Items Vol. 50 No.1 (1996)

( SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL) Volume 50/ Number 1 / March 1996

Open the Social Sciences

by Immanuel Wallerstein* [The following is based on a presentation delivered by Mr. Wallerstein at the SSRC on October 24, 1995, to mark the publication of Open the Social Sciences (Stanford University Press, 1996), a Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. I ] How were the social sciences constructed? In preparing our report we had to consider this question in order to understand the dilemmas of the social sciences. We start the story in the late 18th century by noting that the mo t important thing that happens is a kind of definitive divorce-I hesitate to use the word "divorce"-a break between cience and philosophy.

Before that the terms were not quite totally interchangeable but very cIo ely aligned. They both - Immanuel Wallerstein i Director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economie , Historical Sy tems, and Civilizations, and Di tingui bed Profe r of Sociology, Binghamton University.

1 The Gulbenkian Cornmi ion was chaired by Mr. Wallerstein. Other members included Calestou Juma, Executive Secretary, UN Convention on Biodiversity; Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor of the Hi tory and Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts In titute of Technology; JUrgen Kocka, Professor of the Hi tory of the Industrial World, Freie UniversiUll, Berlin; Dominique l..ecourt, Professor of the Philosophy and History of Science, Universi~ de Paris; Valentin Y. Mudimbe, William R. Kenan, Jr. Profe r, Depanment of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and CI ic, Stanford University; Kinhide Mu hakoji, Pro~ r, Faculty of International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University; lIya Prigogine, Vicomte, Nobel Prize for OIemistry, 1977, Director, lnstituts Internationaux de Phy ique et de Chimie; Peter J. Taylor, Professor of Geography, Loughborough University; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Krieger-Eisenhower Distingui bed Profes or of Anthropology d Director, Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power, and Hi tory, The John Hopkin University.

810 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019

meant knowledge, and people did not make a strong distinction between philosophy and science, It is in the late 18th century that we see the birth of C,P. Snow's ''two cultures." Science was defined as the empirical, the search for truth through research, as opposed to what philosophers did, which was to speculate or make deductions in some way, It was a continuation of the break between philosophy and theology; this was taking it one step further, toward a thoroughly ecularized knowledge system.

ATI'ENTION READERS Please note our new addre s, effective March 15, 1996 Social Science Research Council 810 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10019 Phone: (212) 377-2700 Fax: (212) 377-2727

•

CONTENTS OF TIllS ISSUE •

Open the Social Sciences,

1995 Abe Fellows' Conference First Annual Japan Studies Suvey of International Field Di settation Workshop Research Fellow hips, 1990Conference on International 1995, K~nlon W. Worc~sIer 8 Miaration to the U.S. Pre idential Items, Asia-Pacific and the New KmMlh Pmvitt 15 World Order Current Activitie at the Council 19 Recent Council Publications

19

Immanu~1 WalltrS/~in

19 20 20 21

Knowledge and the university At the arne time as this intellectual break in people's minds between science and philo ophy, there occurs the revival of the univer ity. We talk of the university as a continuous in titution but it really i not. The medieval univer ity was an interesting in titution but it more or Ie s died out in the 16th century.

And the universities were relatively unimportant in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centurie . They did not have permanent staff; intellectual work didn't go on in the university but outside of it, in many other kinds of in titutions: the College de France, the Royal Societie , etc. One of the intere ting things that happened in the 19th century is the recreation of the univer ity a the locus of both the creation of knowledge and it reproduction. That involved omething quite new, which was to take the faculty, primarily the faculty of philo ophy, and break it up into omething called di ciplines, with chairs, and with departments that would grant degrees. The structure of the univer ity as we know it today was really created in the late 19th century. So it was very recently that universitie and di ciplines as we know them were invented.

Between about 1750 and 1850, in term of the development of individual di cipline , we a see a ituation where there were hundred of name for re earch inquiry. What happen between 1850 and 1914 is the reduction of the e hundred of name to a small group of name which become defined as the disciplines. It's a kind of coagulation of sets of interests, sets of problems. Our report argues that in point of fact we end up with six major name , plus a couple of minor ones. The e six major name become departments, national associations, cholarly journal , and library categories (the Library of Congre in the last decade of the 19th century reproduce the e name as its set of categories). All of thi in titutionalize a serie of choices.

Lines of demarcation We see the names cho en around three basic cleavages. The first cleavage i pa t-pre ent, which was a cleavage between history, as it was reorganized in the 19th century, and the trio of ociology, political cience, and economics. There were two rather different assumptions about how one achieved scientific truths.

The historians followed Ranke's dictum that " .. .er will bios zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen" [it wants 2\lTEMS

only to how what actually happened]. In other word , you could only tru t as evidence document that were written at the time for purpo es other than informing historian three centuries later. The fundamental as umption wa that if an ambassador write a letter to hi monarch, he i trying to inform the monarch of a situation in the country where he is po ted, and he i trying to tell it a he understand it.

If you read it three centurie later, at least you know that i what the ambas ador in fact aid, and it may well be that it is what the ambassador really believed.

And thi of course pu he you in the direction of archive . It al 0 pu he you in the direction of political and diplomatic hi tory, becau e the e are the thing mo t likely to urvive in archival form.

It wa argued that cholar would probably have a bia about current event becau e of their involvement in their own ocietie. For thi rea on, the further they delved into the past the more neutral the cholars could be. AI 0, the objective reality of the archive would impo e itself upon the cholars. Hence anything recent wa u peet. In addition, states or other in titution tended not to make recent documents available to cholar. They till don't; state document are ecret for 20 year , 30 years, 50 year , 1()() year or whatever. Furthermore, in order to understand the archive , you had to be pretty well-informed about the general cultural context within which they fell.

Thi led hi torian to do work in field with which they were mo t familiar, 0 there was a great tendency to work on their own national histories. At the same time, they were very u picious of generalizations preci ely becau e they were" cientists." That is to ay they aw generalization as being old-fashioned peculative philo ophy, and in order to be empiricist, you could not generalize. In any case working with archive pu he you in the direction of detail, and detail tend to be terribly idiographic.

On the other hand, the nomothetic trio turned the w~ole logic on it head. In order to be objective, they aId, we have to have data that are not ubject to the judgment of the cholar. Ergo, the more quantitative the data, the Ie ubject they are to the judgment of the cholar, the more comparable they are in various ituation . And that pu he you inevitably into the preent. E peeially if you take the next tep which i to ay there are univer al truth about human behavior that hold acro all time and pace. The minute you ay that, it become no different whether you tudy VOLUME

50, NUMBER I

Germany in the pre ent or India in the 5th century B.C., becau e you are looking for universal truth .

Since the data on Germany in the pre ent i 5,000 time better-harder i the word-than the data on India in 5,000 B.C., we tudy Germany in the pre ent to arrive at our generalization . That was the general late 19th-century, early 20th-century eparation of history from the three "hard" ocial cience.

We note something el e: the ociology of knowledge. At least 95 percent of all scholars and all cholarship from the period 1850 to 1914, and probably even to 1945, originates in five countrie : France, Great Britain, the Germanie , the Italie , and the United State . There i a mattering el ewhere, but ba icaJly not only doe the cholar hip come out of the e five countrie , but mo t of the cholarship by most cholars i about their own country. So mo t of the cholarship is about the e five countries. Thi is partly pragmatic, partly ocial pre ure, and partly ideological: the e are the important countries, this is what matters, this is what we should tudy in order to learn how the world operates.

That leads to the econd cleavage. The fact i that the five countrie were not the entire world and there wa orne vague awarene in the scholarly community that there wa a world beyond the five countrie .

What they did in our view was imply invent two other di cipline to tudy the re t of the world. The fir t and mo t obviou i anthropology, which wa invented to tudy the primitive world. The primitive world was defined in a very imple way: in practice, as the colonie of the five countries, including the internal countrie . In theory it wa defined as the tudy of maJl groups which had a low level of technology, which did not have writing prior to contact with the We tern world, which did not have religion that cut acro group, with each group having it own religiou belief. The e group were pre umed to be unchanging and timele .

