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Rationality, Development, and Scholarship by Francis X. Sutton* NOT LONG AGO, I was brooding on lessons I had learned at school and seem to have forgotten. Positivism, I remembered, was a set of doctrines relegated, with its errors exposed, to the history of philosophy and social thought. But having lived through an era that reeked of positivism-in its faith in planned and controllable development-I wondered how I and so many other expensively educated people could have been so inattentive to what we were supposed to know. Perhaps we were guilty of what Bertrand Russell in A History of Western Philosophy (1946) called out "cosmic impiety," that "intoxication with power" f-hich he thought to be "the greatest danger of Qur~time." By now, the bright optimism that colored the decades after World War II has faded to a degree that might have comforted Russell. Confidence that the affairs of" nations can be controlled and steered briskly toward better futures has been badly shaken. The positivistic faith that human troubles and imperfections are mere "problems" that have solutions based on scientific inquiry and rational action has receded, and we now-in doubt and disquietponder what we can and cannot do. The times challenge us to fresh inspection of the relations of action, inquiry, and ideology. Foundation officials are not a very numerous breed, and like other mortals we characteristically misuse our opportunities. But we do have a station at the intersection of study and action that ought to give us some perceptions that are peculiar to the trade and
* The autpor.- a sociologist, is a deputy vice president at the Ford Foundation, where he has been an officer since 1954. This article is slightly abridged from his address to the Council's Area Assembly on October 29,1982. The Area Assembly, attended by members of the 10 area committees that the Council sponsors jointly with the American Council of Learned Societies, was held at Airlie House, Airlie, Virginia.
possibly of wider interest. Some of us have been enthusiastic participants in the era of development and in that widening of concerns for the whole of humanity that has marked our time. We have shared a peculiarly American faith in the controllability of human affairs, and we have had rather more respect for the uses of research and learning than has been orthodox in this country. What I want to do this evening is to reflect-from the vantage point I have had~n the ways scholarship and action have been related as the times have changed from tq.e confident positivism of some 20 or 30 years ago to the divisions and diffidence of the present.
The ideology of development In the years following World War II, there came into being an international ideology that had, in what we used to call the "free world," a remarkable prevalence as orthodoxy. Like all useful ideologies, it had vagueness, imprecisions, and contradictions, but its general outlines are identifiable and familiar. Let me recall its main tenets: .
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE 49
Rationality, Development, and Scholarship-Francis X. Sutton 58 The Joint Area Committees of the Two Councils-David L. Szanton -Workshops at the October Area Assembly (page 59) -Members of the Joint Area Committees, 1982-83 (page 60) -Selected Publications of the Joint Area Committees (page 62) - Area Committee Chairmen Endorse Continuation of Predoctoral Research Awards (page 63) - Reviews of Area Studies in the United States (page 64)
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• The ideology was egalitarian, both in the sense oped countries that they knew what development was that it proclaimed the right of self-determination all about and that it could be achieved. The fading of peoples throughout the world and in that it colonial powers, the United States, and the United viewed inequalities within and between nations as Nations all launched into development programs challenges or problems to be met with deliberate under conceptions of the beneficient effects of transferring capital and technical knowledge that now effort towards their removal or mitigation. • Self-determination and independence did not look quite naive or primitive-as ruling conceptions simply imply the right of a nation to do as it of the past usually do. It is in the nature of the rationalized modern world pleased. There was an obligation for all nations, codified in the 1948 Universal Declaration of that any major course of social action generates a Human Rights, to seek material betterment and great envelope of analysis, debate, theoretical elabthe observance of a long list of rights and free- oration, and speculation. A great part of this is generated in modern bureaucratic and political processes, doms for individuals and groups. • Outside the great darkness of the Communist much of it through publicists and the media generbloc, the world was divided into two classes of ally, and some of it by social scientists, philosophers, nations, those that were developing and those and pundits. that were already developed, and the latter asSocial scientists have a role in the modern world sumed obligations for concern with the former. rather like theologians had in the past. They are the • The national governments of developing coun- intellectualizers of widespread beliefs they seldom tries, transformed from being mere guardians of originate; rather, they clarify, criticize, and shape law and order into agencies of development, them into articulate doctrine. There is a weighty sense were to be pillars of rationally controlled change. of being ultimate authorities, of saying "Yea" or • These governments were to determine an ac- "Nay," out of disciplined investigation, to what others ceptable pattern of development, including what merely opine or want to believe. would be adopted or accepted from external The abstract generality of the development ideology conformed very well to the resources of midcensources. . • Where present deficiencies existed in the ca- tury social science. Its egalitarianism required pacities of these governments to plan and ad- theories that were universally applicable and it led in minister development programs, they were to be practice to a host of general questions about the naremedied by appropriate training. ture and conditions of economic growth, the pos• Egalitarian principles required that peoples sibilities of "take-off," the meaning of modernization, everywhere, if properly educated and trained, and the concept of human capital. Area studies, in this should be able to develop. A universal right to context, were rather bothersome, helpful at best in education was enshrined in the 1948 Declaration, giving pause, and too stubbornly suggesting that but education was more than an individual right: things elsewhere are different when studied in the it was an indispensable pillar of development. round. It was a time when theory had a comfortable ascendancy, and there were not yet fundamental di• Aid from the developed countries was to be politically and culturally neutral-thus technical visions on which sorts of theories actually fit experience. and financial. The need to "do something" is always implied when • An open international system in some vaguely defined sense was assumed, with more or less a public policy or an ideology becomes effective. There is perhaps a particular force to this urge in the free movement of trade and capital. • International political relations were to have the American tradition with its respect for concrete acfreedom consistent with self-determination and complishment and its distrust of elaborate theory. A independence, but with constraints of defection healthy respect for the distance between a general conception and the successful execution of a course of to the Communist bloc. action played a very great role in shaping developWhat all this assemblage of ideas meant in prac- ment programs and the interest we have taken in tice has of course depended upon the concerns of the developing countries. Some of the results have been actors involved at any given time, and on the roles puzzling and frustrating to university administrators, they have played in the conduct or contemplation of foundation officials, and other believers in the merits affairs. In retrospect, there was a remarkable agree- of international studies. I believe it can be shown ment among people in both developing and devel- fairly persuasively that the business of development 50
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assistance has generated the largest volume of international professional and scholarly traffic in the last decades, quite outstripping until recently other forms of intellectual voyaging. But the dependence of development assistance on-and its stimulus to--area studies as practiced in the universities and by the joint committees assembled here has been much more limited than many of us have thought it ought to be. I shall try to tell you why I think this has been the case.
