causes of the revolution, its tumultuous early years, and the devastating long-term consequences. Paulos Milkias's Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia is another scholarly book on this very important moment in modern Ethiopian history. The book is divided into 14 chapters and a postscript. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the historical and theoretical background, respectively. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 analyze the role of modern education in Ethiopia, the penetration of Western cultural influences, and the rise of Western-educated intellectuals, who initially cooperated with the Haile Selassie regime but later turned against it. Chapters 6 through 10 discuss the involvement of French-Canadian Jesuits and United States educators in the development of higher education in Ethiopia, the alienation of Western-educated intellectuals, and the rise of the radical student movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 examine the challenges posed by the students and teachers to the Haile Selassie regime, the widening political protests that engulfed the feudal, autocratic government, and the rise of the Derg (the military junta) and the fall of the monarchy in 1974. Chapter 14 summarizes the main argument of the book. The postscript briefly discusses the political repression during the [End Page 191] Derg era (1974–91) and the coming to power of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991. In this book, the author attempts to explain the contradictions between modern education, which promoted Western cultural and political values, and the modernizing autocracy of the Haile Selassie government, which consolidated its power after the end of the Italian occupation (1941). Beginning in the mid-1940s, Haile Selassie recruited French-Canadian educators to expand modern education and produce loyal intellectuals who could run the government bureaucracy and manage the economic enterprises. But in the 1950s and 1960s, the emperor increasingly favored American involvement in shaping Ethiopia's higher education. The policy initially led to "a triple partnership: Haile Selassie, the Western educated elite, and the United States," united by mutual interests and interdependence (243). But by the early 1960s, as the modernization policy of the Haile Selassie government failed to produce the desired economic development, and the bond between the emperor and the United States became stronger, the Western-educated elite felt alienated and eventually turned against the regime and its Western backers. Milkias argues that the political crisis of the 1960s and early 1970s was a reaction to the feudal, authoritarian regime, which introduced Western education and values "without changing the intrinsic character pertaining to itself" (245). This book is very well written. The chapters are a bit fragmented but are short and readable. The book draws its overall strength partly from the author's personal knowledge of Ethiopian politics as a student leader in the 1960s and his involvement in some of the major events discussed in the book. Milkias reminds the reader that he knew some of the important political actors in the Haile Selassie government. Although he was a participant in the student movement of the 1960s, he writes dispassionately and with scholarly objectivity. He belongs to a generation of students who believed in dismantling the entrenched feudal order to facilitate the political and economic modernization of Ethiopia. These students were young, radical idealists. They hoped to bring about progress, democracy, and faster economic development. But after the overthrow of the monarchy, they became captives of the Marxist political ideology that they used to attack the feudal autocracy and Western cultural domination. They splintered into rival political groups and [End Page 192] became victims of repression under the Derg regime. The author points out the weaknesses of these intellectuals and the fatal mistakes they made in their attempt to radically transform...

Guarding the Borders of Rembrandt Connoisseurship

Why are the attributions and quality judgments of some authors accepted in the literature, while the opinions of others meet with contempt or even mockery? Max Lautner in Wer ist Rembrandt? (1891) challenged the attribution of nearly all paintings then given to Rembrandt, and assigned them to his follower Ferdinand Bol. John C. Van Dyke in Rembrandt and His School (1923) asserted that only 48 Rembrandt paintings in public collections were actually authentic, and that the hundreds of other works given to him were by students, followers, and imitators. The critical reception of these books serves as examples of the policing of art history as a scholarly discipline. These cases also illuminate the fact that connoisseurship has not merely been subjective, but also a highly personal process, embedded in specific social contexts and practiced in ways that make questionable claims for scholarly objectivity.

