Western Social Science Research Articles

In the Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

This article argues that cross cultural management is dominated by the objectivist paradigm of functionalism which is itself embedded in an ethnocentric western culture characterized by amoral rationalism, affective neutrality and orientation to Truth. The discussion uses research into Chinese culture and Chinese management to contextualize the debate. Western culture, it is argued, is an inadequate vehicle for understanding Chinese culture and management. The scientific sub-culture of functionalism is hegemonic within western social scientific paradigms. The paradigm hermeticism and paradigm `wars' characterizing this contested domain prevent integrative and synthetic views. The approaches of Hofstede and Schwartz exacerbate the problem, resulting in avoidance of an agenda to understand the complexities of culture beyond a western mechanistic, quantitative parochialism. The problem is summarized as attributable to the structural obsession of western social science that results in the denigration of understanding of process. Two possible solutions to this problem are outlined; namely `reform' and `radical change'.

East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. By Daniel A. Bell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 396p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

"I continue to believe," states Brian Barry (Justice as Impar- tiality, 1995, p. 3), "in the possibility of putting forward a universally valid case in favor of liberal egalitarian princi- ples." Barry's belief is not idiosyncratic but widely shared by Western intellectuals. In fact, a traditional trademark of Western philosophy has been to insist on the universal validity of its teachings, while relegating other cultures and ideas to a merely contingent or particularistic status. The belief tends to be shared by much of Western social science.

The Study of the Social Sciences in Developing Societies: Towards an Adequate Conceptualization of Relevance

For the last 100 years or so, there has been a strong awareness of a lack of fit between the western social sciences and non-western realities. Lacking, however, is the conceptualization of irrelevance. What is meant, at a conceptual level, by irrelevance has rarely been the subject of discussion. As a result, the calls for more relevant social science, often reflected in moves to decolonize, indigenize, or nationalize the social sciences, are equally incoherent. This is because the logical opposite of irrelevance, that is relevance, also lacks conceptualization. In this article, the author elaborates what he understands to be the central features of irrelevance and relevance, provides a preliminary conceptualization of relevance by way of a typology and discusses the nature of relevant social science.

Fictional Oungan: In the Long Shadow of the Fetish

My active encounter with the ritual arts of Haitian Vodou occurred in narratives of aggression and protection recounted by clients in a mental health clinic serving Haitians in the Boston area. However, the objects referred to were not the public forms, such as sequinned flags, painted drums and veve, or ground drawings, usually emblematic of the ritual corpus. What emerged in these sessions were descriptions of wanga—instrumental objects and materials associated with private “magical” work to transform human situations. Unequipped to counter the influence of such forms on their own terms when they were experienced as harmful, I resorted to the standard clinical repertoire, including psychological evaluation, counseling, and, in liaison with consulting psychiatrists, psychotropic medications. These professional strategies were often ineffective and even, occasionally, destructive. It was not simply a matter of my own ambivalence toward the Eurocentric theoretical foundations of my profession, or my limits as a non-Haitian therapist, which undermined my efforts. For several years after leaving, I continued to receive calls from other clinicians, both Haitian and non-Haitian, of varying theoretical persuasions, whose efforts to help the same clients had been similarly thwarted. Compared to the interpersonally charged, antiaesthetic, and often concealed wanga that I had encountered through their impact on people’s lives, the visually captivating and public Vodou flag, or drapo, a focus of my later doctoral work (see my “For the Flower of Ginen”), seemed easy. During the initial stages of my research, however, when I worked with the oungan (Vodou priest) and flagmaker Clotaire Bazile, it was the intimate and potent objects he assembled for travay, for private work with clients, not the shimmering sequinned drapo, that were in evidence. Described by K a ren Brown as “reifications of problematic relational situations” (“Serving the Spirits” 210), 1 these forms, such as hanging bottles, cloth figures, tied bundles, and mirrors, gradually became inseparable from my growing recognition of Bazile’s talents as a healer and of the bitter trials undergone by many who consulted him, including people recently terrorized by the postcoup military regime in Haiti. However, these working objects also continued to trigger sorcery fears associated with my previous clinical work and internalized colonial and postcolonial representations of the oungan as the malevolent and/or fraudulent creator and manipulator of destructive wanga. 2 Unable, by virtue of experience, to contain the power of these objects exclusively within psychological, socioeconomic, semantic, or other explanatory models of Western social science, I was also aware of their resonance as fetish within the colonial discourse that legitimated conquest and slavery. As Suzanne Blier explains in “T ruth and Seeing,” the term,

