40_2010_04_18_15_04_40_FacingAnUnequalWorld.v1

FACING AN UNEQUAL WORLD :CHALLENGES FOR A GLOBAL SOCIOLOGY

FACING AN UNEQUAL WORLD :CHALLENGES FOR A GLOBAL SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME ONE: INTRODUCTION, LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICAEditors: Michael Burawoy, Mau-kuei Chang, and Michelle Fei-yu HsiehAssociate Editors: Abigail Andrews, Emine Fidan Elcioglu, and Laura K. Nelson

A Joint Publication of TheInstitute of Sociology, Academia SinicaCouncil of National Associations of the International Sociological AssociationAcademia Sinica

Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology

These Conference Proceedings are jointly published by the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica, Council of National Associations of the International Sociological Association, and Academia Sinica.Published in 2010 Printed in Taiwan

Copyright for the individual papers belongs to the authors.

All rights reserved. Reproduction of materials in this book in any form requires prior written consent from the authors and full attribution. No part of this book may be reproduced for commercial purposes.

Please direct inquiries to:

Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica128 Sec. 2, Academia Rd., Nankang, Taipei 11529, TaiwanPhone: +886 2 2652-5100 Fax: +886 2 2652-5050 email: [email protected] http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/ios/indexE.php

ISBN- 978-986-02-2692-8

FACING AN UNEQUAL WORLD:CHALLENGES FOR A GLOBAL SOCIOLOGY

Editors: Michael Burawoy, Mau-kuei Chang, and Michelle Fei-yu Hsieh

Associate Editors: Abigail Andrews, Emine Fidan Elcioglu, and Laura K. Nelson

CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE: INTRODUCTION, LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA

Preface

Acknowledgements from the Local Organizers PART I: INTRODUCTION

1.Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley, USA

2.Challenges Facing Human Society in the 21st Century Yuan-Tseh Lee, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

3.Sociology in Times of CrisisMichel Wieviorka, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

4.The Imperative and the Challenge of Diversity: Reconstructing Sociological Traditions in an Unequal WorldSujata Patel, University of Hyderabad, India

PART II: LATIN AMERICA

5.Revitalizing the Sociological View in Latin AmericaMarcos Supervielle, Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Uruguay

ix

xiii

3

28

35

48

63

6.On the Internationalization of Brazilian Academic SociologyTom Dwyer, State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

7.The Dialogue between Criminology and the South’s Sociology of Violence: The Policing Crisis and AlternativesJosé-Vicente Tavares dos Santos, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

8.Challenges for and Practices in the Sociology of Work in Mexico: Between Global Paradigms and Local Development ParadigmsJorge Carrillo, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), Mexico

9.Publishing Sociological Journals in Argentina: Problems and ChallengesAlicia Itatí Palermo, Council of Professional Sociologists, Argentina

10.Sociology, Technology Parks, Applied Research, and International AccreditationNapoleon Velástegui Bahamonde, University of Guayaquil, Ecuador

PART III: AFRICA

11.Practical Responses to the Challenges for Sociology in the Face of Global InequalityLayi Erinosho, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

12.Social Sciences in Egypt: The Swinging Pendulum between Commodification and CriminalizationMona Abaza, American University in Cairo, Egypt

13.South African Sociology: Current Challenges and Future Implications: A Review and Some Empirical Evidence from the 2007 National Survey of Sociology DepartmentsMokong Simon Mapadimeng, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

84

105

126

157

166

181

187

213

Contentsvi

14.Resistance to Rating: Resource Allocation, Academic Freedom and CitizenshipTina Uys, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

15.Poverty Fighters in Academia: The Subversion of the Notion of Socially Engaged Science in the Mozambican Higher Education SystemPatrício Langa, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique andUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa

16.Challenges of Doing Sociology in a Globalizing South: Between Indigenization and Emergent StructuresIfeanyi P. Onyeonoru, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

17.Globalization, Sociological Research, and Public Policy in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Relevance of Socio-Legal Research to the Development Needs of NigeriaAbdul-Mumin Sa’ad, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria

18.The Relevance of Sociological Studies and Training for Social Realities, Development Policy, and Practice in EthiopiaFeleke Tadele, Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists, Ethiopia

224

245

268

282

300

Contents vii

Preface

PrefaceThe papers included in these three volumes were originally presented at a conference of National (Sociological) Associations. It was sponsored by the National Association Liaison Committee of the International Socio-logical Association and hosted by the Taiwanese Sociological Associa-tion and the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. The conference took place March 23-25, 2009 in Taipei on the premises of Academia Sinica, one of the leading centers for scientific research in Asia.

The theme of the conference was “Facing an Unequal World: Chal-lenges for a Global Sociology.” It was designed to address the obstacles to forging a global community of sociologists, obstacles that included inequalities, dominations and dependencies within nations as well as be-tween nations. We were also concerned to plot new directions for sociol-ogy that might address those obstacles and meet the challenge of a global sociology. We have arranged the conference papers into three volumes, divided according to region: Latin America, Africa, Western Asia, Asia-Pacific, West-North-South Europe, and East-Central Europe. The idea was to revisit the 10 conferences of regional sociologies organized by Immanuel Wallerstein, then President of the ISA, and published as part of the 1998 World Congress of Sociology.1

The region is not simply a convenient grouping of nations but impor-tant in its own right since the challenges facing sociologists crystallize around a region’s shared history and common geopolitics. Moreover, the region is the natural stepping stone from the national to the global level, especially important for the many countries with a weakly developed so-ciology. Of course, there are also risks involved as defining a region is itself a political act and, thus, always controversial. There is nothing per-manent or irrevocable about the groupings we have chosen. They are the outcome of a negotiated process.

There are obvious lacunae such as the absence of any official repre-sentatives from North America – the US representative had to withdraw and Canada did not send a representative. Nevertheless, there were two participants from the U.S. -- myself and Jan Marie Fritz -- and quite a

1 The 10 regions were: Arab World, East Asia, East-Central Europe, Latin Amer-ica, Lusophone World, Nordic Europe, North America, South Asia, Southern Africa, Southern Europe.

Preface

number of the participants were either trained in North America or had spent extended periods there. It is the nature of our unequal world, in so-ciology and beyond, that North America is always present.

The opening address was given by the former President of Academia Sinica and Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry, Yuan-Tseh Lee, on the challenges to human society posed by environmental and climate change. It was followed by two keynote addresses from President of the ISA, Mi-chel Wieviorka, and former ISA Vice-President for National Associations, Sujata Patel. They were followed by 2 streams of 6 panels each, stretch-ing over 3 days, plus a panel devoted to Taiwanese sociology. The panels included the following topics: New Approaches to Policy Research, Fac-ing Northern Hegemonies, Facing Political Pressures, Beyond Universal-ism and Particularism, The Dilemmas Posed by International Ratings, Confronting Historical Legacies, Pressure for Policy Research, Doing Sociology in an Unequal World, Neoliberalism and the Academy, Forg-ing Alternative Sociologies, Challenges of Regionalism, Transnational Collaborations. The closing panel included reflections on the conference from two ISA Vice-Presidents in attendance, Jan Marie Fritz, Devorah Kalekin-Fishman and Arturo Rodriguez Morato, and the President of the African Sociological Association, Layi Erinosho.

In the final count there were 60 delegates from 43 different countries. All 57 National Associations, members of the ISA, were invited to send participants and 29 accepted. The ISA President, the Vice-Presidents and members of the National Association Liaison Committee contributed a further 10 participants. Then we invited another 9 sociologists from un-der-represented areas. In the final count we had 48 papers whose authors were distributed as follows: 17 from “A” countries, 15 from “B” coun-tries, and 16 from “C” countries.2 The conference organization covered all the expenses (including travel) of the participants from B and C coun-tries, and the food and lodging in Taipei of participants from A countries. The ISA contributed 15% of the total cost but the bulk of the funding (85%) came from Taiwanese sources – the National Science Council, the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Without this funding from Taiwan the con-ference would have been impossible. The Taiwanese team at Academia Sinica left no stone unturned to make sure everyone turned up, ensuring

2 These are categories developed by the World Bank to distinguish economies. They are based on Gross National Income per capita. The ISA uses them to de-termine differential membership fees.

x

Preface

that the participants who needed visas received them on time as well as helping participants plan their often complex air travel.

If the organization of the conference became a lesson in global ine-qualities, the meeting itself was marked by an extraordinary and egalitar-ian esprit de corps with intense discussions flowing out into the corridors and into the night to be continued at breakfast. The Taiwanese team headed by Dr. Maukuei Chang (President of the Taiwanese Sociological Association and Chair of the Local Organizing Committee) and the ever-vigilant team-leader Michelle Hsieh, Fellow of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, were responsible for looking after every detail – from lodging to program, from travel to catering, from tourism to sumptuous banquets, from airport welcome to farewell prizes. They produced a magnificent conference website that hosted the program, conference pa-pers, travel instructions, and, following the conference, audio and visual recordings of each panel as well photographs. Their herculean efforts paid off in a most successful endeavor of community building across the globe, precisely meeting the challenges discussed in the panels. To cap-ture this atmosphere of engagement and collaboration, two students from the University of California, Berkeley – Annie Lin and Ana Villarreal – made a short film, based on interviews and film footage from the confer-ence, entitled “Challenges for a Global Sociology.” The film focuses on four challenges in particular: barriers of language, unequal material con-ditions, privatization of research and the search for alternative theories. It is included in the DVD that comes with these three volumes.

Bringing the papers together and publishing them involved another stage of international collaboration. We gathered together a team of Berkeley graduate students – Abigail Andrews, Fidan Elcioglu and Laura Nelson – who devoted their summer to translating and editing the revised papers. They entered into extended discussions with the authors to pro-duce the finished document. Finally, the papers were sent back to Taiwan where Maukuei Chang and Michelle Hsieh worked on their publication. I hope these three volumes will initiate a world-wide debate among soci-ologists as to how we can constitute ourselves as a global community en-gaged in addressing the pressing issues of our time. Certainly, this pros-pect was given a powerful boost by the exciting discussions held in Taipei.

Michael Burawoy, December 19, 2009

xi

Acknowledgements from the Local Organizers

The actual organization of this conference says much about the various aspects of global inequalities. The planning involved finding ways to overcome the hurdles that could possibly occur as a result of these ine-qualities. They ranged from negotiating travel permits with the Taiwanese government, which, like other governments, favors some nationals over others; organizing complex travel arrangements in an era of tightening border controls; securing funding to ensure the participation of delegates from under-represented regions; and initiating various creative measures to encourage genuine dialogues among all participants on an equal foot-ing. These tasks could not have been accomplished without the help of the following agencies in Taiwan and their personnel who were involved in this project. Special thanks go to the National Science Councils of Taiwan, the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Also special thanks are due to the conference program chair, Professor Michael Burawoy, who was very supportive throughout the whole process; his enthusiasm and energy pushed us forward in this project of forming a truly international community of sociologists.

One of the conference themes was the inequalities that exist in the discipline. In this regard, sociology’s knowledge production can be seen as a reflection of international relations. Taiwanese sociology, like many other national sociologies, has gained little exposure internationally de-spite its vitality. The complex process of mapping out the obstacles to forming a global sociological community involves knowing about each other and our distinctive national sociologies. A conference with this kind of diversity meant broadening the horizons of sociological imagination by bringing the world to Taiwan. Since the development of sociology in Taiwan has been heavily influenced by the U.S. and other western coun-tries, the process, then, was to reveal what is indigenous to Taiwanese sociology as compared to the sociologies from other countries. Thus, in-cluding and encouraging local participation was a key item on the agenda when we started planning the conference. The conference would have been self-defeating had we failed to bridge the local-global linkages when its theme was to discuss the impacts of inequality and domination on the sociological knowledge production among and within nations.

Acknowledgements from the Local Organizersxiv

More importantly, learning about other distinctive national sociolo-gies complements the increasing awareness and commitment to indigeni-zation within the Taiwanese sociological community, an effort that has gone hand-in-hand with internationalization. Several efforts worth men-tioning were made to achieve this goal, although they are not included in these conference proceedings. A special panel focusing on Taiwanese so-ciology was included in the conference program. Local universities also sent out invitations to some conference delegates to make campus visits. Special thanks go to these invited delegates who kindly agreed to travel extra miles to meet with Taiwanese faculty members and students. Ex-cerpts of these meetings, jubilant feedback, and remarks from young so-ciologists and from local universities are well documented in the news-letter of the Taiwanese Sociological Association. The post conference one-day sociological tour of Taipei, which provided a glimpse into the country’s past and present, put the conference discussion into practice by illustrating how historical and colonial legacies could spur vitalities of a national sociology and the dynamism of civil society.

Lastly, in an attempt to overcome the inequality resulting from an asymmetrical distribution of resources among regions, we made an extra effort to enhance accessibility by making all the conference materials and recordings (both audio and video) that could possibly serve as teaching and learning aids on global sociology available on-line for downloading. Thanks are due to the delegates who granted us the right to do this. With the intention to reach a potentially global audience, the decision to pub-lish the conference proceedings was taken in a post-conference meeting between us and Professor Burawoy. The international division of labor in forging a global community was in action again. Special thanks go to the Council of National Associations of the International Sociological Asso-ciation, Academia Sinica, and the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica for funding the publication project, and to Ms. Even Liu and Ms. Rufen Liao for their painstaking efforts in assisting the production of the proceedings. As a supplement to the hard copy of the conference pro-ceedings, the on-line version will be available at http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/cna/index.php. All in all, planning this con-ference was a rewarding and enriching experience for us, the hosts, and many thanks go to all those who helped it to succeed.

Mau-kuei Chang and Michelle Fei-yu Hsieh, Academia Sinica

PART I:

INTRODUCTION

Facing an Unequal World 3

Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology1

Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley, USA2

Yuan-Tseh Lee, former president of Academia Sinica and Nobel Prize Winner, opened the second conference of the Council of National Asso-ciations with a call to scientists the world-over to come together and con-front ever-deepening global problems. Some of the most serious chal-lenges facing mankind -- climate change, energy crisis, and disease – stem from processes that transcend national boundaries and social divi-sions, yet the tools to tackle them are still largely locked within national boundaries and controlled by powerful, vested interests. The problem, Dr. Lee insisted, is not so much globalization but its incompleteness. Devel-oping global communities along with global governance is necessary for tackling global problems. We can no longer retreat back to an insular lo-calism, so we must move forward to realize the potentials of a more com-plete and complex globalization. He posed the challenge to sociology: how did we respond?

As sociologists we specialize in studying the downside of globaliza-tion, the obstacles to a globalization that will benefit humanity. We are experts in the ways inequality and domination present the deepest barriers to tackling the daunting challenges of our epoch. We postulate conditions for overcoming such barriers while criticizing false solutions that redis-tribute rather than diminish the ill-effects incomplete globalization. It is the presumption of this conference that for sociologists to address the exclusion and oppression underlying poverty and war, disease and envi-ronmental degradation on a global scale, our scientific community must itself first assume a global character ruled by dialogue and accountability We gathered together in Taipei, therefore, to examine our own discipline through the bifocal lens of domination and inequality – a risky but neces-sary project -- so as to create and embrace a global sociology that is equal to the global tasks we face.

1 I am grateful to Emma Porio for her comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2 Michael Burawoy is the Vice President for National Associations of the Inter-national Sociological Association.

Michael Burawoy4

There is an obvious resistance to focusing on such divisions in our midst. Thus, the great theorists of inequality and domination, when it comes to the sociological field itself, revert to proclamations of unity rather than interrogating the inequalities and dominations that divide us. Immanuel Wallerstein (1999) proposes the absorption of sociology into a unified field of historical and social sciences, Ulrich Beck (2004) calls for a global cosmopolitanism, while Pierre Bourdieu (1989) announces the formation of an international of intellectuals, pursuing a “corporatism of the universal.” It is as if all divisions in our midst must spontaneously evaporate in the face of the world system crisis (Wallerstein), the depth of global inequalities (Beck), or the havoc wreaked by neoliberalism (Bourdieu). All differences among us, with respect to how we experience crisis, inequality and neoliberalism, must somehow be summarily buried to meet the challenge. Their genuine concern for the fate of humanity leads these sociologists to normative, if not utopian projects, abandoning the sociological tools that they have spent a life time sharpening. Pro-jected from the pinnacles of Western academia these projects, at best, appear remote from the everyday practice of sociology in most of the world and, at worst, are deployed as universal arbiters of good practice.

This is not to deny there is a unity that we share as sociologists, but it is not a unity that can be imposed by fiat. That which binds us together can only be produced by a laborious elaboration from below, stitching together commonalities in a complex global mosaic. The building block of that mosaic is the national sociology, for the nation has always been sociology’s basic unit of analysis as well as defining the parameters of its field of action. Such, at any rate, is the argument of this introductory chapter. We have to construct the bonds of unity through articulating and interweaving the differences that separate us. Thus, to explore those dif-ferences in our midst and the divergent interests they foreshadow is not to discredit others, but to simply recognize that we, like the people we study, cannot escape the inequalities in which we are embedded, and that it is only out of confronting these inequalities that common enterprises can possibly be forged.

Such a reflexive project demands that we subject our own relations and practices to sociological analysis -- not to discredit their authors but to move sociology to a higher scientific plane. This introduction, there-fore, sets out from the obvious inequalities we face within our discipline and association, before excavating their embeddedness within structures of domination beyond our discipline. From there I consider how those dominations, especially the symbolic ones, can be challenged by alterna-tive sociologies. Finally, I ask how such alternatives can be grounded in experiences, institutions and movements within local and national con-


texts, so as to knit them together into a global configuration, albeit con-tingent and precarious. I base my reflections on the papers delivered at the conference, now revised and assembled in the three volumes that fol-low, papers that address the obstacles to be overcome, but also point be-yond those obstacles to different ways of constructing global sociologies from below. THE CONTEXT OF INEQUALITY AND DOMINATION The challenges we face are immediately apparent in our own association. The International Sociological Association was established in 1947 under the auspices of UNESCO and, in the beginning, it was almost entirely dominated by sociologists from Europe and North America. Since then it has made enormous strides toward broader representation from different parts of the world. Individual members come from 120 countries while 57 countries are collective members of the ISA. At its last World Con-gress in South Africa participants came from 104 countries.

The real progress that has been made, however, only accentuates the negative side of the balance sheet. Thus, membership is still heavily con-centrated in the rich countries: 68.7% of individual members and 40% of the collective members are from “A” countries.3 Leadership is drawn from rich countries: at present the President and all 5 Vice-Presidents are from “A” countries. This may be unusual -- in the previous regime only half were from “A” countries – but equally important 92% of the Presi-dents of the 53 Research Committees come from “A” countries. Nor is this surprising if only because sociologists with the resources and time to build international contacts and influence and, then, to carry out organiza-tional and administrative tasks are more likely to come from richer coun-tries with their greater educational endowments, their greater affluence, and their fewer local and national obligations. The ISA can be a perfectly fair and neutral field but, situated in the context of global inequality, ine-quality in representation is the inevitable outcome. Although we can and must strive for greater equality in our midst, that it exists is not due to some Western conspiracy.

Ironically, the more successful the ISA has been in broadening its membership basis, the more we face inequalities within the organization and the more cognizant we become of those sociologists left outside our

3 A, B, and C countries – with A countries the richest -- are defined by the World Bank on the basis of per capita Gross National Income. They are used by the ISA as a sliding scale for membership and conference fees, travel subsidies, etc.

Michael Burawoy6

organization and beyond our reach. The inequalities within the ISA inevi-tably reflect and mask far deeper inequalities between countries and, no less important, within countries. We are deeply enmeshed in global ine-qualities tied to the unequal distribution of material resources (income, research funds, teaching obligations, working conditions), social capital (professional networks, patronage) and cultural capital (educational cre-dentials, university prestige, language facility, publications). As sociolo-gists we are especially skilled in discerning such inequalities.

From Academic Dependency to Western Hegemony Inequalities don’t simply exist, but are produced through relations of domination conceptualized by Farid Alatas (2006a) as “academic de-pendency” and “intellectual imperialism.” He sees domination in the cognitive realm – Eurocentrism, Orientalism, the “Captive Mind”4 – as tied to but also legitimating dependency in the institutional realm, that is, dependency on foreign funds, foreign journals, foreign publishers, foreign training, and foreign demand for skills.

A number of papers express this dependency as legacies of different forms of colonization:

• Using Alatas’s framework, Shaikh Mohammed Kais describes just what academic dependency looks like in the postcolonial context of Bangladesh – from the difficulties of teaching, do-ing research, a process of hybridization that leads to the repro-duction of marginality. When we talk of global sociology we should not forget the challenges faced by those who are more or less excluded.

• Ifeanyi Onyeonoru describes the social legacies of colonialism in Nigeria and of continuing metropolitan domination, that has been countered by indigenization, engagement with local and national issues, as well as by connections based on national, regional and international associations.

• Janusz Mucha describes the history of dependency in Poland, how that led to the development of an authentic but non-institutional sociology, you might say a public sociology of the 19th. century, but then institutionalization set in under different regimes during the 20th. century. So “Polish sociology” in-

4 The theory of the “Captive Mind” was developed by Syed Hussein Alatas to describe the uncritical and imitative adoption of U.S. and European social sci-ence in Asia. See, for example, Alatas (1974).


creasingly has become “sociology in Poland,” even more so af-ter the fall of socialism.

Three other papers lay out the working of Western hegemony in Tur-key, Australia and Japan, countries where one might not expect it:

• Despite Turkey’s history as empire Aytül Kasapoğlu, Nilay Çabuk Kaya and Mehmet Ecevit describe the hegemony of Western sociology, manifested in the application of Western theory to the local context.

• Similarly, Raewyn Connell presents Australia as a settler colony in the global periphery, a status that invites sociology’s unreflexive embrace of metropolitan sociology, what she calls, following Hountondji, “extravertion”. She shows how being responsive to local context and history or even to local publics does not necessarily feed back into an original professional sociology.

s

gy.

• Japan is manifestly an independent nation within the core, which prompts Yoshimichi Sato to undertake a subtle analysis of the hegemony of Western sociology. He asks why Japanese and Chinese scholars do not develop their concepts (e.g. aidagara and en, guanxi) into universal ones, to compete with notions of social capital. Sato suggests it is necessary to go beyond such thick local concepts, formulated as a reaction to the inadequacies of social capital, by turning them into thin concepts that can travel to different places where they can be relocalized.

Then there are cases in which the hegemony of the West, but especially of U.S. sociology is tied to geopolitic

• Thus, Sammy Smooha presents Israel as part of the core actively embracing and participating in US sociology as its appendage. In his view, the result is that sociologists pay too little attention to Israeli specificity, which could provide the basis of an original contribution to world sociolo

• Mau-kuei Chang, Ying-hwa Chang, and Chih-chie Tang from Taiwan offer a far more complicated picture of the effects of geopolitics on sociology. They write about the effects of a suc-cession of external subjugations: first, of Japanese who used survey methods as an arm of colonial rule, then the sponsor-ship of sociology by the U.S. in the early years of the National-ist KMT government, which led to the elevation of the (mainland) Chinese roots of Taiwanese sociology. When Tai-wan lost its international status in the early 1970s, displaced by the People’s Republic of China, sociology took a new turn.

Michael Burawoy8

Sinicization was replaced by a move toward indigenization as a reaction to the continuing dependence on the US and the threat of PRC. The combination of economic growth and geo-political insecurity led to the institutionalization of sociology, but also intensified pressure on Taiwanese universities in gen-eral and sociology in particular to establish their international ranking, which, in turn, fed indigenization.

While it is customary to condemn the enormous influence the US wields throughout the world, this should not lead us to overlook other circuits of North-South hegemony, such as the impressive presence of French sociology in much of Latin America as well as parts of Asia, Middle East and Africa. Such competing hegemonies, in this case over the valuation of different linguistic capital, do give some leverage to the dominated groups. There are three official languages in the ISA yet English prevails, not only because of the influence of the Anglo-American world, but also because so many countries in the global south, including India, China and much of Africa, have invested in English as a second language.

s.

National and Regional Hegemonies Hegemony within world sociology cannot be reduced to a simple North-South, West-East, developed-underdeveloped, metropolis-periphery dichotomy. First, there are important gradations in the world system and we might even invoke Wallerstein’s notion of semi-periphery to capture distinctive societies that combine within themselves features of both periphery and core. Thus, countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa, and China contain within themselves conditions approximating to the “North” as well as the “South”. Second, there is a center and a periphery in the production of knowledge within such countries that can be as stark as the difference between any rich and poor country. The model of academic dependency shouldn’t lead us to overlook patterns of inequality and domination within countrie

• Tina Uys reports the criticisms of South African sociologists toward the rating system of their scholarly ouput, designed to promote international compertitiveness. First, it presumes a false consensus on standards. Second, ratings based on publications in international journals and relying on international reviewers draws research away from issues and problems of local and national importance. Third, it devalues the teaching and training of the next generation of sociologists, and instead creates an elite statum of researchers. In short, the


rating system effectively internalizes the hegemony of Northern sociology, thereby deepening the divide among South African sociologists.

• Emma Porio describes the pressures on Philippine universities, subject to a range of audits and pressure for policy driven research with the result that there is increased differentiation both within and between universities, and this takes place at the same time as dependency on Northern funding increases.

• From Egypt Mona Abaza tells another story – one in which the field of sociology is subject to a pincer movement of commodification and criminalization. Critical voices, even the seemingly most protected, such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s, are pilloried as subversive, jailed as spies. Public sociology becomes life threatening in an authoritarian regime with no autonomous civil sphere. In this case an international campaign in Ibrahim’s defense easily redounded against him, and even made him suspect among some of his colleagues.

ss these

th-South

ries of yesterday’s empires things wolves

The semi-periphery not only draws attention to internal divisions within countries but between countries within regions. Thus, Brazilian sociology is the best resourced sociology within Latin America, Indian sociology within South Asia, South African sociology within Africa, just as the core countries of the European Union have richer traditions of sociology than its periphery. Inequality, yes, but does this imply domination? What are the possibilities of collaboration acrodivides?

