scholarly journals New lessons from old shells: Changing perspectives on the Kula

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-163
Author(s):  
Roger M. Keesing
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
The West ◽  
Primitive Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Way

The kula partners of the Melanesian Massim have been one of anthropology's most compelling and influential and enduring images of Otherness, created both by Malinowski's rhetorical power and the sheer fascination they themselves engender. Malinowski saw in the kula lessons for the social science of his time, as well as popular stereotypes, for example the critique of the ostensibly universal figure of the Homo economicus. While anthropology's fashions have changed, and what there ever was of a "primitive" world has been overturned, engulfed, and obliterated, the fascination of the kula has endured. Indeed, this fascination has been a lure helping to attract further generations of fieldworkers to Malinowski's Trobriands and other islands of the kula "ring." Assessing the new evidence, I will suggest that the emerging picture has important implications not only for our understanding of the region and the phenomenon, but for the way we think about Alterity, about "primitive society", a world that never existed, and about anthropology's Orientalist project of representing radical cultural difference to the West. The new perspectives on Massim exchange exemplify directions in which contemporary anthropology has been moving, and provide some useful insights about where and how it needs now to move.

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

The Emergence of Political Science in Communist Countries

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 572-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Powell ◽  
Paul Shoup
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
Free Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Independent Inquiry

The scientific study of politics requires an environment which accepts free inquiry and discussion. Scholars must be permitted to ask questions of their own choosing, gather data without hindrance, and communicate freely with one another about their findings. To be sure, freedom to investigate sensitive policy matters is limited by all governments. Moreover, political scientists themselves inevitably introduce some measure of their own values or ideological predispositions into their works. But it is obvious that without the guarantee of certain minimum freedoms, political science as we know it in the West could never exist.Communist regimes traditionally have made independent inquiry or objective discussion of political phenomena impossible. In the Stalinist period, scholarly analyses of politics—or, for that matter, of aesthetic, literary, moral or economic questions—amounted to little more than doctrinal exegesis or the elaboration of practical measures to implement the Party's demands. An autonomous social science in Stalin's Russia or Eastern Europe was simply unthinkable.Since the dictator's death, however, Communist governments have modified their hostility toward the social sciences in general, and toward political science in particular. A decade of de-Stalinization has been accompanied by steps to encourage the scientific study of politics. In several East European countries, political science now enjoys recognition as a discipline in its own right.This does not mean that political science in Communist countries has freed itself of political controls, or that what is presented as political science is always of scholarly merit.

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

Should Any Court Accept the “Social Authority” Paradigm?

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Nowlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Evidence ◽  
Research Criteria ◽  
Science Evidence ◽  
The Way

Monahan and Walker have proposed that American judges should fundamentally alter the way they receive and assess social science evidence in court, by treating social science research as “law-like” or authoritative when certain professional research criteria are met. Strict application of the stipulated criteria to various kinds of social science research introduced into American and Canadian courts reveals, however, that such research can seldom be considered authoritative in the way Monahan and Walker imagine. Accordingly, as a general rule judges should be reluctant to apply Monahan and Walker’s “social authority” model to the courtroom resolution of difficult questions of social, economic, and cultural or historical facts.

Reconsidering Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Louis Gates, Jr
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Way

Race is one of the most elusive phenomena of social life. While we generally know it when we see it, it's not an easy concept to define. Social science literature has argued that race is a Western, sociopolitical concept that emerged with the birth of modern imperialism, whether in the sixteenth century (the Age of Discovery) or the eighteenth century (the Age of Enlightenment). This book points out that there is a disjuncture between the way race is conceptualized in the social science and medical literature: some of the modern sciences employ racial and ethnic categories. As such, race has a physical, as opposed to a purely social, dimension. The book argues that in order to more fully understand what we mean by race, social scientists need to engage genetics, medicine, and health. To be sure, the long shadow of eugenics and the Nazi use of scientific racism have cast a pall over the effort to understand this complicated relationship between social science and race. But while the text rejects pseudoscience and hierarchical ways of looking at race, it makes the claim that it is time to reassess the Western-based, social construction paradigm. The chapters in this book consider three fundamental tensions in thinking about race: one between theories that see race as fixed or malleable; a second between the idea that race is a universal but modern Western concept and the idea that it has a deeper and more complicated cultural history; and a third between sociopolitical and biological/biomedical concepts of race. Arguing that race is not merely socially constructed, the chapters offer a collection of views on the way that social scientists must reconsider the idea of race in the age of genomics.

scholarly journals Singaporean Social Science Journals: Creating a Regional Voice or Scrambling to Reach the Top?