Andrew Pettigrew on Executives and Strategy:: An Interview by Kenneth Starkey

Andrew Pettigrew on Executives and Strategy:: An Interview by Kenneth Starkey

Jews of the Amazon: Self-Exile in Earthly Paradise

The Jewish Publication Society did a disservice to this book and to its potential readership by releasing it under the title given above. The book is not about Jews exiled to the Amazon, but about a mestizo population living in the city of Iquitos, well integrated into local society and culture, who are the accidental descendants of Jewish traders and tappers who arrived in the region during the rubber boom of the 1880s. As the offspring of non-Jewish mothers and grandmothers, they are not Jews under Jewish law. Israel does not automatically grant them immigration rights under the Law of Return, and Limeño Jews keep them at an emotional distance, possibly because of their “alien” phenotype. (Who are the exiles here?) The author, quite appropriately, surrounds his use of the term “Jew” with quotation marks throughout the text, or refers to them as Jewish mestizos or descendants of Jews.What Segal explores is a more interesting topic than chronicling the existence of yet another quaint Jewish community. His focus is the “Jewish obsession” that so possesses this group. Despite their isolation from Jewish institutions, individuals, or sacred texts, they struggle—not to maintain—for they started from ground zero—but to gain a Jewish identity that they consider their birthright. Amazonian notions of the supernatural combine with trace elements of Jewish monotheism. Like other Iquiteños, they inhabit a world of jungle spirits and souls “retracing their steps.” They question the Christian Trinity, yet embrace Jesus as the Messiah. They observe the public Christian holidays but fast on Yom Kippur, explaining their traditions by quoting from the Apostles. These passionate confusions, contrasted with the secular lifestyle of the acknowledged Jews of Lima, provoke in Segal the ongoing riddle of Jewish life, “Who is a Jew?”Segal, identifying himself as a Jew and a neophyte historian, describes his struggle to separate these two personas during the period of his research in Iquitos. In the end, the Jew wins out, resulting in his total immersion in the life of the community as a quondam religious teacher and later, as an advocate. Starting from a determination to maintain scholarly objectivity, he finds himself engaged emotionally with the struggle of these “Jews” to enter fully into Judaism while possessing the barest knowledge of what Judaism might be. He is overwhelmed by their longing for Israel. He relates their efforts to be accepted by people they assume to be at the core of Jewish life—such as himself or the Jews of Lima. He suggests that they are modern Marranos: Jews whose conventional Catholicism masks a Jewish soul. Their stubborn retention of the shred of Jewish tradition—which is all their fathers bequeathed them—amounts, says the author, to a “Jewish obsession.” Where it comes from, and why is it so recognizable to us are questions he cannot answer rationally, only by empathizing with the obsessed.Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller runs like a theme through the book, and Segal has in fact turned himself into the storyteller for the “mestizo Jews” of Iqui-tos. Like all storytellers, he tells a convoluted tale that repeats itself incessantly. He is unable to analyze the phenomena he describes, disclaiming knowledge of sociological and anthropological tools. This book is not comparable to Ruth Behar’s Translated Woman, whose author also entered into the life of her subject, while maintaining use of her intellectual armamentarium. Instead we have what Segal himself calls “lyrical sentimentalism.” Yet as Vargas Llosa asserts through one of his characters, “storytelling may be something that the very existence of a people may depend on.”

SAP implementation at Metalica: an organizational drama in two acts

This play attempts to reconstruct the social reality of key players at Metalica during the first couple of years of SAP implementation. Rather than adopting one perspective about the SAP project, we provide the views of different participants using their own words, arguments and ideas as much as possible. The play is constructed from summaries of systematic interviews which were changed only to suit scholarly objectives and a dramatic presentation. At the request of the company involved, the names and locations in this case have been disguised. Act 1 describes the company's vision concerning the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a crisis which emerged during the initial phase of implementation and the actions taken to remedy the shortfalls. Act 2 describes the project management, the dynamics between the implementation team members and the organizational implications of an ERP system implementation. The actual performance of the play and a subsequent discussion among the participants enable students to re-create and experience the thrills, frustrations, dilemmas and concerns originally expressed by the people who inspired this account of SAP implementation. Using theatre in an academic environment opens new avenues for critical observation, integrative sense making and experiential learning.

SAP Implementation at Metalica: An Organizational Drama in Two Acts

This play attempts to reconstruct the social reality of key players at Metalica during the first couple of years of SAP implementation. Rather than adopting one perspective about the SAP project, we provide the views of different participants using their own words, arguments and ideas as much as possible. The play is constructed from summaries of systematic interviews which were changed only to suit scholarly objectives and a dramatic presentation. At the request of the company involved, the names and locations in this case have been disguised. Act 1 describes the company's vision concerning the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a crisis which emerged during the initial phase of implementation and the actions taken to remedy the shortfalls. Act 2 describes the project management, the dynamics between the implementation team members and the organizational implications of an ERP system implementation. The actual performance of the play and a subsequent discussion among the participants enable students to re-create and experience the thrills, frustrations, dilemmas and concerns originally expressed by the people who inspired this account of SAP implementation. Using theatre in an academic environment opens new avenues for critical observation, integrative sense making and experiential learning.