• Tom Dwyer does not mince words when writing about the different mechanisms guaranteeing the domination of metropolitan sociology – from linguistic domination, to the control of journals and rating systems. Based on the experience of Brazil he proposes an alternative multi-polar vision of internationalization – one that emanates from countries of the South as well as from the North. A vibrant Brazilian sociology rates its own Portuguese-language journals on an international ranking system, and has actively pursued Soucollaboration (and Latin America has long been a leader in this regard).

From the standpoint of the periphedon’t look rosy, especially when countries are cast to Western under the spell of socialist legacies.

• Abulfaz Suleymanov describes the difficult situation in Azer-baijan where the Soviet legacy has left a vacuum in sociologi-cal training, the underdevelopment of social theory, coloniza-

Michael Burawoy10

tion of research by Western interests, the reduction of sociol-ogy to commercially sponsored surveys, and more generally the subordination of sociology to the market at the cost of pub-lic concerns. In this context building a national association and

atically different

ary imposition from above but is responsive to

ision, let lone a notion of US imperialism, does not capture the complex

ies of very different types within as well as mong nation states.

ome more precarious in Britain, to the

regimes

s the

making regional and international connections become espe-cially important.

• Rastislav Bednárik, writing about Slovakia, reminds us just how difficult it is for a young and barely recognized discipline, facing growing numbers of students with very limited teachers and resources. Slovakia may be in the European Union but its peripheral situation makes for a dramconditions of knowledge production when compared to core countries such as Germany, France or U.K.

• Inga Tomić-Koludrović describes the reaction of Croatian sociologists to the Bologna Process, integrating higher education in the European Union. She sees the opposition as a legacy of the socialist past and rooted in outdated nationalist sentiments that fail to come to grips with the new global dispensation – second modernization -- to which the Bologna process is a response. The Bologna process, she argues, is not simply an arbitrneeds from below, from groups, identities and interests that have been marginalized.

While not denying an overwhelming concentration of institutional resources and symbolic domination, emanating from the North, reinforced by the circulation through the North of a few privileged scholars from the South, nonetheless a simple North-South divaarticulation of hegemona The Neoliberal Crisis Academic dependency across nations is itself being reconfigured as the position of sociology and more broadly of the university is challenged within the core. Sociology has becGermany, and France as the golden years of sociology recede inpast and as the discipline has been threatened by neoliberal which question the very idea of the social.

• Louis Chauvel offers a chilling analysis of the decline of the salaried middle class in France since the 1970s. This class in-cludes sociologists who find their positions under assault a


value of the sociology credential falls relative to other creden-tials, such as economics, exacerbated by the decline in funding for the public university relative to the Grandes Écoles.

• Marina Subirats warns of the dangers of disciplinary fracturing. She is precisely critical of sociology for not emulating the unity of economics. Reflecting on the experience of Spanish sociology, she proposes a “global sociology” that recognizes

ing a global actor in their wn right, simultaneously participant in and observer of the world they udy. The chapters in the three volumes explore precisely this possibility,

but it is a possib differences.

is a two-step project: first, to show at they do not reflect the experience of subjugated populations and then,

ere are alternative theories that have been ignored metropolitan sociology.

increased global interdependence, transcending national parochialism and disciplinary fragmentation, and facing the real problems of a world in crisis.

Michel Wieviorka directly addresses the crisis of our times by accusing economists of misunderstanding its true character. The crisis does not have a simple teleology -- crisis-resolution-crisis, down-turn followed by the inevitable upturn. Such a cyclical account cannot comprehend what is qualitatively new because what is new is produced by collective actors, especially social movements, whose retreat in the first place was responsible for initiating the crisis three decades ago. The way out of the present crisis, Wieviorka avers, is through the birth of new actors, such as the anti-globalization movement, or the rebirth of old actors, such as the trade union movement. What he does not consider, however, is the possibility of sociologists becomost

ility that rests upon negotiating our internal

FROM DIVERSE TRADITIONS TO

ALTERNATIVE SOCIOLOGIES Farid Alatas argues that, in the short run, there is little we can do about the material side of academic dependency, and we should concentrate, therefore, on the side of ideas and theory. How can we combat Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and the “Captive Mind”? Challenging the universalism of Western sociologiesthto demonstrate that thor suppressed by Diverse Traditions The ISA has long recognized the existence of multiple sociological tradi-tions, signaled by a number of books. The first collection, National Tra-

Michael Burawoy12

ditions in Sociology, edited by Nikolai Genov (1989), emerged from the 11th. World Congress held in Delhi in 1986. A second volume edited by Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King (1990), Globalization, Knowledge and Society, was a collection of papers that appeared in the ISA journal International Sociology since its founding in 1986. It was during this pe-riod that the Nigerian, Akinsolo Akiwowo (1986), made his famous in-tervention on behalf of “indigenous” sociology. In response to these de-bates Martin Albrow optimistically claimed that sociology goes through a series of stages: universalism, national sociologies, internationalism, in-digenization and finally globalization. Most recently Sujata Patel (2009) has brought out The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, showing how sociological traditions can be broadly grouped into regions that have shared common historical experiences. The recognition of mul-

ce that apital-

o the relation of sociology and power at

6-1990) proposed to develop a u

strengthening the

tiple sociologies is already a challenge to the idea of a single scienuniversalizes the experiences and thoughts of the most advanced cist countries.

• Sujata Patel’s keynote address develops this theme, challeng-ing those who would abandon national formations and their sociologies, sensitive tglobal as well as national levels, and defending the necessity of developing multiple sociological traditions in conversation with one another.

A long line of Presidents of the ISA have emphatically supported the plurality of sociologies, even if they still searched for an underlying or projected unity. Ulf Himmelstrand (1978-1982) made a point of opening dialogue with sociologists from Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as with Africa and Latin America. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1982-1986) wrote in his foreword to the first issue of International Sociology: “This will be the endeavor of our journal: to increase our knowledge about contemporary societies and sociologies, by showing pluralistic paths of concern in sociology rooted in different historical and cultural traditions” (1986: 2). Margaret Archer (198

nified sociology but one based on diversity, and Piotr Sztompka (2002-2006), similarly called for a uniformity of world sociology com-bined with uniqueness of local sociologies.

T.K. Oomen (1990-1994), however, was far more cautious about any proposed unity, concerned that internationalization could be a proxy for Westernization. Too hasty an internationalization without protection for weaker sociological traditions could lead to intellectual colonialism. He called for “multidirectional flow of sociology, particularly

flow from the weak to the strong centers” (Oomen, 1991: 81). The


only President to come from a recently decolonized society, he was the most forthright about the hegemony of Western sociology.

Perhaps the ISA President to have done most for the development of regional sociologies, despite his unitary vision of sociology, was Imman-uel Wallerstein (1994-1998). He orchestrated regional conferences that led to the publication of 10 edited volumes, one for each region’s sociol-ogy. His was a major step toward recognizing the diversity of traditions, and gave birth to a new generation of international sociologists. Alberto Martinelli (1998-2002) followed Wallerstein with another important insti-

tional innovation that brought together young sociologists from all over al PhD Laboratory. In short, President after President

as defended the plurality of coexisting sociologies, even if they have

ted pub

less problem-

tuthe globe -- the annuhbeen less willing to tackle their arrangement in a hierarchical order.

Southern Theory A more radical project thematizes the relations among these diverse tradi-tions as one of domination, and proceeds to challenge that domination by valorizing what Raewyn Connell and others call Southern Theory. In Southern Theory (2007) Connell problematizes the canonical works of metropolitan theory – from the so-called classics of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim to the contemporary theories of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens – whose silence on the South portends a distinctively Northern perspective disguised as universalism. Connell presents us with an alternative project that foregrounds social thinkers from the South who have not made it into the “mainstream” – from Af-rica the Dahomeyan philosopher Paulin Hountontdji, from the Middle East, three Iranian thinkers al-Afghani, Al-e Ahmad, and the more con-temporary Shariati, from Latin America the Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch, the Brazilian sociologist Fernando Enrique Cardoso, the Mexi-can anthropologist García Canclini, from South Asia subaltern thinker, Ranajit Guha, anthropologist Veena Das, and public intellectual Ashis Nandy, and from South Africa, an early African nationalist and gif

lic intellectual, Sol Plaatje. Around such thinkers Connell proposes to build an alternative social science. In seeking out alternative traditions, theories or discourses that challenge the assumptions of mainstream U.S. and European sociology, she raises a number of intriguing questions.

First, is it significant that the thinkers Connell dismisses are all soci-ologists from the North whereas those she embraces are a motley group of thinkers of whom none are declared sociologists, with the exception of Cardoso, who after all was deeply influenced by French sociology. Is so-ciology, then, only a (Northern) metropolitan project? No

Michael Burawoy14

atic

gemonies: an hegemony within dominant countries/regions and

present particular interests in their te soci-

which ational

plex situation. There is a plurality of responses --

is multiple, what distinguishes the South from the North? How come Australia ends up in the “South”? If South-

is the fact that so many of Connell’s Southern Theorists, e.g. Cardoso,Plaatje, Prebish, and Shariati, are thoroughly infused with Northern (French, English, and U.S.) thinking. If there is a Southern sociology then what makes it Southern and what makes it sociology?

Second, can one dismiss “Northern” theory when it includes the cri-tique of the very theorists Connell takes as representative of Northern sociology. Feminism, critical race theory and even Marxism have relent-lessly attacked the economism of James Coleman, the functionalism of Pierre Bourdieu and the third way of Anthony Giddens. Does that make these Northern critical theories part of Southern theory? Are there not, at least, two he

a hegemony exercised by those dominant countries/regions over the subaltern countries/regions? Does that not open up the possibility of alli-ances struck between subjugated sociologies of the North and “Southern Theory”?

Therefore, third, rather than homogenizing metropolitan sociology, can we not see it as a contested field with dominant and subordinate mo-ments. Doesn’t this also apply to the South? Connell’s chosen Southern theorists have to be restored to their context. Once we place Plaatje, Car-doso and Prebisch, for example, in their own intellectual fields, we will see how they reflect, refract and recountries of origin. Thus, are there not hegemonic and subordinaologies within the South? Can one understand the thinkers to Connell draws our attention without locating them in their nfields – intellectual and political?

• Mohammad Ghaneirad shows how and why Shariati’s com-plex hybrid of Islamic and Western thinking has dropped out of the present day Iranian sociological field. The state initiated drive for an Islamic sociology or a sociology that would pro-mote the Islamicization of society has provoked a phobia of Nativism among professional sociologists concerned to defend their autonomy. Alternative sociologies are difficult to develop in this comfrom the embrace of universalistic sociologies, inspired by Western concepts, to seeking new directions in public sociolo-gies. But Shariati’s ideas are shunned from both sides of the divide.

Finally, and relatedly, if Southern theory exists to express, albeit in complex and mediated form, the experience of the South, then what is this experience of the South? How is that experience expressed in theory? If the experience of the South


ern theory is not embedded in some material experience, nor reflesome real interests, how can we expect social science to emergConnell’s Southern theorists?

• Farid Alatas has pursued a similar project but rather than dis-missing Western theory he proposes different ways of amal-gamating Western sociology with alternative intellectual tradi-tions emanating from non-Western societies. In his contribu-tion here he dwells on the history of a distinctive Chinese soci-

ctive of e from

gy come from the North. hey inspire us to think outside conventional sociological frames. We

owe them both a great debt for making the project of alternative sociolo-gies imaginab

actu-ally

re being continu-ally

ology and its relevance to the modern world. Elsewhere (2006b) he has creatively introduced Ibn Khaldun’s cyclical theory of history into Western debates about Asiatic society.

In constituting her North/South binary Connell has raised a host of problems – problems that we can no longer side step. Together with Alatas she has fired the all-important opening shot, inverting the taken-for-granted hierarchy that all new ideas in socioloT

le, now we must make it feasible.

BUILDING NATIONAL SOCIOLOGIES We must come down from heaven to earth, we must ground any alterna-tive theories in the living practices and concrete social relations of

existing sociologists. If they are to spark the sociological imagination they must be rooted in the division of sociological labor, defined by its four elements – professional, policy, public and critical sociology.

At the core of this division of labor is professional sociology that de-velops scientific research programs and is accountable to peers. Whether we are living in Colombo or Paris, Aukland or Oakland, Johannesburg or Sao Paulo, Tokyo or Beirut what defines us as sociologists is our connec-tion to traditions of sociological research and theorizing, traditions that have been defined by our predecessors, traditions that a

redefined and rearticulated in a community of fellow scholars. To be sure professional sociology can be overdeveloped here and underdevel-oped there, but it still lies at the core of our discipline.

It is important, therefore, that professional sociology does not come to be monopolized – and the danger is ever-present -- by universities and research institutes in the North. National professional sociologies cannot, however, spring from nowhere. They must be responsive to and inspired by problems defined by local or national actors. This is what I call a pol-icy sociology which is borne of but also feeds back into professional so-

Michael Burawoy16

ciology. Whether we are talking of surveys or case studies, policy sociol-ogy should retain an intimate connection to professional sociology. If it does not maintain that connection it is easily captured by the clients it serves. There is, however, a second way of being connected to the local and national context, and that is through public sociology. Here the point is not to solve a problem defined by a client but to generate discussion and

ssumptions made by policy sociology, just as it infuses new visi

critical ciologies or the extroversion of policy and public sociologies. The suc-

ce lay precisely in the manifold ways these four types f sociology entered into a common discourse. Let me elaborate.

The un-der

debate about the basic values and direction of society. You might say public sociology is the conscience of policy sociology in that it often debates issues of policy and influences the direction of policy.

If professional sociology is the core of our discipline critical sociol-ogy, the fourth element, is the heart of sociology. Critical sociology is first and foremost the critique of professional sociology. Here, indeed, we find the agenda for alternative sociologies – a critique of the theoretical foundations of much professional sociology. Critical sociology interro-gates the a

ons into public sociology. Critical sociology involves sociologists in conversation with one another as to the foundations of their common en-terprise.

The assumption behind this model of knowledge production is that a flourishing discipline depends on the interaction among all four types of knowledge, on preventing the introversion of professional and socess of our confereno

Public Sociology Whether one is struggling for the rearticulation of sociologies within the existing global hegemony or one is seeking a new hegemonic order re-volving around Southern Theory, new directions can only take root if grounded in real experience, in institutional life, and even in social movements. This requires a sociology that makes itself relevant to local or national issues, and accountable to local or national publics.

taking of such a public sociology should, therefore, be valorized by a national sociological community as a way to develop shared perspectives and deflate the universalistic claims of metropolitan sociology.

Public sociology is dialogue between sociologists and publics – a dia-logue that recognizes the autonomy and reciprocal interdependence of each side. It can work in two ways: either through an organic connection of sociologists with a community, organization or movement, or alterna-tively through addressing a far broader audience, and cultivating national debate, what I call traditional public sociology. Organic public sociology


would include Alain Touraine’s action sociology, deepening the con-sciousness of social movement militants and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed working through an interaction between sociologist and peasantry. Traditional public sociology would include the writings of Pi-erre

tional debate about pressing

blic so-

nd policy-oriented sociology. There are risks on all

sociologies).

never at the cost of a public sociology.

on. Traditional public sociology gives direction to organic public soci-ologies, connecting them to one another, while organic public sociology grounds wider public debate in the realities facing different communities.

Bourdieu in France, M.N. Srinivas in India or Shariati in pre-revolutionary Iran. They all contributed to nasocial issues.

A number of papers in these volumes provide examples of puciology from the past as well as the present.

• Dénes Némedi presents the history of Hungarian sociology as a complex interlacing of internal and external influences start-ing with original versions of traditional and then organic public sociology in the 19th and early 20th centuries, superseded by Soviet Marxism that generated its own critical sociology be-fore the embrace of a Western oriented professional sociology.

• Georgy Fotev describes the dilemmas of traditional public so-ciology in Bulgaria battling with the communist legacy of a dependent asides: threats to value free professional sociology, dangers of populism but also distanciation, and ambiguous relations with the media.

• With Indonesia as their case Rochman Achwan and Iwan Sujatmiko show what can be done when there is synergy between “sociology for society” and “society for sociology” (between professional-critical and public-policyThey point to the involvement of public sociology in the reform of governance and labor laws, economic empowerment, agrarian reform, and constitutional amendment.

• Luis Baptista and Paulo Machado describe the efflorescence of sociology in Portugal after the end of the dictatorship in 1974. There sociology has had a close connection to national politics and policy science, but Indeed, the Portuguse Sociological association has organised open public debates about civic issues in different cities up and down the country.

Between traditional and organic public sociologies there should not be a relation of hostility and exclusivity but one of synergy and interac-ti

Michael Burawoy18

Policy Sociology In some contexts public sociology faces major obstacles while in other contexts it is simply a luxury. On the one hand, aspiring traditional public sociologists may have difficulty accessing the national media, indifferent or hostile to sociological perspectives. On the other hand, sociologists may not have the resources to develop the time consuming organic rela-tion to communities, and communities may not be interested in debate and discussion. They want sociologists to deliver something much more concrete. In other words, they want policy rather than public sociology.

In addition, there may be real material pressures impelling sociolo-gists into the policy realm, where they can garner necessary “extra” in-come, by serving external agencies that define problems as well as ac-ceptable solutions. But here too there are different ways for sociologists to go about their business. On the one hand, there is the sponsorship model in which the client defines problems -- sometimes broadly, allow-ing sociologists considerable autonomy to bring critical perspectives to bear, and sometimes narrowly, serving as a paid expert or survey techni-cian, often destined to legitimate policies already decided. On the other hand, there is the advocacy model in which sociologists takes it upon themselves to make policy proposals, seeking out advocates in the policy world. The initiative here lies with the sociologist rather than the client. Advocacy policy sociology can easily bleed into public sociology when the sociologist drums up support in the wider community.

The following are examples of the advocacy model in which the pol-icy soci udefines .

ologist form lates the character of the social problem and then appropriate (and inappropriate) responses or even solutions

• José‐Vicente Tavares‐Dos‐Santos, writing from Brazil, shows the influence of neoliberal punishment‐centered po‐licing models within the criminology imported from the United States. In Porto Alegre he has developed alternative sociological models that protect citizenship security, on the basis of closer relations between police and community.

• Napoleón Velástegui Bahamonde from Ecuador, offers a pro-grammatic statement, insisting that sociology must join the so-cial and natural sciences in promoting modernization and the university’s engagement in the knowledge-based society.

• Vu Hao Quang writes of the role of sociology in analyzing so-cial problems such as the fate of Vietnamese farmers under policies of the WTO. Here sociology is a technocratic disci-pline for the purposes of promoting social and economic de-velopment.


On the other hand, many of the papers describe the dangers of a spon-sored policy sociology of a narrow contractual character that gives little autonomy to the researcher. If widespread this approach can have a dis-torting effect on the general practice of sociology in a given country.

• Abdul Mumin Sa’ad describes the impediments to the sociolo-gist’s influence over Nigeria’s legal policy making -- narrow perception of development, prejudices against academics, in-adequate media access and coverage, no appropriate body for receiving and utilizing sociological research.

• Patricio Langa describes another aspect of sociology’s limited significance -- the “instrumentalization” of the Mozambiquan university whereby the social sciences are relegated below the more “useful” and technical disciplines. Political interference in university life, a legacy of the previous socialist regime, ad-vances neither science nor the national “fight against absolute poverty.”

• Sari Hanafi describes the proliferation of private research cen-ters throughout the Arab world, channeling resources away from and undermining public universities in the region, This new NGO-based global elite produces shoddy policy-driven research, competing for funds from foreign donors with their own political agendas, creating superficial knowledge of the region, abandoning any critical capacity toward fashionable paradigms.

European welfare states have always had a strong policy orientation, combining both advocacy and sponsorship models. These cases from Denmark and Finland point to the emergence of new arenas of policy sci-ence, so-called mode-2 type knowledge, that is policy oriented knowl-edge produced outside the university by inter-disciplinary teams.

• Kristoffer Kropp and Anders Blok also describe shifts toward policy science (and to some extent “mode-2” type knowledge) in Denmark, linked to a whole gamut of institutions broadly connected to the welfare state, leading to what they call “wel-fare reflexivity.” In the 1990s to the present, strategies of re-professionalization and policy research rescued Danish sociol-ogy from the state-led offensives of the 1980s against the radi-calism of the 1970s.

• Pekka Sulkunen from Finland writes of the growth of “Mode-2” type transdisciplinary knowledge concerned with applica-tion and what works, with evaluation research, corresponding to transformations in welfare states toward programs proposed from below rather the plans imposed from above.

Michael Burawoy20

Professional Sociology The focus on public and/or policy sociology is not intended to reproduce the existing global division of sociological labor with the metropolitan monopoly of theoretical work and scientific research, so it is important that national policy and public sociologies feed into a national profes-sional sociology. Without that the enterprise would be of diminished value and significance. Here, too, there are multiple challenges and risks. Thus, limited resources make it more feasible to simply import profes-sional sociology from abroad, or where resources are not so limited states may be intent on bench marking universities to “international,” i.e. met-ropolitan standards. This is what we might call formal professionalization. By contrast substantive professionalization involves the development of a relatively autonomous professional sociology, based on expanding re-search programs influenced by the issues brought to the table by public and policy sociologies. We can find examples of this in different conti-nents, for example, subaltern studies in India, labor studies South Africa, participatory action research in Latin America, but, note, in each case the professionalization stems from embeddedness in local or national issues,.

Certainly formal professionalization is one way to bring theories and methodologies, new paradigms to the attention of national sociologies, but it should not overwhelm substantive professionalization. Between the two there should be a reciprocal relation without the one outweighing the other. Indeed, at their best the Research Committees of the ISA can fos-ter such a balance, fostering the fruitful circulation of ideas that can ad-vance the autonomy and energy of national sociologies.

Sustaining a relatively autonomous professional sociology can be very difficult due to the paucity of resources, the pressure for narrow pol-icy-driven research and inhospitable national legacies. Below we have cases from Africa, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America and India that face very different challenges. Africa:

• Simon Mapadimeng writes of the complexity of continuities and breaks with apartheid South Africa. The massive expan-sion of sociology students and thus ever-increasing teaching loads, the continuing divide between historically black and white universities, and the turn to client-driven policy research, are threatening the advance of research-based and critical soci-ologies, and South Africa’s place in the global division of so-ciological labor.

• Feleke Tadele maps out the history of sociology in Ethiopia – an exceptional African nation without a colonial legacy. It has


experienced rapid growth in the recent period (manifested in degrees at all levels), owing to the demands for sociologists in the NGO sector. There is a strong emphasis on the applied di-mension of sociology at the expense of building research tradi-tion and indigenous social theory.

The Former Soviet Union:• Gevorg Poghosyan depicts the dilemmas of Armenia released

from the former Soviet Union as an independent state, strug-gling to constitute a national sociology de novo in a context of open borders and free markets. Facing the exodus of sociolo-gists from the academic world into jobs abroad or private poll-ing companies, the Armemenian Sociological Association tries to promote professional sociology through regional, diasporic and international connections.

• Valery Mansurov offers a more optimistic picture for Russia, where he sees the convergence of postSoviet and Western so-ciology. As old restrictions are cast aside, Russian sociology has developed a multi-paradigmatic studies of elite formation, the continuing power of the Soviet nomenklatura, gender ine-quality, poverty and homelessness, conflict as in the Chechen War, adopting qualitative methodologies within new theoreti-cal frameworks, including a reconstructed Marxism.

Latin America:• Alicia Palermo from Argentina takes on one aspect of substan-

tive professionalism, the challenges of sustaining national journals of sociology that are recognized nationally, regionally and world-wide. She emphasizes the biases of international rat-ing systems, as well as the lack of funding and training, and calls for greater involvement of state agencies and collabora-tions among sociology journals across Latin America.

• Jorge Carrillo writes about the challenges facing the sociology of work in Mexico – one of the strongest subdisciplines in Mexico, and renown throughout Latin America. With tighten-ing economic resources, there are fewer research projects, and growing inequalities within the research community. Studies are more descriptive than theoretical, and miss an international comparative dimension, although there is a very fruitful col-laboration across Latin America.

India:• As Ishwa Modi writes, even a country as large as India with its

large body of sociology, and its long traditions finds the devel-opment of an autonomous sociology difficult, especially in an

Michael Burawoy22

era of marketization and privatization. But the Indian Socio-logical Society has tried to foster greater communication within India but also between India and other countries, espe-cially those of the Global South, namely Brazil and South Af-rica.

Professional sociology is also struggling in richer countries, under competitive pressures of internationalization.

• Charles Crothers from New Zealand argues that policy and public sociologies have not borne fruit in a strong professional sociology. Indeed, in recent years sociology has been absorbed into other disciplines, leaving only one autonomous sociology department. Even though this white settler colony is part of the semi-periphery, it is a periphery of Australia which sets in-tellectual patterns for the region.

• John Holmwood examines the consequences of the British “re-search assessment exercise,” that is designed to benchmark academic knowledge to international standards. He sees this formal professionalization as a form of “governmentality” that threatens the professional core and its critical alternatives by fragmenting sociology, with parts migrating into other disci-plines.

As all these cases suggest, the development of an autonomous profes-sional sociology is very much dependent upon the largesse of the state, and the autonomy of a university system as well as the standing of the discipline within the university. One of the reasons for the expansion of Ethiopian sociology has been its ability to make teaching a priority, to offer degrees or diplomas in “applied” sociology that attract students. On the other hand, of course, excessive teaching loads can also sink the pos-sibility of developing serious research agendas. Since teaching absorbs so much of the time of so many sociologists we have to give serious at-tention to innovative synergies between teaching and research, especially as electronic media become more widely dispersed. Critical Sociology It is critical sociology that sustains the integrity of the division of socio-logical labor. It sustains a balance between substantive and formal profes-sionalization, between sponsored and contract policy research, and be-tween traditional and organic public sociology. The project of critical sociology is to make us accountable to ourselves as well as others, and to build a reflexive community, reflexive about the values we think are im-


portant, values that might be infused into professional, policy and public sociologies.