And 0 we get a whole ideology about how you study them. They are very trange people who peak very trange language , from a European point of view. You have to do participant ob ervation, you have to go out there, you spend a couple of years with "your tribe," you learn the language, you get orne people to help you a interpreters. What do you study? You tudy everything: ethnography. Becau e you know nothing, you learn everything: how they marry, how they exchange goods, how they handle MARCH

1996

disputes among themselves, what the grammar of the language i , and you come back and you report all of thi . It was very idiographic in tonality and was based on the pre umption of ahistoricity.

Thi help you handle the problem of a good portion of the earth but not all of the earth outside the five countrie , or out ide of Europe, because there are obviou Iy countrie that cannot be de cribed in the term I ju t u ed for anthropological work: for example, China, India, the Arab-I lamic world, Persia. All hare a serie of characteristic . They have at the preent or at orne point in the past one or more large bureaucratic empires in their area. A a result, there wa in fact writing, and urviving texts. Furthermore, they had-to u e a 19th century term-world religion . What a world religion essentially meant was a religion that had spread over a large area of the world.

Buddhism was a world religion, Islam was a world religion, Hindui m wa a world religion, as opposed to African-animi t-Iocal religious beliefs. These nonEuropean civilizations had world religions, and they had texts which tended largely to be religious texts.

The only thing they did not have was modernity.

The study of these kinds of ocial systems was built into the last field which was not usually defined as a ocial cience, which refused to defme itself as a ocial cience, but in fact was the major ocial science from 1850 to 1945 dealing with all these areas of the world: Oriental tudie. The premise of Oriental studie wa very imple: These are marvelous, complex, tructure that we have to understand. The best way to understand them i to get into their civilization, which means reading and learning the texts-philology become a very central technique-and presenting the e texts to the rest of the world, while also explaining why they could not become modern. They were een a frozen civilization , and therefore as ahistoric.

So we have a econd basic cleavage: history plus the nomothetic trio dealing with the Western world, and anthropology and Oriental tudies dealing with the re t of the world.

The third cleavage has to do with the existence of three nomothetic ocial ciences (sociology, political science, and economic ). Why not have one social cience? I believe this has to do with 19th century ideology. Basically the dominant world view of liberalism wa that the tate, the market, and the civil society were different entities. They operated by different logic and therefore needed to be studied eparately, ITEMsi3

and kept apart, in ome ense, in the real world. In order to do that the scholar had to egregate their learning of these subjects. This is crudely what happened, and by about 1945, it was well e tablished a the organizing principle in the ocial cience divi ions of most universities. In the meantime, in the emergence of the university system we get what we call the tripartite division, between the natural science , the humanities, and the ocial ciences. Basically that means philo ophy versu science, with the ocial ciences somehow uneasily in the middle, reproducing the tension inside the social cience, of the "two-culture" split. This holds true up to 1945. Then everything is changed.

The internationalization of the social sciences We think everything changed as of 1945 primarily because the real world changed in everal way . We emerge at the end of the Second World War with a world in which the United State i the dominant force, economically, politically, and cUlturally. For at least 10 or 15 years it i literally the dominant force numerically in the ocial cience world. I was very struck two or three year ago looking back at an early po twar UNESCO document that wa produced by a committee of 16 people, of whom 15 were from the United States. That i ab olutely extraordinary. I cannot imagine a UNESCO document today having more than one of the 16 from the United State . But there it was. Nobody thought it was urpri ing then that 15 of the 16 scholar were from the United State.

What difference did that make? It made everal differences; one is the emergence of area tudie . The history is very clear, the motivation was heavily geopolitical. People were aying, ''The U.S. has all the ere ponsibilitie in the world, it doe n't have anybody who know what' going on in all the e part of the world, we're hort of scholars, we've got to produce pecialists of the non-We tern world." Then area tudies comes along a the organizational mode by which we are going to produce rapidly large numbers of scholars who know omething about Africa and Asia and Latin America and Ru ia and China and whatnot.

Area studie is very intere ting as an organizational tructure. The basic idea was to ay, "We're not going to touch the discipline . People are till going to get Ph.D.'s in all their discipline . But we're going to try to induce graduate tudents to pecialize in the e areas 4\1TEMS

and acquire knowledge by giving them a one-year program added on to their normal Ph.D., during which they'd learn a little bit about everything about the area." So if they were intere ted in India, they'd learn about the hi tory of India, the ociology of India, the economic of India, the political cience of India, etc.

Plu maybe Urdu or Hindi or whatever. Thi was therefore-to u e the clas ic word-multidi ci pli nary.

The tudents would acquire thi knowledge, then they would go on to their Ph.D. in orne discipline and hopefully, they would continue to do their empirical work on India as economi t , or a sociologi t , or as hi torian . Thi was a highly ucce sful program. Over the last 40-odd year it ha pread beyond the United State . Many other countrie adopted the arne idea and we have produced thou and of very good scholars doing all kind of work which was almo t never done before 1945.

Now what doe thi mean? Fir t of all it mean that the cleavage, civilized world/re t of the world, i broken down completely in term of the di ciplines.

Prior to 1945 you would have been con idered trange if you were doing empirical work out ide of the We tern world and you were not in either anthropology or Oriental tudie. All of a udden you get hi torian ,political cienti t, ociologi t , and even economi t , floating around the re t of the world. If you think about that, it eem to undermine the theoretical logic of cultural anthropology and Oriental tudie.

The theoretical logic was that the e di cipline had omething pecial to do in the e areas which nobody el e could do and they had to do it in quite a different way. And they would do it ahi torically, whereas the e people were coming in to tudy an ongoing, changing, tran forming reality-that'S why area tudie was created. So it challenge the logic of the di cipline . Oriental tudie give up it name, the cholars join other divi ion , they become hi torians or profe ors of religion. The cultural anthropologi ts tried variou thing. They decided that European and North American have tribe too; they would tudy Swi mountaineer and people in Chicago lum, and now they decide they'll tudy, "culture." They are in earch of a rai on d'etre.

The internal logic of tho e department changed as well. It i n't only that anthropology and Oriental tudie 10 t their bearing but that other discipline have to truggle with their methodological and their theoretical rationale . On top of that, ince 1945, you VOLUME

50, NUMBER I

have the mo t extraordinary expan ion of the world economy in the hi tory of the modem world sy tern.

This means that there wa a lot of money around, and one of the way in which this money was expended is on the incredible expan ion of the univer ity y tern throughout the world. From 1945 on, there has been a geometric escalation in the number of universities, the number of university profe ors, of students, of Ph.D.'s ....

When we got our Ph.D.' there was orne mumbling about how it had to be original re earch. Original re earch mean omething that omebody hasn't already done. A the number increase thi tend to be a bit of a problem. You have to find niches. So there is a natural proce of poaching. Let's take my own field of ociology. One of the first ub-disciplines that emerges after World War II is omething called political sociology. There wa also economic ociology; a little bit later there was historical sociology. I am not even talking about the more e oteric sociologies: the sociology of touri m, for example, but tho e that directly impinge on the neighboring fields. I recall my own experience 40 years ago on my Ph.D. orals. One of my field was political ociology, and orne professor aid, "What do you think i the difference between political ociology and political science?" a question which I must confe had not occurred to me before.

I thought about it and I said, "Well, I can't ee any."

And I still can't ee any. So we have a problem of overlap which e cal ate .

I go to quite a few different national ocial cience meetings for one reason or another. One of the things that strikes me i , when you pick up the program of the meetings and you read the title of the paper, it's very hard to know which congre you're at the e days. The title read the ame whether it's ociology, anthropology, political cience, or hi tory. The overlap at that level grow daily. Thi wa the situation from 1945 on. Area tudies tremendously undermined the logic of the ocial cience divi ioning that was created up to then, and the mutual poaching al 0 undermined it.

And then came 1968, symbolically. A couple of things happened a a re ult. First of all, one of the main theme of '68 was "the forgotten peoples." And the forgotten people got tran lated immediately into academic term: women's tudie, black tudie, etc.

There i a continuing creation of more name . The e groups come along and say, We have a place, a legitiMARCH

1996

mate place within the university structure, and we would like to translate that not merely into writing book , but into having programs, eventually majors, eventually Ph.D.' -although there was some hesitation about that. What you ee with that process which i very trong, socially based, and not about to go away, is that we are in fact now moving in the other direction. If from 1750 to 1850 you had a lot of names which then got reduced (to about six as of 1945), the curve is now moving in the other direction.