The politics of conceptualizing corruption in reform China

It is significant to examine Chinese debates over corruption for several reasons. These debates confirm certain universal aspects of corruption that have been emphasized in the Western social science literature. They also suggest unique features of corruption that are useful for understanding the issue in the Chinese context. They further reveal how the conceptualization of corruption is politicized in the Chinese discourse,giving insight to the alignment of political and intellectual forces on the issue. Finally, Chinese analyses have heuristic values for general discussions of political corruption. This paper surveys Chinese debates over the definitions, sources, and consequences of corruption from the late 1980's to the late 1990's.

Understanding Sport and Body Culture in Japan

This article argues that the recent growth of interest in the body in Western social science has been largely based on Western assumptions of social development. In particular, studies of sport and body culture more generally have either ignored non-Western societies, such as Japan, or sustained stereotypical views of Japanese culture. As a small amount of research being developed by anthropologists suggests, the study of sport and body culture in Japan reveals similarities and differences with the West. The pattern of Japanese social development is both a route to modernity and one of the roots of modernity. Reflections on three areas (body culture, physical culture and sport) illustrate this argument and suggest where further research is required.

Sociology in Singapore: Global Discourse in Local Context

AbstractThis paper reviews the development trajectory of sociology as a discipline and its practice in Singapore. Viewing sociology as a global discourse, the paper argues that there have been, at least, three waves in the development of sociological practice in Singapore. These waves mark a shift in research interests that somehow parallel the changing official interest in the findings of sociological research. Such shifts in research interest and changes in curricula reflect important dynamics not only in the relationship between academic knowledge and official need for such knowledge but with time also an increasing appreciation of critical inquiry. This paper argues that there are limitations in viewing sociology simply as a "Western social science" in a "non-Western context". For the clarity of both conceptual and empirical understanding, it may be useful to rethink the relationship between sociological knowledge and power as a dynamic process with some universal features. This would entail going beyond the West versus non-West polarity and assessing the development of social science in terms of the global/local interface.

Some reflections on the western bias of media theory

This paper sketches a personal perspective of this phenomenon, as seen through Western eyes, and looks at some of its origins, manifestations and possible effects. The roots lie deeply embeded in Western social science where they are mixed with ideas about the superiority of Western (and Protestant) society. In relation to media theory, the bias partly comes from the extent to which media theory is dependent on and reflective of the meda themsleves, which according to some hypotheses are also very ‘Western’ if not ‘American’. The question arises how to combat, avoid or counter the bias in seeking a more universal form of media theory.

"Dead Men in Sultry Darkness": Western Theory and the Problematic of a Baseline Cultural Motif in Islamic Ascetic Tradition

In my researches on the mystical chanters in Egypt and Morocco, I have had to grapple with the problem of how to understand the whole culture of the ascetic tradition in Islam. I have concluded that the usual procedures among Western social sciences lead to a distortion of the lived experience of the Sūfīs and may not encapsulate Islamic tradition faithfully. This paper is an attempt to sketch a modified approach. The focal point of the paper is the claim that the potential member is initiated into a coherent socio-spiritual organization that transcends the normal time/space framework. It deals with issues of learning the code, with spiritual kin-group relationships and with the content of the spiritual cosmos. It suggests that the liturgical dimension of Sūfism is the central ingredient of an independent-minded spiritual movement ; it both holds the disparate social elements together, and connects the ordinary world with the supernatural world in an apparently seamless manner.

"Dead Men in Sultry Darkness"

In my researches on the mystical chanters in Egypt and Morocco, I have had to grapple with the problem of how to understand the whole culture of the ascetic tradition in Islam. I have concluded that the usual procedures among Western social sciences lead to a distortion of the lived experience of the Suf and may not encapsulate Islamic tradition faithfully. This paper is an attempt to sketch a modified approach. The focal point of the paper is the claim that the potential member is initiated into a coherent socio-spiritual organization that transcends the normal time/space framework. It deals with issues of learning the code, with spiritual kin-group relationships and with the content of the spiritual cosmos. It suggests that the liturgical dimension of Sufism is the central ingredient of an independent-minded spiritual movement; it both holds the disparate social elements together, and connects the ordinary world with the supernatural world in an apparently seamless manner.