Critical sociology may be aimed at our discipline, but it is also a con-duit of ideas from other disciplines. Again it is especially important to fend off pressures for narrow disciplinary chauvinism that can mark the social sciences of the North, especially in the United States. Interdiscipli-narity is very important where public and policy sociology is emphasized since neighboring disciplines can offer important perspectives on social issues, but it is also very important where social science disciplines are individually very weak. Interdisciplinarity does not mean the dissolution of disciplinarity. Quite the opposite it feeds off disciplinarity, which is its sine qua non, just as it often provides intellectual sustenance for discipli-narity.

Metropolitan sociology developed through the synergy of four types of knowledge – professional, policy, public and critical – even if now one or more dominate their disciplinary fields. It’s important to replicate that synergy, not just within countries but within regions too. Thus, Latin America, as a region, offers probably one of the best examples of a broad gauged synergy among the four types of knowledge and has given rise to one of most vibrant sociological fields in the world.

• Marcos Supervielle, reflecting on the four phases of post-WWII history of sociology in Latin America, underlines its continuing engagement with society – whether at the level of policy experts or public dialogue. It is this engagement that be-comes the spring board for original sociologies, creatively ap-propriating and critically appraising metropolitan theories while generating autonomous research traditions. Making it-self accountable to local and national communities has been one ingredient but the creation of a regional community of scholars has been the second ingredient for the dynamic auto-centric expansion of theory and research.

• Takashi Machimura describes the very different situation in Japan where research and teaching has been largely conducted in Japanese. This has favored a synergy among the four types of sociology, including a strong public sociology, but commu-nication with other sociologies is difficult. Although Western classics are translated into Japanese, Japanese classics rarely become a reference point for international sociology, despite Japan being the second or third most numerous concentrations of sociology in the world.

If one way to resist the false universalism of metropolitan hegemony is to build robust national sociologies throughout the South, another way

Michael Burawoy24

is to nationalize or “provincialize” Northern sociology. The universal claims, implicit or explicit, of U.S., French, German sociologies must be qualified by recognition of the particular realities they reflect and from which they have emerged. Here, too, more attention to a public sociology might help, but also openness to the contestation of universalistic claims by other national professional and critical sociologies. There is nothing like open discussion among sociologists from different parts of the world to clarify the particularity of universal claims!

TOWARD FEASIBLE GLOBAL SOCIOLOGIES

So, what does this mean for the development of global sociologies? One form of global sociology, global sociology from above, is simply the uni-versalization of a single, usually Northern, sociology. Here a comparison with economics is pertinent. Economics has managed to constitute its own object of analysis – the market economy – over which it has a mo-nopoly of knowledge, and thereby it has created a theory and methodol-ogy with claims to universal applicability. The center of this univocal but ever-changing paradigm, is the United States. The paradigm imposes it-self through transnational socialization (flows of students, prestige of US credentials), through flows of resources (scholarships, research funding, think tanks) and through the domination of international agencies (World Bank, IMF, etc.), which employ mainly U.S. trained economists (Four-cade 2006). A large part of its success lies with the constitution of “na-tional economies” which underpin an ongoing synergy between profes-sional and policy science. Once the Soviet order had disintegrated it was hard to even imagine challenges to the domination of U.S. economics, although, of course, Europe always had its alternative models and there have been critiques emanating from the South. Undoubtedly, their suc-cess in creating a distinctive object of knowledge and in convincing oth-ers of their insights into its working undergirds the influence of econo-mists in diverse political fields (Fourcade 2009).

Sociology is different in that it has not successfully constituted its own object over which it has a monopoly of knowledge. Therefore, there has been no umbilical cord connecting professional and policy sociol-ogy – although a close approximation may be found in Scandinavia. Gen-erally, efforts to establish a single paradigm with “society” as its object have failed. There is simply no well-defined object that sociologists study and over which they have a monopoly of knowledge. They study every-thing: from institutions to identities, from states to schools, from econo-mies to families, from deviance to consent, from domination to social


movements. The ISA has 55 research committees, all focused on different topics. Thus, instead of having its own object, sociology has a distinctive standpoint, namely the standpoint of civil society – those institutions, organizations, and movements that inhabit the space between economy and state. This does not mean that sociology only studies civil society. Rather it studies state and market through their effects on civil society, and vice versa how civil society provides the conditions of existence of state and market. Because civil society is made up of competing forces, organized into patterns of domination and exclusion, so sociology is a contested and plural discipline, very different from the paradigmatic sci-ence of economics.

To look upon sociology as defined by its standpoint means to recog-nize that the sociologist is simultaneously observer of and participant in society, that there is no place outside society not even for the scientist. Sociology, therefore, is always potentially an actor within the society it studies. In taking up such a stance sociology is necessarily skeptical of economists’ claims to neutrality, objectivity and universality. Indeed, these claims mask the interest of orthodox economics in the unrestricted expansion of markets, an expansion that threatens civil society and thus, not just sociology but also humanity’s capacity to protect itself against, for example, the degradation of the environment and labor. Sociology becomes, therefore, not only a potential opposition to economics in the academic field but also contributes to the counter-movement against mar-kets in the wider society.

As markets become global so sociology aspires to become global too, contributing to a global civil society, knitting together communities, or-ganizations and movements across national boundaries. If orthodox eco-nomics is constituted globally from above through a process of academic imperialism, global sociologies are laboriously constituted from below out of particular national sociologies. This depends on the viability of those national sociologies discussed in the previous section, and then on building multiple connections among such national sociologies. This can be done directly or through the development of regional ties and regional sociologies, as has been done in Latin America, Europe and North Amer-ica, and to a lesser extent in Asia and the Arab World. Moreover, through such linkages and circulations, conferences and joint projects, weaker sociologies are strengthened.

Building a global sociology from below is a daunting and precarious task. If there is a paucity of collective actors in the world then sociology may have little alternative but to enter the vacuum. Indeed, faced with the possibility of being condemned to irrelevance, its very livelihood may be at stake. Can we look for global actors of tomorrow in the legions of so-

Michael Burawoy26

ciologists, whose peculiarity is to simultaneously diagnose and confront the unequal world they inhabit. If sociology can be constituted as a col-lective actor, can it also reach beyond a trade union defensiveness, impor-tant though that is, to embrace wider interests and global awareness? That’s the challenge of a global sociology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alatas, Syed Farid. Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Re-

sponses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi: Sage, 2006a. ____. “A Khaldunian Exemplar for a Historical Sociology for the South.”

Current Sociology 54, no.3 (2006b): 397-412. Alatas, Syed Hussein. “The Captive Mind and Creative development.”

Internationl Social Science Journal 36 (1974): 691-99. Albrow, Martin and Elizabeth King (eds.). Globalization, Knowledge and

Society. London: Sage, 1990. Archer, Margaret. “Sociology for one World: Unity and Diversity.”

International Sociology 6, no.2 (1991): 131-47. Akiwowo, Akinsola. “Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from

an African Oral Poetry.” International Sociology 1, no.4 (1986): 343-358.

Beck, Ulrich. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge, U.K., Polity Press, 2004.

Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Corporatism of the Universal: The Role of Intellectuals in the Modern World.” Telos 81 (1989): 99-110.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. “Foreword.” International Sociology 1, no.1 (1986): 1-2 Connell, Raewyn. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in SocialScience. Crows Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2007.

Fourcade, Marion. “The Construction of a Global Profession: The Transnationalization of Economics.” American Journal of Sociology 112 (2006): 145-94.

____. Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France 1890s to 1990s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Genov, Nikolai (ed.). National Traditions in Sociology. London: Sage, 1989.

Himmelstrand, Ulf. “The Role of the ISA in Internationalizing Sociology.” Current Sociology 39 (1991): 85-100.

Oommen, T.K. “Internationalization of Sociology: A View from Developing Countries.” Current Sociology 39 (1991): 67-84.


Patel, Sujata (ed.). The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage, 2009.

Sztompka, Piotr. “One Sociology or Many?” in Patel (editor), The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, pp.21-28. London: Sage, 2009 Wallerstein, Immanuel. The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Yuan-Tseh Lee28

Challenges Facing Human Societyin the 21st Century

Yuan-Tseh Lee, Academia Sinica, Taiwan1

It is a great honor for a natural scientist to be invited to present a lecture at the 2009 Conference of the National Associations of the International Sociological Association. My talk will be focused on the issues of energy, the environment, and the challenges facing human society in the 21st cen-tury.

THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN SOCIETY ON EARTH

After the appearance of our ancestors on the heavily forested planet a couple of million years ago, the development of the human society as a whole was in harmony with nature. Humankind was indeed a part of na-ture, reliant on the sun to create most of what was needed to survive. Since the population of humankind was small, for a long period of time their limited activities seemed to have affected neither the biosphere nor the living environment of humankind to any great extent.

However, the development of humankind took a new turn after the industrial revolution, which began about two hundred and fifty years ago. As humankind learned to transform energy from one form to another – from chemical, thermal, and electrical to mechanical – and invented vari-ous machines that could perform work thousands of times more power-fully, more precisely, and more reliably than could possibly be done with human and animal labor, the productivity of humankind increased im-mensely, and an unprecedented improvement of living standards was achieved. The success of humankind on the surface of the earth had been quite remarkable. But, during this process, humankind became addicted to the use of a large amount of energy, and since the energy from the biomass created by sunshine no longer satisfied our needs, we began to depend more and more on fossil fuels - coal, natural gas, and petroleum -

1 Yuan-Tseh Lee is the President-Elect of International Council for Science and the President Emeritus of Academia Sinica.

Challenges Facing Human Society in the 21st Century 29

which were buried under the ground and had taken millions of years to accumulate. In the USA in 1850, 90% of the energy depended on wood burning, but 80 years later, by 1930, 90% of the energy came from the combustion of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels also provided energy and feed stock needed for the production of various new materials, such as plastics, fertilizer, synthetic fibers, steel, and cement, and regrettably people had drastically changed the intimate relation between humans and nature. The harmonious relation between people and the biosphere was disrupted, and the important role played by the sun in the development of human-kind, or the philosophical view of Confucius that “Man and Nature are but one,” somehow seemed to have been forgotten.

As we entered the 21st century, we began to realize that the current development patterns of human society were not sustainable. Problems related to population explosion, natural resource depletion, and the dam-age done to the living environment have become quite serious. In a sense, the earth was once regarded as “infinite” or “unlimited” for humankind, not only because of the resources available but also due to the ability of the earth to digest all the waste that humankind produced. However, from the point of view of the damage done to the ecosystem or the living environment, the earth as a whole should be considered “limited” and “overdeveloped” at present. For example, carbon dioxide produced by human activities is far exceeding the earth’s capacity to absorb it through the growth of the forest, coral reefs, and other mechanisms, and the trend of global warming is threatening the very existence of human beings on Earth. It is quite ironic that during the 20th century not only are the “de-veloped” countries overdeveloped, but so-called “developing” countries are also overdeveloped. It is unfortunate that so-called “developing” countries are following in the footsteps of “developed” countries and marching along the unsustainable path established by “developed coun-tries” in the past when the earth was still “unlimited.”

It is extremely important for humankind to wake up immediately and acknowledge the fact that the human society as a whole is living beyond its means. We must learn to work together as a community to find new, sustainable ways to re-establish an intimate relationship with biosphere, live in harmony with nature, and return to a more direct relationship with the mighty power of the sun. After all, it was the sun that brought us all together here on the surface of the earth.

Yuan-Tseh Lee30

ISSUES RELATED TO ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

One of the most urgent problems people face today is related to the rela-tionship between energy and the environment, especially global warming trends caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, and energy crises caused by the widening gap between the limited supply and rapidly grow-ing demand for petroleum and other fossil fuels. The other problem, which threatens to wipe out large portions of humanity in a short time, is the spread of infectious diseases, like those caused by virus H5N1.

It is comforting to know that, at present, the energy absorbed by the surface of the earth in one hour is approximately equal to the total energy consumption of the entire world in a year. In other words, the amount of energy the surface of the earth absorbs is approximately ten thousand times the energy consumed by the human society. It means that if we were clever enough, we could depend entirely on solar energy. For ex-ample, if an inexpensive practical photovoltaic cell, which converts 10% of solar energy to electricity, becomes available, it will only take 1% of the planet’s land area to generate enough electric energy to satisfy the energy needs of the entire world. If the electrical energy generated by a photovoltaic cell could be effectively stored or used to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen—or to even more directly dissociate water by using a combination of photovoltaic cells—it is not inconceivable that countries with large land masses could become energy exporting coun-tries, nor that hydrogen gas might then become a major energy source as we enter the age of the “hydrogen economy.” If we learn to produce bio-fuel more efficiently or invent efficient “artificial leaves,” their photosyn-thesis might provide enough biomass on Earth to satisfy our need for liq-uid fuel and other chemical feed stocks now provided by petroleum.

THE DILEMMAS OF LIVING IN A PARTIALLY-GLOBALIZED WORLD

Although we have witnessed the process of the globalization of human society during the last few decades, the process is only half complete, and because of this, we are suffering the consequences. Owing to highly-developed transportation and communication technologies, our world is relatively smaller than it once was, and it appears that the concept of a global village is slowly taking root as a number of human activities, most notably in the economic sphere, become globalized. The spread of dis-ease around the world is another example. With thousands of airplanes daily crossing oceans and continents, loaded with people and goods, dis-


ease-causing bacteria, viruses, and other microbes certainly will not be confined to specific locations. Similarly, environmental problems such as the depletion of the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons and global warm-ing trends caused by greenhouse gases are problems that must be ad-dressed on a global scale. On the other hand, in spite of the increased international collaboration in the areas of science and technology, high-tech economic competition is still largely carried out on a national basis. Currently, in the partially-globalized world, it is quite clear that only those people who are able to stage their activities on a global scale are benefiting enormously. For that reason, it is not surprising that we will have to tackle such problems as the widening gap between the rich and the poor, both among countries and between people within a country, nor that threats to solve problems by military force have not disappeared. These problems might be avoided if the entire world were to become “one community.”

We should also realize that though the globalization of the world economy is driving us toward a borderless society, it will not reduce the differences among peoples in various regions overnight. Establishing a new, common global culture, together with more effective ways of com-municating among all the peoples, will certainly take time. The differ-ences among cultural heritages, languages, and religions that make this world so rich and colorful will not, and should not, be made to disappear. As the world shrinks in relative terms, and contact between peoples be-comes more frequent, whether or not the differences in civilizations are likely to cause an inevitable crash (as suggested by the well-known scholar Samuel Huntington), seems to depend entirely on how well peo-ple around the world learn to communicate and to understand, appreciate, and respect each other’s cultural heritage. To become good citizens of the global village, we need to learn quickly and also to teach our young peo-ple to take a global view and to respect, appreciate, and understand the different cultures of different peoples. In this regard, scientists can cer-tainly lead the way.

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY FORUM IN KYOTO

In the fall of 2004, Mr. Omi, the former Minister of Finance of Japan, organized a very important annual forum in Kyoto, called “The Science and Technology in Society Forum.” More than six hundred leading sci-entists, business leaders, and policy makers were invited every year from all over the world to discuss problems related to the subject matter of the

Yuan-Tseh Lee32

forum. The forum aroused great enthusiasm among participants and has since become a very successful and important annual event. This past October, in 2008, the fifth forum was held with more than 600 attendees.

Mr. Omi made two important points when he described the funda-mental concept of this forum in the opening ceremony of the first forum. He mentioned positive and negative aspects of the rapid progress of sci-ence and technology, and he noted that the benefits of science and tech-nology have not yet reached everyone equally, which, as he said, “Is really what symbolizes the lights and shadows of science and technol-ogy.” While their negative aspects must be properly controlled, the posi-tive features of science and technology should be promoted.

Mr. Omi’s other important point was stated thus: “Today’s problems are global and can not be solved by any single country or by scientists alone.” He went on to say, “Boundaries between nations are merely lines on a map; nature makes no such distinctions. We should think of our-selves as members of humankind, whose very existence will be at risk if we do not live in accordance with the principles of Mother Nature.” In-deed, if an astronaut observes the beautiful earth from a spacecraft, the astronaut will not find any national boundaries.

I believe most of us sitting in this room would support this idea with-out hesitation. However, if we do not try to answer some other questions related to the fact that the earth is “limited’ and the world is only “par-tially globalized,” our efforts to find solutions might encounter some dif-ficulties. For example, we must also ask, “How many people could the planet support if we were to extend the living standard of the people in the so-called ‘developed countries’ to everyone on Earth?” It is interest-ing to note that when India became independent, in response to the ques-tion of how the people in that country could catch up with the living stan-dard of the people in Great Britain, Gandhi rightfully recognized that it would take the natural resources of many Planet Earths for the people in India to have the British way of life. It is just impossible.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Many of the problems we face today are problems that cannot be solved with current scientific knowledge and technologies; they await the accu-mulation of new knowledge and the development of new technologies. That is why it is so important to continue our efforts to advance science and technology and to educate a new generation of creative scientists.

During the long history of humankind, our ancestors invented various technologies in order to survive better or to improve their quality of life.


Their curiosity and their desire to understand natural phenomena were the basis of the advancement of science. Until about one hundred years ago, the advancement of science was driven by the available technology; only during the last century have technological advances been led by the re-sults of scientific research.

In recent years, we have observed encouraging improvements in international scientific collaboration. Many projects have been initiated; many agreements have been signed. Year after year, we have discussed “capacity building” in science, technology, and education for developing countries, but the worsening situation of the entire world has yet to find its turning point. For example, the rain forest, which is often compared with the lung of a human body, is continuing to disappear from the sur-face of the earth. For the past decade, every summer we have witnessed the thick dark smog generated by the forest fires in Indonesia contaminate not only the air in Indonesia, but also in their neighboring countries. It is not realistic to blame or to expect Indonesia to be able to keep their rain forest from disappearing. Unless we consider the protection of the rain forest in Indonesia “our responsibility” and raise enough funds to help Indonesia to establish a protected “global rain forest,” no matter how se-riously we engage in international scientific collaboration, the rain forest will continue to disappear.

We should all recognize the fact that the increasingly interconnected world cannot be a safe place if a large portion of its population still suf-fers from grinding poverty, disease, illiteracy, lack of education, unem-ployment, and other barriers to survival. Scientists can play key roles in finding the solutions to these problems. Especially if we learn to solve problems together; learn to share knowledge, new technological options, and the limited resources available; and learn to respect and understand different cultural heritages, then it will be possible to realize the estab-lishment of a genuine global village that makes sustainable development possible for all.

In order for science and technology to solve the problems man faces in the 21st century, it is not enough to advance science and technology at a faster pace. The advancement of science and technology certainly will solve many problems we are facing today and will also shape the devel-opment of human society of the future. However, the serious problems related to sustainable development will not be solved unless we pay spe-cial attention to the roles played by science and technology in this “finite” and “half-globalized” world, learn to work together beyond national boundaries, and pay more attention to our collective “global competitive-ness” for solving the problems of the entire world, rather than continuing to worry about the “national competitiveness” of our own countries.

Yuan-Tseh Lee34

At present, the entire world consists of more than one hundred na-tion-states. One of the duties of the government of a nation-state is to collect taxes from its citizen and businesses to solve the nation’s prob-lems and redistribute wealth. As the world has become more and more globalized, it has become obvious that there is a need for some sort of “global government” that can resolve the conflict between the interests of nation-states and the interests of the entire world.

The best way to work together beyond national boundaries is to make national boundaries disappear all together. Although it might take a long time, our future certainly will depend on how soon all of us in different countries learn to operate as “one community” for the entire world, and we do not have much time to waste. Perhaps the European Union is a step in that direction. Half way through the 21st Century, the formation of the “Global Union of the Planet of Earth” might become a reality, and then the sustainable development of the entire world might become pos-sible. Otherwise, in the not too distant future, the solar system might send the farewell message to humankind on Earth.

Sociology in Times of Crisis 35

Sociology in Times of Crisis Michel Wieviorka, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,

Paris, France1

Translated by Kristin Couper

We have entered an era since September 2008 that countless observers, analysts, economists, and politicians have described as one of “crisis.” The term has become the key word of the moment. At the same time, the explanation we are offered to account for this phenomenon is something of a stereotype.

How should the present crisis be understood? By far, the majority of the commentators tell us that the simplest thing is to follow the sequence of events. Thereafter, we are presented with a story that is always the same, apart from a few variations in detail; Jacques Attali’s (2008) book constitutes a paradigm. We are told that, in the first instance, the crisis was financial (credit for consumer goods and especially the American housing “bubble,” the “subprimes,” “securitization,” the failures of finan-cial institutions or banks, avoided in the last resort thanks to the interven-tion of states, etc.). It spread in the form of a worldwide social and eco-nomic crisis (so-called “technical” unemployment, axing of jobs, closing of firms, poverty, etc.). It will perhaps have dramatic political repercus-sions with violence, riots, and populist, nationalist, or extreme left forms of radicalization. Sooner or later, after a difficult period, it will be re-solved. This will be the “way out of the crisis;” the economy will pick up again, cleaned up and perhaps strengthened, working more smoothly thanks to a banking system which has been improved under the leader-ship of states which have led the way to a recovery of confidence, thanks perhaps also to substantial progress having been made in global-level governance of the economy and finance.

Of course, this narrative is not entirely false. However, in many re-spects, it is unbearable. Its economism tends to be over-simplistic; eco-nomics is the explanation for everything. The Marxist overtones are as-tonishing on the part of those who have developed it; if we are to believe them, the economic infrastructure controlled the political-ideological su-perstructure, as if the political actors were in no way responsible for the 1 Michel Wieworka is President of the International Sociological Association.

Michel Wieviorka36

catastrophe. All that is required is simply to await a reversal of the situa-tion, which is already taking shape and is referred to as “the return of the state.”

This narrative also has the overtones of a “saga” with a happy ending of the type: we’re going to suffer; we’ll have to tighten our belts, but we’ll get over it. And, those who created it, be they experts, economists, or others, are not lacking in self-confidence. They did not see what was coming, but they present themselves as qualified to explain in a learned fashion what happened and what the future will be like, even going as far as suggesting the most appropriate public policies to adopt.

Moreover, when they are questioned, they state that some of them had forecast the American scenario, the inevitable bursting of the bubble associated with unbridled credit, in the property market and for consumer goods. At most, they concede that they did not imagine the extension of the crisis to the planet as a whole and with such rapidity; those who have been speaking about globalization for the past twenty years without ever imagining that it could also lead to a “global” crisis have no hesitation in declaring that this is the first crisis in globalization.

This narrative also has an implicit characteristic that deserves to be made explicit. It does break, and very rightly so, with the image of a type of disassociation specific to globalization which is said to have discon-nected the financial economy from the real economy. On the contrary, by insisting on the consequences of the financial crisis on employment, growth, the standard of living, the GDP (gross domestic product), etc., this narrative points to links between the two registers, links that are cer-tainly very complex.

But, are these repetitive remarks that always tell us the same story apart from a few variations the only way to look at the crisis? Here, soci-ology definitely has other analyses to offer us. I even think that sociolo-gists should make the “crisis” a priority in their interventions. A com-parison enables us make the point forcefully: sociologists cannot continue to go about their business while the boat is sinking.

THE CRISIS AS THE PROBLEM OF A SYSTEM

The social sciences have developed on the basis of dealing with causes for concern that frequently evoked the idea of crisis. Thus, the concept of anomie, popularized by Emile Durkheim, refers directly to the idea of crisis. From this point of view, crisis means that a system (in particular a social, political, or economic one) is not working well, is getting stuck and changing in a way that cannot be controlled; this engenders reactions


in behavior which are themselves linked, for example, to frustrations and fears.

Anomie, in Durkheim’s definition of the term, is the lack or ineffi-cacy of norms in a society. Durkheim introduced the concept of anomie2

in The Division of Labour in Society (1893) and used it primarily in Sui-cide (1897). In particular, he differentiated between anomic suicide and other modalities of the phenomenon; anomic suicide occurs when norms are absent or else is due to the fact that anomie is long-standing, for ex-ample in industrial work, in trade, or when an abrupt transition leads to loss of efficacy of norms which no longer succeed in regulating behavior. For example, in times of financial crisis, anomie incites people to suicide.

In an article that is frequently quoted, the concept of anomie was taken up again and transformed by Robert Merton (1938) to explain devi-ance. With Merton, anomie ceases to be in the norms and values which become confused or disappear, as in Durkheim; it resides in the means to succeed in achieving aims or legitimate, clear values which are in no way in crisis. The deviant accepts values that are socially recognized, but he uses non-legitimate means to achieve them. The values may be, for ex-ample, individual success; the legitimate means to achieve this are, for example, work or education. Now, some people are going to use illegiti-mate means, such as crime or delinquency, to achieve the individual suc-cess that the others earn as a result of study or professional activities. This idea leads to the hypothesis of the conformism of deviants: like eve-ryone else, they want money or signs of social success, but they achieve them by means that do not conform.

We should add that the concept of anomie implies that there is a soci-ety, an idea that might deserve to be discussed or criticized. The fact re-mains that, both with Emile Durkheim and the American functionalists of the 1930s, 40s, or 50s, the crisis refers in the first instance to the idea of a breakdown in the system or of a system and, in particular, to the idea of a problem of social bond. There is a break or the threat of a break in soli-darity or in the social fabric; there is a lack of confidence.