Applied social science, area studies, and development Development cooperation has been mostly action in large organizational frames, with goals vaguely set by organs of policy at their apex. In the case I know best, that extraordinary American, Paul Hoffman, persuaded seven powerful men, the then trustees of the Ford Foundation, that the Foundation should undertake development programs in Asia and the Middle East. The year was 1950 and the motivation was strongly political. China had been "lost" and there were fears for India, Indonesia, and other countries. There was "competition for the minds of men" and the development ideology was far enough along to give shape to a sense of what might be done. There was not much time for broad, philosophical, or theoretical discussion of development in the Foundation's board room-there never is much time at the apex. Staff had to be engaged to plan and to set things in motion. In a span of only eight or nine months, field trips were taken, consultations with both the U.S. and foreign governments were undertaken, appropriations were approved, and a first Ford representative was set up in New Delhi. Where it would all lead could not be foreseen, but the guiding principles were clear: there was to be concrete, useful action worked out in agreement with the national authorities and guided by a close understanding of local conditions. A desire to serve the welfare of the common people directly led into famous, protracted, and ultimately very controversial programs in community development. From these programs there was quick proliferation into other fields and fresh areas in which we have persisted over the subsequent decades with a total commitment of more than $1.5 billion. There have of course been great changes, but there has been a persistent focus on concrete action programs selected and directed by people on the ground with an intimate acquaintance with local realitie~. Development programs like the Ford Foundation's have thus aimed to "get something done," and not DECEMBER
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primarily to make studies or test theories. But the confidence that these programs had something to contribute beyond money has had to rest on some presumption that they had special or general competences to purvey. Given the ideology of development I sketched out earlier, cultural or personal superiority could not properly be assumed; there had to be recourse to specialized knowledge and competences that could in principle be acquired by anybody. Much of American social science grew up under the influence of such values and with strong confidence in its utility. Public administration is a particularly clear example. One remembers the half-scornful incredulity of French and British civil servants that we Americans believed in a science of public administration. We of course did, and we built schools in that faith. Latterly, Don Price and others have looked back in some bemusement at an era when a large part of the functioning of government was thought to be reducible to objective principles and to methods that could be taught for the neutral service of varying political purposes. Being neutral, this body of principles and methods was thought to be exportable and indeed it was put out in many exotic places by the Ford Foundation and others. Other examples could be cited in such fields as economic development, rural sociology, business management, and law. The general point I wish to stress is that the urge for concrete action and the disposition to maximize the presumed scope and relevance of technical knowledge have been dominant influences in shaping development cooperation. Both the ideology of development and its practice emphasized matters that were controllable by rational effort and hence, presumably, were teachable by example and formal instruction. With the wisdom of hindsight, we are now painfully conscious of the exaggerations of what could be rationally controlled and effectively taught. We are also conscious of the inhibitions that the ethics of technical assistance imposed on study and awareness in the places where experts worked. Detailed analysis of the social and political contexts of development activities was thought to be the business of the nationals. Outsiders were to stick to their professional tasks. Errors come from this deference, but one doubts that a wider wisdom would have been compatible with enthusiastic commitment, and it is certainly mean-spirited to diminish with hindsight what the squadrons of technical experts have done for development. The exciting expansion of international scholarship that has been one of the academic glories of our 51
time was stimulated by the ideology of development, but it was more affected by concerns for national competences in foreign policy and international affairs. In the Ford Foundation, development cooperation and international studies grew along different tracks under different bureaucratic responsibilities. The division reflected different concerns and is not a mere curiosity of Ford Foundation history. In contrast to the generality and long perspectives of the development ideology, national concerns with foreign affairs have a concreteness and a complexity that require great attention to particulars. There is a need to interpret what it means now that Quadaffi has been cordially received in Beijing or what the relation of the PLO and a popular Palestinian congress may be in the future. Crises dominate attention and today's newspapers are essential documents. I recently read an article on the troubles around the Persian Gulf by an estimable security specialist, Shah ram Chubin, in which he reflected on misjudged writings about Iraq as a regional power that preceded the Iraq-Iran war and the failure to anticipate accurately the effect of the war on oil supplies. 1 He rather sadly concluded that broader historical and contemporary study of the area might be a better guide to what might happen there than his own professional specialty, security analysis. His conclusion seems somewhat like that reached many times by others, that we can hardly know too much about other countries, near or remote. Neville Chamberlain made a famous remark during the 1938-39 Sudeten crisis that Czechoslovakia was "a faraway country of which we know nothing." Our international studies programs have been dedicated to the proposition that there should henceforth be no such countries. It has not always been obvious what we should try to know about them, how we should sustain the specialists on them, or how we might get these specialists to be heard when they are needed. But I need hardly remind you of the great academic response in our time to these concerns: The academic world has become a great storehouse of what had hitherto been rather scattered pockets of expertise throughout this country, and a great flowering of intellectual effort on far places has resulted.
The distrust of scholarship among developers One might have thought that the spate of articles, monographs, and general histories that flowed from 1 Shahram Chubin, "L guerre irano-irakienne: paradoxes et f particularites." Politique Etrangere, 47(2):381-384 Oune 1982).
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this upsurge would have been unambivalently welcomed by the managers and experts in development programs. But things have not been that simple. One remembers vividly the anxious mistrust Ford Foundation overseas representatives had for Fellows supported by those incautious people back in New York-the Foreign Area Fellowship Program. There was the enthusiastic young student of independence movements in the Congo who was busy showing his research subjects how to organize better. There was the outrage of the Ford representative in India at young fry being sent to look at things he thought the Indians would rather keep to themselves. There were even some scholars who seemed careless about their relationship to the CIA. Exasperation with mere "book writers," who did not seem to care if they helped the people they were writing about, enlivened sundowners all across the longitudes. We even tried to bring pressure on the program 'to send out more development specialists and to pay less attention to those who wanted to record exotic music or' "do still another study of Pushkin." There was, as we say in the sociological trade, a serious conflict of roles, or perhaps a set of them. People engaged day-in, day-out with development projects had a sense of first-hand acquaintance with "realities" that they thought no mere disinterested observer could match. The urge to achieve something new also produces a kind of dislike for or indifference to history among developers. Few want to hear that what they are doing has been tried before. Indeed, I believe this goes so far that there is a kind of endemic retrospective falsification of development history. And perhaps worse, the wide view of a scholarly observer may challenge the whole frame of effort. Few of us who tried to help make a two-winged Pakistan work or who devoted ourselves to the Africanization of governments wanted to hear that these were likely to be frustrated or bootless ventures. On the whole, I would have to say that developers and area specialists have not gotten on very well in the field or even at home.
The erosion of the development ideology We are now clearly in a new era when the old development ideology has been eroded. The bitterness and intractability of North-South differences are symptoms of a lost consensus. In the South, there has risen a view of development that makes it depend upon its international setting. The domestic development of countries is no longer seen as a basically autonomous modernization out of the darkness of VOLUME
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tradition, but as a struggle for equity in an international system devised by others in their own interests, and for recovery from externally induced disadvantage. The view remains activist in its emphases on the need for self-reliance on the one hand and a reformed new international economic order on the other. (The inconsistencies in these views are not neatly resolved, as is common in ideologies.) In the North and West there has grown a corresponding though very different set of preoccupations with the international order, or lack of it. The faltering of economic growth in the OECD countries, the rise of unemployment and in"flation to levels not known for a generation, the decay of the Bretton Woods framework, debt crises, and a depressed sense that still worse may come in the 1980s now preoccupy us. As OPEC and the NICs (Newly-Industrializing Countries) have risen in power, the old confidence that the rising tide of economic progress would lift everybody has faltered. Rude cries for "No more Japans" resound amid all-night quarrels over who is being more protectionist. The old and benevolent distinction of developed and developing countries now yields to more complex perceptions of Third and Fourth Worlds, and as concerns over instability and violence grow, more critical and more pessimistic views of nations and governments grow too. There is a declining faith in the possibility of planned state action, new emphases on.equity and human rights, and a blurring of developmental and eleemosynary concerns. The emergence of "basic needs" strategies, the "New Directions" in U.S. development assistance since 1973, concerns for the poorest of the poor, and revived enthusiasm for community development and private initiatives express these views. It is certainly no news to a scholarly world now full of Marxist and dependencia theories to hear that the old concord based on a common faith in the tenets of development ideology has gone. But I do hope that we may gain something by reflecting on the new relations of scholarship to a world in more discord and confusion. The central tenets of the old faith that I would stress were (1) the capacity of governments as agents and guides to development; (2) the efficacy of education and training; and (3) the possibility of mutually beneficent cooperation between rich and poor countries in an equitable international order. The faith that independent nation-states were the necessary frames and agents of progress prevailed because self-determination gave moral authority to governments, and governments provided an instrumentality through which the goals of their peoples could be pursued. We need also to remember that the DECEMBER 1982