Social transformation, development, and European social sciences

The paper starts from the impression that European social scientists in the mainstream of all disciplines remain surprisingly unimpressed by the present global crisis. The general thesis is that mainstream Western social science is still not willing, and may in fact be unable, to understand the explosive character of the transformations happening, and even less of the societal content of the sustainability problématique. To challenge this apathy, three examples are used to illustrate what happens outside the ivory tower, and their interlinkages are discussed: the gradual destruction of tropical rainforests, the ‘Asian’ financial and economic meltdown, and socio‐economic polarization and anomia in the transformation societies of the former socialist block. It then goes into sustainable development, marches on to discuss briefly western social sciences and their major flaws, and finally draws some conclusions about where European social sciences should be directed.

The environmental knowledge frontier: transects with experts and villagers

Knowledge of the environment has often been associated with ‘expert’ or professional interpretations. The knowledge and views of villagers have consequently been obscured and underused. Comparisons of ‘expert’ and local perspectives in the field are rare. Local knowledge is gaining wide recognition in Western social science, but is often still not accepted in other disciplines or other societies. This paper explores one knowledge interface between ‘experts’ and ‘locals’ on environmental issues. It focuses on the interface between official policy and local everyday life of the rural population, by presenting findings from transects conducted with separate groups of villagers and ‘experts’ in Nyando Division, Kisumu District, Kenya. The transects were used both for basic evaluation of the environment and as a forum to elicit opinion from ‘experts’ and ‘locals’. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social Science from an East Asian Perspective: With a Focus on Sociology

Abstract: Social science is a very historic and unique form of knowledge. It was institutionalized in nineteenth century Europe. By the time Europeans came to East Asia in the late nineteenth century, Western social science was already a dominant form of social knowledge, delegetimating many other forms of social knowledge of the world. After European social science had been implanted in East Asia, issues such as relevancy and indigenization haunted East Asian scholars. Now the quest for “East Asian” social science is very strong in part because of the shifting world power relations and also due to the emergence of indigenization discourse. This paper is an attempt to discuss these issues from an East Asian perspective.

The China Factor in Modern Japanese Thought: The Case of Tachibana Shiraki, 1881-1945 (review)