In some way, spontaneous sociology and also the sociology behind most of the stereotypical discourses on the present crisis concord fairly well with the classical categories which have just been described. If we restrict ourselves to these discourses, it is expected that in the context of a close correspondence between society, nation, and the state, measures will be taken by state authorities to restore confidence in economic and financial matters. Furthermore, those in power expect the population to rally behind them in the name of the higher interest of the nation. The

2 The word had been used before him by Jean-Marie Guyau (1885).

Michel Wieviorka38

idea that by combating the crisis efficiently, violence will be avoided, radicalization minimized, and the move to extremes restrained also be-longs to this same classical sociology. The crisis, here, is a temporary problem in the social system; it is a state of disaster of one or several so-cieties which it is the task of their states to end, with the help of interna-tional agreements or negotiations and by means of appropriate policies, for example plans for reviving economic growth. Apart from the state, there are not many actors in this type of approach; at the most, there are the actors whose behavior ought to be regulated or governed by public instances: bankers, financiers, and traders who acted improperly in the previous period.

Approaches to the crisis which originate in Durkheim or in function-alism can lead to the idea that it is time to change the social system or the type of society, but in most instances they extend into appeals for an end to the present difficulties and a return to the state ex ante. On this basis, the sociologist can intervene in the discussion. His or her intervention will be aimed at proposing remedies and solutions, rather than helping in the formation of actors and, by clarifying things for them, enabling them to improve their mobilization in the face of the crisis.

“CRISIOLOGY”

In the late 1960s, Edgar Morin (1968) proposed the development of a scientific study of the crisis, or “crisiology.” As we shall see below, this was a premonitory text, because it was written in the historical context where the general transformation which culminated in what we know to-day as “the” crisis was taking shape. Morin considered that the crisis can be an event which both reveals and has an effect. First, as an event that reveals, it reveals what usually remains invisible; it forces us to hear things we do not wish to hear. The crisis reveals elements that are inher-ent to the real and are not merely accidents; it constitutes a moment of truth. Thus, we could say that the present crisis reveals unbridled capital-ism, in particular financial capitalism, in all its brutality and its extreme injustice. Above all, we see that it constitutes a paroxysm in a process that started long before September 2008. Second, as an event that has an effect, Morin explains that the crisis sets in motion not only forces of de-composition, disorganization, and destruction, but also forces of trans-formation. In these cases, it is also a critical point in a process that in-cludes dimensions of construction, innovation, and invention.

This idea of a critical point is reinforced by the etymology. The word krisis in Greek means decision, and it was first used in medicine. The


crisis is the critical point that enables the diagnosis, as Edgar Morin re-minds us. From this point of view, the crisis is not only synonymous with congestion, impotence, a situation to be endured, and, as a conse-quence, the development of irrational elements that give rise to deregula-tion and a hardening of positions, the “paralysis” and “stiffening of what constituted the organizational flexibility of the system,” notes Edgar Morin. But, it also constitutes, on the contrary, a condition that is favor-able to the actions and decisions of some actors and enables or even forces actors to think and improve their analysis in order to improve their action. Morin states:

At one and the same time we can grasp the inadequacy and the interest of the concept of crisis: there is something inherent to it which is uncer-tain since it corresponds to a regression of the determinism specific to the system in question, therefore to a regression in knowledge. But this regression can and must be compensated for by progress in the under-standing of the complexity associated with crises. (140-141)

Continuing in the idea that the crisis both “has an effect” and “re-veals,” Edgar Morin invites us therefore to admit that the crisis demon-strates that what was a matter of course is in fact a source of difficulties and presents problems; what worked had its limits, its drawbacks, and its inadequacies. The crisis therefore constitutes an incentive to invent something new. But, this incentive is imperative in a very particular con-text, in which emotions, passions, and fears tend to pervert reason and, in particular, the endeavor to get out of the crisis by rational means. It is a commonplace but one which corresponds to many realities to recall that in times of crisis many seek scapegoats, populism is likely to develop, and actors become more radical. It must be forcefully stated that in times of crisis, forms of behavior may also involve sectarianism, resort to magic and the irrational, and assume the garb of messianic movements. The forms of behavior are many and varied and do not conform to any sort of determinism; most of them are all the more alarming given that actors or a system in crisis develop in ways which are much less foresee-able and much more random than do actors in a system which works. But, crisis-type behavior can even take many other forms. In particular, these may include discouragement, apathy, as Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel (1933) observed in the classical study of unemployed workers in Marienthal, a small town in Austria where anomie was the predominant form of behavior at the beginning of the 1930s before the Nazis transformed it into forms of collective behavior and mobilization.

Michel Wieviorka40

In a crisis, disorder and rigidity are at work. But, in so far as the cri-sis is subject to the unknown, in the last resort, it does leave room for maneuver for individual strategies or the action of an active minority. The crisis is a disruption of a system in which uncertainties arise, but there are also new opportunities; this disruption is two-fold. It operates both in the sphere of social reality and in our knowledge; it opens up new perspectives in action and in learning.

But, let’s take a step further. Seen from this perspective, is the crisis a characteristic of the system that it affects, or does it indicate the way out? If we follow Edgar Morin, it tends to be the first path that we should take. He states that we can only develop a theory of crisis:

If we have a theory of society which is also systematic, cybernetic and subject to negative entropy. To understand the crisis, if we want to go beyond the idea of disruption, ordeal, and equilibrium, we have to un-derstand society as a system capable of experiencing crises, that is, a complex system which includes antagonisms without which the theory of the society is inadequate and the notion of crisis is unthinkable. (142)

In this case, crisis is a characteristic, in the last resort a property of the complex system constituted by the society, a system that can trans-form itself or retrieve its own form of regulation. But, why not envisage a second path and see the crisis as the convulsion in the transition from one system to another, in any event a deciding phase in a process of change in the system?

Both of these hypotheses deserve to be applied to the analysis of ac-tual crises. For example, Lenin in his time adopted the second one when he explained that in his opinion the main point was not that the actors be revolutionaries but that the situation be so, that is, defined in terms of crisis. The change in system became possible in 1917 in Russia from the point at which the crisis had become generalized, social, and political but also international and military, and the regime of the Czar was collapsing.

Finally, we also find an interesting question in Morin: does the crisis come from within the system which it affects, or from without? There, too, there is no single answer but separate experiences depending on which crises are under consideration. The disruption may come from without, for example, in the case of climatic catastrophes. It can also come from within, from a process that at the outset is not a theoretical source of crisis but that produces it with the result that the system is no longer self-regulating. In Marx, for example, crises in capitalism can originate in a contradiction that has become too great between the rela-tions of production and the development of the productive forces. The


crisis then arises when the system becomes incapable of resolving the difficulties that until then it was capable of resolving. Morin states that the crisis is “the absence of solution (phenomena of deregulation and dis-organization) which, as a result, is capable of creating a solution (a new form of regulation, gradual transformation)” (143-144). Here, he concurs in a way with Michel Dobry (1992), for whom the most interesting aspect of the sociology of crises lies in envisaging not the external disruption but the internal disruption and the processes of deregulation consequent to it: dysfunctioning and deregulation.

Thus, with the “crisiology” outlined by Edgar Morin, we have paths or hypotheses that may enable us to tackle the present crises with catego-ries other than those of the stereotypical discourse in which economics and politics predominate. As we shall see, the exercise is worth trying.

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION

On the basis of what we have just said, it is possible to suggest a very different argument from the one that underlies the usual economic ap-proaches to the present-day crisis. It consists in setting the present crisis into a long-term historical context and seeing it as a particular point in a process of change that started in the developed countries with the oil cri-sis that followed the Yom Kippur War.

Immediately after World War II, the developed countries imple-mented models of functioning and developing which had been taking shape before the war, on one hand, in dealing with the crisis in 1929 and sometimes also, as was the case in France, within the Resistance (during World War II). These models, which have their Western versions and their Soviet versions, presented distinct characteristics, even if diverse variants could be seen: relatively strong growth, considerable intervention on the part of the state, confidence in science, a real capacity to project themselves into the future, and the idea that production opens the way to progress. Upward social mobility was a promise in which many could believe. Economic and social thinking gave primacy of place to the state and the nation as the framework for analysis and action, a framework that was rounded off by the Westphalian concept of international relations.

The economy of industrial societies was one in which work was or-ganized according to principles of scientific organization; there was a belief in the Taylorian concept of “one best way.” Education was becom-ing more democratic and the university more open, but not necessarily to all. The processes of migration were relatively limited and above all did not seem to pose major problems. At a global level, decolonization was a

Michel Wieviorka42

source of immense hopes about peoples’ and nations’ capacity to control their own destinies, and the Cold War provided a principle of structuring conflict that, on the whole, organized peace, rather more than war and violence.

Lastly, politics were dominated in the democracies by the idea of a Left/Right opposition representing primarily the world of the working class in opposition to domination and the capitalist order.

All this, briefly outlined, began to fall apart in the mid 1970s, some-times earlier, and often later (in Eastern European countries). We then entered a long period of transformation, marked on one hand by the de-composition of these models from the post-World War Two years and on the other by the invention, or the outlines, of what could be termed other models.

The present financial crisis must therefore be presented in the context of a different narrative from the one offered by the majority of the economists for whom the point of departure is the “subprime” crisis and the extension of the crisis in the American property market to the planet and to all spheres of the economy. Instead, it must be considered a cli-mactic moment in a long, therapeutic process, a difficult and chaotic way out of the old models; from this same perspective, it must also be envis-aged as a point in time when tomorrow’s models could be being invented or taking shape. On the basis of Morin’s “crisiology,” it is possible to conceive of recent events in a historical time-scale which does not begin with the “subprimes” and which does not restrict the crisis to the “ef-fects” or “consequences” of the deviations of the financial system. This is not a linear historical development but one in which one world is tak-ing shape while, at the same time, another is disappearing.

CRISIS AND CONFLICT

In the social sciences, it is possible to discern ways of thinking which differ from and are even opposed to those which focus on society or on the system, considered in its totality and in its difficulties maintaining integration; these promote an approach based on the idea of an insuffi-ciency, a lack, a loss, or a deficit of conflictuality. In these cases, the analysis focuses not so much on the system or on the society as on the actors who do not succeed or no longer succeed or have not yet suc-ceeded in setting up a conflictual relation, with the crisis representing the complete opposite of this type of relation.

A conflict exists when actors are involved in a relationship that they recognize as binding them and opposing them; the actors admit that the


relationship involves issues, that these issues are the same for all, and that each of them is endeavoring to control or master them.

These issues can be situated at various levels, and sociological theory may endeavor to rank them. Thus, in the 1970s, Alain Touraine (1974) suggested comparing three different levels of conflict, on the one hand, with three different levels of crisis on the other. He distinguished the highest level in sociological terms, which he called the level of historicity, at which the control of the main orientations of community life are de-cided:

This distance that society places between itself and its activity and this action by which it determines the categories of its practice I call his-toricity. Society is not what it is but what it makes itself be: through knowledge, which creates a state of relations between society and its environment; through accumulation, which subtracts a portion of avail-able product from the cycle leading to consumption; through the cul-tural model, which captures creativity in forms dependent upon the so-ciety’s practical dominion over its own functioning. (4)

At the level of historicity, therefore, the conflict, in the vocabulary used by Alain Touraine, refers to the existence of a social movement, which is the action of an actor who is dominated and controlled, engaged in a struggle with the major actors and leaders for the control of historic-ity. Thus, in an industrial society, the most important issue at stake in the conflict between the working class movement and the employers was the control of the organization of labour, particularly the control of invest-ment and the appropriation and use of the fruits of labour. In turn, at this level of historicity, the crisis emerges when the social conflict is either not possible or no longer possible, when it destroys the state and over-takes it, when it is incapable of acting and representing a social entity in its present state but also in its future and in its past. The crisis emerges when there is an absence of state power or when it is reduced to the mere exercise of force and is itself overcome and overwhelmed. A state that is in profound crisis generates reactive forms of behavior that may ulti-mately culminate in revolution. For example, in Russia in 1917 there was effectively a social movement of workers, but if there was a revolution it was not because the workers and the employers were at loggerheads; it was because the Russian State, as I said, had collapsed and was losing the war. Moreover, as soon as the Revolution was victorious, the new Soviet power lost no time in crushing the working class movement and in mak-ing the trade unions “transmission belts” controlled by it. This example nevertheless invites us to recognize that there may be a complex relation-

Michel Wieviorka44

ship between social movements and the revolution, or the conflict and the crisis, more generally speaking.

Crisis does not necessarily prevent conflict; crisis has an impact on conflict just as it may also be the origin or the outcome of conflict. Therefore, let us be wary of over-simplistic arguments that might evoke an image of a connection between the two as if the violence of the con-flict was inversely related to the extent of the crisis. Reality is more complex. Instead, a more balanced way of putting it would be to say that the sphere of conflict increases when that of the crisis declines and vice versa, but without any idea of this being pre-determined or automatic. When this can clarify things, let us be ready to combine in our analyses the hypothesis of conflict and that of crisis, and their interaction when they are mixed. For example, if we take May 1968 in France, we can make an analytical distinction between 1) the dimensions of conflict and of social movement – firstly the students, then the workers – and 2) ele-ments of crisis, in particular in the university system and the political re-gime.

Alain Touraine also suggests considering two other categories that are at a lower level, in sociological terms, than that of historicity. At the political or institutional level, there is a crisis if the political system is blocked, proves to be incapable of dealing with the demands that come from society or from certain of its sectors, or is incapable of shaping so-cial discussion. For example, Italian terrorism, for which many explana-tions were advanced in the 70s and 90s, was in many respects due to the political crisis. In the context of the rapprochement between the left (the Italian Communist Party, or ICP) and the right (Christian Democrats), moving together towards a “historical compromise,” the ICP became in-capable of dealing politically with demands which were classically their domain, in particular those which emanated from the youth of the time. Young people, who were often qualified and, at the time, could only find jobs on production lines, dreamt of another culture and, realizing that the university was becoming a way of controlling them, were swept into the violence of terrorist organizations.3 Generally speaking, crisis-type con-duct often takes the form of violence.

At the political or institutional level, the conflict, as opposed to the crisis, assumes the garb of pressures from actors to improve their relative position within a political system in order to gain entry or to increase their influence; this is the main lesson of what is known as the theory of “resource mobilization.”

3 I take this example since I studied it in-depth in my (1993) book The Making of Terrorism.


Lastly, and still in the wake of Alain Touraine, at an even lower level, there is an opposition between crisis and conflict within organizations. In these instances, the conflict is a relationship within which actors endeavor to obtain a better reward in return for their contribution; the organiza-tional crisis is a sign of disorganization, an incapacity to deal with inter-nal problems and to face the outside world. It expresses deterioration, a hiatus between values and discourse; here, also, it may be conveyed by violent forms of conduct.

In all cases, violence may equally well be associated with a conflict and in this case appear as instrumental, like a tool or a resource mobilized by some actors to achieve their aims or be associated with a crisis of purely expressive and even desperate forms of conduct, for example, in the form of a riot.

Now, let’s consider how these theoretical or general considerations can help in clarifying our understanding of the present crisis.

THE CRISIS AS ABSENCE, LOSS, OR INSUFFICIENCYOF CONFLICT

Let’s begin by considering the specifically social dimensions of the crisis. The effects are all the more devastating since the major principle of con-flictuality that structured societies like ours for at least a century and until the mid-1970s, i.e., the opposition between the working class movement and the employers, is no longer fundamental. Until recently, it was still possible to contrast the Rhine model of capitalism, in which trade unions and governing boards of firms confronted each other in the context of highly institutionalized conflict, and the neo-American model, which pri-oritized share-holders and financial, or even speculative, rationales.4

The neo-American model, which seems to have gained the upper hand since then, signified the absolute domination of share-holders over managers, of preferring the very short-term economic viability of invest-ment over the long-term stability of the firm. If the economy has sud-denly decelerated is this only due to a lack of liquidity? Is it not also be-cause modes of organization have prioritized flexibility, the implications of which have been so well described by Richard Sennett (2005) in The Culture of the New Capitalism, at the expense of rationales of production enabling the structuring of social relationships in firms between managers and wage-earners?

4 See, for example, Albert (1991).

Michel Wieviorka46

Two questions arise here. The first is that of the capacity of trade un-ionism to make a comeback as a mobilized force in the firm, but also, further, to have an impact as an actor of a political type. Can we imagine a revival of trade union action? Does this not imply new forms of mili-tancy or conditions that very specifically encourage wage-earners to join trade unions? There would need to be appreciable changes in the running and management of firms, the end of “neo-American” capitalism, which seems an unrealistic aim and is not prominent in trade union mobilization at the moment. The second question is: is trade unionism capable of pro-jecting itself into the future by contributing to inventing new modes of development? Is it not profoundly attached to the previous model, a pris-oner of its major orientations, to the point that, when it does succeed in mobilizing, it runs the risk of temporarily reviving the old system rather than contributing to the construction of a new one? At the end of the 1970s and in the 1990s, some trade unions, like the CFDT in France, in-novated by presenting themselves, timidly it’s true, as the political opera-tor of new challenges including, in particular, ecologists, women, and the anti-nuclear movement. This idea deserves to be re-examined and up-dated. It does enable the trade union itself to be the traditional defender of wage-earners, jobs, and standard of living, while at the same time con-tributing to struggles which are not specific to it but which it realizes are playing a role in leading us towards a new era.

Now, let’s look closely at the conflicts which signpost this shift, and today let’s look specifically at the altermondialist (“another world”) struggles.

In the 1990s, the recognition of the global nature of the major prob-lems in the world was the motive force behind what was best in the al-termondialist movement. At this point, this movement was pleading in favor of another form of altermondialization; it introduced another prin-ciple of conflictuality into the public sphere.

Since then, it has declined – a collateral victim in particular of the at-tacks of September 11, 2001, which is not to say that it is historically-speaking, bound to disappear – undermined by extreme politicization, which frequently transforms it into an anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anti-American force. Its decline deprives the discussions about the crisis and the way out of the crisis of a challenge that, in its time, did put an end to the arrogance of Davos. Paradoxically, it is an element in the present dif-ficulties because it deprives us, in the wake of the decline of trade union-ism, of a second principle of conflictuality. At a broader level, the sever-ity of the present crisis seems to be accentuated by the difficulty which the challenges concerning the planet, the environment, the supranational


regulation of economic life, the existence of a world-level form of justice, etc., have in constructing a broader sphere for discussion and conflict.

Whether it be a question of trade unionism or new movements, there is one hypothesis that seems to us to merit our attention: for sociologists, consideration of the way out of the crisis should mean analyzing the con-ditions which would enable the production and stimulation of actors en-gaged in conflicts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albert, Michel. Capitalisme Contre Capitalisme. Paris: Seuil, 1991. Attali, Jacques. La Crise et Après? Paris: Fayard, 2008. Dobry, Michel. “Brève Note sur les Turpitudes de la Crisologie: Que

Sommes Nous en Droit de Déduire des Multiples Usages du Mot ‘Crise’?” Cahiers de la Sécurité Intérieure (IHESI) 7 (January 1992).

Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. (Orig. pub. 1893).

-----. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. (Orig. pub. 1897).

Guyau, Jean-Marie. Esquisse d’une Morale Sans Obligation ni Sanction.Paris: F. Alcan, 1885.

Jahoda, Marie, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel. Marienthal: The Study of an Unemployed Community. London: Tavistok, 1974 (Orig. pub. 1933).

Merton, Robert K. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociologi-cal Review 3, no. 5 (1938): 672-682.

Morin, Edgar. “Pour une Sociologie de la Crise.” Sociologie. Paris: Fayard (1984): 139-153. Orig. pub. in Communications 25 (1968).

Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Touraine, Alain. Production de la Société. Paris: Seuil, 1974. Wieworka, Michel. The Making of Terrorism. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1993 (Orig. pub 1988).

Sujata Patel48

The Imperative and the Challenge of Diversity:Reconstructing Sociological Traditions in an

Unequal World Sujata Patel, University of Hyderabad, India

Since the 70s and particularly after the 90s, the dynamics of the world have changed. Global integration has promoted a free flow of ideas, in-formation, knowledge, goods, services, finance, technology, and even diseases, drugs, and arms. At one level, the world has contracted. It has opened up possibilities of diverse kinds of trans-border flows and move-ments: those of capital, labour, and communication. Together with inter-dependence of finances, new global practices have widened the arenas of likely projects of cooperation and collaboration. And, paradoxically, it has also created intense conflicts and increased militarization.

At another level, the contexts of flows of capital and labour have changed; if these have encouraged voluntary migration, they have also encouraged human trafficking, displaced populations, and made refugees. Inequalities and hierarchies are now being differently organized even though we manifestedly live in one global, capitalist world with a domi-nant form and representation of modernity. Lack of access to livelihoods, infrastructure, and political citizenship now blends with new forms of exclusion - those of cultural and group identities as they are articulated in uneven ways in distinct spatial locations.

Space is being reconstituted and articulated unevenly as sociabilities crisscross within and between localities, regions, nation-states, and global territories in tune with the changing nature of work and enterprise, agency and identity. Each of these locations has thus become a signifi-cant site of scrutiny and analysis, as sociabilities are being constituted unevenly within many, multiple locations.

This process is and has challenged the constitution of agency of ac-tors and groups of actors. Today, the globe is awash with differential forms of collective and/or violent interventions, concurrently asserting diverse representations of cultural identities together with livelihood dep-rivations as the defining characteristic of these collectivities. Fluidity of identities and its continuous expression in uneven and varied manifesta-

The Imperative and the Challenge of Diversity 49

tions demand a fresh perspective to assess and examine the world; it needs to be perceived through many prisms.

Are sociology and sociologists across the world ready to take the challenge that contemporary times pose for us? What kind of resources do they have to tackle the demands presented by contemporary dynam-ics? In the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, the Europe-ans and later the Americans took up the challenge to assess societal changes facing their societies and evolved new perspectives. Does this legacy have traditions of criticality to give us a language and resources to cope with these challenges?

Sociologists declare that sociology is and remains the most reflexive of all social sciences. The first moment of reflection emerged when American sociology was institutionalizing the Parsonian approach in its university structures. But these and similar interventions merely interro-gated the silences of gender, race, ethnicity and other identities within Europe and North America regions. There has been very little reflection regarding the implicit and explicit assumptions of power that have gov-erned the formation of the discipline in Europe and its export to other regions of the globe.

The genealogy of this reflection in the US can be traced to Alvin Gouldner’s (1971) seminal work, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociol-ogy, and to the later criticisms that emerged with the growth of student and feminist movements in the late sixties. This had its impact on Euro-pean and American social theories, which, together with the impact of new perspectives developed out of structuralism and post-structuralism, reconstituted Marxism, feminism, environmentalism, and identity theory and reframed social theory as many-faceted, plural, and eclectic. These trends coincided with Wallerstein’s (1996) advocacy for the discipline to “open” itself to incorporate the challenges from interdisciplinary social sciences such as gender studies, environment studies, cultural studies, and race and ethnicity studies.

These trends find recognition in texts such as Social Theory Today(Giddens and Turner 1987), which argue that there is no agreement in the profession about the fundamentals of what constitutes social theory. European and American traditions of the discipline assert this theoretical and methodological plurality. Neil Smelser (1994) treats it as an asset when he says, “The benefit is living in a field that refuses to seal itself into a closed paradigm and threatens to exhaust itself, but, rather, retains the qualities of intellectual openness and imagination” (8).

In some fashion, this theme was reflected in Martin Albrow’s (1987) statement in the inaugural issue of International Sociology, when he pro-posed that the journal initiate an “… explicit search for [new] models of

Sujata Patel50

inquiry and conceptual frames which can express the uniqueness of cul-tures” (9). In spite of this felt need, within Europe and the USA, discus-sion of sociological traditions has been generally restricted to a debate on social theories, the development of a culture of professionalization, and the affirmation of universality in its perspectives and practices. This uni-versalisation locates the discussion of social theory in modernity and its growth in Europe and spread across North America and later the rest of the industrial developed world. For instance, Anthony Giddens (1996) asserts, “Sociology is a generalising discipline that concerns itself above all with modernity - with the character and dynamics of modern or indus-trialised societies” (3).

It is in this context that we need to assess the recent interventions by Jurgen Habermas (2001) and Ulrich Beck (2006) for a post-national and trans-national social theory to embrace the new cosmopolitanism being ushered in by contemporary globalization. But this position reasserts the grounding of social theory in European modernity, in this case “the sec-ond modernity.” It makes Beck claim, “Reality is becoming cosmopoli-tan – this is a historical fact” (68).

At this juncture, it is imperative that we recall Charles Taylor’s (1995) distinction of two kinds of modernity: cultural, wherein the theory assesses transformations in terms of the rise of new culture, and acultural, when theory examines transformations in terms of culturally neutral terms, such as Western rationality or industrialization, and now globaliza-tion. Taylor argues that most social theory is acultural and that Western modernity is powered by its vision of positive good. This affirms West-ern modernity as a moral outlook and distorts the theory at two levels. The first is the miscalculation of changes related to the specific culture of the West and the second is the universalization of facets of Western civi-lization, such as science and religion, as perennial. Taylor asks us to re-member that science has grown in the West “in close symbiosis with a certain culture, in the sense … [of] a constellation of understandings of person, nature, society, and the good” (27).

Beck’s argument on cosmopolitanism, I would contend, needs to be rejected on similar grounds. He argues that there is interrelatedness and interdependence of people across the globe, but this is assessed in terms of certain specific features that are now universalized. These are the emergence of supranational organizations in the area of economy, politics of non-state actors, and civil society movements; normative precepts like human rights; types and profiles of global risks; forms of warfare; and global organized crime and terrorism. Their common denominator is cosmopolitanization, i.e., the erosion of clear borders separating markets, states, civilizations, cultures, and the life-worlds of common people. But


does it? Beck’s work remains located empirically within trends occurring in Europe and has no comparative global analysis to support its position. Of significance in this context is a lack of analysis regarding the relationship between power, culture, and knowledge.