great movement of previously-subject peoples to independence after World War II gave a symbolic importance to governments as expressions of new dignity for their peoples and gave expectations that these governments would be their natural guides and benefactors. Western countries were prepared to cooperate in programs of planned development that at home would have appeared to involve excessive state control because it seemed evident that radical transformation necessitated state planning and intervention. There was initially much concern over the legitimacy of governments as properly representative of their peoples. But there was also concern that divisions might render parliamentary democracy ineffectual and the desire for firmly-guided development brought indulgent acceptance of regimes like Ayub's in Pakistan. These conceptions not only provided a framework in which development cooperation would . proceed with self-confidence: They also provided a frame within which much of the study of developing countries by area specialists has gone on. We are all familiar with the fact that specialists on most world areas, with the notable exception of the Soviet Union and its neighbors, become sympathizers, advocates, or even apologists for their areas. In the area I know best, the continent of Africa, political scientists from the United States and other countries reported the exciting transformations in Africa in an impressive body of sympathetic literature. I have often found myself complaining that they were not very good prophets of the vulnerability of African states to military coups and other symptoms of fragility and weakness. The reason, I should think, was an optimistic bias shared with the developers, and rooted in the spirit of the times. If, as I suggested above, the relations of scholars and developers were not those of happy complementarity, there was at least a common sympathy shared with our African hosts. The diminished confidence in governments that has come about over the last decade and a half is of course remarkable. There are not many governments in the Third World that escape categorization as unstable, exploitative, inefficient, or oppressive--or all of the above. Citizens, officials, and scholars from the Third World are more likely to retain more positive views of what their governments might be, even if the present ones are not quite satisfactory. But the familiar passage of Western views into the Third World seems to be occurring in views of the state as in other subjects. One detects a growing sympathy for private institutions and initiatives that was much less common a decade or so ago. Some of this shift of confidence is 53
of course based on hard experience that has been was once a burgeoning field of applied social science documented by social scientists. Jon Moris, out of is now fading. Finally, the old optimism of the development era many years of field experience, recited at a 1976 that a system of international relations could be susRockefeller Foundation conference a sad litany of some of the problems in the governments of devel- tained with a mutually beneficial cooperation between oping countries: rich and poor countries has weakened. Developing countries have become more distantly foreign counNorms about hiring and firing are not enforced, so that reand the alienation is reciprocated. Confidence tries, cruitment occurs through personal influence. Security of employment is accepted as the norm at all levels. The distinction that disparity in the wealth of nations could be altered between public and private goods is not maintained, and in with sufficient speed to gratify the poor countries varying degree, forms of corruption are common ... mainte- without threatening the rich has proven to be little nance of existing equipment and facilities is so poor that despite founded. The expectation that the attainment of sovlow labor costs, the actual unit costs of operations remain high .... There is intense internal politicization of the junior ereign independence would bring amicable and officers, who line up beneath various patrons in the hope that cooperative international relations has been disapthey may thereby gain advancement and recognition ... At the pointed. For all its internal divisions, the Third bottom levels, morale among the junior staff is so low and World is an emotional reality that bursts out in desupervision so haphazard that work performance is highly un- mands for a new international economic order, a new reliable ... Higher officials operate in a condition of chronic information order, or a general redressment of the work overload ... the administrative system shows decreasing balance of power and wealth in the world. sensitivity to rational control from the top. "Its size has The assertion of basic equality of peoples that was burgeoned, and its best men are tired .... 2 implied in national sovereignties has exacerbated Confidence that these difficulties are remediable awareness of inequality and brought the rich and through training and technical assistance has not powerful to defensiveness. The United States, forbeen sustained, and with it has passed much employmerly the initiator and leader in designs for world ment for applied social scientists. The old enthusiasm order, now finds itself resisting demands for global for teaching public administration, which led in the negotiations, making increasingly lonely challenges to 1960s to the establishment of more than 40 institutes schemes for international communications, and of public administration in Africa alone, is largely threatening withdrawal from parts or all of the gone from international agencies, and the old hope United Nations. There are repeated and hopeful efthat governments will lead their nations to controlled forts to conceive new ways in which the existing order and beneficient change is being reluctantly and slowly may adapt and evolve. Policy studies like the formidabandoned in the developing countries themselves. able 1980s Project of the Council on Foreign RelaThe hope that educational systems could be tions are abundant. But clear visions and confidence planned to foster orderly and rapid development has in them are evidently lacking, and the prevalent views also faded amid concerns about excessive exin the scholarly world seem more apt at explaining penditures, unemployed school leavers, and considwhy there is division and dissension than at describing erable disruption of traditional occupations, particuwhat might be done about them-short of revolution larly in rural areas. Diagnoses and remedies have or a long, long march. been supplied in abundance but without inspiring lasting conviction. The international development agencies ha':e discreetly withdrawn from several New relations of practice, policy, ideology, and fields of educational effort and I have recently heard scholarship officials in developing countries denounce their eduIn this chastened world of the 1980s, it is harder to cational systems as "in ruins" or "incredibly messed be arrogant positivists than it was when new nations up." A sense that education can neither be controlled were so plentifully and hopefully appearing. There is nor planned has crept into public acknowl~dgment. now a serious danger of slack resignation, excusing Even the International Institute of Educational Planour failures to act in the name of realism and imponing at UNESCO has declared its doubts, and what tence. Fortunately, the momentum of commitment to rational activism is built into our institutions and our 2 Jon Moris, "The Transferability of Western Management occupational norms. The practice of orderly planning Concepts: An East African Perspective." In Laurence D. Stifel, and disciplined execution is now the accepted ideal James S. Coleman, and Joseph E. Black, editors, Education and Trainingfor Public Sector Management in Developing Countries. New and it is frequently honored in even the' more dispirYork: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1977, pages 78-80. ited and unsuccessful nations. For all the discour54
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agements and confusions that have beset development cooperation, it continues to stimulate this sort of planning and action across the Third World, and we regularly hear complaints now that Third World academics and other professionals are so caught up in contracts and consultancies from aid projects that teaching and scholarship suffer. But these efforts now seem more isolated from broad contexts of theory and doctrine than they were. The fading of economic development in the academic firmament has left a gap that no new broad conceptions usable by working professionals have come to fill. We are now in an era of renewed ideological fervors. Some are full of moral rigor and grasping for past certainties, as in fundamentalist Islam; others are determinedly set on a scientifically guided future. Wild oscillations between "humanism" and "scientific socialism" appear in Kaunda's Zambia and between Bhutto's socialism and Zia's Islamizing in Pakistan. The control of mass media by governments gives an inflated prominence to the current official ideology and it is often an obscure and difficult quest to find out the roots or prevalence of competing doctrines. It seems certain that the fragility and weakness of governments or the desperation of oppositions will continue to make revolutionary ideologies-whether "progressive" or "reactionary"-a flaring corona on contemporary history in the next years. They will not, for the most part, be guided by scholarship, but they are likely to color scholarship. Indeed, the domestic constraints on free expression in much of the world give a compensating prominence to expatriate and international voices, among them the voices of scholars. The urge to gain some new and comprehensive view of the world is resisted by many scholars, but certainly not by all, and grand theories are seldom far from ideology. Ideology is not scholarship, but since ideology is indispensable, it is certainly no unworthy ambition of scholars to try to shape it. One hopes that the scholar's detachment will not give too much disposition to rest in structural inevitabilities, or in the pathos of inevitable conflict, but will contribute to the strengths that hold nations together and enable them to act. As those old pillars of rationalistic confidence-the state and education-have crumbled, there is a new need to get beyond policy studies into less immediately purposeful studies of why governments don't work as we thought they should or why educational systems get to look like sorcerer's apprentices. The bafflement of national governments and international agencies over the way well-laid plans go wrong has brought new needs and receptivity for analysis. I DECEMBER
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have recited some of Jon Moris's analysis for you. Reading his litany reminds one that years ago there was much scholarly effort through the Comparative Administration Group and elsewhere to seek out the cultural conditions affecting bureaucratic organizations around the world. But there was a large gap between this work and the practical guides that developers could use. It has not since been filled, but with so many more trained social scientists studying their own cultures, with such lively attention to subjects like patronage and clientelism, and with a readiness among scholars of the state to be what John Lonsdale has called "nomads in search of paradigms," there are promising resources for filling it. Not many international developers are yet ready to accept Jon Moris's blunt conclusion that "in the longer run and especially in regard to the agricultural and rural development sectors, the project is self-defeating and ultimately self-destroying." But there is certainly a growing discomfort at the neglect of the environment of projects and a half-reluctant but swelling determination to look again at ways to improve governmental functioning. The analyses that are needed are not easy to get at; but without them, scholars are likely only to be chroniclers of failure. My reflections on our new era have thus far addressed various ways in which scholarship may help us know what we can do to improve our mortal lot. I hope I have made clear my belief that as the old confident positivism has gone, these tasks of research and scholarship may grow rather than diminish. But there are other tasks that have more to do with what we must accept than with what we must try to change. I t has been one of my more moving and rewarding experiences as a foundation official to have become immersed in Polish affairs after the painful events of December 1981. It was mine, and everyone else's good fortune, that Norman Davies brought to completion his magnificent two-volume history of Poland in these momentous times. He called it God's Playground 3 and one does not have to know very much about Poland and its history to appreciate the acrid savor of the title. What does one do if one is a Pole in these times? What does one make of a national and personal fate so full of idealistic splendors, lasting frustrations, shame, and bitter humiliation? It is evidently not enough to exhort, to plan, to plot, and to scheme, to muster one's courage, and to sacrifice. All . this has been done, again and again. There remain 3 Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland. 2 volumes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. First published by the Oxford University Press in 1981.
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the arms of Holy Mother Church. There is also the drink, and worse. But there is also present some human and intellectual need to know how to feel about what it all can mean, to know what still to believe in, or what to hold on to when hope seems so treacherous. The enormous regard the Poles have for their intellectuals has been won by their filling this need. Poets and novelists, historians and publicists, from Mickiewicz and Slowacki down to Milosz and Michnik and a host of others in our time, have expressed the ideals, the pride, and the despair of Poles in ways that make Poland indestructible through all its trials.
