SECTION II

Perspectives on Social Science

Western, ‘Post-Western’ and 'Non-
Western’ (cont’d)
SOSC 1000 6.0
Lecture 10
Jan Krouzil PhD
June 10, 2021
 Agenda
PART I Western and/or universal social science?
PART II The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern
PART III A non-Western perspective: the bias of social
science
PART IV ‘Post-Western’ social sciences
PART V Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non-
Western settings
KEY WORDS
 Part I
Western and/or universal social science? (1)

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 often it 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 science?
o the systematic search for new knowledge according to criteria, which allow to control and
eventually repeat the experiments. Traditionally 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)

The clash of epochs

• unlike the clash of civilizations
o the ‘fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily
economic. … The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics’ (Huntington 1993)
• conflict among traditional society, modernity, and postmodernity
• has led the West to be internally torn apart and increasingly incapable of withstanding newly
emerging challenges (Korab-Karpowicz 2019)
• how to reverse the trend?
o the Western world has to reconstruct itself again as a civilization
o needs to rediscover the value of its classical moral and intellectual traditions
o should be not merely a return to the past but a creative return that will initiate evolutionity—a new
evolutionary epoch, which would replace modernity and postmodernity
 The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (2)

The modern and traditional divide

• ‘modernity’ refers to a historical period beginning in the sixteen and
seventeenth centuries or even earlier
o its beginnings can be associated with the rise of modern Western
philosophy and science
o a period during which the West through scientific and technological
advances has achieved an unprecedented power and extended its
domination over the rest of the world
o initially, this domination took the form of colonization of overseas
territories and then the form of commercial exploitation and political
dominance of poorer and weaker peoples
 The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (3)

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 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)

‘De-traditionalization’ and ‘secularization’

•the traditional society, animated by ancient customs and traditional
religiosity, is replaced by a modern society organized according to
the principles of rationality
o this task is undertaken in the name of social progress
•the history of the West
o characterized by challenges and radical transformations
o Christianity challenges the ancient world assimilating some vital aspects of its
culture
o in turn it is challenged by modernity
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (5)
• modernity overturns the ideas and values of the traditional (classical and
Christian) West European civilization
o emphasizes human self-interest
o replaces the classical concept of reflective or deliberative rationality by the
modern concept of purposive or instrumental rationality
• this modern subjectivity is expressed at a practical level in
individualism
o in thought and action aimed at one’s own particularity, that is, motivated by self-
interest
• by becoming ‘modern’ the West was able to impose its will on the rest
of the world and to force it toward modernization
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (6)
• ‘wisdom’ in the form of Western liberal democracy is now attained
and philosophy as the quest for wisdom no longer needed
oas an academic discipline it is marginalized and replaced by the
particular sciences
oits domain, insofar as it asks for a politically and morally good life, is
overtaken by political scientists and other narrow specialists.
Has ‘history’ ended?
• liberal democracy is a modern creation
oits triumph suggests a victory of modernity
ohas modernity been finally victorious?
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (7)
The Challenge of Postmodernity
•the West’s ‘modernity’ is now being challenged by postmodernity
o both a challenge to and a radical continuation of the modern project
o dating back to the 1970s and 1980s
o its beginnings can be associated with the collapse of communism symbolized by the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the rise of post-Marxist critical and postmodern
thought
Writers of postmodernity
•‘deconstructed’ or eliminated the ingredients necessary for ‘a world view’
o such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth as correspondence
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (8)
•denied the modern idea of social progress propelled by unblemished faith in
reason
•challenged the ideas of rationality and objectivity themselves
•questioned any privileged—objective, rational, masculine, and especially
Western—way of looking at things
• challenge the scientific ideal of a detached, neutral observer who has no race, no
gender, no cultural identity
• explores patterns of domination, including those by the sovereign state
• seek to remove the Eurocentric emphasis on rational inquiry, detachment, and
objectivity and replace it by the ideology of emancipation, liberation from
oppressive structures, justice without borders, cultural pluralism, and the
celebration of difference and diversity
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (9)
Traditional society, modernity, and postmodernity
•three epochs and at the same time three different
paradigmatic ideological or cultural formations
•the key concepts that can be associated with traditional
society are family, morality, religiosity, and community
o these basic concepts represent values that are common to many
civilizations, including the premodern Western civilization
The clash of epochs: traditional, modern and
post-modern (10)
• both modernity and postmodernity represent a challenge to
these values
o by socializing people into individuals who rationally pursue their
own interests, modernity challenges a naturally grown community
and replaces it with self-seeking individuals and the artificially
constructed unity of a nation
o postmodernity in turn challenges this national unity by its notions
of diversity and multiculturalism, weakens the nation-state, and
deconstructs its sovereignty
 PART III
A non-Western perspective: the bias of social science (1)

The 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: the bias of 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: the bias of social science (2)

The concept of globalization

•‘debated since the 1960s lacks universal universalism because
the oligopoly of the social sciences, which includes
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: the bias of social
science (3)
•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: the bias of social
science (4)
The term ‘globalization’
• ‘a cluster of related changes [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: the bias of social
science (5)
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: the bias of social
science (6)
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: the bias of social
science (7)
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: the bias of social
science (8)
• 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’
 A non-Western perspective: the bias of social
science (9)
•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)