More interesting is Beck’s argument about methodological national-ism, which he claims is based on the “national prison theory of human existence” (12). He argues:

Until now, methodological nationalism has been dominant in sociology and other social sciences on the assumption that they are nationally structured. The result was a system of nation-states and corresponding national sociologies that define their specific societies in terms of con-cepts associated with the nation state. For the national outlook, the na-tion-state creates and controls the ‘container’ of society and thereby at the same time prescribes the limits of sociology. (2)

Beck’s assertion regarding nations and nationalism resonates with those of other commentators. In the early eighties, Anthony Smith (1983) argued that while sociologists have studied “society” as a bounded terri-torial unit - the nation-state - they have failed to acknowledge that the “study of society is always ipso facto the study of the nation” (26). In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens (1990) elaborates this point when he states:

Now, understood in this way, ‘societies’ are plainly nation-states. Yet, although a sociologist speaking of a particular society might casually employ instead the term ‘nation’, or ‘country’, the character of the na-tion-state is rarely directly theorized. In explicating the nature of the modern societies, we have to capture the specific characteristics of the nation-state - a type of social community which contrasts in a radical way with pre-modern states. (13)

All three suggest that the subject matter of sociology is generally a description of the categories of people, institutions, organizations, and cultures of one’s own nationality. In this context, how can these be made universal? Following this argument and in context with Taylor’s meth-odological points mentioned above, it becomes imperative to explore the relationship between explanatory schemas and styles of reasoning with specific cultural contexts and representations of nation and nationalism, rather than to assert an a priori universality. Rather, as Chakrabarty (2000) has suggested, these sociologies should be categorized as provin-cial.

Sujata Patel52

Additionally implicated in nation and nationalism is control over ter-ritory and the use of its economic, political, and cultural resources, proc-esses and knowledges for the project of nation and nation-building not only within one’s own nation-state but those of others, through colonial and neo-colonial control. To what extent has European and American theory assessed the impact of global distributions of power on the produc-tion and reproduction of conservative, radical, and reflexive sociological knowledge across the world?

From outside Europe and North America, we see the emergence of a diametrically opposite position that introduces a new voice to the entire debate. Labelled indigenous sociology and recently recast as a project of constructing endogenous (Adesina 2006) and autonomous (Alatas 2006) sociologies and as transmodernity (Dussel 2000), it elaborates a new epis-temic position on the discipline, some of which is incorporated in Raewyn Connell’s (2007) book Southern Theory. Endogenous sociolo-gists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have argued for a need to exca-vate indigenous philosophies, epistemologies, and methodologies to con-ceptualise, understand, and examine “local” and national cultures and structures in the various countries of the South (Alatas 1974).

The key issue here is colonialism and the imposition of Western sci-ence, theories, and methodologies in assessing non-Western societies. Scholars in the rest of the world have argued that the univerzalisation of European and American perspectives provided one grand vision and a “truth” assessing changes taking place in the world (Wallerstein 2006). Syed Hussain Alatas (1972) calls it the captive mind, “an uncritical imita-tion of scientific intellectual activity including problem setting, analysis, abstraction, generalisation, conceptualisation, description, explanation, and interpretation” (11-12).

Indigenous positions have suggested that European and American perspectives were ethnocentric and obfuscated the analysis of specific contexts and processes, refracting, misrepresenting, and simultaneously defining one particular way of evaluating them (Alatas 1974; Mukerji and Sengupta 2004). This was not only true of conservative and positivist theories but also radical theories such as Marxism and those representing subaltern and excluded voices, such as environmentalism and feminism (Mohanty 1988; Mani 1990). As these have been exported to other coun-tries, they too have become dominant universal models.

No wonder, it is argued, the idea that there is very little in these non-Western societies and regions in terms of new conceptual and explana-tory theories, and the suggestion that until there is we cannot seriously consider these sociologies as relevant, reconstituted domination in new ways. The Indian sociologists Radha Kamal Mukerjee and D. P. Mukerji


thus suggested that social sciences should be seen as a unified discipline that is culture-specific and that integrates values with analysis; they de-manded that Indian values define the way sociological thinking in India be construed (Mukerjee 1955; Mukerji 1958). The same assessment structures Akiwowo’s (1987; 1990) demand for indigenous sociologies, to which end he elaborated a conceptual scheme for assessing sociologi-cal studies based on ideas and notions of African poetry.

This perspective also affirmed the need for the nation-state (now in a different sense) to remain a critical locale for the classification and as-sessment of a range of sociological practices, including social theories. Additionally, there was a call to go beyond the nation-state in search of the supra-local, which could be the locale for new practices to be con-strued - especially in the case of large nation-states such as China and India. Indigenous sociologists have highlighted Western domination in an array of sociological practices, including those that dealt with teaching, such as importing syllabi, textbooks, and research (what to study, how to study, and what are considered best practices of research, including the evaluation of research projects and protocols of writing and presenting empirical and theoretical articles in journals) (Alatas 1974).

These issues, together with a discussion on who funds research and who defines its agenda, opened up for debate the way social theory and its practices are embedded in the uneven distribution of global power, an issue of significance in the context of contemporary globalization. The argument here is that the discipline needs to be defined by the entire set of practices that structure its organisation, rather than merely the theories. These practices are unevenly organised across the globe, and their exami-nation would lead us to assess the colonial construction of modernity. This is the resource from which it is possible to draw out the many ways of thinking and analysing contemporary, uneven, global processes.

These dimensions are explored in a radical epistemic critique emerg-ing from the neo-dependency school of Latin America. Theorists such as Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, and Walter Mignolo have elaborated this position, arguing that universalization inherent in sociological theory is part of the geopolitics of knowledge. The key to this process is an as-sessment of modernity and its relationship to social theory. For instance, Dussel (2000) argues:

If one understands Europe’s modernity - a long process of five centuries - as the unfolding of new possibilities derived from its centrality in world history and the corollary constitution of all other cultures as its periphery, it becomes clear that, even though all cultures are ethnocen-tric, modern European ethnocentrism is the only one that might pretend

Sujata Patel54

to claim universality for itself. Modernity’s Eurocentrism lies in the confusion between abstract universality and the concrete world hegem-ony derived from Europe’s position as the center. (471)

Dussel and Quijano see a need to examine sociological knowledge as a discourse of power, particularly in the context of contemporary devel-opments. They propose that both classical and contemporary European theories, and now American social theory, need to be assessed as dis-courses of power. They contend that this theory is premised on assessing itself, the “I” (the West), rather than the “Other” (the rest of the world), which was and remains the object of its control, even after the formal demise of colonialism and imperialism. Universalism implies legitimat-ing the knowledge of the “I” regarding “society” (Mignolo 2002).

European and American social theories, they argue, incorporate a set of axioms to frame knowledge of society and consist of several features, which come together in terms of binaries to become a matrix of power and a principle and a strategy of control and domination. These scholars contend that this discourse has universalized the precepts of European and American modernity (as part of the imperialist project), disallowing legitimacy for new ways of thinking, of assessing processes in the rest of the world and unearthing its tradition(s) of philosophies and epistemolo-gies together with its specific practices. They argue for a need to study not only sociological theories but the entire range of practices of produc-tion and reproduction of sociological knowledge within nation-states and regions. These have to be examined in terms of their organic links with the dominant discourse, with each of such reflections indicating diverse-universal ways of understanding these symbiotic linkages (Quijano 2000; Lander 2002; Mignolo 2002).

Obviously, sociological theories, (systems of interrelated concepts, categories, and modes of explanation that are designed to make sense of the world) are enmeshed in normative projects (systems of thoughts and beliefs concerned with a way of improving society). Sometimes these normative projects are explicitly stated, but often they’re implicitly ar-gued. These normative projects are projects of power associated with imperialism (Connell 2006; Patel 2006; Wallerstein 1996).

Critical and reflexive sociology has been the first to initiate a discus-sion on the symbiotic relationship between knowledge and power, includ-ing its own. But, as indicated above, the relationship between knowledge and power needs to be examined not only in terms of theories but in terms of an entire range of practices. Today, globalization is also reor-ganizing knowledge and its institutions in new and seminal ways. Can we delineate the way this process is affecting the nature of sociological


knowledge? How is power and domination in its complex, colonial, neo-colonial, patriarchal, discursive, national, and material manifestations affecting epistemology, its claim to truth, and its strategies of representa-tion? Whose ideas and perspectives is it reflecting when it enumerates the nature and content of consequences of globalization? What is the re-lationship between national, regional, and global knowledges?

Dussel (2000) and Quijano (2000) suggest a need to construct “a worldwide ethical liberation project” in which alterity can be fulfilled through a creation of new knowledge where modernity and its denied alterity, its victims, would mutually fulfill each other in an imaginative process. Transcending the coloniality of power and embracing transmod-ernity is a project of mutual fulfillment of solidarity of center/periphery, woman/man, mankind/earth, Western culture/peripheral postcolonial cul-tures, different races, different ethnicities, and different classes. Can we fulfill this project at ontological, methodological, and theoretical levels?

***

Below, I present some steps that allow such a project to be initiated. For long, the criticism against dominant knowledges has been dismissed in terms of relativism and/or ethnocentrism. Borrowing from Taylor, I ar-gue that there is a need for accepting a cultural theory of modernity (rather than an acultural theory) and that this can be constructed from many sites and in many locations and through many positions. Our goal should be to debate the various ways in which power has shaped and con-tinues to shape the practices of sociological knowledge across the world. Our objective is to create a discussion on how to assess all aspects of the discipline organized and institutionalized across the globe: ideas and theories, scholars and scholarship, practices and traditions, ruptures and continuities through a globalising perspective that examines the relation-ship between sociological knowledge and power.

Given that the relationship between knowledge and power may be structured in distinct ways across the world and within nation-states, there is a need to examine the resources of the discipline at three levels. First, disciplinary traditions need to be studied from multiple spatial locations: within localities, within nation-states, within regions and the globe. How-ever, the nation-state is a key element in fashioning the traditions of the discipline. The nation-state defines sociological traditions in many ways.

It does so directly. Whether democratic, authoritarian, fascist, social-ist, or theocratic, it plays a critical role in legitimising the need for the discipline and framing its function for society. Democracies have gener-

Sujata Patel56

ally encouraged the teaching of sociology; this is not so for states that have propagated fascism, communism, theocracy, apartheid, and military dictatorships. These have, instead, barred it and/or controlled its teaching.

In countries where the subject is not proscribed, the nation-state can intervene in myriad ways, including when private institutions play a di-rect role. It does this by determining the content of knowledge to be transmitted to learners and through a gamut of policies and regulations on higher education, which both encourage and constrain the development of the discipline. These policies determine the protocols and practices of teaching and learning processes, the establishment and practices of re-search within research institutes, the distribution of grants for research, the language of reflection, the organization of the profession, and the definitions of scholars and scholarship.

These different disciplinary traditions are best understood if per-ceived as being organized within the nation-state after the Second World War, though there also exist traditions in terms of language communities. However, the former provides the most significant spatial and political locale to assess this history together with the evaluation of the many con-tradictions and contestations that have defined the organic linkages be-tween these tradition(s). Sociological knowledge, this paper argues, is imbricated in the identity of the nation-state and within its politics.

It is also significant to argue, following Smith, Giddens, and Beck (mentioned above), that the resources of the discipline need to be seen from above and below the nation-state. For instance, space in the form of locality remains a key category for structuring the resources of the disci-pline. But, these necessarily remain uneven and provincial. Thus, within each nation-state, one can assess the many starting points, many achievements, many failures, and many continuities and discontinuities. These ups and downs dealing with the organization, consolidation, and institutionalization of sociological traditions involve confrontations be-tween dominant universal traditions and newly emerging subaltern ones. In this sense there is and will be diversity of sociological traditions within nation-states.

These diversities exist not only within nation-states but also between them. Because the histories of sociological traditions in nation-states are differently constituted, the collective experience of growth and the spread of sociological traditions across the world is and remains diverse and un-evenly organized. This unevenness is related to the relationship of each tradition with that of Europe and later of the USA and relates to the way these traditions came to be universalized across the world.

Universalization of the North Atlantic tradition(s) is associated with the global distribution of power (Wallerstein 2006). In this sense, this


paper attempts to move beyond the binaries of universalism versus rela-tivism/particularism to posit a third position which suggests that socio-logical traditions are both universal and diverse. It argues that the claims of each of the traditions of sociological knowledge are distinct and uni-versal, but together these are not equivalent but remain plural, multiple, hybrid, or relative-positing claims based on criteria internal to each of these tradition(s) (Chakrabarty 2008).

Second, traditions need to be discussed in terms of their sociological moorings in distinct philosophies, epistemologies, theoretical frames, cul-tures of science, and languages of reflection. These need to be explored to assess how, at various points of time in the history of the discipline, new perspectives on understanding social life have emerged by question-ing dominant universalized and colonized sociological ideas. There is also a need to examine how the discipline has evolved to incorporate sub-altern voices and use these voices in order to understand, assess, and comprehend evolving sociabilities. They also highlight how external and dominant processes, together with colonialism and neo-colonialism, have reframed knowledge, and they assert a need to excavate new endogenous and/or autonomous ways of thinking and of practicing sociology.

Third, the intellectual moorings of sociological practices are exten-sive. There are diverse and comparative sites of knowledge production and its transmission. These range from campaigns, movements, and ad-vocacies to classrooms and departments to syllabi formulations and pro-tocols of evaluating journal articles and books. They involve activists, scholars, and communities in assessing, reflecting, and elucidating imme-diate events and issues that define the research process; in organizing and systematizing knowledge of the discipline; and in long-term, institutional-ized processes for organizing the teaching process.

Together, these diversities cannot be placed in a single line and con-sidered equal; neither are these superior or inferior. Collectively, they are and remain both diverse and universal sociological traditions, because they present distinct and different perspectives to assess their own histo-ries of sociological theories and practices. Each of these traditions has also evolved its own assessment of its relationship with other traditions and with the accumulation of sociological knowledge and power. In this sense, different traditions’ perspectives remain diverse and comparative. This is so for two reasons:

First, they are diverse because each tradition makes its own assess-ment of how it is structured within the global distribution of ideas, schol-ars, and scholarship (whether these are adapted from imports or are stated to be indigenous/endogenous/local/national/ provincial); how these relate to its contexts, including the culture of teaching and research, institutions,

Sujata Patel58

the state, and the economy. While these claims are universal, the inter-pretations of how these are interconnected with the North Atlantic tradi-tion(s) and with each other remain different for each nation-state. Or, to put it in other words, what is distinct is how each tradition has contested the claims of those from the North Atlantic and evolved its own internal assessment of this relationship. In this sense, collectively, sociological traditions can be stated to be diversely universal or incorporating “diver-sality” (Mignolo 2002: 89).

Second, following from the above, we can suggest that sociology was globalized from the moment of its birth with the assertion of the singular-ity of the process of modernity through the universalization of European and later the American provincial experience(s) (Chakrabarty 2000). A discourse of power structured universalization of knowledge regarding sociabilities. In this sense, while globalization has been debated to be a recent process, globalization of sociological knowledge has had a longer history.

This globalization has sometimes erased earlier histories of moderni-ties, reinterpreting these and displaced ways of thinking, being, and living. As a result, some tradition(s) have not evolved perspectives and theories to assess their relationships with dominant, universalized traditions, though the latter have been recognized. Others have adapted to external and dominant ideas. Yet, others have made a critique of the legacy of dependence and domination to assess and to reflect on their own moder-nities. If globalization of sociological knowledge has “silenced” the for-mation of many voices in certain regions and nation-states, it has also challenged the West by asking new questions and provided novel answers from other arenas. These energies need to be coalesced in a strong intra- and internationalized network of communication that transcends the above mentioned multiple matrices of inequalities. Working from the margins of all borders can help to provide a new identity. The creative and imaginative use of these resources continues to remain the most sig-nificant challenge of the day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adesina, J. “Sociology Beyond Despair: Recovery of Nerve, Endogene-ity, and Epistemic Intervention.” South African Review 37, no. 2 (2006): 241-259.

Akiwowo, A. “Building National Sociological Tradition in an African Subregion.” In National Traditions in Sociology, edited by N. Genov, pp. 151-166. London: Sage, 1987.


-----. “Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry.” In Globalisation, Knowledge, and Society: Readings from International Sociology, edited by M. Albrow and E. King, pp. 103-118. London: Sage, 1990.

Alatas, H. “The Captive Mind and Creative Development.” Interna-tional Social Science Journal 36, no. 4 (1974): 691-9.

Alatas, F. Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses To Eurocentrism. Delhi: Sage, 2006.

Albrow, M. “Sociology for One World.” International Sociology 2, no. 1 (1987): 1-12.

-----. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity, 2006. Chakrabarty, D. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and His-

torical Difference Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Connell, R. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in

Social Sciences. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. -----. “In Defense of Provincializing Europe: A Response to Carola

Dietze.” History and Theory 47 (February 2008): 85-96. Dussel, E. “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism.” Nepantla: Views

from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 465-478. Giddens, A. The Consequences of Modernity. California: Stanford Uni-

versity Press, 1990. Giddens, A. and J. Turner, eds. Social Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity

Press, 1987. Gouldner, A. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Ba-

sic Books, 1971. Habermas, J. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Cam-

bridge: Polity, 2001. Lander, E. “Eurocentrism, Modern Knowledges, and the ‘Natural’ Order

of Global Capital.” Nepantla: Views from the South 3, no. 2 (2002): 249-268.

Mani, L. “Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception.” Feminist Review 35 (Summer 1990): 24-41.

Mignolo, W. D. “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Dif-ference.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 57-96

Mohanty, C. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review 30 (Autumn 1988): 61-88.

Mukerjee, R. “A General Theory of Society.” In The Frontiers of Social Science: in Honour of Radhakamal Mukerjee, edited by B. Singh. London: Macmillan, 1955.

Sujata Patel60

Mukerji, D. P. Diversities: Essays in Economics, Sociology, and Other Social Problems. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1958.

Mukherji, P. N. and C. Sengupta, eds. Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science: A South Asian Response. Sage: New Delhi, 2004.

Patel, S. “Beyond Binaries: A Case for Self-Reflexive Sociologies.” Current Sociology 54, no. 3 (2006): 381–395.

Quijano, A. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentricism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from the South 1 (2000): 553-800.

Smelser, N. (1994) “Sociology as Science, Humanism, and Art.” La Revue Tocqueville 15, no. 1 (1994): 5-18.

Smith, A. “Nationalism: A Trend Report and an Annotated Bibliogra-phy.” Current Sociology 21, no. 3 (1973).

Taylor, C. “Two Theories of Modernity.” The Hastings Center Report25, no. 2 (Mar - Apr 1995): 24-33.

Wallerstein, I. Open Social Sciences. Delhi: Vistaar, 1996. -----. European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. New York: The

New Press, 2006.

PART II:

LATIN AMERICA

Revitalizing the Sociological View in Latin America 63

Revitalizing the Sociological Viewin Latin America

Marcos Supervielle, Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Uruguay

Latin American sociology, like the sociologies of all the non-hegemonic regions, has become entangled, with time, within the typical debates about the pertinence of theories and models that it uses to analyze its so-ciety.

Indeed, the categories with which this sociology pretends to analyze society, in general terms, were created to describe central societies: the German, the English, the French or the American ones, and therefore they are only relevant to analyze our society by means of analogy. This par-ticularity takes us to the endless discussion of the validity of these catego-ries of analysis or their heuristic performance. They have even been criti-cized because their being “imported” deforms reality, generating negative consequences, since they lead the investigation or reflection towards shal-low conclusions or even worse, lend support to the wrong political agen-das, incomplete or ill-intentioned in solving our society’s problems and predicting their future projection.

This situation is certainly not new in Latin America. In 1900, Latin American scholars recommended the adoption of European categories, but only after a critical analysis so as to discard the useless ones. In some cases, they criticized harshly those who strayed from the real problems of our society and who were dazzled by European theorizations. This daz-zling, which some have called “cultural colonialism” (Roitman 2008), still has some validity and important negative consequences for the pro-duction of sociological knowledge in our continent. This is notorious in two different ways.

First, there is a certain inferiority complex in knowledge production, which is overcome in certain periods of our recent history, but which we still continue to confront. Second, as a reaction to such “cultural colonial-ism”, a kind of naïve nationalism has emerged which pretends to deny all contributions from outside Latin America, or at least to ignore them. It is also fashionable to denounce the sociological or intellectual “trends” in general. But the paradox is that the denunciation of these so-called alien-

Marcos Supervielle64

ating categories is carried out in defense of imported categories them-selves, but which conform to the standards of the dominant “establish-ment” of the Social Sciences and therefore become an alleged universal pattern.

One possible outlook of the Latin American sociology is to observe its maturity, from the point of view of its autonomization from the center, that is, from European and North American sociologies. But this would deny the impact—positive or otherwise—that European concepts have had on the changed orientation. In our continent, the big educational re-forms and the laicism and gratuity principles were inspired by the positiv-ist ideas of Compte and Spencer. Contemporary European ideas of the time exerted a big influence on past Latin American sociology, especially in overcoming the fundamentally catholic “spiritualism”, which tended to support and legitimate very unequal structures within our societies.

Therefore, one of the characteristics of the Latin American sociology is that it did not develop general theories or analytic models for our own society until very recently. To the reasons provided above, we must add that the development and evolution of this sociology has been very closely related to political, economic and social situations. Ours is argua-bly the continent where most high level politicians, such as presidents and secretaries of state have been sociologists with important academic careers. This implies a strong relationship between the social sciences and the political juncture, a situation which has benefited sociology under certain circumstances, but has weakened it seriously under others. As a consequence, the production of the sociology in Latin America is not the creation of big theoretical systems, but of categories of relevance as to the orientation of the social and political action. Categories, or concepts, such as periphery, dependency, structural heterogeneity, domestic colonialism, differentiated styles, marginal mass and informality, among others are an example of the original focus on our societies.

Mindful of the disadvantages generated by this “cultural colonialism” and the lack of autonomy generated by historical circumstances, and also of the consequent immaturity of its sociological production, we think it is paramount to question ourselves about the function of sociological knowledge in Latin America and the conditions of its production in each historical era; the factors that modified its demand and generated new uses for it; and its uses today and the reasons why we see the possibility for a new development of sociology in this historical moment.

The post-war Latin American sociology may be divided into the fol-lowing periods.


• In the first period, there is a sociology of modernization that is closely tied to the theories of Latin American economic development.

• A second period characterized by the emergence of theories of de-pendency and exploitation, that are critical of the sociology of mod-ernization and economic theories of development, coincide with the initial phase of the Latin American dictatorship.

• As dictatorships spread to almost the entire continent, the third phase is characterized by an ebbing in the the importance and vital-ity of sociology in its opposition to the expansion of the neoliberal philosophy and economics, the latter which are almost taking over the entire “room” of the social sciences. But at the same time, just as the dependency theory runs out of steam (or almost does), a profes-sional and specialized sociology appears. And in the last phases of the dictatorships, a sociology of the résistance develops.

• In the fourth and last phase, after the exhaustion of neoliberal theo-ries, the re-democratizations of all the Latin American states, and increased popular participation through social movements, we find a re-valorization of sociology and a rediscovery of the possibilities to contribute to emancipatory mega-tales. We witness a re-evaluation of anti-dependent-on-the-hegemonic-countries sociology. European categories of modernization are revised in an effort to create the foundations for a sociology that overcomes domestic colonialism, that focuses on the development of social movements as the carriers of social change, and that is oriented to aiding the creation of a sus-tainable production system. And finally, we see the expansion of a professional and/or specialized sociology but now it is framed around a search for the reduction of social inequalities and in de-fense of social, civil, and politic rights of our societies.

SOCIOLOGY OF THE POST-WAR MODERNIZATION

Both World War II and the Korean War benefited the Latin American economies in that the “commodities” produced on our continent reached extraordinarily high prices and our industries bloomed while in the cen-tral countries production had become war-related.

This very favorable context foretold a very optimistic, European-like future: that our continent evolution was supposed to hinge on its indus-trial development. This industrial and economic bonanza was also sup-posed to go hand-in-hand with a liberal and democratic society.

This outlook was advocated by Latin American economists such as Prebisch and Furtado. The former was a great economic development


theoretician and the first general secretary of CEPAL (Latin Americal Economy Comission) that was created in 1947 under the U.N. system. From the start, Prebisch called for the contribution of sociologists to ex-pand on and enrich the economic development analysis of Latin America.

From this original approach, sociology was asked to report on the po-tential of diverse social elements in order to generate the development of Latin American countries. With this goal in mind, the sociology built di-chotomous categories (traditional-modern, dual societies, etc.) which, although they evolved with time, never totally abandoned their original matrix.

In this first phase of modern Latin American sociology, which lasted until the mid-sixties, our sociology evolved from the dominant feudal-bourgeois category at first, with clear European connotations, to an oli-garchy-national bourgeoisie category later, which focused on the potenti-alities of the dominant classes for the development of our societies, to finally a broader category of the traditional society-modern society.

This is not merely a nominal evolution; the transformation of one category into another entailed important conceptual changes, particularly because such transformation were the result of a increasingly complex analysis that evolved from the analysis of the dominant classes to one about all classes within society, including everyone in the analysis of such development. But it was always, or almost always, circumscribed within an analysis that presupposed the transferring from a backwards nucleus to a modern one. At the time, there was talk of “developing” so-cieties. The measuring yardstick, the ideal standard, was always a devel-oped hub, and all the negative attributes and impediments were found in the backwards, traditional or underdeveloped ones. This analytical strat-egy always started from a more specific definition of the developed hubs, the modern or developed one, attributing all negative or contradictory attributes to the backwards, traditional or underdeveloped one.

But the really original contribution to Latin American sociology at the time was the role assigned to political activities in such a process of development. Medina Echeverría (1980), sociologist and Prebisch’s main collaborator at the CEPAL, assigned a particular relevance to political participation during the transition process from underdevelopment to de-velopment, because of the peripherical situation of our continent. It be-came obvious to them that it was necessary to achieve development through political activities so as to overcome the shortcomings of an area’s peripherical situation; there was also a discussion about the differ-ent development styles engendered by different political systems (Graci-arena 1967). At the same time, sociology was given the task to analyze the role of social classes in their development but not in their involve-


ment with class struggles, which was practically a non-existent subject in academic contexts as well as in the CEPAL at the time.