Indonesia's struggle for economic development: pragmatism in action

This book examines Indonesia's economic development from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. Indonesia's transformation during this period was largely engineered by a group of economists, one of whom is the author. Combining scholarly objectivity with an insider's view, the book offers insightful analysis of the events that shaped Indonesia's development.

Welfare States, Economic Growth, and Scholarly Objectivity

(2000). Welfare States, Economic Growth, and Scholarly Objectivity. Challenge: Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 49-66.

John Donne's Pseudo-Martyr and the Oath of Allegiance Controversy

John Donne's Pseudo-Martyr (1610) makes an important contribution to the defense of King James's Oath of Allegiance through its author's careful positioning between extremists on both the Catholic and Protestant sides of the debate. Where William Barlow insists that Catholic devotion and deference to James's civil authority are incompatible, and Robert Persons argues that Catholic faith is grossly compromised by swearing James's Oath, Donne asks English recusants to pledge their loyalty to James without insisting that they change their church denomination. This delineation between public declaration and private religious belief not only distinguishes Pseudo-Martyr as an Oath of Allegiance tract, it also more closely mirrors James's attitudes toward religious controversy, as they are demonstrated in his own Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (1607, 1609) and in the other policies he supported with regard to Scottish Presbyterians and Catholics both before and after his ascension to the English throne. In response to this controversy's fixation on scholarly accuracy, Donne proposes his own, highly innovative use of italics. This and other innovations further substantiate his claims for scholarly objectivity because they distance Pseudo-Martyr from the fixation on quotational and citational accuracy that typified printed European religious debate throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thomas Fitzherbert's attack on Pseudo-Martyr in 1613 wholly ignores Donne's larger argument in support of the Oath, and his experiment with scholarly method, focusing instead on an ostensible error—if not willful deception—pertaining to Donne's quotation of the last canon from the third Lateran Council (1179). Thus, Donne does not succeed in changing the tenor of either Protestant or Catholic polemic. What he does demonstrate, however, both in Pseudo-Martyr and in his subsequent decision to pursue a career as a Protestant preacher—a decision supported, and rewarded, handsomely by James—is that his English king is more invested in securing his subjects' obedience than he is in shaping their consciences. The strategies pursued by both Donne and King James during this crisis severely problematize subsequent interpretations of their politics as 'absolutist'. Rather, both men pursue civil aims pragmatically, while recognizing a space for private religious devotion. Donne does so—fittingly—with striking ingenuity, and clear awareness of his king's preference for compromise.

Discontent in the historical profession

I n April, 1998, a group of historians held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce the formation of "a new and genuinely 'diverse' organization" to reshape the profession. Dubbed "The Historical Society," it was intended as an alternative forum to the two existing umbrella organizations of historians in the United States, the Organization of American Historians (OAH)---comprised of those who study the history of the United States--and the American Historical Associa t ion ( A H A ) w h i c h includes American historians of all parts of the world, including the United States. Why did discontent within the AHA and OAH lead to a search for more promising alternatives? Some of the reasons lay in the seeming rejection of the norms of scholarly objectivity, universality and pluralism within those organizations. This trend has its roots in the late 1960s, but only transformed the official institutions of the profession some decades later as historians steeped in an activist conception of professional activity came to dominate historical organizations and departments.