Invention of a "post-western" space in the social sciences

o as part of a dialogue with researchers from different Asian
countries
• with the circulation and globalization of knowledge
o new centers and new peripheries are forming
o new hierarchies appear more or less discreetly that produce
competitions for the development of ‘new’ knowledge
o today, social sciences are global (Calhoun and Wieviorka 2013,
Kuhn 2013)
 ‘Post-Western’ social sciences (2)

• a period of post-westernization of knowledge and co-production of

arrangements between situated knowledge (Roulleau-Berger, 2011)
• in Asia, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian intellectuals mobilized
themselves from ‘struggles’ for the recognition of scientific productions
rendered invisible by virtue of domination effects and not perceived as
having equal value to those produced in the western worlds (Roulleau-
Berger 2015)
• the question of the international recognition of "decolonial" knowledge
o a process of decolonial reconfiguration engaged in transnational spaces
or ‘ethnoscapes’ from dissociations and assemblages of knowledge
between sociologies of Asia and Europe
 ‘Post-Western’ social sciences (3)

Diversity of injustices and epistemic autonomies

• the process of generating hegemonic thoughts in the history of the social sciences
took place through ‘epistemic injustices’ (Bhargava 2013)
o the dominations and hierarchies very early built between the Western, Eastern and Far
Eastern contexts produced ignorance and occultations of whole swathes of knowledge
(Roulleau-Berger 2015)
• many Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indian scholars consider that the imposition
of Western epistemic frameworks has partially hindered them from accessing
their own system of meanings and interpretations to understand their own society
• these situations of epistemic injustice have also simultaneously produced forms of
epistemic autonomies in different societal contexts, more or less discrete, more or
less assertive, more or less stated
 ‘Post-Western’ social sciences (4)

‘Post-Western’ social sciences and global knowledge

•‘post-western’ social sciences means listening to a multiplicity
of narrative voices and narratives
o identifying, naming, recognizing the theories they contain and grasping concepts and
paradigms
•the boundaries between ‘the old centers of knowledge
production’ and ‘the old peripheries’ are disappearing to reveal
a plurality of hegemonies born of differentiated historical
processes, leaning on an acrimonious indigenism (Bhargava,
2013)
 ‘Post-Western’ social sciences (5)

New centers for the production of knowledge

o the result of the refusal to imitate Western epistemic frameworks with a desire to control
hybridizations of Western and non-Western knowledge from the dynamics of
deterritorialization-reterritorialization of non-indigenous knowledge (Roulleau-Berger 2015)
The fabric of a ‘post-western’ space: from Asia to Europe
•to build epistemic equivalence can start from drawing the outline of
a conceptual space from which to address post-occidental gaps
between clean areas to the social sciences in Europe and Asia
o while leaving the emergence of shared spaces where concepts coexist in complex relationships of
proximity and distance 
 PART V
Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non-
Western settings (1)

Questions with respect to the state of the social sciences in non-

Western settings
o what is social science and what do social scientists do?
o how do the various contextual domains (nation-state, local and global) enable or
impede particular conceptualizations of the social sciences?
o what should be the appropriate relationship between the state and the social sciences?
o what rationale should guide the production of social scientific knowledge?
o should social science fulfil the administrative needs of the modern nation-state or
serve the interest of civil society?
o is indigenous social science possible?
 Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non- Western settings (2)

• related queries about the autonomy and independence of the social

sciences from the hegemonic influences of the state as well as from
domination by Western theoretical and political agendas
• the need to purge the social sciences of Eurocentrism and thus register a
crucial break from the dominant influence of a colonial past is a call made
by Third World (largely non-Western) scholars who perceive the rationale
of this project to be self-evident (Sinha 1997)
• implicit in the call for indigenizing the social sciences is a desire to
reclaim agency, to redefine the ‘self’, the ‘other’ and more importantly,
the relations between the two, in an effort to craft a new agenda for the
present and future of the discipline in question
Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non-
Western settings (3)
The notion of ‘indigenization’
o ‘an idiom or a metaphor for attempting to level the playing field in
which good social science theorizing can be undertaken’ (Sinha
1997)
Key elements in reconceptualizing of indigenization
•to problematize and question the epistemological and
methodological status of all social science categories, including
‘indigenous’, ‘native’, ‘West’ and ‘non-West’
Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non-
Western settings (4)
•to embed social theorizing in the socio-cultural and political
particularities of a region without necessarily rejecting all Western
input and contribution
•to articulate and theorize on the global politics of academia and its
complex role in perpetuating the traditional intellectual division of
labour
o non-Western scholars as gatherers of empirical material which forms the
grounding for theoretical arguments advanced by Western scholars
•to recognize multiple centres (non-Western and Western) of socio
-cultural theorizing and hence, eliminate this intellectual specialization
Reconceptualizing the social sciences in non-
Western settings (5)
Key point
•call for recognition of ‘the social sciences in the non-West’ –
stripped of any socio-cultural and geo-political, regional
specificity - as a valid and legitimate unit of analysis (Sinha
1997)
 Key words
Eurocentric
‘clash of civilizations’ vs ‘clash of epochs’
global vs universal
traditional society
modernity
postmodernity
rationality (deliberative and instrumental)
social progress
anthropocentrism
bias of social science