We are going from six to 20 names. When I read univer ity catalogues I am struck with the fact that each catalogue has about 10 to 12 names. They all have the basic ix or even, but they all each add about three that vary from university to university. This will continue for orne time to come.

Spheres of inquiry Two other things happen in the 1970s and 1980s which are quite fundamental and which we talk about in the report. One is a major revolution in the natural ciences. The natural sciences were epistemologically very stable from about the 16th or 17th century to the 1970 , in the ense that Newtonian/Cartesian premises were fundamental to all scientific activity. Science was the earch for the simplest laws. Science was objective. Science was neutral. Science dealt with equilibria. Science was cumulative.

What happens i that there has been a revolution brewing ince the late 19th century, but it doesn't acquire organizational strength until the 1970s. It come along and ays cience is not deterministic.

All we can have is probabilistic statements about the future. Mathematical accuracy is impossible to obtain. Every time you measure you are going to mea ure omething different. Processes are not linear but bifurcate. Science is the search for the complex, and not the earch for the imple. And, most important for our purpo e, cientific laws are not reversible.

A founding as umption of the natural sciences is that time does not matter. But today many natural scientists proclaim that irreversibility is a fundamental premi e of cientific activity. The slogan is "the arrow of time." Even atoms have time and are changed over time. Now thi turns the relationship of the social science and the natural ciences upside down.

When I was a graduate student you learned that we ocial cientists were inferior physicists but one day we would learn how. We would someday figure out l11lMsl5

how to talk about social proce se the way physici ts talk about physical proce e, that i , that they were linear, they had equilibrium, that they were irrever ible, that there exi ted universal law . All of a sudden we have a major portion of natural cienti t saying no, no, no, it's an arrow of time-in effect bringing the natural ciences and the ocial cience closer together, but not on the ba is of mechani tic, Newtonian natural science, but on the basis of premi es that are fundamental to the ocial cience.

The movement is toward the ocial science , in effect.

The physicists are aying in a way that they are inferior ociologists rather than ociologi t aying they are inferior cientists. In any case they recognize that the ocial proces es are the mo t complex proce es.

At the ame time there i a movement in the humanities, which I think can be explained in part by changes in the political world, which has led to the rise of cultural studie . Cultural tudie i an ab olutely major movement today. It eed i in the humanities, but there are many anthropologi t and historians who are involved in cultural tudie, and this is spreading throughout the social ciences. So there is a blurring. Although the cultural tudie people emphasize the degree to which their work i a reaction to and a condemnation of cienti m, it i of cour e Newtonian cienti m that they are really denouncing, which, as I've pointed out above, i being undermined within the rank of the natural cientists. But what is triking i the degree to which cultural studies is really a move of the humanities towards the social cience. What cultural tudies ays is that ocial proce se matter, that what the humanities have to talk about are the e ocial proces es. Not only are difference within the ocial ciences becoming blurred, but the tripartite divi ion it elf-humanitie, ocial science, natural cience-i coming into question.

A program of refonn What kind of social cience hall we build? Fir t of all, we ugge t that the problem of the future i not merely a question of re tructuring the ocial science .

We are not ugge ting that they be made one. We are saying that the rationale for the di cipline we now have doe not make much ense. And we had better try to rethink new rationale , new way of divi ioning.

Note that what we today call biology, was called zoology and botany not 0 very long ago, and that zoology 6\ITEMS

and botany departments have virtually di appeared ..

Biology has many ubdivi ion , but botany and zoology are not the principle on which they are organized, o it i po ible to redivide the pie in other way .

We ugge t that univer itie need to examine the tripartite division. It i built on a concept of the "two culture " which grew up in the late 18th century and which we think hould be overcome. We may be a bit chauvini tic in thinking that the ocial cience might be central to that proce . We even wonder whether the univer ity will remain the primary locus of knowledge production and reproduction. Until recently it wa . With the expan ion of the univer ities and the numbers of people who go to univer itie , one of the thing that ha happened i what I call the highchoolization of the university y tern, that i to ay the enormou ocial pre ure-you hould teach more and it hould be relevant and 0 forth-in order to get tudent with a B.A. into a po ition where they can get a job, etc. Scholarly profe or have flown from college teaching to graduate school teaching; they are beginning to fly to in titute of advanced tudy. And we have to rai e the que tion a we look ahead, 20, 50 year , whether we are not going to develop new kind of in titution and, if 0, on what financial base. How would you fund people doing re earch? Hi torically the univer ity was the olution to the problem of how you fund cholar. You give them a job a a teacher, and that way you fund cholar hip. If now there i a trend to pu h them out or they pu h them elve out, what will fund them a scholars?

One pecific recommendation i that univer itie and other in titution encourage omething that already exi t on a mall cale: the po ibility of group coming together around theme for a year' work. Second, in tead of new program being e tabIi hed every time orne body has an argument for x tudie we ugge t that universitie think in tead of e tabli hing a five-year time-limited re earch center on that ubject. Then they will ee what they can actually produce within thi five-year program, without having to worry about fundrai ing during that period.

(Fund hould be obtained at the beginning 0 time i not pent writing grant propo al which, a we all know, i a very time-con uming proce ). Now tho e two ugge tion co t a certain amount of money. We have two further ugge tion which I think are even more important and will co t not a penny.

We ugge t that profe or be given joint VOL ME 50, NUMBER I

appointment. Nowaday it i u ually a favor to a relatively di tingui hed person, in hi or her fifties or sixties. When you try to get that per on to the univer ity, you ay, "You can be a professor of x and y imultaneou Iy." It' a courte y. The econd appointment is u ually meaningle and you're not really expected to do anything about it.

It's just a nice title, it make the profe or feel good. We would like to tum it all around. We would like to ay: mandatory double appointment. No profe or at the university hould be in one department. All profe or hould be in two.

When you talk in term of their primary department, it i the one in which they have their Ph.D. The econd department could be any other one.

And in order to prevent a department from being re i tant to thi , we would insi t that all departments have at least 25 percent of their profe or come from another o-called primary department.

We think thi would tran form department . It would create new mixes, and it doe n't co t a penny. As long as you make it mandatory, it will work. Every profes or must be a profe or in two

MARCH

1996

department , but in effect he/she can choose the econd department. And the departments must accept this po sibility; nobody can say, "Only our types here."

The arne hold true at the graduate-student level.

Make it mandatory to have a minor in another department. Now it's not only optional but most departments frown on it if you try to do it. You go to your department and you ay, "I'd like to take x number of cour e in orne other department." And they say, "It's not good for your career, don't do it." We propose aying you can't get a Ph.D. in any discipline without taking a quarter of your courses in some other department as a minor. You can still earn a Ph.D. in that discipline but you must choose a second one. And departments must allow you to do it.

Those are the stronge t recommendations. I think they would be revolutionary and as I say they would not co t a penny. Having made the e recommendation , let me conclude by quoting from the last sentence of our report: "What is most important ... is that the underlying issues be debated-dearly, openly, intelligently, and urgently." •

ITEMS17

Survey of International Field Research Fellowships,

1990-1995

by Kenton W. Worcester* The SSRC-ACLS** international program has provided ub tantial support for fellow hip that enable advanced graduate tudent to conduct field re earch outside the United State . Thi program of field re earch di ertation fellowship i well regarded acro graduate program in the ocial ciences and humanities and ha allowed everal generations of highly promising younger cholars to conduct overeas re earch. The fir t program of Area Research Training Fellowship was initiated by the SSRC in 1948 with funds from the Carnegie Corporation and was de igned to meet the training need of per on who were or proposed to become peciali t on the contemporary culture of major foreign areas. The program was tenninated in 1953 when the Ford Foundation e tabli hed it Foreign Area Fellow hip Program. In 1963, admini tration for thi program was transferred to a joint committee of the Council and the ACLS. Ten year later, the two Council folded the program into the field development activitie of the joint area tudie committee . The program has effectively remained the re pon ibility of the joint committee and will be 0 through the remainder of the 1996 fellow hip cycle.

Thi article provide an overview of the di sertation field re earch fellow hip awarded by the Council 'joint committee during the ix-year period from 1990-1995. It update a 1991 Items article by David Szanton that provided infonnation on the fellow hip program for the period 1983-1989. 1

Program overview During the 1990-1995 period, the program provided a total of 578 field research di ertation fellowhip . Fellow were elected by the II joint area

• Kenton w. Worcester. a political scienti t. i program director or the Joint Committcc on 'WI tern Europe and the Berlin Program ror Advanced Gennan and European Studie .