China's Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History of Chinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952 (review)

Reviews 345 All in all, while Bajo un Mismo Techo does not contain pafhbreaking new scholarship, it is a very interesting refocusing and redeployment ofexisting research to spodight a crucial transition period, and the questions it raises ought to cause analogous questions to rise in readers' minds about the fate ofthe Chinese family during China's present turbulent social transformation. Katherine Carlitz University of Pittsburgh Katherine Carlitz is adjunctfaculty in theAsian Studies Program ofthe University of Pittsburgh, specializing in studies ofMingfiction, drama, and social history. N OTE S 1. Patricia Ebrey, "The Chinese Family and the Spread ofConfucian Values," in Gilbert Rozman, ed., The EastAsian Region: Confucian Heritage and Its Modern Adaptation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 78-82. Gregor Benton. China's Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History ofChinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952. Revolutionary Studies. Atlantic Highlands , New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996. 269 pp. Hardcover, $55.00, isbn 0-391-03921-0. Paperback $19.95, isbn 0-391-03947-4. Gregor Benton's recent work, China's Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History ofChinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952, is, according to the author, "a digest of research and thinking . . . over the past fifteen years," in the continuing and still somewhat fragmented search for a clear picture of Chinese Trotskyism. The book is structured in two parts. First, Benton provides his account of Chinese Trotskyism by examining the topic from a selection of useful points ofview. After discussing the historical context into which Chinese Trotskyism emerged as a form of oppositional politics to the early CCP, Benton examines its origins both in China and in the Soviet Union. Then he relates the role of Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi in the development of the movement. Lastiy, he assesses the influence of Chinese Trotskyism on such areas as the larger CCP, the war against Japan , the worldwide Trotskyist movement, Chinese literature, and the develop-©1997 by University ment ofdemocracy in China. The second section ofthe volume consists of ofHawai ?Pressextensive appendixes, including Zheng Chaolin's special studyofChen Duxiu's relationship to Trotskyism, a section regarding Wang Fanxi's critique ofTang 346 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 1997 Baolin's History ofChinese Trotskyism, and a biographical list of the principal figures in the Chinese Trotskyist movement. Benton presents an assiduously researched account of a topic whose story is complicated by the intense political fracas that surrounded it and by the fact that it was forced underground for its alleged heresies. This is a history pieced together from archives, interviews, memoirs, and letters, including published and unpublished material in a wide range oflanguages, which, thanks to Benton's impressive linguistic and research skills, are now made accessible to an English-reading audience . The author advises die reader to resist viewing the book as a comprehensive study of the sum of archival material on Chinese Trotskyism, suggesting instead that it be regarded as an appraisal-to-date of the ongoing and still incomplete "explorations" into the topic. Despite the author's very tentative approach to his findings, he does undertake to evaluate the material for its insight into why the Chinese Trotskyist movement played such an inconsequential role in Chinese politics after 1931. Benton assumes that the destiny of a political party can be foretold by assessing four major components: "the goals that it sets itself, the methods that it adopts to realize them, the resources (human and material) that it can apply to that end, and the odds that it encounters in so doing." He then proceeds to evaluate Chinese Trotskyism in light of these factors. Overall an impressive and convincing study, the quality of the volume is only mildly affected by occasional recourse to bias-laden vocabulary that, although it enlivens the reading process, deprives us of die reassuring scholarly objectivity that such fine research deserves. Margaret B. Denning Slippery Rock University Peggy Denning is a professor ofhistory specializing in Chinese history during the Sino-Japanese War. ...

BEYOND ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION? The Anti-Bon Polemic Included in the Thirteenth-Century Single Intention (Dgong-gcig Yig-cha) and Its Background in Tibetan Religious History

I hope that no one will look forward to finding in this paper a number of closely linked arguments leading in a single logical chain swiftly and directly to one inescapable conclusion. I fear this will resemble more a rambling talk, with a number of paths opening out on the map without being travelled down very far (even with an occasional backward step), but we may at least hope that this will reveal more of the countryside and its landscapes than do those researchers who travel non-stop the limited-access tollroads directly from point A to point B. The conclusion to which the following remarks should lead is simply a better understanding of the circumstances behind the production of a particular literary passage. If everything works out better than I expect it to, that literary passage, the anti-Bon polemic of the Single Intention, will be enough of a conclusion. Still, the historical patterns that will be uncovered might lead us to challenge some long-held assumptions, particularly as they concern the Tibetan polemical tradition and its continuing hold on our consciousness. When dealing with a polemic all the usual problematics of scholarly objectivity and impartiality rise to the surface. Partisanship does make us bad judges. We should carefully hear and weigh the statements and arguments from all parties of course, while recognizing that polemic is extreme testimony often produced under a state of duress and usually put forward in order to induce a state of duress. Polemic does its best to undo the background and authority of a tradition as it understands itself, and in various ways remake that background into something disreputable and unworthy of further interest. Seeing this delegitimating motive behind polemics, we may yet at times find truths in them, but they should hardly ever be our primary sources of truths. At best they can only occasionally, and that despite their designs, supply some useful points of secondary verification. In any case, we will keep polemics filed