i84 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 Lincoln Li. The China Factor in Modern Japanese Thought: The Case of Tachibana Shiraki, 1881-1945. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1996. x, 171 pp. Hardcover $65.50, isbn 0-7914-3039-1. Paperback $21.95, isbn 0-7914-3040-5. Tachibana Shiraki tH^ (1881-1945)—journalist, propagandist, ideologue, and a respected, self-taught scholar of Chinese popular Daoism and of grassroots Chinese society—was an influential and independent-minded Japanese living in China and China's Northeast for more than thirty years, from 1906 to 1939. After 1939, as the Japanese military that dominated Manzhouguo became more intolerant of alternative voices, Tachibana retreated back to Tokyo. From Japan itself, he strove to check Japanese militarism by reforming Japan's political structure, to modify Japanese governmental policies toward China, and to move Japan closer to his own vision ofa peaceful agrarian-based New East, or Shin Töyö ^JÎU^. Scholars researching Sino-Japanese relations in the twentieth century invariably run across Tachibana's name. Until now, however, not one article in English (much less a book) has focused on this important figure. This "little failing" of China scholars is symptomatic of a "big failing" of China scholars, that is, our failure to investigate the full variety of activities of Japanese in China. Sweeping generalizations and simple stereotypes dominate our thinking. Moving to a fuller understanding of the Japanese presence in all its complexity—and its varied impact not only in China but also back home in Japan—is long overdue. Only systematic data-gathering and analysis of primary source materials in both Japanese and Chinese can achieve this end. Lincoln Li's book moves us in the right direction. Li is an established scholar of Japanese activities in North China, going back to his pioneering study, The Japanese Army in North China, 1937-1941: Problems of Political and Economic Control (1975). In his present book, he focuses on one person , Tachibana Shiraki, in the manner of Mark Peattie, who focused on a complex military leader in his Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West (!975)> and of Joshua Fogel on a brilliant sinologist in his Nakae Ushikichi in China: The Mourning ofSpirit (1989). In an introductory passage that clarifies his choice of book title, Li remarks, "The China factor was imbedded in Japanese traditions" (p. 2). Li explores this claim via the life and thought of Tachibana. The choice of Tachibana is significant , since Tachibana specialized in studying China's folk culture and popular 1998 by University Daoism, in defiance of"traditional Japanese scholarship on China" (p. 14), which concentrated on China's elites and elitist traditions. The case ofTachibana gives the lie to notions of a narrow or uniform "Japanese" approach to modern China. ofHawaii Press Reviews 185 Tachibana's three intellectual phases serve as the organizational structure of Li's study. In phase one, 1906-1925, after arriving in China, Tachibana experimented with various methodologies, including the Western social sciences, to explore Chinese society and popular culture. In phase two, 1925-1931, catalyzed by China's May Thirtieth Movement, he embarked upon political commentary and the exploration ofthe themes ofpopular consciousness (minshü ishiki .K^bIII) and national consciousness (minzoku ishiki ËzlMMïÈ). After the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and up to 1939, or phase three, Tachibana devoted himselfto ideas and policies aimed at autonomous self-rule for Manchuria, focused on village society , through agrarianism and the spread ofrural cooperatives. In his most influential period, between 1925 and 1936, his voice was heard broadly through various journals, including some edited or cofounded by him. After 1939, prevented by the Japanese military from nonmilitary pursuits, Tachibana took refuge in Japan, from where he tried to moderate military policies that he considered misguided and ultimately self-defeating. In this study, Li identifies the parameters ofimportant issues and, using predominantly Japanese materials, begins the process of exploration. It is only a start, however. Many compelling issues are half-explored, and lack the rigor expected ofintellectual histories. Contradictory shifts in policy recommendations by Tachibana, for example, as he sought to accommodate rising Japanese military aggression and pressures, are not challenged...

From Phobias and Ideological Prescription

The article offers a comparative exploration of the variety and complexity of economic transition strategies. There is also a compelling need to focus on the weaknesses of putative market forces when "designing" appropriate strategies for transition and economic development. Attention is drawn to financial market failures and their impact on economic reconstruction and political liberalization experiences. Particular attention is drawn to the need for a critical assessment of developmental strategies and transition models, and their potential "shelf life, " in the broader spectrum of debate about complex patterns of regulation and deregulation in mixed economies. The Russian experience with economic and political development cannot be lightly dismissed as irrelevant to the management development agenda, especially in the face of the failure by Western social science to fully address the complexities of economic and political transition that need to go beyond much of the ideological, and recently more rhetorical, arguments sofar offered by Western management and economic specialists.

Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa

What role does ritual play in the everyday lives of modern Africans? How are so-called traditional cultural forms deployed by people seeking empowerment in a world where modernity has failed to deliver on its promises? Some of the essays in Modernity and Its Malcontents address familiar anthropological issues but treat them in fresh ways, situating them amidst the polyphonies of contemporary Africa. Others explore distinctly non-traditional subjects - among them the Nigerian popular press and soul-eating in Niger - in such a way as to confront the conceptual limits of Western social science. Addressing challenges posed by contemporary African realities, the authors subject such concepts as modernity, ritual, power and history to renewed critical scrutiny. They are united by a wish to preserve the diversity and historical specificity of local signs and practices, voices and perspectives. The contributors, all from the Africanist circle at the University of Chicago, are Adeline Masquelier, Deborah Kaspin, J. Lorand Matory, Ralph A. Austen, Andrew Apter, Misty L. Bastian, Mark Auslander and Pamela G. Schmoll.