Investigations were then carried out in order to find out the capability of the different social classes to participate in the development process. Fernando Enrique Cardoso conducted important research about the “Cap-tains of Industry” (1964) and Alain Touraine and Torcuato Di Tella (1967) inaugurated sociological investigations with research on mining workers. Their findings on two mining endeavors show that those miners were in the middle of an industrial transition process, from a closed society to an open one, from a traditional enterprise to a modern one (Abramo and Montero 2000). Research by Nun about the most “excluded” segments of society allowed him to elaborate on the concept of “marginal mass” as opposed to “marginality,” fashionable at the time, to describe a non-integrated sector of society and in order to point out that in Latin America not all “marginal masses” automatically became the “industrial reserve army” in the Marxist sense (2001). With this definition, Nun set the limits of who would participate in the transition to development and who would be excluded.

Social Development in the Post-War Latin America is the book that best reflects the sociological thinking of that era (CEPAL 1963). Al-though not mentioned by name in this official book, all its authors were sociologists. This book highlights the social problems of the time.

• There is rapid urbanization and social concentration in big cities, without a corresponding agricultural growth, but with a consistent country to city migration instead.

• Countryside marginality was a result of stratification and production in ranches, and hence created a very poor quality of life and very low political participation among workers.

• The authors acknowledge the naiveté of previous CEPAL analyses in which erasing the original hub was estimated to be a relatively easy task. Rather, they argue that such traditional societies appar-ently “have a flexible quality, capable of absorbing extremely ra-tional elements, without losing its original physiognomy” (7).

• The book also points out that such flexibility of the “traditional structure” has been supported by the domination of patron-client re-lationships, but that as a mechanism it might be worn out by abuse and demographic pressure; it also reaffirms that the prevalence of patron-client relationships is incompatible with modern pluralist democracies with economic support on industrial organization.

• The authors also find that the flexibility of the traditional structures had partially absorbed the middle classes, which had been assigned


a central role in “creative activity” as a source of change. This ab-sorption had hence reduced the capacity for change.

• Within the most popular classes, the authors remark on the rele-vance of unions, which did not follow European models. They also note the marginality of some urban social layers and even “danger-ous areas” of the “mass situations” of some excluded or badly in-cluded sectors.

• Finally, on a more conceptual plane, the authors argue that the dy-namics of the traditional structures created “protoforms” of ideolo-gies with ambiguous formulations, “soaked” with irrational ele-ments, and that reflected the critical situation of the domination by clienteles and the situation of “massification” brought about by demographic pressure and fast urbanization. In other words, they emphasize the assimilation capability of the persistent traditional society.

Latin American sociology, with its findings, did not question the categories it adopted from European and North American theories, but its conclusions tended to show that the evolution of societies in the central countries did not follow the same course as in Latin America. Because of its peripherical situation and certain resilience of the traditional sector, these evolutions follow a very different course in Latin America.

Beyond that, the sociology practiced after World War II had progres-sive and democratic connotations, so that sociologists of this generation, their pupils, and their science were labeled as progressive or left-wing. This had consequences for the discipline’s consequent development.

SOCIOLOGY OF DEPENDENCE AND EXPLOITATION

Historic events such as the Cuban revolution of 1958 and the coup d’état in Brazil, which initiated a cycle of coup d’états in Latin America, even-tually exhausted the previous theoretical model and contributed to the onset of the second period of the Latin American sociology. In addition, the second Ecumenical Council was of great influence on this new period, as it directed liberation theology and revitalized important Catholic scholars. These events influenced the new generations of sociologists in particular and Latin American intellectual activity in general since it in-corporated revolution or at least a radical possibility for change within the horizon of Latin American development. But above all, it transferred the blame for the obstacles to development from the backwardness of our


societies, to the dependency of our peripherical situation on the hege-monic centers of world capitalism.

Dependency theory opened up perhaps the more notorious period of sociology in Latin America. Simultaneously, other theories appeared. In Mexico, Gonzalez Casanova produced his theory of exploitation, an al-ternative to the theory of development. And, while dictatorships spread throughout Latin America, a specialized professional sociology devel-oped providing information that was instrumental in making decisions about social policies, as well as a sociological research, intended to de-termine the resilient capabilities of the dictatorships.

Meanwhile, both the Cuban revolution and the Brazilian dictatorship incorporated the concept of process “rupture” and radical directional change, unknown in the previous period. But the latter produced an im-portant impact in that it caused a migration of sociologists, some of whom ended up in Chile, the location of CEPAL headquarters. Chile ap-peared as a very liberal country at the time, energized by an important growth in the political left-wing, which eventually produced the election of the first socialist government through free elections in the continent, that of Víctor Allende.

The Brazilian dictatorship experience plus a certain euphoria related to the possibilities of progressive political changes in Chile, produced a strong skepticism as to: first, the possibilities of change by simply over-coming our backwards problems and, second, the removal of certain so-cial structures that the following of the center-European models was gen-erating. The ambiguity of the political climate, increasingly authoritarian, together with a strong hope of radical change, although with a wide range of hues, created the conditions for a different sociological reflection: the main task with regards to our development was not to overcome the most backward hub of the Latin American societies but rather, to overcome its dependency on the hegemonic centers of capitalism. Further, this depend-ency did not stop at our borders.

In 1967, the book Development and Dependency in Latin America by Cardoso and Faletto, the former a Brazilian, the latter a Chilean, was pub-lished. The book expounded on several theses:

• First, that it is necessary to differentiate between underdeveloped countries and those, increasingly less, which lack development completely and which have no commercial relationships with indus-trialized countries. Further, the authors argue that it’s important to differentiate out the diverse kinds of underdevelopment, according to the particular kind of relationship these societies forge with in-dustrialized countries. The concept of dependency refers to “the


conditions of existence and functioning of the economy and political systems, showing the relationship between the two, within the inter-nal sphere as well as on the external” (38).

• This category-dependency is therefore different from center-periphery, because the latter only underlines the role of underdevel-oped economies in the global market.

• The analysis of the “dependency situation,” within the Latin Ameri-can development context, means to highlight the definite and di-verse interrelationships between and among the different social groups, as well as the activity of forces, groups, and institutions with a decisive role in development. This is because, for these authors, there is no metaphysical relationship of dependency; rather it is pro-duced by an interest and co-action network that relates some social groups with others, and particularly, some social classes to others.

The subsequent popularization and abuse of the concept of depend-ency led to its misuse. Therefore the original authors found themselves forced to find specifications as to its epistemological status. For instance, they pointed out that dependency did not have the same status as the cen-tral categories of analysis of capitalism such a plusvalía, acumulation, etc. (Cardoso 1978). The concept, not restricted to the political and economic spheres, was on occasion even applied to cultural or religious contexts (Ianni 1969). But the biggest criticism of the theory of dependency was that the “internal-external” relationship to which it necessarily refers, makes what happens in the dependent country appear as an automatic result of what happens in the hegemonic country of reference, a theoreti-cally very poor and empirically false conceptualization (Cueva 1979). Another criticism pointed at the existence of an external dependency and an internal one in the theoreticians of the dependency, and argued that therefore the analysis oscilates between a national “focus” (external de-pendency) and a class focus (internal dependency), and that in general terms, the external dependency received more attention (Weffort 1994). Some took this criticism to a more radical level, arguing that the theory of dependency does not include a class analysis (Cueva 1979).

Alongside the theory of dependency, as a result of political circum-stances and intellectual exchanges in South America and in Mexico, an-other sociological intellectual production center, González Casanova pro-duced the theory of exploitation in 1976. It also comes across as yet an-other criticism of the theory of development and modernization, and also explicitly a criticism of the theory of dependency, although it recognizes some merit in it. This theory mostly highlights the domestic relashion-ships within national states.


The main theses of the theory of exploitation can be summarized as follows:

• Neither equality, freedom nor progress are values located beyond exploitation, but rather are characteristics or properties of it instead since inequality, power, and development are part of the exploita-tion relationship.

• Unlike in the past, the class struggle has been mediatized so that ex-ploitation no longer has direct effects on class struggle. For this rea-son it is necessary to demonstrate that exploitation is not an excep-tional event but that it permeates the world system and affects its behavior. It is therefore the main category in this analysis.

• Relationships of exploitation may be classified into exploitation of classes and exploitation of regions, and both may vary in weight and overlap with each other. Class-based exploitation, as a general cate-gory, takes the historical forms inspired by classical Marxism: slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and neocapitalism. Regional exploitation, as a general category, includes the countryside-city exploitation, colonial exploitation, imperialism exploitation, and domestic colonialism.

• In the case of Mexico, domestic colonialism is the analysis of the native American problem. More broadly, it focuses on the social re-lationships of domination and exploitation among heterogeneous cultural groups. Generally, when using the frameworks of colonial-ism or semicolonialism, it is in reference to Mexican relationships with the metropolis or foreign powers, but the indigenous popula-tions are victims of domestic colonialism, turning Mexico (and by extension others nations in the continent) into colonizer and colo-nized, without being aware of it.

• The colonial structure and domestic colonialism differ from the class structure because they are not only forms of domination and exploitation of the workers but also of an entire population (com-prised of diverse classes) by another population.

These theories were more or less influenced by Marxism, which at the time entered the academic center, becoming a general frame of refer-ence. Nevertheless, the theory of dependency was not clearly Marxist and the theory of exploitation drew from the Marxist category but incorpo-rated connotations which transcended it and turned it into something dif-ferent.

The fading of relevance of the theory of dependency and of the the-ory of exploitation within Latin American sociology had more to do with


a new culture of the social sciences gaining ground in the region, than with the theories’ inconsistencies or inability to account for the reality that it pretended to describe. Together with and driven by the growth of dictatorships in the south of the continent, neoliberal theory advanced as the dominant culture in reference to the economy, society, modernization, and development and later, in a second instance became the hegemonic continental culture.

THE SOCIOLOGY DURINGTHE MILITARY DISCTATORSHIPS

This hegemonization process of the neoliberal culture within the social sciences and in decision-making centers caused a deep change in the ori-entation of the dominant economics in Latin America. It changed the re-flection of the development subjects focus among Prebisch and Furtado’s followers. And therefore, it changed radically the relarionship between sociology and economics. With its new paradigm, sociology did not feel the need to dwell on the analysis of social development, which became completely forsaken by international organizations There was never an-other book published, like in the sixties, about social development that focused on theories and sociological problems, neither by CEPAL nor by any other international organization.

Sociology became increasingly excluded from all public policy and particularly from all development discussions. The impact of neoliberal economic theory that accompanied the dictatorships and later permeated the emerging Latin American democracies erradicated all reflection on class struggles. Classes themselves were no longer referenced in explana-tions. Analysis in economic terms of center-periphery and the deteriora-tion of exchange terms became less relevant. By privileging the market, the historical and cultural dimension of development no longer received attention and gradually collective units of analysis were replaced by a focus on individual rationalities and rights.

On a different plane and as a background to future sociological activ-ity, the market became the main regulator of the economy and hence, of society. It became a priority for the state to withdraw all forms of social protection without providing any alternative safety net, and through in-creasing privatization, the role of the state in the economy was drastically reduced.

Paradoxically, this process of “withdrawal of the state” from the so-cial and economic activities took place during the dictatorships and with support from the military, a sector of the state. But even after the fall of


dictatorships in the eighties, this trend did not reverse and in fact became even stronger, because it was compatible with the emerging democracies.

During the dictatorships, sociologists were the target of strong repres-sion. A few scientists, who had gained notoriety at a very young age, shunned professional practice to join the guerrillas, such as Camilo Tor-res in Colombia. Others immigrated either to Europe or to other Latin American countries that were unaffected by military governments, in-cluding Mexico and Venezuela, where they were able to continue work-ing in their profession. Universities located in countries that had dictator-ships either cancelled or drastically reduced instruction in sociology. So-ciologists and other social scientists were displaced from their traditional posts at national and international institutions and culturally suppressed. In this very negative context, sociologists changed the focus and orienta-tion of their profession, in order to survive.

Sociologists’ labored re-insertion took mainly three main directions. First, a great number of them took technical jobs in countries under dicta-torships. Second, because sociologists had incorporated social and statis-tical research into their working methodology in the past, and had accu-mulated experience in conducting and organizing surveys, they used this fact to their advantage. Since diverse national and international operators, both in the public and private domain, demanded additional statistical information, a specific market for professional sociology appeared. It was of a very neutral nature and produced increasingly specialized descriptive information of the most diverse social populations. Indeed, many organi-zations of the UN system required additional information from different socioeconomic levels in order to carry out international comparisons. This demand generated job opportunities for college teachers in social research private institutes. Simultaneously, nongovernmental organiza-tions (NGOs) from Sweden, Canada, and Holland supported these institu-tions with their research programs and which demanded stable staff. Sur-vey-conducting companies emerged as the demand for market research for television and radio audiences, goods and services, and later, public opinion for electoral and other purposes grew. Third, during the period of re-democratization, a market demand for statistics investigation units emerged for the central administration and private enterprises. Again, sociologists were able to seek positions in these niches.

In these new centers of knowledge, the characteristics of their sociol-ogy allowed for a much more specific empirical knowledge of social real-ity, but it could not describe the whole of society, nor could it predict changes in trends or the direction of macro societal policies. These new professional sociologies appeared as a new division of sociology within sociology, very descriptive, supported by sophisticated quantitative


methodologies, reaching an unprecedented expansion due to the devel-opment of informatics and its database capabilities. Even when this knowledge was incorporated into diverse theories, they were sectorial (education, health, job, etc.) and became reorganized under different paradigms and sought to solve more pragmatic problems than the sociol-ogy of modernization, development, dependency or exploitation had in-tended. These sectorial sociologies became legitimate and justified to a great extent, insofar as they described different kinds of populations. But in these descriptions, they also modified their unit of analysis so that it was no longer a social class or other form of stratification, but rather the individual. Moreover, thanks to the informatics resources which could account empirically for these populations, sociology gravitated towards a focus on individuals as the informative support of society, allowing for a dialogue with the more radical liberal postures that would accompany liberalism.

A second area of development in sociology, which also originated during the dictatorships of democratic regimes with a strong authoritarian sign, was in the promotion of communities, particularly ethnic communi-ties. Its goal was no longer a focus on macro-social or societal subjects, but rather pointed to the defense of aboriginal cultures that were facing the aggressive cultural integration promoted by urban centers. These cul-tures, many of which are non-writing, used to have a strong wealth of knowledge that entitled them to their own social models, and which they were stripped of by the advance of occidental culture.

Scholars like Paulo Freire in Brasil or Orlando Fals Borda in Colom-bia developed different strategies of public sociology with an ethno-graphic character. Freire (1974) argues that

As a result of man’s relationship with reality, of being with her and in her, because of acts of creation, recreation and decision, he dy-namizes the world. He dominates reality, humanizing it, increasing it with something he creates, he temporalized the geographic spaces, creates culture. And this play of man with men, challenging and an-swering to challenges, altering, creating, is what does not aloow for immobility neither of society nor of culture. And while he creates, re-creates and decides, historical eras are shaped. (34)

In this way, Freire developed a pedagogy oriented to very popular sectors with an innovative sociological base.

Orlando Fals Borda developed the Partcipative Action Investigation (IAP) Method (1991). For this methodology, Fals Borda leaned explicitly on Cardoso and Faletto’s theory of dependency, as well as on Gonzalez


Casanova’s, Camilo Torres’s and Freire’s sociology of exploitation. It is an investigation of anthropological foundations, which intends to substi-tute the valorative neutrality with a “telos” (purpose) that implies a com-mitment within this context of transforming a society in a direction con-sidered inadmissible. To do it, he wishes to break the traditional relation-ship between the investigator and the investigated group defined as sub-ject-object and proposes a subject-subject relationship. This break with the traditional relationship is crucial, since the author intends to build a new society, and this break operates on a scientific level as well as in a social one. In the domestic realm, it affects machismo in the man-woman relationship; in education, it affects the student-teacher relationship; in politics, it affects leader-follower relationship; in medicine, the patient-doctor one; and generally seeks symmetrical relationships in all fields. The second great challenge of this methodology is to recognize the popu-lar wisdom (or popular science) which points to something that he feels that science and traditional techniques have forgotten and forsaken; life, feelings, joy, and everyday life. For Fals Borda, IAP eventually achieves an encounter of both kinds of knowledge: technological, “which could be leading us to world destruction” and popular wisdom that emphasizes other values (19). Indeed, a new path may appear from there.

Finally, during the dictatorships, and mostly at the end of that era, a sociology that was oriented by the opposition between democracy and dictatorships, developed, which set the foundations for a political science that would rapidly develop in the following years. The main focus in this sociology of resistenceI was no longer modernity and development, but on the capability of the popular forces to overthrow dictatorships. In work sociology, for instance, the intention was to analyze the possibilities of rebuilding the working-class and union movements. In Brazil, where this trend grew most notably, the focus was on the relationship between resis-tence and conflict, but within the political framework as opposed to one that was concerned with modernization, as in the past (Abramo and Mon-tero 2000).

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TODAY’S RE-EMERGING SOCIOLOGY

The lack of focus of the sociological production in this period, as a result of the general conditions under the dictatorships, continued into the era of democratization that ended the authoritarian cycle of the eighties. After all, the transition into democracy failed to produce any changes with re-gards to the neoliberal economic orientations or the pretension to turn


sociology into the social science of reference for all kinds of social and economic policies. In addition to all this, the political sciences were forti-fied by the very important and liberal concept of democracy during this period.

The dominant theoretical-philosophical perspectives took relevance over societal reflections and its specific dynamism as the bases for expla-nations about the characteristics of Latin American national societies and as results of the economic, cultural, institutional, and social policies that these societies experience.

In spite of the weak bonds between the sociological reflection and private and public decision-making processes, of the lack of thematic and theoretical focus in academic centers, and waning efforts to strengthen common Latin American theoretical production, and—perhaps as a con-sequence of this last factor, of the growing importance attached to theo-retical production from central countries—inspite of all this, Latin American sociology started slowly to recover. At this time, Latin Ameri-can states were required to carry out economic structural adjustment and which gave way to large-scale privatization of public enterprises and the financial crisis of the new century. These events generated social re-sponses, movements, and demonstrations of a very wide nature which again prompted important questions with no easy answers from an eco-nomic or political point of view.

Growing democratization, the intent to overcome neoliberal cultural hegemony, the dynamism of social movements struggling for democratic freedom, and struggling to share the costs of crises and the structural ad-justment policies with the upper classes as well as the growing participa-tion of ethnic groups or segregated sectors in these struggles, opened up the possibility for a renewed sociology that went back to its sources in hopes of improving Latin American societies.

We will attempt to describe, albeit incompletely, the big trends in Latin American sociology today, as it recovers its reflective capacities and is again oriented by emancipatory megatales.

Today, an important theoretical reflection on the academic level has developed that is a continuation of the center-periphery controversy. Ac-cording to this first line of thought, there is a growing concern about Latin America’s social and economic role in the global context, of the economic and cultural impact which hegemonic societies have on the continent, and its role in globalization process. In some cases, globaliza-tion is understood as a new version of the theory of dependency or even as the result of liberal (or liberal neo-conservative) policies (Gonzalez Casanova 1995). Borón (2005) among others, have analyzed the impact of neoliberal policies, the negotiations over external debt payments, and


the repercussions these have had on making the region one of the most socially unequal places in the world, along this line of thought. From a different perspective, but still with a focus on the external impact on Latin America, Robles (2000) incorporates the concept of “risk” giving it an original twist than how it was used in Europe. Robles argues that risk marks the end of the “pretense of rationality of capitalism” and identifies Latin American societies as “of risk of the globalized periphery,” and that they are bound to suffer from two kinds of risks: first, global risks such as global warming, intercontinental wars, and financial risks (16). Although these risks deeply impact and affect our societies, we have no way of preventing or avoiding them. Second, our own risks on a national level, including unemployment, poverty, inequality and so forth, are risks that our goverments assume in order to produce solutions for our most urgent problems but which add to the growth of global risks.

A second line of thought focuses on the description of Latin Ameri-can society through the lens of ethnicity and multiculturalism and there-fore requires non-eurocentric categories to understand it. To do so, it is necesssary to criticize and break with the European social sciences model, which has been accepted as universal. This school of thought has carried out broad historical revisions in order to understand, criticize, and dis-tance itself from the European model, and propose alternative models (Mignolo 2003; Dussel 2003). This tradition intends to redefine catego-ries using the insertion of Latin America into a global and colonial sys-tem as a starting point and by arguing that “[t]he historical process that defined the historical dependency from Europe as the power world center started here [Latin America]” (Quijano 1992: 106). Quijano sustains that Latin America never actually reached modernity and even today is repro-duced as modern/colonial. According to him, Latin America acceses the world market at a time of rapid expansion but one that is still dominated by a Spanish colonization of a “dark” medieval type. With the extraordi-nary profits reaped from America, Spain strenghtened the pre-capitalist exploitation in this continent and also violently “undemocratized” inde-pendent communities in Spain (Basques, Catalans, etc.), thus generating an internal colonialism and the destruction of the internal Spanish pro-ductions. This process called the Lord’s Regime (regimen señorial), is what made for the enrichment and secularization of Central and Northern Europe. This regime destroyed a historical, socio-cultural, and demo-graphic world in perhaps the most important destruction in the history of mankind. This holocaust generated a new system of world domination, whose central tenet is the concept of race (Quijano and Wallerstein 1994). It pointed to not only native aborigines but also to the immediately “eth-nitized” black slaves. Race was originally a way to distinguish Indians


from Iberians, later extended to distinguish blacks as well. The concept of race became congealed within the system of social exploitation. By the end of the sixteenth century, blacks were by definition slaves while Indi-ans were servants. In the eighteenth century, among mulattos it was the hue of their skin color that defined their social and work status. White-ness was identified with the “West” and its modernity, and this concept’s relevance extended into the era after national independences. The coloni-alism of the powers-that-be implied the sociological invisibility of non-Europeans, that is, the overwhelming majority of the Latin American population. In this sense, the recent indigenous and African-American political-cultural movements definitely question—for Quijano—the European version of modernity and propose an alternative rationality premised on the idea of social equality. It also denies the legitimacy of the nation-state founded in the coloniality of power and proposes the af-firmation and reproduction of the reciprocity and its ethics of social soli-darity as an alternative option to the predatory tendencies of modern capi-talism. In any case, the question of identity takes centerstage in a histori-cally open and heterogeneous project (Quijano 2007).

A third, very dynamic line of contemporary sociology takes off from social movements research. This school of thought evolved out of a so-ciological analysis of the resistence to the dictatorships and has important peculiarities with respect to the social movements in hegemonic countries. In these movements, we find “old” social movements such as working unions, renewing themselves and extending to non-factory sectors (De la Garza 2005) and “new” social movements that develop in new social “spaces.” Its relevance lies in the dynamism and diversity of Latin Amer-ica. These movements may be linked to re-democratization struggles and attempts to access public services, as well as to to urban, rural, ethnic, union, feminist, ecological or international movements or a wide range of combinations among them. They appear as a social expression of a de-mand for change and they reflect the incapacity of the state to meet social demands and aspirations within today’s historical context. They are socio-political actions by collective social actors belonging to different social classes and socioeconomic and political groups. These actions take place in a social and political-cultural process that creates a collective identity or new subjectivities for the movement members, originated from common interests (Falero 2008). This identity is amalgamated by the solidarity principle and built from the referential base of cultural and po-litical values shared by the group in non-institutionalized collective spaces. It takes the form of struggle for social, civic or political rights.Therefore they are autonomous from the state as well as from political parties despite their ties with and being influenced by them. Social


movements generate a series of innovations in the public (governmental or non-governmental) and private spheres. They participate directly or indirectly in the political processes of the country and contribute to the development and transformation of civil and political society. Hence, they participate in the historical-social change of a country (Ghon 1997). A great number of sociologists, observing these movements or participat-ing in them, try to project new emancipatory megatales that may be im-parted to all Latin America. Although these tendencies are on a different level of sociological reflection than previous ones, they dialogue with them to a great extent.

1) A new sociology of production emerges with the intention of fig-uring out the extent to which the Latin American economy can develop self-sustaining production models. This tendency strenghtens with the 2002 crisis, when enterprises and the whole system appear to be extraor-dinarily fragile because of external reasons. A new tendency questions the sustainability of our productive models such as the “maquilas” in México, and the coherence of productive chains or clusters based in Latin America as part of other regions (Contreras and Carrillo 2003). These (mostly) economic worries find important sociological contributions in the proceses of work organization and their transformation (Novick 2000), organizational work and risk analysis (Walter and Pucci 2007) and so forth. This sociology relates to entrepreneurial and union actors, but fo-cuses on the optimization of organizational and productive processes of goods and services. It is inscribed within an emancipatory megatale in the sense that this line of sociological thought tries to break free from the economic logic and strategies of hegemonic countries, or at least, estab-lish certain spaces of negotiation with them.

2) Most sociologists are busy in this period with a professional soci-ology that intends to solve multiple sectorial problems or formulate diag-noses or produce descriptive data for public or private decision-making processes. In the “Latin American Sociology Treaty,” De la Garza (2006) points out that, in opposition to other first world sociology manuals which are organized by big theoretical trends (such as functionalism, Marxism, etc.), the most traditional path of organizing the exposition by specialized subdisciplines of sociology was chosen. In the Treaty, there are subjects like the sociology of culture, historical sociology, the sociol-ogy of work and family, the sociology of syndicalism, the sociology of organizations, the sociology of entrepreneural actors, urban sociology, rural sociology, the sociology of law, the sociology of health, and the so-ciology of religion among others. Although these tendencies maintain a dialogue with the specialized sociologies of central countries and at times with other tendencies of Latin American sociology that were mentioned


above, they are extremely sensitive to the inequalities that plague Latin America as a continent and to the struggles for social, civil, and political rights. Therefore these sociologies produce excellent descriptions of Latin American societies and foster the development of emancipatory mega-tales.