•• American Councilor Learned Societie .

8\I-reMS

committee u ing criteria e tabli hed by the Councils a a whole. The fellow hip have been intended to timulate the close inve tigation of compelling intellectual and theoretical problem through prolonged expo ure to ite, archive , and culture out ide the United State . In the context of deepening federal retrenchment in higher and international education and of dimini hing intere t in basic research on th~ part of many private foundation , the fellow hip have perfonned a critical role in preserving a fragile re ource base for theoretically-driven, context- en itive field re earch.

During thi period, upport for the field re earch fellow hip ha come from two funding tream . The fir t ha been "core funding" provided by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the international program. The e fund have been di tributed on an annual basi to the joint committees, allocated largely on the ba i of the ize of the particular applicant pool. The econd tream con i t of fund generated by individual committee , which have been allocated within their specific program . In the 1990-1995 period, the Africa, China, Korea, Near and Middle East, and South A ia (for Banglade h tudie ) joint committee attracted ub tantial level of upport from funder concerned with upporting in-depth re earch in the countrie and region by younger scholars. The joint committees on Eastern Europe and the fonner Soviet Union al 0 benefited from major upport from the U.S. government Title VIll program .

The field re earch fellow hip program ha attracted izable number of applicant each year. The Latin American and We tern Europe program con i tently have received over 200 application per year for the pa t everal year , while the Africa program receive approximately 150 applicant annUally. While the preci e number fluctuate , of course, depending on any number of particular variable , the international program as a whole ha received anywhere from 800 to 1,000 application per year. In part, the inten e competition for the e fellow hip i a function of their pre tige. It al 0 reflect the limited ource of upport for in-depth field re earch at the di ertation level in the humanitie and ocial cience. The Council -that i , their selection panel and peer I David L. Szanton. · Shapin the Course or Area Studies: The Di Research Award : Ittms. 45(2-3):26-31 . June-September 1991.

rtation

VOLUME 50. NUMBER 1

review proce es-review a very high proportion of the be t di sertation propo als pre ented by student who wi h to do field-ba ed international cholar hip.

The program i noteworthy for the fact that the fellowships have not been limited by citizen hip.

As the program' guideline tate, "Full-time tudents, regardle of citizenship, who are enrolled in full time doctoral program in the United State are eligible ... U.S. citizen and permanent resident of the United States enrolled in full-time doctoral program abroad are al 0 eligible un Ie otherwi e noted." The ACLS-SSRC field re earch dis ertation fellow hip i the only program of it kind that welcome application from qualified non-U.S. citizen applicants. The re ult is that in any given year a minimum of 15% of the fellowhip award have gone to non U.S.-citizens, either for re earch in their home country or in a third country. Thi feature of the program repre ent an important contribution to the ongoing internationalization of the ocial science and humanitie .

The evaluation criteria u ed in determining award i basically con i tent acro the joint committee . Overall, the program seek to provide upport to projects that are of broad and compelling intellectual and theoretical intere t.

Propo aI are expected to tate the propo itions or hypothe e to be evaluated, to de cribe the method to be u ed and the data ource to be drawn upon, and to e tabli h firmly the relevance of the case selected for the problem at hand. In addition, applicant mu t how that they are competent to carry out the propo ed re earch and that they have the nece ary language and methodological kill to implement the project in a timely manner.

Furthermore, the applicant' project i expected to contribute to the theoretical and methodological development of individual di cipline and re earch

areas.

Fellow hip award are currently administered by the Council' II area program. In ca e where a fellow receive a fellow hip from an out ide program, uch as the Fulbright Program, award level are amended accordingly. In many in tance the Council will add upport to the out ide award to achieve extended period of field re earch at minimal additional co t. Saving incurred in the e

MARCH

1996

hared award are u ed to upport additional fellows.

Awards have ranged from as little as $3,000 in cases where the fellow received ubstantial outside support, to upward of $22,000. In addition, a number of the joint committee provide a limited amount of support for di ertation write-up or pecialized language training. Award are et at levels that conform to the requirements of individual projects, which of course vary con iderably acro s world regions and type of research ite (e.g., rural versus urban).

Statistical overview The following table offer detailed information regarding the awards granted for dissertation field research by the international program in the period 1990-1995. Tables 1,2,3, and 4 indicate the regions and countries tudied, the disciplines and the universitie repre ented, and in broad terms, the types of project conducted. Table 5 indicates the number of award provided by each committee per year. The categorie used in con tructing the first four tables match tho e contained in David Szanton's 1991 Items article. In tandem, the two articles provide a wealth of information on the Councils' dis ertation field re earch fellow hip from the early 1980 to the mid1990 .

One figure that doe not appear in the tables is the percentage of awards that went to women and men.

For thi reason, it i worth noting that of the 578 fellowship awarded over the six-year period from 1990-1995, 52% went to men, while 48% went to women. (Comparable figure from the 1983-1989 period were 54% men and 46% women.)

Table 1 ( ee next page) indicate, by region (as defined by the exi ting committee structure), the countrie in which the fellows carried out their research project . Although mo t fellows conducted their research in a ingle country, orne worked in two or more countrie . This means that the totals indicated by world area are generally higher than the total number of fellow hip awarded by each joint committee. In everal in tance fellows traveled beyond their world area to take advantage of archives based in former colonial centers, uch as Britain or France. In other ca e fellow worked in countries that are no longer in exi tenee (e.g., the German Democratic Republic), or are not recognized by sections of the international community (e.g., Macedonia).

IreMs19

Tabl 1 FeUows' PJace(s) or Study, by World Area and H t Country, Im-I99S

Africa Kenya Tanzania Nigeria zimbabwe Senegal Central African Republic South Africa Burkina Faso, Cameroon Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zanzibar Botswana,C8te d'Ivoire, Gabon, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia Total

8 7

6 6 5 4 4 6 (3 each)

Eastern Europe Poland Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic Hungary Yugoslavia/former Yugoslavia E. Europe (general) German Democratic Republic Slovakia Total

22 17 11 6 5 4

5(1 each) 70

27 16 16 9 7

7 2

84

~

Japan United States

l5(3each) 2

7 (1 each)

7i

Near and Middle East Egypt Israel and West Bank Turkey Britain, Syria France Morocco, Yemen Algeria, Iran. Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Sudan, Tunisia Total

13 7 5 8 (4 4 (2

7 (1 each)

11 6

10(5 each) 3 2 2 (1 each)

34

Southeast Asia Indonesia Thailand Philippines Vietnam Cambodia, Malaysia Burma, Laos, Singapore

19 8 6 6 6 (3 each)

3(1 each)

48

Total

~

37

75

~

27

3 (1 each)

30

Latin America and the Caribbean 17 Mexico 13 Brazil Argentina 10

IO\ITEMS

each)

47

Soviet Union Soviet Union / former SU South Korea Japan, Mexico, Taiwan Total

each)

3

South Asia Bangladesh Sri Lanka India, Nepal Britain Pakistan Malaysia, The Netherlands Total

35 Total

6 4

14 (2 each) 8 (1 each)

~

Taiwan Japan Hong Kong China France Britain Germany, India, Korea, Peru, Russia Total

Chile Ecuador Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru Bolivia Belize, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Martinique, South Korea, Trinidad Total

Western Europe France Germany Britain Spain Greece, Italy, Portugal Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Malta, The Netherlands. Sweden Total

23 16

12 4 9(3 each) 2 ~(1

each)

72

VOLUME

50,

NUMBER I

1

Many of the joint committees have endeavored to ensure that "lesser-studied" countries receive attention from younger cholars, but the figures provided by Table I suggest that a limited number of countries continue to attract disproportionate number of researcher -a a function of their ize, regional importance, and/or acce sibility to outside scholars.

Table 2 underscores the continuing centrality of a small number of di ciplines to the field research program. Between them, history and anthropology account for slightly over half of the awards given in the period under review. If political science and ociology are added, then these four discipline account for just over three quarters of the fellowship awards.

By way of contrast, art hi tory, literature, and musicology together constituted ju t under 10% of the awards, while economic , geography, and p ychology contributed slightly under five percent. The SSRC remains concerned with finding ways of enhancing the value and appeal of the program for these underrepresented disciplines, particularly in the social sciences.