The need for meaning in contemporary life It is elementary that every people and nation need something of what the Poles have had in such brillance and abundance. Even for happier nations, the twists of individual and national fates require that existences have meaning when all has not gone well, . and fortune or justice seem elusive. The way we meet these needs depends heavily on the persistence or withering of traditional religious belief. In the West, modernity has diminished the functions and power of inherited religion, and it is now commonplace to think that the arts, literature, and humanities must replace something of what has been lost. In the developing countries, there remains a more intimate and organic relation of religion, the arts, and everyday life. But everywhere there is need for meaning in contemporary life, and present change brings new questions about the meaning of old ways and the past.
creatIVity, and to cope with a cosmopolitan culture that invades all the world. As it is with the Poles, and as it should be, the overwhelming bulk of this effort is by creative spirits within their own nations and cultures, and the functions it fills are those of the arts and humanities in the modern world. Sometimes, of course, they are in the evident service of national causes, or opposition to them, or to revolution. But much is in pursuit of interpreting everyday experience, or reaching beyond it to visions and ecstacy. There is a need-felt not only under repressive or totalitarian regimes-to get beyond official or conventional ways of seeing and thinking to truths and realities that are subtle or uncomfortable. Modern artists and intellectuals feel this responsibility acutely. As the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, recently put it: The novel is an investigation into human existence .... (It) proclaims no truth, no morality .... That is a job for others: leaders of political parties, presidents, terrorists, priests, revolutionaries and editorial writers. The novel came about at the beginning of modern times, when man was discovering how hard it is to get at the truth and how relative human affairs really are.路
The novel, like other esthetic experiences, does not tell us what to do but helps us understand what we are and what is happening to us. And this is much of what humanists, scholarly as well as those of other sorts, do. The rejection of the vulgar slogan that "the humaniti,es teach values" is not a rejection of responsibility for serving human needs. We need the humanities not for precepts, but to help us cope with our limitations and to accept what we do not fully understand or control. The area committees were established as joint committees by the American Council of Learned The convergence of the humanities and the Societies and the Social Science Research Council in social sciences deference to the rather peculiarly American distincHow these needs are met is a splendid subject for tion of the humanities and social sciences, and at a objective study by area specialists like yourselves. I time when the distinction was more strongly felt than need hardly remind you of the purely scholarly inter- it is now. The present sense of convergence-which is est, but I should like to emphasize the possibilities of now being greeted with such commendable encontributing to the lives of people and nations. There thusiasm by the Councils-opens up attractive vistas is now a rich flourishing of literary and artistic activity for cooperation with what is going on around the across most of the world, some of it well-known inter- world. The humanistic pursuit of truth and meaning nationally, much of it locked in languages and that I have been describing is an investigation that traditions not visible to any but rare specialists from cannot now flourish in most domains without scholelsewhere. One thinks of Egyptian poetry, of Black arship that extends beyond traditional humanities African novels, or of Indian drama, music, dance, into the social sciences. In particular, the kind of and literature in both English and Indian languages. historical writing that can combine passion with rigor Everywhere there are efforts to preserve the cultural heritage, to use and interpret it in contemporary 4 The New York Times Book Review, 24 October 1982, page 37. 56
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in interpreting what has been happening to nations and peoples is a great need of our times and is hardly achievable without this merger of disciplines and viewpoints. Just as development efforts remain strongly international in character, so also must these efforts in humanistic and social scientific scholarship. The world is now clearly evolving from an era of Western dominance toward something that will be culturally more diverse and complex. There is now a cosmopolitan international culture, high and low, from the sciences to pop, which penetrates farther and farther, even with the transistor, to the back of beyond. It is still lopsidedly Western, and resented as such. And we in the West are learning only too slowly to stretch our minds and imaginations, to keep remembering that Hinter dem Berge wohnen auch Leute-"We're not the only pebbles on the beach." But like Prospero to Caliban, we have taught the language in which we are cursed, and remote nations do not know what to make of themselves without looking to the wider world. I hardly need to underline that there is challenge and opportunity in this situation, and that few organizations are as happily placed to respond as are the joint committees. They are among the rare, continuing, and international forums where a common quest for understanding the diversity and unity of the world can be steadily pursued in calmness and breadth. If my account of the passage from an era when we believed too sanguinely in the rational controllability of human affairs is sound, their chances for great contributions look better in the future than in the past. The conditions of hopeful effort at development now require a breadth of study that the firm dedication of the committees to basic scholarship assures, and the chances of their being listened to by busy leaders look better than before. And moreover, the combination of humanists and social scientists promises help to a world now more conscious of its need to understand as much as it can of what happens, and not only what can be controlled and mastered.
DECEMBER
1982
Support for area scholarship I should not close without a few words about the prospects that those with power and pelf will share some of these beliefs and support the kind of work the joint committees do. It was my pleasure and privilege for a long time to argue the merits of such support, and I am conscious of many of the difficulties in so arguing. The desires to get something concrete done, to help some real human beings in tangible ways, and not just to put another study on a shelf, are always present in foundations and with other funders. And they ought to be. The decline of what I have called the positivistic faith that human situations can be defined as "problems" and that they will yield to research and analysis has not yet shown strong signs of being reversed. Change in the prevailing mood will come sometime, and we may before a painfully long time see renewed enthusiasm for support of basic scholarship as such. But one does not have to await a new faith in scholarship to venture some optimism. At an early point in this talk, I commented on the broad judgments that have to be made at the top of organizations, where specifics must be left to others to work out. It was the history of the Ford Foundation's support of international studies that much was supported that would undoubtedly have been turned down if presented directly for funding. Within a broad objective, like understanding the Soviet Union better, or the consequences of bringing new industrial nations into the international system, there is a very large scope for work such as that which the joint committees do. The Harrimans' recent gift to Columia for Soviet studies reminds us that large commitments to large objectives continue to occur. The purposes of such actions are not simply the support of scholarship for its own sake, but they cannot be achieved without scholarship, and much beyond that which is narrowly useful will certainly be done. With the world as puzzling and alarming as it now is, I do not think we have to fear bleak neglect of international scholarD ship.
57
The Joint Area Committees of the Two Councils A report on the October Area Assembly provides an appropriate opportunity to review the area committees' programs
by David L. Szanton*
THE IO-S00N TO BE II-JOINT AREA COMMITIEES
sponsored by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies generally meet separately. This year, for the first time, the committees met at one place over the same weekend. This Area Assembly, held at Airlie House, Airlie, Virginia, from October 28-31, 1982, included both individual committee meetings and an all-day series of workshops (described in the box on page 59). On Saturday night, there was a plenary session, at which Francis X. Sutton, a deputy vice president of the Ford Foundation, gave the major address (see pages 49-57, above).
Each committee meets two or three times a year, although there are often additional formal and informal meetings of the committee's various working groups which often include scholars not on the committees. Between meetings, much of the work of the committees is carried on by the Council's professional staff. Staff members are themselves scholars with substantive interests in the activities of the committees they serve.
Funding