Max Weber's Concept of Patrimonialism and the Soviet System

The concept of patrimonial domination was at first underutilized in western social science and then often used without proper clarification of its methodological basis. When the Soviet system was characterized as patrimonial, conceptual analysis was also generally lacking. In the article an attempt is made to fill in the gap between Weberian sociological theory and historical studies of Soviet society. It is argued that, although the concept of patrimonialism is applicable to the Stalinist system, this concept is not sufficient for the description of the Soviet state throughout its history. It is assumed in the article that Weber's concept of Beamtenmherrschaft might be more appropriate for the analysis of the post-Stalinist political regime in the USSR.

The Civil Society Debate in Africa

'Civil society' is suddenly all the rage in social science and comparative politics circles. Seminars, books, special issues of journals, even institutes have expounded the idea of civil society in developing countries. 'Civil societies' have been sought and apparently found in 'nascent,' 'incipient,' or 'emerging' (in some cases re-emerging) forms in places, such as the Middle East and China, where Western social science had long denied their presence even their possibility. Academics are not the only ones employing the concept. Political movements and lately even non-governmental organizations (ngos) have used it, although how much in both cases seems to vary from country to country and to reflect local conditions and intellectual traditions. The recent revival of the concept follows on the democratic revolutions in eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and even earlier on the rise of social movements in the West; it is at once the product of an attempt by political actors to conceptualize the nature of their struggles and by scholars to provide a key to understanding global political developments. Indeed the term has come to be virtually synonymous with 'democracy.' The growth of the concept in African studies has been particularly rapid.1 As recently as 1989 Michael Bratton

Yin and Yang: Musings While Meandering the "Bits-of-Data Bikepath"

This article examines some of the scientific, cultural, and social ramifications of our cultural courtship with the concepts of relativism and pluralism. Western social science, with U.S. hegemony, has come full circle from early absolutist tendencies to a more widely accepting posture. The orientation is of whole cloth with current U.S. culture in many realms where a sometimes virulent form of relativism pervades many of our social and moral judgments and actions. Although the orientation may be transitory, many of its features can inform us in valuable ways on a variety of our endeavors.

A reviewer's introduction toStaging the new romantic hero in the old cynical theatre: On managers, roles and change in Poland

The idea that organizational behavior theories are dominated by American cultural assumptions is old news (Hofstede, 1980). Unfortunately, this important insight has done little to foster the integration of theories from other cultural perspectives into mainstream organizational behavior. Rather, it has been comfortably marginalized as the study of cultural differences, leaving most published research and theory still dominated by American ethnocentrism. It is a sad fact that the internationalization of organizational and management theories has done considerably more to enrich our store of anecdotes than it has to broaden fundamental organization and management theory. The problem is a formidable one. Nevertheless, one reason for this continuing theoretical ethnocentricity is that Anglo-American rational empiricism has unquestioned dominance in our best academic journals. Thus, I was pleased when the editors of the Journal of Organizational Behavior asked my assistance in reviewing and introducing the following article. Our objective was to bring a work of theory deriving from rather different cultural experiences to the attention of demanding readers steeped in rational empiricism. In my research on the transforming organizations of the formerly communist countries, I have developed a great respect for the theoretical insights of my central and eastern European colleagues, and what can only be called a sheer delight in their style. Unfortunately, the very indirection and witty personal asides that make such insights so compelling when delivered over the dinner table render them unfit for print in a respected Western social science journal. The editors of JOB have commendably decided to provide a vehicle for sharing these insights in this occasional special section. The following article, 'Staging the new romantic hero in the old cynical theatre' by Professors Kostera, Proppe and Szatkowski, draws on the Romantic heritage of Polish culture to introduce the study of managerial rationalizations via the metaphor of the search for a self-image as a romantic hero. In this regard, Polish managers are hardly unique. Yet while metaphors of organization are familiar from Morgan's (1986) work, there has not been much concern with organizational participants' personal uses of metaphors in the maintenance of positive selfimages at work. Why should the study of the rationalizations that organizational participants strive to develop and sustain be so new to us? Don't most managers strive to create romantic myths about themselves? How else to explain the perennial attractiveness of military and sports metaphors, despite ample evidence that complex business and nonprofit enterprises operate quite differently than do battlefields and playing fields? Don't managers generally seek to enhance their esteem in their own eyes and the eyes of others? How else to explain their deep interest in status symbols like titles, parking places, and corner offices? While certain symbolic features of managers'