A view from the front line

Try as I might, I have not been able to cast these ruminations in anything remotely resembling scholarly objectivity; the package of legislation known as Megan's Law strikes too close to home. Since 1976, I have served as a member of the Special Classification Review Board (SCRB) for Sex Offenders in the New Jersey Department of Corrections, for all but three of those years as chairperson. The Board's function, as originally detailed in the 1947 legislation that established a treatment program for repetitive, habitual, or compulsive sex offenders, is to function as a clinically-oriented dangerousness review body that assesses the readiness of an offender to be released into the community after judicially-imposed confinement for treatment in the state's specialized prison facility, the euphemistically-named Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center (ADTC). Membership of the Board is comprised of three mental health professionals from the academic and professional community (who serve pro bono) and two representatives of state agencies (the Department of Corrections and the Bureau of Parole, respectively). Although recommendation for parole by the SCRB is a condition, it is not sufficient. SCRB's recommendation is in turn forwarded to the State Board of Parole, whose approval is both and sufficient. Alternately, the State Board of Parole cannot grant release in the absence of a positive recommendation from SCRB. That is quite an unusual process, one that results in a parole rate for inmates under SCRB jurisdiction that approximates 1.5% to 3% annually vs. 20% to 25% for the state's prison system in the aggregate. To be released on parole in New Jersey as elsewhere, it is necessary that a felony offender have served a portion of his or her sentence and have further avoided out while in confinement in ways that merit institutional sanctions. Little inquiry is made during the paroling process into whether there is discernible or demonstrable change in the offender's attitudes, beliefs, values, or patterns of behavior. In contrast, to be released on parole from ADTC, an inmate must convince first those responsible for treatment, then the treatment staff acting as an aggregate body (with one or more members enacting the role of devil's advocate), then the superintendent, and finally the SCRB of just such changes before the case is forwarded to the State Board of Parole for consideration. It is worth observing that the 1994 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (at p. 650) indicates forty-four months as the median sentence actually served in state prisons nationally for forcible sexual assault; my 19 years of experience on the SCRB inclines me to believe that the median sentence for that offense among ADTC inmates has been very nearly 100% greater. When called upon to defend the data which reflect our low rate of release on parole in contrast to a rate that is some 1300% higher for felony offenders in the state system (as we are called upon to do with some frequency in Federal court, in cases which allege deprivation of the right to due process inherent in clinical judgment, collective or otherwise), SCRB has replied that our criteria for recommending parole are and must remain essentially clinical--since they lead to a clinical judgment not merely that an offender has benefitted from treatment but that he (or occasionally, she) is unlikely to recidivate in the future, sexually or otherwise, if returned to the community. We are, in essence, called upon to affirm a null hypothesis, a task that would daunt the best of our hard-science colleagues. In most years, the responses from the corridors of political power in Trenton to SCRB has usually been to cavil at our retentionist practices. Not so in the summer of 1994. Megan Kanka's killer had been convicted twice of sexual offenses against children. He had been released not on parole from the second of his sentences, but rather because he had completed his sentence. …

Understanding Scholarly Presuppositions: A Crucial Tool for Research?

It is argued that all scholarly enquiry unavoidably rests on either tacitly or explicitly accepted presuppositions. Such presuppositions control enquiry with varying degrees of strength, functioning either as axioms or methodological assumptions. In the interests of objectivity the Christian scholar has the duty to test his own presuppositions by reference to the primary documents of his faith, and by reflecting upon the different presuppositions adopted by other scholars. The quest for scholarly objectivity must not be confused with neutrality.