For many years, the joint committees were funded almost entirely by the Ford Foundation. By the midPurpose 1970s, however, additional funders had begun to support particular committee projects. The new funders The whole-culture approach that characterizes much international research is based on the belief include the Agency for International Development, that humanistic and social science research must be the J apan- United States Friendship Commission, the combined in order to understand foreign societies Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science and cultures. Accordingly, most of the Council's for- Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and others. Beeign area activity is carried out or sponsored by com- ginning in 1978, the area committees were also fortumittees jointly appointed by it and the American nate to attract substantial core funding from the NaCouncil of Learned Societies. Their membership thus tional Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In fiscal year 1981-82, an operating budget of apincludes both social scientists and humanists. Charged with administering research programs, as- proximately $3.0 million was provided in about equal sessing the state of the field, conducting conferences, amounts from NEH, the Ford Foundation, and eight and stimulating new research, the committees also additional funders. Beginning in 1982-83, however, concern themselves with the financing of their fields this funding arrangement will be changed. During and with initiating and promoting relations with the past year, officers of the Ford Foundation rescholars and scholarly bodies of similar professional ported that the Foundation would not be able to sustain annual grants at the level then prevailing (about interests abroad. There are at present 10 joint committees for the $1.2 million per year), but that the Foundation restudy of 10 countries and world areas: Africa, China, mained strongly committed to the purposes served by Eastern Europe,Japan, Korea, Latin America and the the area committees. Out of a series of conversations Caribbean, the Near and Middle East, South Asia, came a decision by the Foundation to try to provide a Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. (Both Councils secure base for the committees over a multiple-year have recently approved the appointment of a new period. In September 1982, the Foundation provided joint area committee on the Soviet Union.) The a "wasting" capital grant of $4.5 million, to be spent 1982-83 membership of the joint committees is listed over a 8-10 year period. The Foundation also awarded a multiyear grant to the International Rein the box on page 60. search and Exchanges Board (IREX), an organization * The author, an anthropologist, serves as staff to the joint sponsored by the two Councils which sponsors scholarly exchange programs between the United States committees on South Asia and Southeast Asia. 58
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Workshops at the October Area Assembly
States and Social Structures
Agrarian Change
J. Katzenstein, Cornell University, joint Committee on Western Europe DisclL~sion topics:
Chair: Alan R. Richards, University of California, Santa Cruz,
Chair: Peter
• Relationships between state structures and transnational forces • Determinants of state objectives and state capacities in economic transformation and social redistribution • Impacts of states on sociopolitical conflicts • Processes of state formation • Disaggregating the state: law, administration, local government, the military Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Chair: William G. Lockwood, University of Michigan, joint
Committee on Eastern Europe Discussion topics: • Cultural and social organization of religious and ethnic communities • Interethnic and interreligious group relations • Ethnicity and the state • Religion and the state Sources and Construction of Expressive Forms: Crosscultural Translations and Interpretations Chair: Earl Miner, Princeton University, joint Committee on
japanese Studies Discussion topics: • Cultural codes that make possible the production of artistic works • "Easy" and "uneasy" appropriations of other cultures • The problem of knowing the "other" and canons of comparability • Translation Household Dynamics and Their Interaction with Macrosocial Trends Chair: jane I. Guyer, Harvard University, joint Committee on
African Studies Discussion topics: • The aims and methodologies of historical demography and contemporary household studies • Household and production : agricultural organization, division of labor by sex, and labor force participation • Regional orientation and perspectives on the gender issue
DECEMBER
1982
joint Committee on the Near and Middle East
Discussion topics: • The survival of small farmers in diverse cultural, economic, and institutional contexts • The interaction of state and local policies with agrarian interest groups and institutions • Peasant protests and resistance to change Political Economy of Industrialization Chair: Gary R. Saxonhouse, University of Michigan , joint
Committee on japanese Studies Discussion topics: • Comparative industrial policies: allocation of capital and creation and allocation of skilled personnel and information • Capital-labor relations • The international division of labor Humanities and Social Sciences Dialogue Chair: V. Y. Mudimbe, Haverford College, joint Committee
on African Studies Discussion topics: • Ideological bases of humanistic and social scientific traditions • Relationships between concepts and society • Significance of epistemological presuppositions • Significance of the gap between empirical observation and theoretical thinking • Disorder versus order and complexity versus simplicity as categories in the social sciences and humanities Popular Culture and Consciousness Chair: Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington, joint
Committee on Southeast Asia Discussion topics: • Relationship between popular culture and the state (in the formation of the modern state and in repressive states) • Popular culture and class consciousness • Popular culture and consumerism (indigenous aesthetics and the marketing of popular culture) • The media and popular culture
59
Members of Joint Area Committees, 1982-83 African Studies ALLEN F. ISAACMAN, University of Minnesota, CHAIRMAN JANE I. GUYER, Harvard University BENNETTA W. JULES-ROSETTE, University of California, San Diego THANDIKA MKANDAWIRE, Council for Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (Dakar) V. Y. MUDIMBE, Haverford College P. ANYANG' NYONG'O, University of Nairobi HAROLD SCHEUB, University of Wisconsin MICHAELj. WATTS, University of California, Berkeley Staff: MARTHA A. GEPHART
Chinese Studies FREDERIC E. WAKEMAN, jR., University of California, Berkeley, CHAIRMAN HOK-LAM CHAN, University of Washington WM. THEODORE DE BARY, Columbia University ROBERT F. DERNBERGER, University of Michigan JACK L. DULL, University of Washington ALBERT FEUERWERKER, University of Michigan VICTOR H. LI, East-West Center (Honolulu) MICHEL OKSENBERG, University of Michigan EVELYN S. RAWSKI, University of Pittsburgh G. WILLIAM SKINNER, Stanford University ANTHONY C. Yu, Uni,:ersity of Chicago Staff: JASON H. PARKER, American Council of Learned Societies; SOPHIE SA
Latin American Studies RICHARD R. FAGEN, Stanford University, CHAIRMAN JORGE BALAN, Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), Buenos Aires CHARLES W. BERQUIST, Duke University MARTIN DISKIN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology BORIS FAUSTO, University of Sao Paulo ENRIQUE FLORESCANO, National Institute of Anthropology and History (Mexico City) MANUEL ANTONIO GARRETON, Latin American Faculty of the Social Sciences (Santiago) SAliL SOSNOWSKI, University of Maryland VERENA STOLCKE, Autonomous University of Barcelona ROSEMARY THORP, University of Oxford Slnff: BROOKE LARSON
Near and Middle East PETER VON SIVERS, University of Utah, CHAIRMAN LEONARD BINDER, University of Chicago ERIC DAVIS, Rutgers University ABDELLAH HAMMOUDI, Hassan II University (Rabat) MICHAEL C. HUDSON, Georgetown University ROBERT j. LAPHAM, National Research Council AFAF LUTFI AL-SAYYID MARSOT, University of California, Los Angeles ALAN R. RICHARDS, University of California, Santa Cruz JOHN WATERBURY, Princeton University Acting staff: DAVID L. SILLS
Ea~tern
Europe
HAROLD B. SEGEL, Columbia University, CHAIRMAN DANIEL CHIROT, University of Washington JANE LEFTWICH CURRY, Columbia University and Manhattanville College EDWARD A. HEWETT, The Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.) KEITH A. HITCHINS, University of Illinois KENNETH T. jOWITT, University of California, Berkeley WILLIAM G. LOCKWOOD, University of Michigan PIOTR S. WANDYCZ, Yale University StafJ.路 JASON H. PARKER, American Council of Learned Societies
South Asia MYRON WEINER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CHAIRMAN PRANAB KUMAR BARDHAN, University of California, Berkeley RICHARD M. EATON, University of Arizona BARBARA S. MILLER, Columbia University RALPH W. NICHOLAS, University of Chicago HAROLD S. POWERS, Princeton University JOHN F. RICHARDS, Duke University NORMAN T. UP.HOFF, Cornell University SUSAN S. WADLEY, Syracuse University SInfJ.路 DAVID L. SZANTON
Japanese Studies JOHN W. HALL, Yale University, CHAIRMAN SUSAN B. HANLEY, University of Washington JEFFREY P. MASS, Stanford University EARL MINER, Princeton University T. j. PEMPEL, Cornell University SUSAN j. PHARR, University of Wisconsin j. THOMAS RIMER, Washington University SEIZABURO SATO, University of Tokyo GARY R. SAXON HOUSE, University of Michigan PATRICIA G. STEINHOFF, University of Hawaii MASAKAZU YAMAZAKI, Osaka University
Southeast
A~ia
JAMES C. SCOTT, Yale University, CHAIRMAN ALTON BECKER, University of Michigan DAVID O. DAPICE, Tufts University MARY R. HOLLNSTEINER, UNICEF (New York) CHARLES F. KEyES, University of Washington LIM TECK GHEE, University of Science, Malaysia DAVID MARR, The Australian National University RUTH T. MCVEY, University of London Slnff: DAVID L. SZANTON
Acting slnfJ.路 SOPHIE SA
Western Europe Korean Studies
60
CHAE-jIN LEE, University of Kansas, CHAIRMAN MARTINA DEUCHLER, University of Zurich MICHAEL C. KALTON, Wichita State University HAN-Kyo KIM, University of Cincinnati HAGEN Koo, University of Hawaii PETER H. LEE, University of Hawaii S. ROBERT RAMSEY, Columbia University
PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTER, European University Institute (Florence), CHAIRMAN PETER A. GoUREVITCH, University of California, San Diego GUDMUND HERNES, University of Bergen PETER j. KATZENSTEIN, Cornell University CHARLES S. MAIER, Harvard University JosE MARiA MARAVALL, University of Madrid FRITZ W. SCHARPF, International Institute of Management (Berlin)
Acting stafJ.路 SOPHIE SA
Acting sln//: SOPHIE SA
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and the countries of East Central and Southeast Europe and the Soviet Union. At about the same time, the national Endowment for the Humanities awarded a three-year grant to the area committee ' programs; pnor awards had been for one or two years. Although the combined core program support from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities represents an approximate one-third decline in funds from present levelsthereby requiring some program reduction-the awards do provide a secure base for several years frorn. which committees can plan their programs and seek special-purpose funding.