A number of di cipline are represented in the Di

1990-1995 period that did not appear in the earlier figures: busine s administration, environmental studies, engineering, history of science, public health, theater, and women's studies. (Only one discipline. nutrition. was featured in the earlier report that did not figure here.) Of particular note is the emergence of environmental sciences as an interdisciplinary field with a Ph.D. component. Environmental sciences received three award in the 1990-1995 period. more than any other previously unrepresented discipline.

Two slight alterations were made to the categories in the earlier report. First, literature was disaggregated from languages and literatures. Awards in the former category were generally to students working out of departments of comparative literature. while awards in the latter category were to students affiliated to programs organized under a languages and cultures rubric.

Second. the category of area studies was folded into languages and literature. primarily because in several cases the distinction was unclear. As this table confirms, doctoral programs of area studies and/or languages and literature remain concentrated in Chinese.

East European. and Soviet studies.

Table 2 rtation FeUow hips by World Area and DiscipUne. 1990-1995

AFR CHN

EE JAP KOR LAC NME

SA SEA SOY

History 23 14 37 8 11 28 12 7 Anthropology 15 5 4 6 6 18 11 14 Poli t. Sci. 5 9 14 7 3 9 3 3 Sociology 1 7 2 4 4 5 1 Lang. & Lit. 11 7 1 1 1 (incl. area studies) Art History 4 4 2 1 1 Economics 3 1 1 1 0 6 1 1 (incl. agricultural and resource economics) Li terature 2 3 1 2 1 2 2 2 1 Music 2 2 1 2 Religion 1 Geography 4 1 1 1 Linguistics 1 1 1 1 1 Architecture 1 Envir. Sci. 1 1 1 Psychology Education 2 Public Health 1 Theater 1 Bus. Adm. 1 Engineering Hist. of Sci. 1 Law Women's Studies Totals MARCH 1996

58

50

78

35

27

71

38

32

7 18

WE Total

11

28 8 18 4

21 11 12 6

2

7

1

196 116 94 34 31

3

11 2

27 18

1

12 11

1

2 1

3

2

2 2 1

1 1

1

1 1 1 1 1

68

578

1

46

75

7 6 6 3 3 3 2 2 2

ITEMs/II

Fellow ' Universiti

APR

CHN

3 6 4 0 1 1 1

2 5 6 2 5 4 3 5 5

UC Berkeley U Michigan Columbia U U Chicago Harvard U Yale U Stanford U Cornell U UCLA U Wisconsin U Washington Indiana U Princeton U MIT U Penn NYU

Northwestern U U Illinois U Pittsburgh U Texas-Austin SUNY Stony Brook U Minnesota Johns Hopkins U Duke U U Hawaii EmoryU UNC Chapel Hill U Virginia Georgetown U New School SUNY Binghamton UC Davis U Pl-Gainesville U Notre Dame CUNY Grad Cntr Mich State U OXford U U Arizona UC San Diego U Iowa U Mass Amherst U Rochester American U Boston U Brandeis U Brown U Clark U 12\In:MS

5 5 1 3 1 1 2 5 3 1

3 1 2 1 1

Table 3

by World Area, 1990-1995

EE JAP KOR LAC NME 11 7 3 5

5 1

4

6

17 8 1 1 1 4 2 4

4

7 1 1

1 1 2 3 5

1 2

4

3 5 1 2

2

16 7 11 5 2 3 6 3

13 5 2 9 3 1

61 49 41 39 35 33 31 25 25 22 19 17 15 12 12 11 10 10 9 8 7

5

1

6

4

1 1

1

3 2 1 1 2

2 1 3

5 2 2 3 3 3 12 3 3 4

1 6

1

1

1

-

1 2 2 6 5

1 1

1

2

1

1 1

1

1

1 1 1

1

1

1

2

2 1

Total

4

1

2

3 2

2 3

WE

1 4

2 1

3 7 3 5 2 2 5

SA SEA SOV

1

1

1 1 1

1 3

3 1 4 1 2 2 1 1 2 1

1

2 1 1 1 3 4 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 2 2

1 1

3 1 1

2 1

1

1

1 2

2 2 1

1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1 1 1

6 5 5 4 4 4

3 1

7

3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 VOLUME

50, NUMBER 1

Table 3 (cooL) Fellows' Universities, by World Area, 1990-1995

AFR

CHN

EE JAP KOR LAC NME

SA SEA SOV

GWU

1

Tulane U UC Irvine UC San Francisco Cambridge U U Kansas U Manitoba U Mryld - Bait U Mryld - CPark U Paris VIII U Sussex U Toronto U Wash St. Louis Virginia Poly Totals

58

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 50

78

35

Table 3 (oppo ite page) indicate the university affiliation of field re earch fellow . Over the past six year, tudent at a wider range of universities have been funded. Student at 61 univer itie were funded between 1990-1995; the figure for 19831989 was 55. A before, the top 20 universitie on the li t account for roughly 85% of the fellow hip and are, predictably, generally considered to be the site for the leading program for international re earch and training in the United States. One noteworthy feature i that the number of fellow from non-U.S. univer itie ha ri en con iderably in the past ix years. Wherea only one non-U.S. univer ity wa repre ented in the earlier report (the Univer ity of London, with one fellow), a total of five non-U.S. univer itie are repre ented in thi table. The increase both in the total number of univer ities repre ented, and in the number of nonU.S. univer itie repre ented, ugge t that the field re earch program i becoming better known beyond the primary U.S. centers of international training and re earch.

In tenn of individual univer itie , the overall trength of two public in titution , the Univer ity of California at Berkeley, and the Univer ityof Michigan at Ann Arbor, i particularly triking.

MARCH

1996

WE Total

27

71

38

32

46

75

68

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

578

Together they con titute nearly 20% of the total. The table al 0 indicate area where particular universities have exceptionally trong programs, such as Columbia in Soviet studie , Yale in Eastern European tudie , and Cornell in Southeast Asian studies.

Table 4 ( ee next page) indicate the time period that wa being examined in the dissertations supported by the program, differentiated by world area (as before, defined by reference to the existing joint committee tructure). For the purposes of this report, "contemporary" wa defined a tudies dealing primarily with the 1980 and beyond. (Thi infonnation wa culled from project title and should be treated with a moderate degree of caution.) This table shows that a total of 73% of field re earch projects supported under thi program concentrated explicitly on is ue , problem , and phenomena of the 20th century.

The figure for the 1983-1989 period was lightly higher, i.e., 77%.

Table 5 ( ee next page) indicates the number of award provided by the joint committee in the period under review. Fluctuation in the award level reflect, of course, change in funding level . It hould be noted that thi table doe not provide infonnation concerning the award ize at which individual applicant were funded. •

ITEMs/I 3

Table 4 Focal Period Cor Dissertation R reb Projects, by World Area

Contemporary (1980present) Africa China Eastern Europe Japan Korea Latin America " Caribbean Near/Middle East South Asia Southeast Asia Soviet Union Western Europe Total Percentage

20th century (19001980)

19th century " earlier

Total

30 13 15 11 5 31

21 16 42 11 15 24

7 21 21 13 7 16

58 50 78 35 27 71

12 14 18 14 20

18 10 24 36 19

8 8 4 25 29

38 32 46 75 68

183 32'

236 41%

159 27'

578 100'

Table 5 Number or Awards, by World Area 1990-1995

14\1reMS

APR

CHN

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

9 14 10 9 10 6

9 10 7 6 12 6

Totals

58

50

EE

JAP

KOR

LAC

NME

7 15 13 11 17 15

6 7 7 9 6

78

35

SA

3 6 6 3 3 6

16 16 13 15 11

5 4 4 12 13

3 5 6 6 12

7 11 9 12 7

7 14 13 13 15 13

11 10 14 13 12 8

46 106 106 94 123 103

27

71

38

32

46

75

68

578

SEA

SOV

WE

Total

VOLUME

SO, NUMBER

1

Presidential Items Many readers of Items will know that the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council jointly sponsor a number of regionally defined scholarly committees, familiarly known as the "the joint committee ." The e committee collectively cover a large part of the world's region: Africa, Asia (five committee ), Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Near and Middle East, and Western Europe. In orne instances dating to the 1950 , the e committees have long taken re ponsibility for advancing scholarship on the world areas, a task which has involved the administration of fellowship programs, language institutes, summer workshops, commis ioned studie , re earch planning conferences, publications, in titutional partner hip , and much more. In the earlier years the primary focus was on informing the U. S. about foreign place ; in more recent period , there has also been an emphasis on working with cholars from these region -approximately 40 percent of the joint committee members today are non-Americans.

