Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social SciencesConcerned about the worldwide state of the social sciences the relations among the disciplines, and their relationship with both the humanities and the natural sciences the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, based in Lisbon, established in 1993 the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. It comprised a distinguished international group of scholars six from the social sciences, two from the natural sciences, and two from the humanities. The report first explores how social science was historically constructed as a form of knowledge and why it was divided into a specific set of relatively standard disciplines in a process that went on between the late eighteenth century and 1945. It then reveals the ways in which world developments since 1945 have raised questions about this intellectual division of labor and have therefore reopened the issues of organizational structuring that had been put into place in the previous period. The report goes on to elucidate a series of basic intellectual questions about which there has been much recent debate. Finally, it discusses in what ways the social sciences can be intelligently restructured in the light of this history and the recent debates. |
Contents
The Historical Construction of | 1 |
Debates Within the Social Sciences | 33 |
What Kind of Social Science Shall | 70 |
Restructuring | 94 |
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activity Alexandre Koyré analysis analytic anthropologists anthropology area studies arena became boundaries Calestous Juma called Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation challenge cial civilizations complex concept concern course critical cultural studies debate defined departments disci disciplinary disciplines domain economic emerging empirical ence epistemology European existing faculty geography groups historians human idiographic Ilya Prigogine Immanuel Wallerstein institutionalized institutions intellectual internal issues John Stuart Mill laws legitimacy legitimate logic modern multiple natural sci natural sciences natural scientists nineteenth century nomic nomothetic social sciences nomothetic social scientists non-Western world objective Open the Social organizational Oriental Orientalist scholars parochial particular past phenomena philosophy political science practice premises primarily psychology question restructuring scholarly scientific seemed social Darwinism social realities social sci sociology state-centric theoretical theories tion tional tive tonian traditional ture university structures university system V. Y. Mudimbe validity views Western world of knowledge worldwide