Principal activities Individual research awards. The dissertation support and the postdoctoral research award programs are central to the joint area committees' activities. The combined overview and development efforts of the committees place them in a position to identify important new research projects and to incorporate results into the intellectual growth of the respective fields. At the same time, the more than 1,000 research applications annually reviewed by the Councils' staff and the committees provide a valuable source of information on (1) the current state of knowledge, (2) new areas in need of (or obtaining) particular attention, and (3) individual scholars-especially younger ones-to be encouraged by direct research support or participation in committee-based research planning activities. In the 1981-82 competition, the committees provided support to 71 new dissertation research fellows (about 1 in 8 of those who applied for these awards) and to 146 postdoctoral grantees (1 in 5 of those applying). More than 75 per cent of all 1981-82 awardees are carrying out at least a part of their research abroad. At the Area Assembly, the chairmen of the joint area committees affirmed the special importance of the pre doctoral research awards programs; see the box on page 63. The two Councils re.cognize that an American talent pool cannot be sustained in isolation: to function properly, it must continue to be linked to the developing international research community. Through their postdoctoral awards to leading scholars in other countries and the ongoing involvement of foreign scholars in all phases of the research planning work of their area committees, the two Councils hope to encourage the mutually beneficial collaboration of DECEMBER
1982
American scholars with scholars located in virtually every part of the world. Research planning. The joint area committees are continually engaged in what the two Councils have come to call "research planning." Most generally, this involves constructing long-term multidisciplinary projects designed to synthesize existing research and identify research agenda for the future. During the two-year period from August 1980 through july 1982, these efforts involved 184 individual meetings-including 55 joint committee sessions, to plan new projects, review on-going activities, and select individual research awards-and 120 topical research planning meetings. These latter range from small planning sessions for new projects, involving perhaps ~8 people, up to major international conferences with 30-50 participants. The actual range of research planning activities encompasses not only workshops, conferences, and seminars, but also training institutes; working groups and other networks of scholars; surveys, bibliographies, and research reviews; the publication of books and articles; and a variety of other services to the respective fields and professional associations. (A selection of recent publications of the joint area committies is given in the box on page 62.) The awards programs assist the committees in identifying topics ripe for synthesis and theoretical development; for example, topics on which a number of detailed case studies have recently been completed, but also weak areas or disciplines that require special attention. In effect, the committees' individual research awards and research planning activities are . reciprocally related, for the planning projects often lead to increased research attention to particular topics by individual scholars. . Monitaring the field. Aside from their awards and research planning activities, the joint area committees frequently engage in major reviews of their field--or of topical or functional sectors within it. These reviews often lead to both substantive and institutional innovations. Two recent activities, by the japan and Africa committees, are illustrative. In the case of japan, the committee is sponsoring a national survey of individuals and institutions concerned with japanese studies to determine the sources and interests of active scholars of japan. The survey will also examine how new funding sources in the japan field have influenced the direction and content of scholarly research on japan. In the case of Africa, the committee has been commissioning state-of-the-art papers in all of the major fields and disciplines to help identify current lll61
Selected Publications of the Joint Area Committees
Africa
tee on Eastern Europe. London: Allen
Causality and Classification in Mrican Medicine and Health, edited by John M.Janzen and Gwyn Prins. Special issue of Social Science and Medicine, 15B:3 (August, 1981). A publication of the Joint Committee on African Studies. Exeter, Devon, England and Elmsford, New York: Pergamon Press.
& Unwin, 1982.
China The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society, edited by Emily Martin Ahern and Hill Gates. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China. Stanford University Press, 1981. China's Development Experience in Comparative Perspective, edited by Robert F. Dernberger. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Subcommittee on Research on the Chinese Economy of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. Humanistic and Social Science Research in China: Recent History and Future Prospects, edited by Anne F. Thurston and Jason H. Parker. A collaborative publication of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China and the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1980.
Japan Conflict in Modem japanese History: The Neglected Tradition, edited by Tetsuo Najita andJ. Victor Koschmann. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. Princeton University Press, 1982. Court and Bakufu in japan: Essays in Kamakura History, edited by Jeffrey P. Mass. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. New Haven and London: Yaie University Press, 1982. japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650, edited by John Whitney Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Princeton University Press, 1981.
Korea Studies on Korea: A Scholar's Guide, edited by Han-Kyo Kim. Published with the support of the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1980.
Soldiers, Peasants, and Bureaucrats: Civil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies, edited by Roman Kolkowicz and Andrzej Korbonski. A publication of the Joint Commit-
62
Near and Middle East Systeme urbaine et deve10ppement au Maghreb, edited by Amal Rassam and Abdelkader Zghal. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East. Tunis: Ceres Productions, 1980.
South Asia Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Papers from two conferences sponsored by the Joint Committee on South Asia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.
Southeast Asia Moral Order and the Question of Change: Essays on Southeast Asian Thought, edited by David K. Wyatt and Alexander Woodside. Papers from two conferences sponsored by the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph Series No. 24, 1982.
Western Europe Latin America
Eastern Europe
The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. Princeton University Press, 1979.
Capitalism and the State in U.S.Latin American Relations, edited by Richard R. Fagen. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. Stanford University Press, 1979.
Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics, edited and with an introduction by Suzanne D. Berger. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Western Europe. Cambridge University Press, 1981.
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tellectual needs. To maximize the participation and reaction of relevant scholars, the papers are then presented in plenary sessions of the annual meetings of the African Studies Association.
Intellectual program Through their intellectual programs, the joint area committees have come to represent several major trends in scholarship in international studies. Three of these trends-that towards scholarship that is international in composition, is multidisciplinary in both personnel and content, and which links the global, national, and local levels-are especially noteworthy. Internationalizing. By systematically incorporating knowledge generated abroad and by promoting collaboration with and among the scholars who produce that knowledge, the joint area committees seek to be at the forefront of efforts to internationalize scholarship. The committees are uniquely situated to move both ideas and people across multiple national boundaries. In doing this, they both incorporate theories and methods developed abroad and share advances in American scholarship with foreign colleagues. They seek to encourage conceptual systems and theoretical perspectives that challenge the orthodoxies of the dominant approaches. And they incorporate, as peers, scholars from countries in which the university communities are relatively new or small, thereby contributing to the development and maintenance of local scholarly competence. Through this process, the committees generate the kind of research-rooted in history and culture and undertaken from multidisciplinary perspectives-that is essential for comparative analysis of social and cultural phenomena. This internationalization process is particularly important today. As the limitations of the theories and techniques developed by American social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s have been increasingly recognized, so too has the need for incorporating ideas and models such as structuralism, Marxism, semiotics, and Annales-style social history-all of which were often initially formulated or have been more fully elaborated in European universities. Scholars in the Third World, meanwhile, have begun to produce an original and ever more challenging theoretical and empirical research literature, often examining and reassessing Western social science analyses. As intellectual exchanges become more balanced, scholarship in America will have more to gain from the assumptions, ideas, and perceptions of forDECEMBER 1982
Area Committee Chairmen Endorse Continuation of Predoctoral Research Awards The chairmen of the foreign area committees sponsored by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies have strongly endorsed the importance of maintaining predoctoral research awards programs. Meeting as a group at the October Area Assembly with Kenneth Prewitt. president of the Council. and John William Ward. president of the ACLS. the chairmen discussed the threats to the area programs posed by reduced levels of funding. It was the finn consensus that predoctoral awards are essential for keeping area studies supplied with personnel and new ideas. and that every effort should be made to obtain the funds necessary to maintain the program at its present level. In 1981-82. 71 new fellows were funded by the program. Their names and topics are listed in the Council's Annual Report for 1981-82. pages 166-172. The area committee chairmen for 1982-83. all of whom were present at the meeting. are: African Studie.1
ALLEN F. ISAACMAN. University of Minnesota Chinese Studies FREDERIC E. WAKEMAN. JR .• University of California.
Berkeley Eastern Europe
HAROLD B. SEGEl.. Columbia University Japanese Studies
JOHN W. HALL. Yale University Korean Studies
CHAE-JIN LEE. University of Kansas Latin American Studies
RICHARD R. FAC:EN. Stanford University Near and Middle East
PETER VON SIVERS. University of Utah South Asia
MYRON WEINER. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Southeast Asia
JAMES C. SCOTT. Yale University Soviet Union
GAIL LAPIDUS. University of California. Berkeley (chairman-designate) Western Europe
PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTER. European University Institute (Florence)
63
Reviews of Area Studies in the United States This selection of publications focuses upon reviews that were sponsored by or are associated with the Council. The order is chronological. ROBERT B. HALL, Area Studies: With Specinl Reference to Their Implications for Research in the Social Sciences. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1947. One of the earliest appraisals, by a University of Michigan geographer, based on a Council-sponsored survey of area programs in American universities. CHARLES WAGl.EY, Area Research and Training. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1948. The report of a conference on the study of world areas, chaired by a Columbia University anthropologist, which recomm(;nded the establishment of the Foreign Area Fellowship Program. BRYCE WOOD, "Area Studies." Volume 1, pages 401-407 in David L. Sills, editor, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968. A review article by a political scientist who served on the staff of the Council from 1950 to 1973. JOHN M. THOMPSON, "Foreign Area Fellowship Program to Merge with Other Area Programs of the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council." Items, 26(4):41-44 (December 1972). A summary of the so-called Thompson Report, which recommended many of the key features of the present structure of the Councils' international program. The author, a historian, is currently executive director of Universities Field Staff International (Hanover, New Hampshire). RICHARD D. LAMBERT, Language and Area Studies Review. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1973. The report of a Council-sponsored nationwide survey of teaching and research in area studies, conducted by a University of Pennsylvania sociologist and Indianist. ROBERT E. WARD AND BRYCE WOOD, "Foreign Area Studies and the Social Science Research Council." Items, 28(4):53-58, December 1974. A review commissioned on the occasion of the Council's 50th anniversary. The authors are both political scientists who were associated with the Council for many years. KENNETH PREWITT, "Area Studies in the 1980s." Social Science Research Council,Annual Report 1981-82: xiii-xxvi. This Annual Report of the President focuses upon the relationship of area studies both to the social science disciplines and to the national interest. It concludes, in part, that "the future of area studies depends upon protecting the transnational character of scholarship in a world of multiple national interests."