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-323
Author(s):  
Brendan Luyt
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
North American ◽  
Final Part ◽  
The West ◽  
Journal Editors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Missed Opportunity

AbstractGiven its newfound position as a solid member of the global semi-periphery, has social science in Singapore been able to develop alternatives to academic dependency on the West? To answer this question, I focus on one segment of Singapore’s social science infrastructure, journal editors. In the interviews with these individuals, it becomes clear that there is an awareness of a division between journals published in the West and those from other parts of the world. However, in terms of wholeheartedly working towards developing regional alternatives, there appears a more contradictory pattern of reactions. The majority of editors are keen to develop regional perspectives or voices in their journals but they are equally keen to compete with North American and European journals on their own terms. A significant minority, however, are focused squarely on that world to the near exclusion of other concerns. In the final part of the article, I argue that the views of Singapore’s journal editors closely reflects the adoption of what Bourdieu describes as a “succession strategy” in the playing of the social science game. The result is a missed opportunity at applying some form of delinking strategy as recommended by Samir Amin in situations of dependency, be they economic or intellectual.

From the Outside Looking In: TheAnnalesSchool, the Non-Western World, andSocial Science History

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-574
Author(s):  
Peter C. Perdue
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Western World ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Way

During the 40 years since its founding, the Social Science History Association (SSHA) and its journal have attracted many scholars to the field of social science history, stimulating many new lines of research, but it has only had limited success in developing some of the more prominent new trends in the history field. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's early presence in the journalSocial Science Historydid not stimulate much further work on thelongue durée. In environmental history, transnational history, and studies of the non-Western world, the SSHA has not led the way. The article calls on members of the SSHA to think about creative responses to these new directions of inquiry.

The Revival of Political Science in China

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (04) ◽  
pp. 745-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhao Baoxu ◽  
David Chu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The Way

As an independent basic social science, the study of politics occupies an important position among all the social sciences. In 1952, however, China abolished political science teaching and research. This was a mistake which is now being corrected. China has reestablished the field of political science in recent years.When a historical event is shown to be mistaken, people often like to describe the reasons for its having taken place as very absurd and unimaginable, as though to demonstrate how confused people were at that time compared with how smart we are now. Such a simple attitude, however, will not help us in understanding the realities scientifically nor will it help us in learning from the lessons of history, and is therefore to be avoided.This essay describes both objective conditions and the way people thought, both in the early 1950s and after 1976. It deals with two opposite events: first, the abolition of political science in China three decades ago, and second, its current revival.

“Spellbinding Portugal: Two British Women’s Travel Voices”

2018 ◽  
pp. 295-312
Author(s):  
Maria Zulmira Castanheira
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Travel Writers ◽  
Women's Travel ◽  
The Way

A genre prone to the thematization of cultural difference, travel writing has, in recent decades, attracted great attention within the area of the Social Sciences and Humanities and gained the respect of both academics and critics. Travel writers are mediator fgures who, through their literary constructs, resulting from their experience of mobility and confrontation with alterity, may shape and circulate positive ideas about foreign cultural realities, thus facilitating openness to difference, empathy, acceptance, understanding, admiration. This article analyses Sybille Bedford’s and Brigid Brophy’s representation of Portugal, paying attention to the authors’ focus on the natural and built landscapes and the way they seek out what they considered to be unique to this Iberian country, thus promoting an image of it as a spellbinding place, charming and exotic, worth the journey.

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