The enterpri e of academic training and promotion of scholarship organized through area studies (of cour e not just the joint committees) has been impressively ucces ful in the term et forth in the 1950 and then elaborated in subsequent decades.

This accomplishment i well-known and need not be detailed in this brief note. Suffice it to say that the United State is today vastly more informed about the world beyond its borders than it was a half-century ago-and this is 0 whether our referent is the foreign policy apparatu , the research universities, commercial enterpri e, nongovernmental organizations, or the reading public.

From the narrower per pective of the humanities and the social cience, area tudie have ucce sfully brought together language and literature, hi tory, philosophy, geography, anthropology, sociology, political cience, economic , p ychology, and other relevant cholarly traditions to provide a comprehensive interpretation of a bounded geographic area. Area tudies holds area con tant and invites the participation of multiple disciplines, in contrast to traditional comparative studies which held di cipline con tant and involved multiple area . Area tudies, consequently, has been the mo t ucce ful, large- cale MARCH

1996

interdisciplinary project ever in the humanities and the social sciences.

The many accomplishments of area studies notwithstanding, most readers of Items will know that area studie as commonly understood is being freshly examined, even que tioned, on a number of campu e , among funders, and, not surprisingly, by the ACLS and the SSRC. In thi self-examination the academic community i hardly alone. From United Nations agencies to international corporations, from nongovernmental organizations to the state department, the traditional region-by-region organization is found to be poorly aligned with the tasks and opportunitie of the contemporary world.

For the ACLS and the SSRC, two central considerations drive the reexamination of area studies. These con iderations are the foundation for a new international program the Councils will jointly propose this year. One con ideration derives from changes in world conditions and the other from changes in world cholarship.

World conditions One of the frequently remarked consequences of the globalization accelerated by new information technologie and po t- t 989 market force is that "areas" are more porou , less bounded, less fixed than we previou ly as umed. Diasporas lead to continuous redefinition of who belongs to what place, and thus confu e the very notion of place as a marker of social identity. Area tudie traditionally had a fairly clear grasp of what was meant by "here" and what was meant by "there." But when areas, from remote village to entire continents, are caught up in proces es which link them to events that, though geographically di tant, are CUlturally, economically, politically, strategically, and ecologically quite near, the distinction between "here" and "there" breaks down. To learn more and more about social conditions in a particular area, then, mean to learn more and more about how that area is situated in events going on beyond its geographic borders-but not thereby out ide its economy or ecology or culture.

And, elf-evidently, the obverse holds as well.

Globalization doe not render the pecific of place incon equential. Whatever may be meant by the term ITEMs/IS

"globalization," the phenomenon to which it point is clearly con tructed from dozen to thou and of eparate places, not all marching in orne lock-step pattern. Mi placed "global village" metaphors notwithtanding, globalization doe not inevitably lead to homogenization. It produce winners and 10 er , the included and the excluded. And the way in which these winner and 10 er re pond to new opportunities, and fre h defeat ,i no Ie conditioned by their separate hi torie and unique cultural perspective today than it wa in time past.

In hort, the global-local notion i not a methodological metaphor invented by ocial theori ts; it i the lived experience of billion of people. And it i being lived today in way unanticipated even a decade ago.

Thi rai e not ju t new cholarly que tion but a ho t of new practical problem . These problem weigh heavily on tho e who are working toward a world Ie inequitable, Ie insecure, Ie inhumane, Ie unju t than the one we pre ently experience. The ocial science came into exi tence toward the end of the la t century in re pon e to what were then viewed as the urgent problem of the day. And for a century the re ults of quality cholarship have found u ers among person working to make the world more equitable and ecure and humane and ju t.

The practical challenge are being thought through anew, a globalization how evidence of pre enting new perver itie and plague , different way to kill and impoveri h, unexpected in tabilitie and in ecuritie . That the 21 t century will require it own coping mechani m , policy in trumentalitie and social formation appropriate to new problem i not in doubt, though what tho e will be and how well they will work certainly i .

In this effort to cope and renew and invent, there will be a earching for in ights and theorie of the ort that only di ciplined analy i can generate. Our que tion mu t be whether the humanitie and the ocial cience are preparing them elve to provide those in ight and theorie .

The Council believe that a number of di crete and separated "area committee ," each focu ed on a ingle world region, i not the optimum tructure for providing new in ight and theorie uitable for a world in which the geographic unit of analy i are neither tatic nor traightforward. The Council

16\1TEM

believe as well that if cholarship is not rooted in place- pecific historie and cultures, it will mis , widely, the nuance that allow u to make sense of uch phenomena a international labor flows, conflicting perspective on human rights, alternative path to democratization, violent re ponses to perceived territorial threat , and differing vi ions of the relation hip between human and nature. A we reflect, then, on a world haken 100 e from it familiar mooring , we have no choice but to ask if there might not be better way to advance international re earch and to prepare the next generation of cholar .

World scholar hip When area tudie (American tyle) were being launched a half-century ago, the ACLS and the SSRC took for granted that the di cipline to be involved in area cholarship would be propelled largely by developments in the American academic community. Thi was not merely myopia or arrogance peaking. It wa an asse ment of the comparative re ource held by the U.S. And thi resource advantage-the depth of the humanistic and ocial cience di cipline , the organizational know-how of U.S. academic, the vast po twar expansion of higher education, and generou funding by private foundation and, following Sputnik, by the federal government-did give the American cholar off to Kampala or Santiago or Delhi or Hong Kong a near monopoIi tic advantage.

Under the e circum tance it was under tandable that the reference point and audience for the area cholar were tho e fellow American hard at work on a different but equally fa cinating feature of Uganda or Chile or India or China. From thi ,of course, emerged university-based area centers, a young Ph.D. candidate returning from the field gravitated to colleague , of whatever discipline, with whom in ight could profitably be compared. University admini trator cooperated, e pecially when TItle VI fund became available. In the maturation of area tudie , the joint committee were central actor .

They helped to hape the re earch agenda, allocated training fellow hip and travel funds, and worked to e tabli h national organization and journals dedicated to advancing knowledge on the different world region.

VOLUME

50, NUMBER 1

Though this American-centric version of the story slights the important role of British, Canadian, German, and French cholars, neither these countries nor any other created, or i now likely to, the exten ive array of programs and institutions that collectively define area tudies in the United State .

This American near-monopoly on tudying foreign places gave way fir t, of course, in Europe, then in Latin America, and gradually acro nearly every world region. If not univer ally so, certainly scholar hip of the kind practiced by American area studies is now internationally produced.

This has far-reaching implications. In the first instance, one' colleague in the tudy of Uganda, Chile, India, or China i as likely to be a scholar from that country--or from Europe or from el ewhere in Africa, Latin America, A ia-a to be an American. Moreover, tho e colleague will not view them elve as "area peciali t ." The Ugandan hi torian, Chilean ociologist, Indian economist, or Chine e linguist-whether they study their own or orne other part of the world-take a their peer community hi torians, ociologi t , economi t , or lingui t . The international production of knowledge i now largely di cipline-ba ed.

Thi in tum i pulling more non-area American cholars into the international arena. There ha always been comparative politic , comparative ociology, comparative literature~rawing from but not limited to area tudies. Scholars of international economic and ecurity have at time come out of area tudie , but that has been the exception rather than the rule. Hi tori an not of a place but of a phenomenon--of art, of war, of revolution-roam acro border and boundarie .

More recently cultural p ychology has emerged as a ub-field bridging anthropology and p ychology and, in orne in tance bringing in the new biocultural specialtie .

The e exception notwith tanding, di ciplineba ed cholar hip in the United State ha been American-centered. Thi inward focu -parochiali m one might ay-i in rapid retreat. Partly thi come from what wa earlier mentioned: good colleague in the disciplines are to be found all around the world. To be current in econometric

MARCH

1996

modeling, gerontology, sociolinguistics, or cultural analysis requires more than knowing what one's U.S. colleagues are doing. Moreover, as U.S. universities eek new ways to internationalize, they are involving unit from acros the campus-from professional chool to phy ic , from ethnic tudies to economic -in cro -national effort of tudent recruitment, vi iting scholar , exchange programs, and collaborative re earch.