64
eign scholars. And as these ideas are creatively incorporated, scholarship in American will, in turn, have more to contribute to the work of our foreign colleagues. The area committees contribute to the process of internationalization by promoting exchanges among individual scholars and by establishing and maintaining links among institutions in different national settings. As their memberships have become increasingly international, the committees have themselves become miniforums at which scholars from different national settings can exchange ideas. The more than 60 research planning conferences which the committees sponsor annually serve this function to an even greater extent, since some 40 per cent of the participants in recent meetings have been based in universities outside North America. At the level of institutional collaboration, the joint committees have established close working relationships with such organizations as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Tokyo), the Indian Council for Social Science Research (New Delhi), the Social Science Association of Thailand (Bangkok), the Latin American Faculty of the Social Sciences (Santiago), the Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (Dakar), and various binational Fulbright commissions in Europe. Through these connections, and in particular through a wide variety of jointly-sponsored projects, the area committees provide forums in which many of the current ideas interpreting the contemporary world at the local, national, and global levels are developed, exchanged, and critiqued. Through these forms of collaboration, the joint area committees have become the national-yet both international and nongovernmental--counterpart bodies to the major agencies which provide intellectual and financial support for social science and humanities research in much of the rest of the world. Integrating the social sciences and the humanities. Another major trend in international scholarship which the committees' programs represent is the integration of perspectives and methods from the social sciences and humanities-an integration which has become a distinctive charactersitic of area studies. Through their programs, the joint area committees encourage research which not only crosses the more closely related social science disciplines, but also integrates into the social sciences the interpretive skills of the humanities. The research planning activities of the joint area committees assume and assure cross-disciplinary collaboration. Under the umbrella of area studies, the VOLUME 36, NUMBER 4
natural tendency for social scientists and humanists to work as individuals and often in isolation is modified for how could India, say, be comprehended without knowledge of its language,literature, history, cultural symbols, social organization, political thought, and material resources? Opportunities for collaboration are presented as a matter of course. We do not suggest that cross-disciplinary collaboration is the only or even the best form of scholarship. But it is prudent to preserve one corner of American intellectual life for scholars who want colleagues with a different perspective on, for instance, social order or moral discourse or popular political mobilization. The present intellectual mood is one of breaking down rather than erecting barriers, one in which the diverse accomplishments of different perspectives and approaches are respected on their own terms and for what they can contribute to understanding the nature of human and social experience. In such a mood, the joint committees are well-positioned to advance integrated scholarship. Linking the global, national, and local levels. A third important trend in international scholarship has resulted from disillusionment with the predictions of social science growth theories in the 1960s; from recognition of the impact of transnational phenomena on economic, social, and political developments within societies; and from dissatisfaction with increasingly sterile debates between competing macrolevel theories which fail to trace the interaction of transnational phenomena and national policies and local cultural forms. More positively, it is a trend which embraces rather than avoids history, which recognizes the importance of the public and private relationships and organizations which cross national boundaries, and which acknowledges the constraints and opportunities created by a society's position in the transnational capital and labor markets. It also recognizes the critical role of the national state-as a bureaucratic organization with its own interests-in mediating between subnational units such as classes and economic sectors, and transnational actors such as multinational corporations and international aid agencies. Through their long commitment both to multidisciplinary and cross-cultural researcI-. and to their research planning functions, the joint area committees are well-positioned to conceptualize and encourage studies which relate these macro level phenomena to cultural preferences, local social forms, and individual actions. And while the central themes and issues that attract or merit scholarly attention will vary from committee to committee, the general trend is likely to DECEMBER
1982
restructure the terms of "development studies" in the 1980s, and stimulate fresh explorations and new approaches.
The search for innovation In pursuing their international programs, the Councils are constantly searching for new structures and mechanisms to advance their intellectual objectives. As individual committees have encountered areas of interest and themes that could not be satisfactorily explored within the confines of a single culture, nation, or region of the world, they have designed new projects which cut across those boundaries. To facilitate such projects, new structures have often been created, such as planning groups or conferences that are jointly sponsored by two or more committees. Some of these ad hoc groups may become new topically focused committees in the Councils' international programs, whose mandate would be to stimulate comparative research in different historical and cultural settings. In order to explore opportunities for exchange among the area committees more systematically, the Councils sponsored a meeting of the chairmen of the committees in November 1981. That group recommended that the joint committees attempt to meet together in working sessions at which areas of possible collaboration could be pursued. The idea for the October Area Assembly emerged from this recommendation. As they continue to reassess both the content and structure of their intellectual programs, the two Councils also try to give critical thought to activities and objectives which have not been undertaken or emphasized in the past-but perhaps should have been. Although the area committees have individually attempted to take stock of their fields and target award and research planning activities to meet particular needs, collectively they have not attempted to provide an overview of area studies, or to assess the state and needs of different fields comparatively (but see the box on page 64 for a list of such reviews). And, although the committees have sought to integrate scholars and ideas in the different social science and humanities disciplines, they have not attempted to build other links, for example, between area studies and the professions. As the Councils develop their international program during the 1980s, they will undoubtedly give attention to these and other areas in which the committees have chosen not to direct their efforts in the past. Such attention will assure a continuing dialogue about future directions. 0 65
Newly-issued Council Publications British Economic Growth, 1856-1973, by R. C. O. Matthews, C. H. Feinstein, and J.C. Odling-Smee. The seventh in a series entitled Studies of Economic Growth in Industrial Countries, sponsored by the Committee on Economic Growth (1949-68). Stanford University Press, 1982. xxiv + 712 pages. Cloth, $65.00. This volume deals broadly with central issues of analysis and method in British economic history. I ncluded are the following 17 chapters: (1) "A Quantitative-Historical Approach to British Economic Growth," (2) "The Rate of Growth of Total Output," (3) "Labor: Quantity," (4) "Labor: Quality," (5) "Capital," (6) "Factor Shares," (7) "Total Factor Productivity," (8) "Outputs, Inputs, and Productivity by Sector," (9) "The Effects of Structural Change," (10) "Demand," (11) "Investment: Introduction," (12) "Investment: The Cost and Availability of Finance," (13) "Investment: The Forces Determining Investment in the Principal Sectors," (14) "International Aspects: Introduction," (15) "The Relationship Between International Transactions and Economic Growth," (16) "The Rate of Growth and the Proximate Sources of Growth," and (17) "Causes and Consequences of the Growth of Total Factor Input and Total Factor Productivity." The book contains some 130 tables and 14 appendices dealing with questions of measurement, interpretation, and sources. The Committee on Economic Growth was one of the most successful and productive in the Council's history; during its 20-year existence, it sponsored some 70 publications, including books in Danish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. Representative examples of its publications in English are Simon Kuznets and Raymond Goldsmith, Income and Wealth of the United States
(Cambridge, England: Bowes & Bowes, 1952); Simon Kuznets, Wilbert E. Moore, and Joseph J. Spengler, Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1955); Olof Lindahl, The Gross Domestic Product of Sweden, 1861-1951 (Stockholm, 1956); Benedetto Barberi, The Growth of National Income ofItaly, 1861-1956 (Rome: Central Institute of Statistics, 1957); O. J. Firestone, Canada's Economic Development, 1867-1953 (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1958); Simon Kuznets, Six Lectures on Eco66
nomic Growth .(New York: Free Press, 1959); Bert F. Hoselitz, editor, Theories of Economic Growth (New York: Free Press, 1960); Henry Rosovsky, Capital Formation in Japan, 1868-1940 (New York: Free
Press, 1961); National Bureau of Economic Research, The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors (Princeton University Press, 1962);
Abram Bergson and Simon Kuznets, editors, Economic Trends in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963); Melville J. Herskovits and Mitchell Harwitz, editors, Economic Transition in Africa (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964); C. Arnold Anderson and Mary Jean Bowman, editors, Education and Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine, 1965); Jacob Schmookler, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966); and J.-J. Carre, P. Dubois, and E. Malinvaud, French Economic Growth (Stanford University Press, 1975.) National Social Data Series: A Compendium of Brief Descriptions, compiled by Richard C. Taeuber and Richard C. Rockwell. Reprinted from Review ofPublic Data Use, 10(112), May 1982. 89 pages. Paper, $2.00 to cover postage and handling. Order from Social Science Research Council, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20036. This is a compendium of published and unpublished information on 101 major data bases that are of use in research on U.S. social conditions and social change. Information is provided on samples, methods of data collection, subject matters covered, available forms of the data, time periods of observation, and addresses and telephone numbers of persons from whom to seek further information. Several indexes are provided, including an alphabetical index and a chronological index that categorizes studies by initial date of observation. A topical index lists studies under a variety of subject categories. Other indexes list panel studies, surveys with a subjective component, and data bases generated from administrative records. Information was current as of December 1981. Data bases were selected for inclusion on the basis of three criteria: a national sample for the United States, a substantial number of social or political variables,