3) Finally, a relevant sociology of denunciation has developed. In all meetings of Latin American regional associations, including ALAS, ALAST, and ALASRU, the majority of seminars denounce situations considered unacceptable by the researchers. In general terms, such research provides little in the way of a heuristic perspective for sociology as a whole. Even so, it is highly relevant because it expresses society’s malaise as explained by sociologists. A second more elaborated form of this sociology of denunciation is dedicated to criticizing, on the one hand, the new categories which seem to define the functioning of today’s society, or rather, a proposal of how our societies function. This line of analysis criticizes categories such as “employability” or “equality of opportunity” because beyond their seemingly progressive intentions, they operate as concepts in a neoliberal macrologic which places the market as society’s main focus. These concepts tend to strengthen and give consistency to this neoliberal focus. Finally this sociology of denunciation is also present in the sociopolitical sphere in some countries like Argentina. It shows the authoritarian aspect in the post-dictatorship phase, in particular with the piquetero movement. The work of Marisela Svampa tries to demonstrate that beyond its formal aspects, the politics related to social movements are still strongly repressive. The characteristics of this kind of sociology are a sort of public sociology, since it is not only expressed in specialized magazines but also communicated in mass newspapers. It aims to produce categories, with a strong expressive content, their validity determined by the extent to which not only academia, but the general public, the communicators and the oppositional political sector adopts them.

CONCLUSION

Latin American sociology has faced a dual dilemma: on the one hand, it has had to deal with theoretical systems from Europe or North America, and on the other hand, it has joined a very problematic political world during the post-war era, from which did not want or did not know how to distance itself, in general terms.

There, to my understanding, lies the strength and weakness of Latin American sociology: its capacity for active commitment but which also


keeps it from building its own conceptual systems. Its production has al-ways been of conceptual categories that never culminate in theoretical systems, but that have nevertheless moved and expressed the aims of dif-ferent social movements or served as the basis of public and private deci-sions, all fundamental for social change.

Its lack of thematical and theoretical unity today may become a source of revitalization if it can adopt a common focus and very general goals. We think it already has these goals, although it does not make them visible explicitly and systematically. The focus on inequality in all its possible manifestations and the shared goal to fight for all social, civil, and political rights could serve as as the positive correlation of a Latin American sociology that renews itself without losing its ties with the tra-dition that inspired it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abramo, L. and Montero, C. “Origen y evolución de la Sociología del Trabajo en América latina.” In Tratado latinoamericano de Sociología del Trabajo, edited by E. De la Garza Toledo, pp. 65-94. Mexico: Colegio de México, FLACSO, UAM and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000.

Borón, A. “Prefacio.” In La trama del neoliberalismo. Mercado, crisis y exclusión social, edited by E. Sader and P. Gentili. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO.

Cardoso, F.H. and E. Faletto. Desarrollo y Dependencia en América Latina. Siglo XXI. Mexico, 1977.

Cardoso F.H. “Notas sobre el estado actual de los estudios de la Dependencia”. In Problemas del subdesarrollo latinoamericano, ed-ited by S. Bagú, F.H. Cardoso, A. Córdova, T. Dos Santos and H. Silva Michelena. Mexico: Nuestro Tiempo, 1978.

CEPAL. “El Desarrollo Social. De América latina en la posguerra.” Buenos Aires, Argentina: Solar/Hachette, 1963.

Cueva, A. “Problemas y perspectivas de la teoría de la dependencia.” In Debates sobre la teoría de la dependencia y la sociología latinoamericana, edited by D. Camacho. San José, Costa Rica: San José educa., 1979.

De la Garza Toledo, E. “¿Cuál puede ser el campo de la Sociología a los inicios del siglo XXI?” In Tratado latinoamericano de Sociología,edited by E. De la Garza Toledo. Mexico: Anthropos / UAM, 2005.

Dussel, E. “Europa, modernidad y eurocentrismo.” Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2003.


Falero, A. Las batallas por la subjetividad: luchas sociales y construcción de Derechos en Uruguay. Montevideo, Uruguay: CSIC, 2008.

Fals Borda, O. and Brandão C. R. Investigación participativa. Montevi-deo, Uruguay : Instituto del Hombre / Ed. Banda Oriental Montevideo, 1991.

Ghon, M.G. Teorias dos Movimentos sociais. São Paulo, Brazil: Loyola, 1997.

Freire, P. La educación como práctica de la libertad. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Siglo XXI, 1974.

Graciarena, J. Poder y clases en el Desarrollo de América latina. Buenos Aires, Argentina : Paidós, 1967.

Gonzalez Casanova, P. Sociología de la explotación. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, 2006 (1969).

-----. Globalidad, neoliberalismo y democracia. Mexico: CII en Ciencias y Humanidades/ UNAM, 1995

Ianni, O. Imperialismo y cultura de la violencia en América latina.Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1969.

Medina Echavarría, J. Consideraciones sociológicas sobre el desarrollo de América latina. San José, Costa Rica : San José educa, 1980.

Mignolo, W. 2003. Historias locales/diseño globales. Colonialidad, conocimientos subalternos y pensamiento fronterizo. Madrid, Spain: Tres Cantos, 2003.

-----. La idea de América Latina. La herida colonial y la opción descolonial. Buenos Aires, Argentina: GEDISA, 2007.

Nun, J. Marginalidad y exclusión social. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura económica, 2001.

Novick, M. “La transformación de la Organización del trabajo.” In Tratado latinoamericano de Sociología del Trabajo, edited by E. De la Garza Toledo, pp. 123-147. Mexico: Colegio de México, FLACSO, UAM and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000.

Quijano, A. “Colonialidad del poder y la experiencia cultural latinoamericana.” In Pueblo, época y desarrollo: la sociología de América Latina, edited by R. Briceño-León and H. R. Sonntag. Caracas, Venezuela: Nueva Sociedad, 1992.

-----. “Don Quijote y los molinos de viento en América latina.” In De la Teoría crítica a una crítica plural de la modernidad, edited by O. Kozlarek, pp. 123-146. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Biblos, 2007.

Quijano A. and I. Wallerstein. “Americanity as a Concept or the Ameri-cas in the Modern World-System.” International Social Sciences Journal, 44(1992): 549-558.


Robles, F. El desaliento inesperado de la modernidad. Concepción, Chile: Sociedad hoy / Dirección de Investigación U.de Concepción, 2000.

Rosemann, M.R. Pensar América latina. El desarrollo de la Sociología latinoamericana. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO libros, 2008.

Sader, E. and P. Gentili. Pós-neoliberalismo: as políticas sociais e o estado democrático. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Terra e Paz, 1995.

-----. La trama del Neoliberalismo. Mercado crisis y exclusión social.Buenos Aires, Argentina: FLASCO, 1999.

Touraine, A. and T. Di Tella. Huachipato y Lota. Paris, France: CNRS, 1967.

Walter, J. and F. Pucci. “La gestión del Riesgo y las crisis”. Fon CSI – San Andrés y Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ateneo, 2007.

Weffort, F. “Notas sobre la teoría de la dependencia: teoría de clases o ideología nacional.” Revista Política y Sociedad, no 17, (1994): 97-115. (Orig. pub. 1972).

Tom Dwyer84

On the Internationalization of Brazilian Academic Sociology

Tom Dwyer, State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil1

The origins of contemporary Brazilian sociology go back to the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and were strongly associated with the pres-ence of foreign sociologists who played important roles, from the 1930s, in setting up what became important sociology departments or centers. Their influence guaranteed that early generations of Brazilian sociologists were trained and subsequent efforts permitted sociology to acquire a small degree of international exposure.

FROM BRAZILIAN SOCIOLOGY’S EARLY RECEPTION OF INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES TO ITS EARLY

INSTITUTIONALIZATION

Sociological production during this early period was not subjected to in-ternational exposure. In spite of their extraordinary importance, of the foundational works of three sociologists who are today considered as classical Brazilian sociology, only one major work has been published in English.2 This has certainly deprived foreign researchers of access to an understanding of Brazil and of Brazilian thought, one that would enrich their comprehension of the limits and strengths of the application of clas-sical sociological theories for understanding social formations that, while having very strong roots in the European traditions, are quite innovative.

In 1950, the Brazilian Sociological Society (SBS) was founded; what precipitated this move was a letter from the newly established Interna-tional Sociological Association (ISA) where the Sociological Society of São Paulo (founded in 1934) was asked if the society would be interested in representing Brazil by joining ISA. In other words, the SBS was founded with a view to internationalizing Brazilian sociology. From an

1 Tom Dwyer is President of the Brazilian Sociological Society. 2 The three classic books are: “Casa Grande e Senzala” (“The Master and the Slaves”) by Gilberto Freyre (1933), “Raízes do Brasil” (“Roots of Brazil”) by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1936) and “Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo” (“The Formation of Contemporary Brazil”) by Caio Prado Junior (1942).

On the Internationalization of Brazilian Academic Sociology 85

early stage two Brazilians occupied positions on the ISA’s Executive Committee, the first president of the SBS Fernando de Azevedo between 1950-1952 and Luiz Costa Pinto between 1953 and 1959. Over the fol-lowing years teaching programs in sociology were set up in diverse parts of the country. In these early days Brazil was a poor, largely rural coun-try and quality transport was not readily available, so few sociology de-partments were set up and few students were trained.3 In 1954 and 1962 national sociology conferences were held.

SECOND PHASE: DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION AND

A CERTAIN INTERNATIONALIZATION OF PRODUCTION4

In 1964, a populist left-wing government, which had allies in the trade union and rural workers’ movements, was overthrown by a right-wing military coup, which had support among the middle and upper classes. As the military regime consolidated its power, especially from the end of 1968, the process of sociology’s institutionalization was severely debili-tated. Some prominent sociologists lost their jobs in public universities, others were imprisoned, tortured, and went into exile. The SBS went into hibernation, and the academic sociological community spent over two decades without organizing its own conferences. Brazilian sociology ex-perienced many other difficulties, both institutional and linked to research and teaching during the military regime. The subjects studied changed and it became more difficult to carry out empirical research because of a combination of censorship, fear, and lack of funding.

Many Brazilian sociologists lived a painful process of forced interna-tionalization that corresponded to their periods of exile. They became exposed to the reality of countries such as Chile (before Pinochet’s coup), Mexico, France, United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA. This experi-ence forced many to start thinking about Brazilian reality in new ways. During the dictatorship, the Latin American Sociological Association’s (ALAS) bi-annual conferences became a significant meeting ground for Brazilian sociologists, which also proved true for sociologists in other Latin American countries under military rule. Also, many who had gone into exile became exposed to international ideas. In addition, interna-tional organizations, particularly the Ford Foundation and some European 3 From the early 1930s until 1955 a total of 280 people earned sociology degrees in the State of São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, such statistics are more difficult to produce because of the variety of institutions involved; between 1939 and 1948 a total of 35 degrees were awarded (Brunner and Barrios 1987) 4 This section is drawn from Porto, M. S. G. and Dwyer, T. (forthcoming).

Tom Dwyer86

foundations, played a role in financing critical social sciences in Brazil. In this period, there was a certain projection of Brazilian sociology

onto the international scene as the book Dependency and Development in Latin America written by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto (1979) was translated into a number of languages. Indeed, it was during this period of the dictatorship that the image of Brazilian sociology in the world seems to have been very positive. Not only was the discipline en-gaged in the movement for democratic change, but it also produced scholarly work that was highly relevant to its own society and to interna-tional sociology.

Cardoso would become vice president of the ISA between 1978 and 1982 and its president from 1982 to 1986.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND A LOW DEGREE OF INTERNATIONALIZATION OF PRODUCTION

Institutionalization

In all fields of science and technology in Brazil, it has been common to attribute what is seen as mediocre performance to successive military and civilian government mismanagement, e.g., start-stop policies, the legacy of high inflation, and the lack of commitment of resources (Fernandes 1990; Schwartzmann 1994). In the social sciences, the forces that affect the natural sciences were aggravated by the severe difficulties found un-der military rule. These have meant that it has fallen on the present gen-eration of senior sociologists to take responsibility for the reinstitutionali-zation of the discipline: founding (or restructuring) departments, develop-ing curricula, developing post-graduate programs from scratch, founding and editing scientific reviews, developing the discipline’s scientific soci-ety (SBS), etc.5 One consequence of such internal demands has been to reduce the time available for research and for confronting the numerous hurdles placed in front of those who wish to internationalize their produc-

5 Beyond there being some 60 Brazilian sociological reviews in Latindex in 2005, there were some 132 degree awarding programs in 84 tertiary institutions and 13,000 students are enrolled in social sciences courses. There are about 900 uni-versity teachers in the social sciences and a total of 1,700 masters and 1,400 doc-toral students enrolled in 51 post-graduate programs (Leidke 2005). The most recent bi-annual Brazilian Sociology Conference had some 2,600 registered par-ticipants (nearly ten times the number of a decade earlier), and the SBS has nearly 1,000 members. These numbers constitute evidence of the consolidation and institutionalization of the area.


tion. While it might appear that after more than two decades since the end

of military rule the institutionalization process has finished, in fact, new demands arise. Most recently, in June 2008, the president of Brazil signed into law a project that requires sociology (social sciences) to be taught in all years of the high school education and in all of the more than 30,000 high schools in the country. This law reintroduces sociology, ex-cluded by the military regime, into the secondary school curriculum. It places huge demands on many senior members of the discipline, for they shall have to write at least some of the specialized teaching materials necessary for the high schools, participate in commissions, and especially develop and teach courses to prepare a future generation of high school sociology teachers.

From Academic to Non-Academic Sociology

So far, I have only mentioned academic sociology. However, at the same time as the discipline becomes more institutionalized, it loses some of its most talented members to non-academic pursuits.

In consolidated democracies, the political and administrative spheres of power are usually relatively consolidated in institutional terms: a group of highly qualified public policy developers and analysts exists (fre-quently recruited from the ranks of sociology graduates), and the political class is professional. Such is not the case in many Latin American coun-tries, where some of the most prominent social scientists are seconded from their universities into central and state government to play a role in public policy development and analysis. More rarely they will temporar-ily or permanently abandon their academic careers to exercise high politi-cal office. In other words, the perceived success of the academic disci-pline and the relative weakness of the administrative and political classes combine to drain the discipline of some of its most talented academics. As such, those who remain in the universities frequently have to work harder to guarantee that basic teaching is carried out.

Internationalization of Teaching and Training

In Brazil, the ideas of foreigners, and especially European and North Americans, have been received for a long time and have fed and made Brazilian sociology prosper as an intellectual exercise.

The tradition, which can be observed from the 1930s onwards, of importing foreign works, reading them intensely, and trying to apply them to build up an understanding of Brazilian society, has indeed been a

Tom Dwyer88

hallmark of our sociology. Most post-graduate programs require reading proficiency in one or two foreign languages (beyond Spanish, which is easily read by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese) as a prerequisite for entry. This means that teachers are able to use a wide range of sources and foreign texts (especially books). As a consequence, many Brazilian sociologists are capable of mixing literature written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages to build a type of sociology that is extremely cosmopolitan, thereby guaranteeing an international fla-vor to local production. From my own observations, this is not so com-mon among sociologists from English, French, and many Spanish-speaking countries.

In the past, a major obstacle to producing world-class sociology in Brazil was the lack of quality research libraries. Today, there are severe problems with the book collections in all Brazilian university libraries; however, the availability of journals has increased remarkably with large collections (mainly written in English) now being available on-line in the most important universities. On-line databases such as Sociological Ab-stracts and Social Science Citations Index have also become widely available over the last decade to staff and students in all major Brazilian universities; however, the numbers of systematic users still appears to be quite low. One reason for this is that students observe that such databases do not adequately reflect international sociological production, because (as we shall soon see) their contents neglect much Brazilian and Latin American production; as such, their legitimacy is questioned.

It is worth noting that the return of democracy and the institutionali-zation of academic science and technology have been associated with an increased percentage of students completing their postgraduate training in Brazil. While this change reduces the exposure of the next generation of teachers to overseas living and academic cultures, it increases their sensi-tivity to their own country. In order to guarantee that the relative increase in the numbers of students studying at home does not result in academic disciplines become nationalistic or provincial in outlook, scholarships are widely available for postgraduate students to travel overseas for up to a year to enhance their doctoral training. Students typically attend univer-sities in the Northern hemisphere, particularly ones to which their advi-sors or research teams already have institutional linkages. This has oc-curred due to generous government and limited international agency sup-port.


INTERNATIONALIZING BRAZILIAN SOCIOLOGY’S PRODUCTION

I shall divide this discussion into a number of sections. The first will ex-amine the relationships with the ISA; the second will look at indexing of international sociology; following up on this, some considerations will be traced with regards to the forces that appear to operate upon sociological production from non-central countries. Subsequently, the question of language shall be examined. In the final part of this paper, I shall explore how Brazilian sociology is reacting to such forces and to the changing nature of power in the world that is redefining what internationalization means.

The ISA as a Factor of Internationalization

Generous government and funding agency support has without doubt had a role in underpinning Brazilian presence at the World Sociology confer-ences, organized by the ISA. In the last two editions, Brazil had the eighth largest national delegation in Brisbane and seventh largest at Dur-ban. Brazilians have occupied leadership positions on some ISA research committees and on the executive committee. Executive committee mem-bers have included Neuma Aguiar (1990-1994) and Alice Abreu (2002-2010), and currently, Brazil is the only Latin American country which is represented on the ISA executive committee, where it has three members: Alice Abreu, Elisa Reis, and José Vicente Tavares dos Santos. However, while it is easy to form the impression that such presence helps interna-tionalize the discipline, I am not aware of research that has sought to as-certain the connection between such presence and the wider visibility and image of Brazilian sociology internationally.

Brazilian researchers are active in many of the ISA research commit-tees and certainly make their colleagues more aware to what is occurring in Brazil and in Brazilian sociology. However, the difficulties of talking in a foreign language, the outrageous fact that sessions allocate equal time for presentations to native and non-native speakers, and also the fact that sociologists from non-central countries feel obliged to make intro-ductory remarks that set out the context of their country and their re-search (something which researchers from central countries assume eve-rybody knows) leads many to feel that they are not given a fair hearing. Particularly, there is a diffuse feeling that a type of arrogance is exhibited by native speakers who do not pay attention or show interest in what non-native speakers have to say. To add insult to injury, native speakers fre-

Tom Dwyer90

quently do not exhibit the cultural sensitivity to talk slowly when speak-ing to a cosmopolitan audience.6

One problem is, indeed, that many of the papers presented at ISA do not appear to be transformed into articles that are published internationally.

Recent ISA initiatives to permit sessions in languages other than the ISA’s three official languages and to encourage national associations to present session proposals are important steps to guarantee a wider range of international activities at the world sociology conferences.

International Indexing of Publications

In the now distant past when there were no international indexing systems and the scientific community was far smaller, scientific production was recognized as “international” when it became widely visible. Since the gradual return to democracy in Brazil during the 1980s, no single Brazil-ian piece of academic sociology has been able to achieve the international prominence of Cardoso and Faletto’s book. While this book was widely appreciated among scholars in central countries, it achieved large audi-ences in Latin America and in other dependent countries such as India, New Zealand, and Australia. In the absence of widely recognized “great books” written by Brazilian authors, we must move to look at other indi-cators of internationalization.

Alice Abreu (2002) pointed out that the percentage of all ISI indexed articles published in Brazil in the year 2000 was 1.33%, less than one half of the percentage published by Australia (2.83%), a country with a popu-lation that is about one tenth the size of Brazil’s.7 This is just one indica- 6 I personally feel that these problems are sometimes so important that should ISA consider obliging all of those who present their work in ISA conference to speak in their second language (as long as it were one of the three official ISA languages). We would go a great way to removing a considerable source of domination exerted by many of our English native-speaker colleagues. It would also remove a source of considerable irritation and ill-feeling for non-native speakers of English (which is increasingly becoming ISA’s lingua franca). Of course, there is a practical obstacle: not many native English speakers even know how to read, let alone speak, a second language! Indeed, in my view, the ques-tion of linguistic domination by English is a serious obstacle to the internation-alization of sociology. Also, the lack of knowledge of foreign languages by Eng-lish native speaking sociologists seriously limits their capacity to understand the role that language plays in forming social imagination and guiding practices, and it impoverishes, because such sociologists exclude themselves from having an intimate knowledge of other conceptual and cultural systems. 7 It is of course necessary to evaluate the number of scientists in each country and the demands on them. Also, it is more probable that Brazilian rather than Australian scientists publish in non-indexed reviews. A further element of a pos-


tion of the type of structural problems faced with regards to internation-alization. Many Brazilian and Latin American scientific reviews in all fields, for a number of reasons that include problems of regularity in their production, and lack of institutionalization of the publishing field, are not listed by the internationally recognized indexing services. There are some indications that this is changing, as the number of articles by Brazil-ian researchers in all fields indexed by ISI increased by four times in the 1990 to 2002 period (Abreu 2007). One reason for this movement, which has not really touched the humanities and the social sciences, has been a large increase in Brazilian natural science reviews edited in English.8

The number of Brazilian sociology publications that are quoted in ISI is very small. Alice Abreu (2007) has observed that less than 3% of Latin Ameri-can sociology journals that are indexed in Latindex (www.latindex.unam.mx) are included in ISI.

When we examine Sociological Abstracts we can see that the pres-ence of Brazilian resident authors is extremely reduced. Consider the following table:

NO. Articles

Articles published in Brazil

% Articles with authors from Brazil

%

1970 7.835 19 0.24 17 0.221980 15.166 23 0.15 21 0.141990 22.175 53 0.24 95 0.432000 28.422 372 1.31 247 0.862005 28.658 554 1.93 45 ***

Here we see evidence that an increasing number of articles published in Brazil are indexed in Sociological Abstracts. If we exclude the year 2005 for which data was incomplete (data for this table was collected in July 2008), the number of Brazilian resident authors also appears to be on the increase. However, the contribution of both Brazilian published arti-

sible explanation is given by Connell (2007), “Natural scientists in Australia also have strong international connections, but they are focused on the United States and Britain, a pattern of quasi-globalisation” (218). 8 The online Brazilian Political Science Review(www.bpsr.org.br/english/revista/natual.htm) was launched recently in an attempt to internationalize the audiences of that discipline’s production. However, it has not yet been indexed internationally. The recently inaugurated SciELO English Language Edition(http://socialsciences. scielo.org/scielo.php) contains a limited number of Eng-lish-language versions of articles that had previously appeared in some Brazilian and other Latin American social science journals.

Tom Dwyer92

cles and Brazilian authors appears to remain extremely low. Raewyn Connell’s (2007) book reflects about how researchers from

countries that lie on the periphery will have severe difficulties in having their voices heard in international debates and publications, particularly books, “Texts are also material objects produced by publishers and gov-erned by copyright laws. It has always been difficult for works published in the periphery to circulate in the metropolitan centers and to other parts of the periphery” (219).

A good example of a case where English language use is handled re-markably well by non-native English speakers are the Nordic countries. A search was carried out using the most recently developed international indexing system, Google Scholar (GS), of the publications of members of 16 sociology departments. The research team found that only 15% of scholars have more than five publications that turned up in the search. While 85% of department members that turn up in the GS search had at least one publication, less than 25% of these are cited more than ten times (Aaltojarvi et al. 2008). In other words, there appears to be a high degree of invisibility built into careers that, even when they can easily be con-ducted in the English language, are conducted outside of central coun-tries.9

However, such an observation appears to affect not only the social sciences. A Costa Rican biologist wrote, “Some of my colleagues dream of having a paper published in Nature or Science, usually considered the two most influential journals (in that order). However, their chances are low (for example, Science accepts 20% of manuscripts from the USA but only 1% of papers from ‘Third World’ countries)” (Gibbs 1995). The author concludes:

Tropical scientists have three basic options. They can despair and make no effort to do good science, they can choose to live at the shadow of temperate science, trying to please the interests of temperate journals, readers and citation indices, or they can do what the USA did so suc-cessfully after spending many years at the shadow of British science, that is, to develop a local scientific pride based on quality and a good balance between basic and applied science.

National agencies that evaluate scientific activity are increasingly demanding that scientists publish internationally. Ming-Chang Tsai ob-served at the 2005 ISA Conference of National Associations that a posi-

9 Here we include countries such as India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zea-land.


tive evaluation based on the key indicator used by the Taiwanese evalua-tion agency, number of publications indexed by the SSCI, was almost entirely dependent on the country of advanced training. Basically, those trained in North America were indexed, whereas those trained elsewhere were far more likely to have few indexed publications. At the same meeting, Victor Arayza observed that his Israeli colleagues, should they wish to publish internationally, would have their best chances if they were to write about the only subject that seems to interest the so-called “international” journals: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its ramifica-tions. In other words, in order to be positively evaluated, it is necessary to turn one’s back on the investigation of many pressing problems of one’s society, because they are problems which do not spark “interna-tional” interest. Indeed, these two papers suggest that if one works out-side of the central countries, it is necessary to deform one’s thinking and research agendas to respond to research questions and to standards that are imposed from abroad, in order to be considered a good “international class” scholar by the evaluating agencies. Here, indeed, we are talking about a distortion that is produced by the demand that scientific produc-tion be evaluated by reference to publications in scientific journals that are recognized as being international; in both cases publication in the re-searcher’s native language is considered to be less relevant than publica-tion in English.

In other words, the domination of international publishing markets, indexing systems, and referees by researchers from the central countries appears to threaten the capacity to produce knowledge in an autonomous fashion in the non-central countries. At this same ISA conference, I re-member hearing Pharta Mukherji, a former president of the Indian Socio-logical Society, use an expression to refer to colleagues who have be-come so infatuated with the West or of having influence in the West; he referred to them as developing a “captive mind syndrome.” This indeed is a very powerful expression, and without consciously combating it, the social sciences are condemned to lose their unique perspective, which is not only theoretical and methodological, but which is also embedded in a culture and where research problems are classically determined by their relevance to society.

Raewyn Connell (2007) argues that Southern theories are excluded from world sociologies and that it is necessary to draw on marginalized forms of knowledge to reconstruct our image of the world. In other words, the Northern-dominated power structures are seen impeding the development of a viable sociology capable of responding to the com-plexities of our times.