Probably mo t significant in the gradual (though certainly not completed) de-parochialization of the discipline i the array of fre h research questions that draw their theoretical excitement or methodological challenge from the variation pre ented by examining them in non-American setting . The commonplace observation with which we tarted, local variations in the context of trong tendencies toward globalization, comes into play at this point. Name your topic-child-parent bonding, identity politic , tran itions to market economie , energy con umption-and chances are high that the compari on that will mo t matter cro s area and cultural boundarie .

Change in how scholarship is and increasingly will be practiced require changes as well in how international cholarship i advanced, at least for the ACLS and the SSRC.

A new structure for the Councils The i ue of how be t to organize international re earch and training at the Councils has benefited from the attention of the officer and the boards of both the SSRC and the ACLS, a well as from exchanges with officer of the Ford and Mellon Foundations (without who e core upport the international program would hrink to a set of activitie hardly justifying the label "program").

And, of cour e, the community of intere ted scholar has actively engaged the is ues. There have been lively di cu ion with members of the pre ent joint committee ,a well a a flood of memo and letters repre enting the views of clo e to 200 cholars. The e di cu ion and commentarie have been sub tantively rich, thoughtfully constructive (in nearly every case), and, for thi reader, in tructive. The new structure, to be de cribed in a sub equent i ue of Items, i being haped by the e exchanges, but is not likely to please everyone or to be viewed a fully re ponsive to pecific (and often contradictory) advice.

ITEMs/I 7

As we try to take into account and be responsive to the changes in world condition and in world cholarship noted in the e cursory comments, we will al 0 be mindful of why we have an ACLS and an SSRC and why the two Councils find merit in working together. Scholarly insularity is an ever pre ent tendency within the humanitie and ocial cience . It occurs when cholar from one disci-

pline don't talk to tho e from other disciplines, when cholars in one part of the world (or who study one part of the world) don't know what is going on in other parts and don't talk to those who do, when globalists con truct research projects that float free of history and place, and when scholars talk only to other scholars.

The Council have been and will continue to be a counterforce to parochialism and to insularity.

-Kenneth Prewitt

18\1TEMS

VOLUME

SO, NUMBER

1

Current Activities at the Council 1995 Abe Fellows' Conference The Abe Fellowship Program, administered by the SSRC in cooperation with the American Council of Learned Societie and funded by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partner hip, spon ored a fellow ' conference on July 23-28, 1995, in Tokyo and Yokohama. The conference brought together 60 Abe Fellows, Abe Fellow hip Program committee members, and gue ts from outide the program for a erie of activitie , including re earch preentation ,thematic e ion, and discus ion group .

The three thematic e ion featured peaker and paneli t prominent in Japan' academic and policy communitie . The fir t e ion, "Social Ju tice: Comparative Sy tern ? Univer al Le son ?" was led by Sumiko Iwao of Keio Univer ity, who characterized Japane e notion of ju tice, equality, and ocietal enforcement a di tinctively different from tho e of other nation .

However, he maintained that universally applied rule for ocial ju tice need to be put in place.

The econd e ion, "U.S. and Japane e Conception of Future Power Configuration in East A ia," featured Taka hi Inoguchi of United Nation Univer ity. Mr. Inoguchi de cribed the dynamics of po t-cold war global change and introduced five po ible cenario of peace and accommodation between the U.S., Japan, and other nation in East A ia.

Ei uke Sakakibara, DirectorGeneral of the International MARCH 1996

Finance Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Finance, was the featured peaker at the third se ion, "Comparative Regulatory Regime : Convergence or Divergence?" Mr. Sakakibara argued that, when analyzing and comparing political and economic y tern , it i nece ary to emphaize the plurality of tho e y tern and the interaction among them, rather than relying on com pari ons drawn from univer ali tic paradigm uch as neoclas ical economic.

A highlight of the conference wa a half-day public ympo ium attended by an invited audience of over 200 entitled "Fifty Year ince the War: An Overview of U.S.Japan Relation and the Challenges for Policy-Relevant Studie ."

Makoto Iokibe of Kobe Univer ity gave the keynote addre s which provided a hi torical per pective on the development of po twar U.S.Japan relation. The ympo ium al 0 featured two panel of Abe Fellow di cu ing the goal of policy-relevant re earch and their individual endeavor to conduct uch re earch.

First Annual Japan Studies Dissertation Workshop There are at least two critical period in the preparation of a di ertation-the time ju t prior to leaving for the field and the ix month or 0 that follow the return from the field. The e period are marked by elf-doubt, ub tantive que tion , and i olation. In the first in tance, tudent wonder whether

the re earch will be possible and in the econd, they are confronted with the need to make sense of pile of data. Students of Japan tudies have a particularly high rate of non-completion, attributed in part to dropping out at these vulnerable junctures.

A special work hop targeted to the needs of uch graduate tudent has been created at the SSRC with the upport of the Japan Foundation. The first workhop was held on January 4-7, 1996, at the Asilomar Conference Center in Monterey California.

Participants included 12 graduate tudent representing 11 institution , 12 departments, and 7 di cipline ranging from political economy to film tudies. Student were elected by five senior faculty members who were aI 0 work hop participant . Students who e work eemed especially promi ing or ambitiou , who eemed particularly in need of critical feedback, or who did not attend universitie with major Japan tudie center, were targeted.

Work hop exerci es were de igned to break down the isolation of graduate tudents by creating a u tained network of advanced tudent and faculty able to interact productively over the cour e of the dis ertation preparation. They al 0 focused on enhancing comparative and multidi ciplinary approache . In preparation for the work hop, tudents wrote e says pointing out the intellectual relationship among their twelve projects and reflecting on ways in which the ITEMsl19

projects of other tudents had raised que tions or provided guidance in their own work.

The Council hope to continue this work hop serie , creating a basic model and manual that can be used to produce a network of uch work hop at targeted in titutions around the country. This con ortium of regional work hop centers would con titute a major mechani m for encouraging the production of knowledge about Japan in in titution and departments not typically con idered centers of traditional Japane e studies.

Conference on International Migration to the U. S. On January 18-21, 1996 the Committee on International Migration held a conference on Sanibel I land, Aorida de igned to forge an interdi ciplinary approach to under tanding immigration to the United State . Entitled "Becoming American!America Becoming," the conference brought together national and international cholar from varied ocial cience di cipline to asse current theorie that orient contemporary research and analy i . The conference presented the mo t comprehen ive and sy tematic intellectual ynthesis undertaken to date of the contribution made by the ocial ciences to an understanding of the implication of po t-World War IT immigration for the United State .

Conference e ion evaluated ocial science theorie that are intended to explain not only the

20\1reMS

cau e and processes but al 0 the political, economic, and ocial outcome of immigration. The theories emerging from different di ciplines concerned with common i ues of immigrant incorporation were asse sed from both hi torical and regional comparative per pective . A common framework for each e ion aro e from an effort to determine how the live of both immigrant and native-born American are being changed thorough immigration proces e , an interrelation hip implied by the conference title.

U ing the conference as a point of departure, two working group will further explore the in ight that can be gained into U.S. immigration from international and hi torical comparative perspective .

These activitie will be upplemented by the doctoral and po tdoctoral re earch fellow hip , and research planning grant offered by the Committee on International Migration.

Asia-Pacific and the World Order

ew

SSRC taff member Mary McDonnell was invited to attend an international ympo ium in Havana on November 28-30, 1995 on the ubject of "A ia-Pacific and the New World Order: Challenge for Cuba." The conference was pon ored by the Cuban Center for the Study of A ia and Oceania as part of a celebration of it 10th anniversary. M . McDonnell, program director of the Council' East A ia program , was a ked to participate a an expert on i ue of tran ition in Indochina and to

provide an analy is of the ways in which the ocial ciences can contribute to ocial development. The conference was scheduled for the eve of Fidel Castro's departure for Beijing, Hanoi, and Tokyo, and was intended to ignal Cuba's growing intere t in A ian models of po tocialist economic transformation.

Di cu ion focused on globalization and regionalization; cooperative ecurity and economic relationship in A ia; the role of the tate and civil ociety in Asian development; economic, ocial, and political renovation in Vietnam and China; and the role of Japan, Au tralia, and Russia in the region.