and observations in two or more time periods. The compendium is not presented as exhaustive of studies meeting these criteria, but the compilers claim to have listed the major studies in each subject area. Readers will note the inclusion of a few data bases that do not meet all criteria (such as the Detroit Area Studies and The American Soldier series), which were included because they have already made substantial contributions to quantitative social science and because items in them can be replicated in current national studies. The authors note that the compilation is strongest on studies pertaining to individuals, families, and households, although there is considerable variation in the number of studies listed in particular subject categories. Only a few studies are listed for which the unit of measurement is a firm, a voluntary association or other form of organization, or a relationship between persons or organizations. This perhaps reflects a true scarcity of such data bases. Data collected through administrative procedures are underrepresented; there is presently no inventory of such data bases for the United States, and the authors did not set out to prepare one. This publication was prepared by staff of the Council's Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indicators in order (1) to assemble information that is scattered in a number of places, many of which are not easily accessible and (2) to emphasize the time series aspect of these data bases by collating information on the several time periods for which a data base is available. Part of the mandate of the Center, and of the Council's Advisory and Planning Committee on Social Indicators which gives intellectual guidance to the Center, is to provide central facilities and reference sources through which researchers can have access to published and unpublished sources of information on social indicators. Resources of the Center's library were used in assembling this material, and it is hoped that wider dissemination of this information will be of use in social science research and training. Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition, edited by Tetsuto Najita andJ. Victor Koschmann. Papers based on a conference sponsored by VOLUME
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the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, 9-14 July 1978. Princeton University Press, 1982. x + 456 pages. Cloth, $42.50; paper, $14.95. The thesis of this volume is that conflicts in modern Japanese history are clustered around discontinuous and synchronic systems of events. Rather than viewing history as a consensual movement proceeding in a causal or purposeful sequence, the approach is to emphasize the obverse of consensus: dissent, secession, and conflict. The contributors to the volume do not deny the importance of consensuality in the history of any society, but-by challenging stereotypes of conformity and corporatism as universal modes of Japanese behavior-they hope to add new ways of comprehending the complex and rich dimensions of modern Japanese history . The papers in the volume focus on the period from the mid-1850s through the mid-1920s and address such topics as ideological conflict, peasant rebellion, samurai radicalism, urban riots, and tenant unrest. In addition to the editors, the contributors are James R. Bartholomew, Ohio State University; Peter Duus, Stanford University; Harry Harootunian, University of Chicago; Hashimoto Mitsuru, Konan Women's College (Kobe); Thomas M. Huber, Duke University; Byron K. Marshall, University of Minnesota; Ron Napier, Data Resources, Inc. (Lexington, Massachusetts); Oka Yoshitake, University of Tokyo; Shumpei Okamoto, Temple University; Bernard S. Silberman, University of Chicago; M. William Steele, International Christian University (Tokyo); Conrad Totman, Northwestern University; Stephen Vlastos, University of Iowa; Ann Waswo, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies (Oxford); and George Wilson, Indiana University.
Food, Famine and the Chinese State-A Symposium, in Journal of Asian Studies, 41(4 :685-801, August 1982 . Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China and the Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies. A Workshop on "Food and Famine in Chinese History" was held from 5-15 August 1980 (see Item~, June 1981). Essays by three of the workshop participants, preceded by an introductory article by workshop organizer Lillian M. DECEMBER 1982
Li, Swarthmore College, are published in this symposium. "Comments from a South Asian Perspective," by Paul R. Greenough, University of Iowa, author of a book on the 1943 Bengal famine and an auditor at the workshop, concludes the symposium. The three historical articles are by James Lee, California Institute of Technology, Peter C. Perdue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and R. Bin Wong, University of Michigan. All three emphasize the importance of the role of the Chinese state in affecting distribution of resources, population growth, water control, and food supply. However, they also contain an implicit recognition of regional variations. Although the articles focus primarily on two regions of 18th century China, they also illuminate some of the broad themes that must be considered when the basic question is approached of how China has fed its population throughout the centuries. The papers in the symposium are noteworthy not only for their substantive content, but also for the sources that underpin much of the work. They draw on some sources that have only recently become available to scholars outside China. Some are located in the Palace Museum Archives in Taipei, and some in the Number One Historical Archives in Beijing. Extraordinarily detailed notes and citations accompany the articles to demonstrate the types of material used and the richness of these archives--which will undoubtedly serve to expand possibilities for research on China.
The Family in Eastern Europe, edited by Michael Mitterauer. Special issue of the Journal of Family Hiswry, 7(1), Spring 1982. A publication of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe. This is a collection of essays, chiefly by East Europeans. Following an introduction by Mr. Mitterauer, the following papers are included: "The Perennial Multiple Family Household, Mishino, Russia 1782-1858," by Peter Czap, Jr.; "Some Characteristics of the Medieval Hungarian Noble Family," by Erik Fugedi; "The EthnoSociological Structure of the Hungarian Extended Family," by Bela Gunda; "Ties of Kinship and Kinship Roles in an Historical Eastern European Peasant Community: A Synchronic Analysis," by An-
drejs Plakans; "Peasant Family and Household in Estonia in the Eighteenth and the First Half of the Nineteenth Centuries," by Juhan Kahk, Heldur Palli, and Halliki Uibu; "The Extended Family in Southeastern Europe," by Milovan Gavazzi; and "Russian and Central European Family Structures: A Comparative View," by Michael Mitterauer and Alexander Kagan.
Soldiers, Peasants, and Bureaucrats: Civil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies, edited by Roman Kolkowicz and Andrzej Korbonski. London: Allen & Unwin, 1982. 340 pages. Cloth, $37.50. This collection was supported in part by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe. The introduction, "CivilMilitary Studies: Fragmentation and Integration," is by Mr. Kolkowicz. Part One, Civil- Military Relations in the Middle East, contains "The Study of CivilMilitary Relations in Modernizing Societies in the Middle East: A Critical Assessment," by Fuad I. Khuri; "Egypt and Turkey: The Military in the Background," by Richard H. Dekmejian; "The Syrian Armed Forces in National Politics: The Role of the Geographic and Ethnic Periphery," by Alasdair Drysdale; and "The Israel Defense Forces: A Civilianized Military in a Partially Militarized Society," by Dan Horowitz. Part Two, Civil- Military Relations in Socialist Societies, contains "Military Intervention in the Soviet Union: Scenario for Post-Hegemonial Synthesis," by Roman Kolkowicz; "The Military as a Political Actor in China," by Ellis Joffe; "The Military as a Political Actor in Poland," by Andrej Korbonski and Sarah M. Terry; "The Role of the Military in Yugoslavia: An Historical Sketch," by A. Ross Johnson; "Party-Military Relations in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania," by Alex Alexiev. Part Three, Systemic Change and the Role of the Military: Modernization, Development, and Civil-Military Relations, contains "Toward a Theory of Civil-Military Relations in Communist (Hegemonial) Systems," by Roman Kilkowicz; "The Praetorian Army: Insecurity, Venality, and Impotence," by David C. Rapoport; "The Morphology of Military Regimes," by Samuel E. Finer; and "Civil- Military Relations in Socialist Authoritarian and Praetorian States: Prospects and Retrospects," by Amos Perlmutter. 67
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 605 THIRD AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158 Incorporated in the State of II/inoi" Dectmber 27, 1924, for the purpo.lt of advancing re.learch in the .locial Jcitnct.l Directors, 1982-83: STEPHEN E. FIENBERG, Carnegie-Mellon University; HOWARD E. GARDNER, Veterans Administration Hospital (Boston); CHARLES O.JONES, University of Vlrginia; MICHAEL KAMMEN, Cornell University; ROBERT W. KATES, Clark University; ROBERT A. LEVINE, Harvard University; GARDNER LINDZEY, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; ELEANOR E. MACCOBY, Stanford University; MARC NERLOVE, University of Pennsylvania; HUGH T. PATRICK, Yale University; KENNETH PREWITT, Social Science Research Council; MURRAY L. SCHWARTZ, University of California, Los Angeles; DONNA E. SHALA1.A, Hunter College, City University of New York; STEPHEN M. STIG1.ER, University of Chicago; SIDNEY VERBA, Harvard University; IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, State University of New York, Binghamton; WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, University of Chicago. Offuers and Staff: KENNETH PREWITT, President; DAVID L. SILLS, Executive Auociate; ROBERT A. GATES, MARTHA A. GEPHART, BROOKE LARSON, ROBERT PARKE, ROBERT W. PEARSON, PETER B. READ, RICHARD C. ROCKWELL, SOPHIE SA, LONNIE R. SHERROD, DAVID L. SZANTON; RONALD J. PE1.ECK, Controller.
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