Having faith, being neutral, and doing justice: Toward a paradigm of responsibility in the comparative study of religions

My aim is to clarify some of the basic parameters of responsibility in the comparative, phenomenological study of religions. In the process I propose some features of a paradigm to guide such study, a paradigm that will reconcile scholarly objectivity, the requirement of justice for the other, and a faith of one's own. I begin by posing several problematic considerations that call for clarification of what constitutes responsibility in the comparative study of religion, drawing on some critical reservations voiced by Arvind Sharma regarding the widespread uncntical employment of the phenomenological approach. My phrasing is deliberate: I do not wish to denigrate the phenomenological approach, only to call for a more responsible use of it. In the interest of 'objectively apprehending the experiential meaning of religious phenomena, phenomenological study calls for a posture of a certain kind of neutrality known as the epoche. I attempt to clarify precisely what such neutrality involves, i.e., its nature and limitations, first m general and then specifically in connection with the study of religion. Most of the problematic considerations I discuss first can be traced to confusions about the epoche and lack of a clear sense of responsibility to guide its practice. An example of some of these confusions as found in a well regarded textbook is then discussed. I go on to sketch certain crucial parameters of responsibility transcending phenomenological study that as such should serve to guide its practice.

Gateway Cities and Other Essays by Leonard K. Eaton

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 417 historians, even a casual review of the documents reveals the manifold considerations involved in conducting a canning business in the early 20th century. Newell’s efforts are perhaps of less value to historians of technology. The emphasis of the Doyle Collection is on British Co­ lumbia, although there is information on the American industry. Doyle’s careful analysis of canning machinery, cannery labor, and op­ erating costs draws on the Canadian experience, yet Canadian can­ neries seldom attained the same level of technological sophistication as the massive American plants located on Puget Sound and throughout Alaska. During the half decade immediately before the establishment of the BCPA, the average British Columbia cannery produced only 38 percent of the annual output attained by the average cannery in Alaska, the industry’s most heavily mechanized region. The Canadian canneries operated successfully at a lower level of mechanization be­ cause of the premium position their product occupied in the vital English market and the ready availability of inexpensive native and Chinese labor in most of the province’s fishing regions. Newell’s in­ troductory essays to each chapter imply that the Canadian experience so well documented by Doyle can be extended to include the industry as a whole. She claims that technological change “did not play as large a role in this food-processing industry as it did in most of the others” (p. 15), a claim that simply cannot be upheld if the large American canneries are included in one’s picture of the industry. The Doyle Collection is virtually unique, providing an unequaled view of the organization and operation of the canned-salmon industry in the early 20th century. While Newell has attempted to select documents that reveal trends and events within the industry, and on the whole has succeeded admirably, some of her selections, particu­ larly lists of fishermen’s names, cannery trademarks, and cannery supply lists will probably be of interest principally to students of the industry. Patrick W. O’Bannon Dr. O’Bannon is principal historian with John Milner Associates, Inc., a cultural resources consulting firm in Philadelphia. He has published on the subject of technological innovation within the Pacific Coast canned-salmon industry. Gateway Cities and Other Essays. By Leonard K. Eaton. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989. Pp. xvii + 203; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95. In laying aside “traditional scholarly objectivity” (p. xiii), Leonard Eaton has written an engaging collection of nine essays rooted unabashedly in his midwestern past and organized loosely around the theme of a “Gateway City,” a metaphor borrowed from CarlJonas, the 418 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Nebraska novelist. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Omaha was the quintessential gateway city, an urban setting in which a river valley, a railroad network, and a warehouse district were “particularly important” (p. xiii) because they established the commercial connec­ tion between the urban core and its periphery, and between one gateway city and another throughout the North American midsec­ tion. Eaton never quantifies how many gateway cities there are; he is more concerned with the warehouse districts of four representatives of the type: St. Joseph, Missouri; St. Paul, Minnesota; Omaha, Nebraska; and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since boyhood Eaton has been intrigued with warehouse structures, and, now that he is a retired architectural historian (one of his major contributions has been to cast appropriate light on the role of clients in architectural innovations), he has taken the time to update past research and to initiate new work concerning the structure, function, and history of Midwest ware­ houses after the 1885 construction of H. H. Richardson’s Marshall Field Warehouse in Chicago. How well does he succeed? The “disparate nature of the essays” (p. xi) indicates something of their unevenness. Because of their focus on particular gateway cities or on architects who designed for corporate clients in need of warehouses, the first six chapters cohere. The last three (with discussions of Jens Jensen, two lesser-known commissions of John Root, and George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series paintings) are less relevant to the book’s theme: that the construction of Midwest warehouses within the past century was more important...