A final ses ion examined how Cuba might learn from the e experiences a it contemplates changes in both the dome tic and foreign policy arenas. Discussion was open and heated, with young, reformminded Cuban re earchers often challenging the as umptions of more enior colleague .

Along with guests from Latin America, A ia, and North America, vice-mini ters from the Cuban mini tries of economy and planning, foreign affair , foreign trade, and foreign inve tment and cooperation took part in the proceeding .

De pite the lack of po t-graduate degree and the impoveri hment and i olation evident ince the collap e of the Soviet communi t tate, much of the analy i contributed by young local re earchers wa penetrating and free of ideological rhetoric.

The ocial ciences, long officially regarded as minimally useful, are becoming increasingly important as Cuba seek to move beyond both the achievements and the difficulties of the last everal decades.

VOLUME 50, NUMBER

t

Recent Council Publications Social Suffering. Special i sue of Daedalus, guest editor , Arthur Kleinman, Veena Da , and Margaret Lock. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Science , vol. 125, no.

I, Winter 1996. Papers from a conference held in Bellagio in July 1994, pon ored by the Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development. xx + 283 page .

"Social Suffering," the topic of thi i ue of Daedalus, bring into a ingle pace an a emblage of human problem that have their origin and con equence in the injurie that social force inflict on human experience. Social suffering re ult from what the exerci e of political, economic, and institutional power doe to people, and, reciprocally, from how the e form of power themelves influence re pon e to ocial problem . Included under the category of ocial uffering are condition that are usually divided among eparate fields, eg., health and welfare, as well a legal, moral, and religiou i ue. Such condition de tabilize e tabli hed categorie . For example, the trauma, pain, and di order to which atrocity give ri e are health condition ; yet they are al 0 political and cultural matter . Similarly, to ay that poverty i the major ri k factor for ill health and death is only another way of aying that health i a ocial indicator and

MARCH

1995

indeed a ocial proce .

The e ay in this i ue addre s the e problem in a different way.

They collap e old dichotomie -for example, tho e that eparate individual from social level of analyis, health from ocial problem , repre entation from experience, uffering from intervention.

Viewed from anthropological, historical, critical literary, and ocial medicine perspective, uch dichotomie are barrier to undertanding how the form of human uffering can be both collective and individual, and how the mode of experiencing pain and trauma can be both local and global. The e e ay argue that, prior to forging new policies, we need to examine the mo t basic relation hip between language and pain, image and uffering. The author di cu why a language of di may, di appointment, bereavement, and alarm that ound unlike the u ual terminology of policy and program may offer a more valid mean for de cribing what i at take in human experience of political cata trophe and ocial tructural violence.

Pursuing the e de tabilizing, interdi ciplinary theme , the e ay authors how the permeability between the border of moral imagination, bodily affect, and ocial proce e. They demon trate that both the varietie of human mi ery and the various ocial scientific and literary analy e of the e problem interfuse, 0 that it i no longer u eful to in ist upon boundarie that divide the world into tidy analytic chamber. In the editors'

view, the most interesting question for theory and practice concerning ocial suffering are in the crack between our categories and in the di cursive processe that traver e our di ciplines.

Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, edited

by Barbara Stallings. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies and the Global Studie Re earch Program, Univer ity of Wi consin, Madison.

Cambridge University Press, 1995. xviii + 410 page.

A new per pective on the study of contemporary development is offered in thi volume, which ets out to analyze the impact of contemporary political and economic trend on the developing world.

The fir t ection explores how the end of the cold war, hifting relation among capitaJi t powers, globalization of trade and production, changing pattern of finance, and new ideological currents have altered the development context in four major third world regions. The econd part di cus e the way in which different region re ponded and how development options were molded by the dominant international power in each region: the United State in Latin America; Japan in Ea t A ia and Southeast A ia; and Europe with the international financial institutions in Africa.

A concluding section provides a conceptual framework for analyz-

IlCMsI2l

ing regional perfonnance.

Variation in economic capacity, trade opportunities, and acce to finance haped the development chance of each region, producing dynami m in A ia, low growth in Latin America, and economic contraction in ub-Saharan Africa during the 1980 and early 1990 . The book al 0 peculate about future trend based on variou development model and international relationship that might emerge. A concluding ection con ider the degree to which developing region will have opportunitie to choo e among di tinctive approache to capitali t development in an effort to achieve di tributive equity together with high levels of economic growth.

22\ITEM

Barbara Stalling i director of the Economic Development Divi ion of the UN Economic Comi ion for Latin America in Santiago, Chile.

The Waning of the Communi t State: Economic Origins of Political Decline in China and Hungary, edited by Andrew G. Walder. Studies on China 21.

Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Chine e Studie and the Joint Committee on Ea tern Europe. Berkeley: Univer ity of California Pre , 1995. xiv + 285 page.

The e e ay offer a compelling explanation for the decline of communi m in China and Hungary, the two countrie that went the furthe t with economic refonn . Articulating a

vi ion of change that erve as a counterpoint to the prevailing emphasi on citizen resi tance and prote t, the contributor focu in tead on the declining organizational integrity of the centralized party- tate. They illuminate a "quiet revolution from within" that be et the two regime after they cho e to refonn their economie and make conce ion to the private ector.

The nine contributor -three each from the di cipline of ociology, political cience, and anthropology-examine key trend that appeared in both countrie .

Chapter trace political con equence of economic refonn that range from the decline of the central tate' fi cal dominance to the revitalization of long- uppre ed ethnic loyalties.

Andrew G. Walder i profe or of ociology at Harvard Univer ity.

VOLUME

50,

NUMBER

1

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 810 SEVENTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. NY 10019 (212) 377-2700

FAX (212) 377-2727

The Council was incorporat~d in the Stat~ of I/Iinois. D~umlHr 27. /924. for the purpou of advancing rruarch in the social sci~nc~s. Nongov~m~ntal and int~rdisciplinary in naturr. th~ Council appoints committus of scholars which sulc to achi~v~ the Council's purpos~ through the g~nuation of n~w id~as and th~ training of scholars. Th~ activiti~s of th~ Council arr supporl~d primarily by grants from privat~ foundations and gov~mm~nt ag~nciu.

Dirrctors. 1993-94: PAUL B. BALTES. Max Planck In titute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); ROBERT H. BATES. Harvard University; IRIS B. BERGER. State University of New York. Albany; WILUAM CRONON. University of Wiscon in. Madison; ALBERT FlsHLOW. Council on Foreign Relation ; SUSAN TuFTS fisKE, University of M chuseltS. Amherst; SUSAN HANSON. Clark University; BARBARA HEYNS. New York University; KENNETH PREWm. Social Science Research Council; JOEL SHERZER. University of Tex • Au tin; BURlON H. SINGER. Princeton University; KENNETH W. WACtrn:R. University of California, Berkeley; MtcHELU: J. WHITE, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor.

OjJicus and Staff: KENNETH PREWm. Pr~sid~nt; KRISTINE DAHLBERG. Chi~f Financial OjJiur; GLORIA KlRCHHElMER. Editor; DoIuE SINOCCHr. Human R~sourc~s Dirrctor; ITrY ABRAHAM (ON LEAVE). Su AN BRONSON. Jo HDEWtND. DIANE 01 MAURO. ARU P. ELHANcE. ERIc HER HBERG. STEVEN HEYDEMANN. FRANK KEssEL, ROBERT LAlHAM. DAVID C. MAJOR. MARY BYRNE McDoNNEu.. ELLEN PER.EcMAN. RICHARD R. PETERSON. SHERI H. RANIS. RAMON TORRECIUfA, KE.NToN W. WORCESlBI.

The Social Science Research Council supports the program of the Commission on Preservation and Acce and i represented on the National Advisory Council on Preservation. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard (or Infonnation Science9--Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984. The infinity ymbol placed in a circle indicates compliance with this tandard.

All issuu of /t~ms arr availabl~ in Microform.

University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road. Dept. PRo Ann Arbor. MI48I06

NON PROm ORO. U.S. POSTAGE

Social Science Research Council 810 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10019

PAID ALBANY, N.Y. Permit No. 31

ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED

24\1TEMS

ISS

0049-0903

VOLUME

50, NUMBER I