Tom Dwyer94

DIFFICULTIES OF INTERNATIONALIZATION OF SOCIOLOGY

For Sociologists from Non-English Speaking Countries

Connell’s interesting book leaves to a side any examination of the com-plex questions posed by the domination that the English language has achieved since the end of World War II and that threatens the very idea that it is possible to develop an “international sociology.” ISA recog-nized the nature of this problem over a decade ago when it commissioned a report on the language question that was presented at the Montreal Con-ference by Alain Touraine (1998). One important conclusion of this re-port was that “Sociology should consider itself as a world discipline inte-grating various intellectual traditions, especially when they have deep historical roots.” This is a point that appears to be very similar to Con-nell’s.

Few native English speakers realize how difficult it is to produce for a refereed journal that is published in a foreign country and language. Pina Cabral (2007), a prominent Portuguese social scientist, recently pro-duced a short reflection around the question of internationalization of the social sciences. He notes that even senior social scientists who have pub-lished from the beginning of their careers and who have been fortunate enough to have seen their articles in journals and well-received edited books are often treated, when they submit articles and chapters for review in English language publications, as beginners; the work is refereed by very junior colleagues, who do not have sufficient understanding of what is being said to adequately review the article. Indeed, I have heard simi-lar complaints over cafezinhos with Brazilian colleagues.

However, for those who choose to publish in ISI-indexed journals, Pina Cabral remarks that adopting such a strategy does not normally work well for those who are outside of the globally defined circuits of excel-lence, which are always linked to the hegemonic centers of power. Given the very nature of social power in intellectual fields, he argues, it is diffi-cult to imagine things occurring in any other way. The capacity to guar-antee a future (futuridade) for the results of scientific research on knowl-edge production as a whole is not measurable in simple terms of “objec-tive impact factors” that are so loved by technocratic evaluators. It is not enough to publish articles that are considered worthwhile in English to guarantee futuridade for what one publishes. Pina Cabral defends an idea that appears to emerge from rational choice theory: citation may depend on a type of cost-benefit relationship between the citer and the cited (and, of course, those who are deliberately not cited). Frequently, to publish in


English it becomes necessary to deny one’s intellectual roots to succeed. Pina Cabral explains, “It is more interesting / chic to quote Foucault (be-cause he is an American craze, which has nothing to do with loving things French) than Thales de Azevedo, even when what is being said has more to do with the brilliant work of the latter, which, for the majority … is simply unknown” (236).

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

W. I. Thomas’s genial formulation that if people define a situation as real it will be real in its consequences contributes to explain the low levels of internationalization of the production of Brazilian sociology. We do not publish in English, because we know that the odds are against us, and when published it is highly likely that we shall be ignored.10 To submit any article for publication is always a time-consuming operation; to pre-pare articles in a foreign language normally requires spending consider-able money on translation and revision. However, journals that use blind referees do not permit the researcher to have a reasonable degree of cer-tainty of achieving a favorable outcome. Indeed, we are far from being naïve actors; we know that much of what is unique in our society does not interest those who have power to define the so-called universal in terms of a dominant Western paradigm (which, in reality, is not one but many). For such reasons, many do not see publishing in English as a re-alistic goal.

Brazilian sociologists tend to give greater importance, as do sociolo-gists in many lands, to the publication of books and book chapters in their native language than to the publication in refereed scientific reviews in English. This option can be interpreted in many ways, as part of a tradi-tion, a desire to be relevant, or a flight from the challenges, the rigor, the marked playing cards, and the possible humiliation involved in having one’s work evaluated “internationally.” In Brazil, the vast majority of book production occurs nationally,11 and should it circulate internation-ally, this will only occur in other countries that use the Portuguese lan-

10 It is important to note that there exist specialists on Brazil who are called “Brazilianists.” They normally (especially the more junior ones) write ignoring Brazilian production and do so using concepts from the central countries to fit their writings about Brazil into a supposedly “international” (but usually North American) perspective. 11 It is important to note that the system of national circulation of books pub-lished in the various regions of Brazil is often fragile. This led the SBS to launch, in 2006, its first scientific review, SBS Resenhas, which publishes book reviews online twice a year (to be found on www.sbsociologia.com.br).

Tom Dwyer96

guage and more rarely in Latin American countries and nations that use Latin languages. Also, many Brazilian sociologists appear not to con-sider publication in national refereed journals to be more important than publication in non-refereed journals. Such a state of affairs is a result of the “culture of the invitation,” whereby people prefer to be invited to submit an article, in full knowledge that publication will be guaranteed, than to go through the considerable effort and pain necessary to publish in a refereed journal.

***

Renato Ortiz (2006) incisively summarized the nature of the question when he considered that no language could be considered a “lingua franca;” such a role is only exercised in certain specific areas where it takes on the function of being “franca.” He described:

In this way English language, in the natural sciences, serves as a pre-dominantly ‘franca’ language; its role concentrates on the transmission of information, minimizing the other dimensions of social life (prestige, aesthetics, sentiments, etc.). But if this is possible, and this is the di-mension that scientists value, a language which is emptied of other con-notations with the aim of maximizing instrumental communication, so valued by natural scientists - what can be said about the social sciences? (35)

Indeed, we arrive at the provocative idea that it is impossible to develop quality social sciences by resorting to a lingua franca. This implies that a more complex strategy of internationalization must be adopted, one which involves high quality translations, with all their expense and diffi-culties, and which pays close attention to both narrative and concept de-velopment as it occurs in given linguistic and socio-historical contexts.

TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF INTERNATIONALIZATION: RECENT TRENDS IN THE

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF BRAZILIAN SOCIOLOGY

The Official Evaluation System

The Brazilian classificatory system has been built up in response to de-mands from the leading funding agency CAPES, which conducts collec-tive evaluations of post-graduate programs based on a complex system


based on peer evaluation (see Adorno and Dwyer 2006). Journals are classified by merit into six categories: International A, B, and C, and Na-tional A, B and C. Of the 23 journals that have been most recently classi-fied by the sociology committee as “International A,” 12 are in published in English, seven in Portuguese, two each in French and Spanish. The number of journals classified as “International B” is, of course, far greater: three are published in Portuguese, 16.5 in English, 9.5 in French, seven in Spanish, one in Italian (the attribution of 0.5 to one journal having a bi-lingual title).

It is important to note that seven Brazilian journals that are published in Portuguese are considered international. In other words, they have editorial boards with non-Brazilian members and articles that are consid-ered to be of international quality. The sociology area committee of the CAPES agency has made a strong movement to force the recognition that certain Portuguese language publications are of international quality. This introduces an endogenous definition of internationalization, rather than a purely exogenous one.

Given the arguments that have been put forward earlier in this paper, it is certainly not difficult for sociologists from other countries to under-stand what is at stake here, the movement to define Portuguese language publications as being of international quality is, of course, linked to the defense of language as a basis of the culture of the society which social scientists study and within which they must express themselves. How-ever, there is also another aim: CAPES evaluates all areas of science, re-sources can be allocated as a function of comparative evaluations of the “worth” of each institution and area of knowledge, and the principle measure of “worth” is international publication. In their search for re-sources and power, natural scientists try to impose a universal criterion of evaluation, where English-language publications are considered as inter-national, on all other areas of science. If Portuguese-language publica-tions are not considered “international,” social scientists would be attest-ing to their own inferiority relative to the natural sciences. It far easier for a natural scientist to submit publications making an instrumental use of English, because such sciences are typically far more formalized and socio-historical, and cultural context is far less important than in the so-cial sciences.

REDEFINING INTERNATIONALIZATION

We have just seen that the sociology area committee of CAPES has pro-duced a definition of internationalization that recognizes that publishing

Tom Dwyer98

in Portuguese is to be considered, in certain cases, an international activ-ity. This constitutes a political victory.

Until very recently, internationalization was defined as having links to, publications in and using research and teaching materials from wealthy Europe and North America (particularly the USA). More re-cently, Latin America has been newly defined as important, particularly in political sociology, where transitions towards democratic rule that oc-curred from the mid-1980s onwards meant that similar social and politi-cal processes were occurring in many countries simultaneously. Later, this intensified as, on the one hand, globalization, neo-liberalism, and the Washington Consensus were seen as imposing a certain sets of policies on most governments. Popular responses emerged within many of these societies to oppose the major forces criticized as seeking to impose ine-quality and cultural and institutional homogeneity on quite diverse popu-lations and to weaken governments’ capacity for autonomous action. However, another form of internationalization came through increasing regional exchanges, particularly in the Southern Cone, where the forma-tion of Mercosul, a common market, has generated international research agendas around many of the difficulties and challenges of economic inte-gration and the concomitant rise of social problems. Also, there have been increasing exchanges of students and university staff between these countries, and the Spanish language is being more frequently studied in Brazil (rather than improvised by mixing Portuguese and espanhol into the hybrid portunhol). In the Amazon region, the perception of the exis-tence of urgent problems such as environmental degradation, issues relat-ing to native cultures and their survival, drug trafficking, rising violence, development issues, and cross-border migration has led to a conscious-ness of the need to develop pan-Amazonian perspectives. Whilst the vast majority of the Amazon region’s area is located in Brazil, a large popula-tion lives in neighboring countries and has been traditionally studied by anthropologists. The rise of economic integration, modernization, and more recent forces linked to globalization is altering research dynamics. Official targeted support is serving to stimulate both Pan-Amazonian and Mercosul-oriented research.

Globalization seems for many to be associated with the inevitable rise of English as a world lingua franca. One of the reactions against this seeming inevitability has been the formation of a political alliance of lu-sophone (Portuguese speaking) countries. Beyond Brazil and Portugal, these countries include East Timor (which, on independence, rejected English as a possible national language, placing the Portuguese language at the heart of its national identity), Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Cape Verde. Official support for the devel-


opment of commerce and cultural exchange between lusophone countries has also extended into stimulus for scientific cooperation. In early Feb-ruary of 2009, the 10th edition of the bi-annual Congresso Luso-Afro-Brasileiro de Ciências Sociais was held in Braga, Portugal. While stud-ies in specialized areas such as violence and historical sociology occa-sionally have specific comparative dimensions, this conference is a point where a visible tendency can be seen to develop a common approach within the shadow of a linguistic community, a linguistic community which is international and cosmopolitan, uniting both rich and poor coun-tries, countries with populations with varying degrees of internal differen-tiation, and at various stages of development, with problems of war and violence, in a common reflection. It is still too early to speak of these congresses as space where, in the shadow provided by a common linguis-tic identity, which permits both affective and instrumental dimensions of communication to be united, “counter-hegemonic” intellectual dynamics can be developed. Such development is certainly a major bet of some who are most deeply involved in this movement. There is a growing con-sciousness that development will require stimulus for comparative re-search between lusophone countries, greater visibility of the community’s scientific journal Travessias, increased use by the countries of the Brazil-ian-based online journal and indexing system Scielo (www.scielo.br)12

and efforts to move towards institutionalizing lusophone social sciences. Indeed, there appears to be an increasing perception at government

level of the necessity to develop deeper interchange with other countries that employ Latin languages, especially Spanish, French, and Italian. There have recently been scientific meetings in this direction. Also, there have been efforts to bring together researchers specialized in Brazil under auspices that are different to that provided by the metropolitan-dominated conferences of the Latin American Studies Association and the Brazilian Studies Association.

Quite recently, South Africa has become a reference point for some Brazilian researchers. Our two countries have many apparently similar social dynamics: school failure, extreme social exclusion, policies de-signed to promote social integration, and extreme levels of violence. Academic relations between South African and Brazilian sociologists received initial early support and/or stimulus from the University of Michigan and the Ford Foundation. As contacts developed, perceptions

12 As we saw in note 7, one relevant development is that Scielo now publishes limited English-language online editions of some leading Brazilian Social Sci-ence journals.

Tom Dwyer100

grew of the existence of scientific problems that are common to both countries have emerged.

The recently formed group of Heads of State (or government) of India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) meets annually and has formed the IBSA trilateral development initiative. 13 The identity of this seemingly disparate group is that its members are unique in that they share large populations and areas, are developing countries, and have democratic governments. Cooperation has rapidly resulted in the signing of protocols to stimulate scientific research and in Brazil-specific research funds becoming available.

Over recent years, there has been much talk about the future world role to be played by a small group of previously subaltern or marginal-ized countries that have large territories and populations and considerable natural resources and will constitute not only large markets but will be important producer nations. Most frequently referred to as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) this loose and highly diverse group of countries is marked, for Brazilian researchers, by considerable deficit in both our knowledge and understanding. It is worthwhile noting that the concept of BRICS is sometimes elastic, in Brazil the “S” may be capital-ized to represent South Africa, and a “M” occasionally inserted to include Mexico. Indian sociologists talk of a possible future inclusion of Paki-stan should that country stabilize politically and become less hostile to the West. As these countries play an increasing role on the world stage in cultural, economic, and political terms, we can imagine that new tensions will occur between them and European and North American countries, tensions will emerge among them, and such tensions will produce new questions for sociological analysis.

Of great importance to contemporary Brazil are the increasing rela-tions with China. It is worthwhile noting the pioneering nature of the work of one of the founding fathers of Brazilian social sciences, Gilberto Freyre (2003), recently republished as a book under the title of China Tropical. He documented some aspects of China’s (and indeed the Ori-ent’s) historic influence on Brazil, which flowed from Portuguese-administered Macao via Goa and served to shape the country, including its customs, architecture, and lifestyles, until the 1850s, when new trading patterns led to a decline in this influence and the United States’s long rise to a hegemonic position in the region. A century later, he saw another type of approximation emerging, as, in the mid-twentieth century, Brazil-ian and Chinese xenophobia emerged in relation to dominant countries, and especially the USA. While the USA continues to be Brazil’s first

13 www.ibsa-trilateral.org


trading partner, a rise in economic exchanges has today pushed China into a position, entirely unimagined even a decade ago, as Brazil’s second trading partner. With this comes a need to build and disseminate an un-derstanding of Chinese culture in Brazil and vice versa. It is necessary to build capacities to investigate and understand the conflicts that will inevi-tably emerge as exchanges increase in many areas: immigration, leisure, cultural exchange, tourism, commerce, etc. Chinese sociologists express interest in learning about the extraordinary rapid processes of economic and social change that occurred in Brazil during the 20th century and spe-cifically how this had an impact on youth and also on government, such interest is linked to attempting to understand the changes their country is currently undergoing, which have few parallels in the history of the world. Common research problems will emerge from this process. My bet is that, should this happen, a new comparative dimension will be introduced into the sociology of both countries.

The rise of these nations as economic powers has, in Brazil, started to be associated with a change in perception of what is relevant for the in-ternationalization of Brazilian sociology and the social sciences more generally. Such a movement will take many years to build up, and cer-tainly we shall have to learn from our North American and European counterparts because their sociologies have had international ambitions for a lot longer than Brazil. In terms of academic traditions, linguistic skills, regular funding, and institution building they are certainly a far ahead of us. It is imperative for sociology to widen its scope and to build up a research dynamic that is increasingly South-South in nature. In this way, we shall be able to understand our development processes through the eyes of comparative research that are in dialogue with, but relatively autonomous from, the research dynamics based on a North-South logic that have dominated for so long. This is, in a way, what Raewyn Connell (2007) and Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses (2009), in spite of their differences, are talking about.

I must note that the role of the SBS in this fast changing arena cannot be omitted. It stimulates debates and encourages participation in interna-tional forums, be they the traditional international ones, regional, or linked to new global dynamics. Scientific societies have a responsibility to lead and to stimulate. At the same time as Brazil’s bi-annual national conferences always bring in some of the world’s leading sociologists to talk, today participants come from an increasing variety of countries and continents. Simultaneously, SBS is seen as having relevance to the agen-das beyond other Latin American developing countries. Normally, invi-tations to speak at conferences are made on an individual basis to promi-nent Northern scholars; in Brazil’s case some invitations are made in an

Tom Dwyer102

institutional manner, because many of our best sociologists are little known internationally (and frequently for the reasons exposed earlier on in this paper). While Brazil’s best sociologists are up-to date with inter-national debates and read these in a cosmopolitan manner, oral expression may be difficult. In the context of increasing formal international ex-changes it is my bet that recourse to translators will become necessary to guarantee that many of the most complex ideas, and contexts, be under-stood as clearly as possible.

However, the fact is that these new intellectual dynamics are already occurring. Brazilian social sciences must equip themselves to compre-hend the recent rise of Brazil to the status of a regional power and, as ex-pressed in the notion of the BRICs, to a more important player in a global sense. Through exposure to other systems of social dynamics, new ways of learning and new angles of vision will certainly develop, enriching our understanding of ourselves and social theory. One key aspect will be the development of a deeper understanding of other cultures and the proc-esses of change that are occurring outside of the countries that are today still referred to as “central.” Here we are not speaking so much of the internationalization of Brazilian sociology but of the formation of a new type of international sociology, one not envisageable before the building of international databases, air travel, Internet, and appropriate funding for comparative research.14 The process by which our discipline will be transformed is likely to be chaotic. Yet, sociologists will still be moti-vated by the search for truth about universal dynamics of social life, and oriented by a rereading of the classical and contemporary sociological traditions, this motivation will guide sociologists into an labyrinth where knowledge about the lives of social actors in many parts of the globe will no-longer be able to be ignored. The complex nature of our contempo-rary world marked by cultural conflicts, environmental change, the rise of new centers of power, increasing exchanges of information and, as of September 2008, by the collapse in the domination of a form of economic thinking which sought to radically separate the economic dimensions of life from its social and political ones, sets the stage upon which future efforts will be conducted. In such a context, sociologists will redefine the role and purposes of internationalized sociology.

14 Until very recently it was extremely difficult for Brazilian researchers to ob-tain financing for South-South research. The international efforts of the funding agencies, as occurs in many developing countries, were nearly all focused upon developing academic and research relations with Northern countries: the CAPES-COFECUB agreements with France, the many Brazilian cathedras in European universities, scholarship allocation to study in Northern hemisphere universities etc.


CONCLUSION

There is a tension inherent in the internationalization of Brazilian sociol-ogy that comes from, on the one hand a need to be seen and recognized in the centers that currently dominate world sociology, and on the other hand there is the imperative, propelled by globalization and supported by both the Brazilian government and committed researchers, to redefine international scientific relations in a way that is adequate to a new and changing international context. This latter effort raises a danger that is not present in the former; Brazilian sociology (and indeed social science) is small and has a strong commitment to being relevant within its own country, yet in this new effort, we may end up spreading ourselves far too thinly.

In the traditional centers of world power, the definitions and the crite-ria of excellence appear to be already defined: change will only be incre-mental; learn to play the game and your scientific work will can become recognized for what it is worth. Such a definition, which as we have seen serves as an obstacle to the development of an internationally recognized Brazilian sociology, will be redefined in a multi-polar world.

We Brazilian sociologists still have a great deal of work to do at home. Some of us seek international recognition in a traditional sense; however, members of the discipline are now deeply involved in a process of seeking to redefine what is international as what is relevant in the world viewed from a Brazil in interaction with a renewed sociological tradition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abreu, A. “A (Strong?) Voice from the South? Latin American Sociol-ogy Today.” Paper presented at the special session “Towards a Global Sociology: Learning from Regional Experiences” at the ISA World Congress of Sociology, Brisbane, 2002.

Abreu, A. “A Internacionalização da Ciência na América Latina e o Caribe: o Contexto Institucional.” Paper presented at the XIII Brazil-ian Sociology Congress, Recife, 2007.

Adorno, S. and T. Dwyer. “The Evaluation Culture and Postgraduate Sociology Programmes in Brazil.” Paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Durban, 2006

Aaltojarvi, I., Arminen, I., Auranen, O. and H.M. Pasanen. “Scientific Productivity, Web Visibility, and Citation Patterns in Sixteen Nordic Sociology Departments.” Acta Sociológica 51, no. 1 (2008): 5-22.

Tom Dwyer104

Brunner, J. and A. Bairros. “Inquisición, Mercado y Filantropía. Ciencias Sociales y Autoritarismo en Argentina, Brasil, Chile y Uruguay.” In As Ciências Sociais na América Latina em Perspectiva Comparada 1930-2005, edited by H. Trindade and G. de Sierra, pp 71-169. Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS, 2007. (Article orig. pub. 1987)

Cardoso, F.H. and E. Faletto. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. (Orig. pub. 1972)

Connell, R. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

Fernandes, A. M. “Science and Dependent Development: How Success-ful Is the Brazilian Case?” Paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Madrid, 1990.

Freyre, G. China Tropical. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, 2003.

Gibbs, W.W. “Lost Science in the Tropics.” American Scientist (August 1995): 76-83.

Liedke Filho, E. D. “A Sociologia no Brasil: História, Teorias, e Desafios.” Sociologias 14 (2005).

Ortiz, R. Mundialização, Saberes, e Crenças. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2006.

De Pina Cabral, J. “Língua e Hegemonia nas Ciências Sociais.” Análise Social 182 (2007): 233-237.

Porto, M. S. G. and T. Dwyer. “Development, Dictatorship, and Rede-mocratization: Trajectories of Brazilian Sociology.” In Sociological Traditions, edited by S. Patel. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, forthcom-ing.

De Sousa Santos, B. and M. P. Meneses. Epistemologias do Sul. Coimbra: Almedina, 2009.

Schwartzman, S. “Catching Up in Science and Technology: Self-Reliance or Internationalization?” Paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld, 1994.

Touraine, A. “Social Knowledge and the Multiplicity of Languages and Cultures.” Report presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Montreal, 1998.

Trindade, H. “Ciências Sociais no Brasil em Perspectiva: Fundação, Consolidação e Expansão.” In As Ciências Sociais na América Latina em Perspectiva Comparada 1930-2005, edited by H. Trindade and G. de Sierra, pp 71-169. Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS, 2007.

The Dialogue between Criminology and the South’s Sociology of Violence 105

The Dialogue between Criminology and the South’s Sociology of Violence:

The Policing Crisis and Alternatives José-Vicente Tavares dos Santos, Federal University of Rio

Grande do Sul, Brazil

Since the 1980s, the structural changes of the capitalist mode of produc-tion have produced a crime metamorphosis, the internationalization of criminal organizations, and the social fabrication of violence. After the “Age of Extremes” (Hobsbawm 1994), we might define the first period of the twenty-first century, beginning in 1991, as the period of the Worldiza-tion Process.1 It can be characterized by an expansion of capitalistic ac-tivities, global crisis, and the culture of post-modernity. This new period can be summed up as the age of late modernity.2

The last three decades, or late modernity, is a time of “liquid fear,” because “fears are many and variable. People of different social, gender and age categories are haunted by their own; there are also fears that we all share – in whatever part of the globe we happen to have been born or have chosen (or been forced) to live” (Bauman 2007: 20).

The world panorama is thus marked by social issues which express themselves in articulated forms, but which manifest themselves in differ-ently across societies. The present period is characterized by a combina-tion of various elements: “the disembeddedness of everyday life, the awareness of pluralism of values, and an individualism which presents the achievement of self realization as an ideal” (Young 2007: 2). In late modernity, society and contemporary states have difficulty coping with the spread of diffuse violence (Giddens 1996). The social roots of these acts of diffuse violence appear to be based on the processes of social fragmentation: “the desegregation of the organizing principles of solidar-

1 The terms “worldization” and “globalization” are used in this article (the distinction is an established one in Spanish, Portuguese, and French) to imply two different social processes. “Globalization” means the internationalization of the world economic process. “Worldization” is used to underline the social phenomena created by economic globaliza-tion.2 See Tavares dos Santos (2002).

José-Vicente Tavares dos Santos106

ity, the crisis of the traditional conception of social rights to provide a framework for thinking about the excluded” (Rosanvallon 1995: 9).

“Postmodern reality assumes the existence of insuperable conflicts” (Bauman 1998: 32). Indeed, plurality, discontinuity, and dispersal are aspects of advanced capitalism’s cultural logic. What occur are the phe-nomena of “disaffiliation” and a breakdown of relations of otherness, diluting the bond between oneself and the other (Castel 1998; Bauman 1998; Jameson 1996). Moreover, it is a society “where both inclusion and exclusion occur concurrently – a bulimic society where massive cultural inclusion is accompanied by systematic structural exclusion” (Young 2007: 32). Changes are taking place in social institutions, such as the family, the school, the factory, religion, and the criminal justice system (the police, courts, mental asylums, judiciaries, prisons), transforming processes of socialization, as we go through a process of crisis and dein-stitutionalization.

A worldwide landscape of insecurity emerges: “vertigo is the malaise of late modernity: a sense of insecurity, of insubstantiality, and of uncer-tainty, a whiff of chaos and a fear of falling” (Young 2007: 12). Conse-quently, late modern societies produce transformations in crime and in forms of violence. The phenomena of diffuse violence acquire new con-tours and spread throughout society. The multiplicity of forms of diffuse violence in contemporary societies, such as violent crime, social exclu-sion, gender violence, acts of racism, and school violence, is expressed in a microphysics of violence (Tavares dos Santos 2009).3

Nevertheless, crime has changed in late modernity. According to Jock Young, the definition of crime has become problematic for several reasons: 1) today, aggressors are multiple, so the likelihood of becoming a victim has come to seem normal; 2) the causes of crime are also wide-spread; crime is part of the continuum of social normality, since its rela-tionship with society is constitutive; 3) moreover, the space for action is both public and private, and it occurs in social spaces that are in dispute – residences, neighborhoods, plazas, private mass properties or streets; 4) the relationship between the aggressors and the victims is complex – they may be strangers or intimates, outsiders or members of the in-group; 5) social control over crime is spread over multiple government agencies and informal actions, including a strong presence of private security; 6) the efficacy and efficiency of formal social control are problematic; 7) finally, the public’s reaction is oriented by an irrational fear of crime and a moral panic (Young 1999: 46). In this social world, “the dangerous and

3 This notion is analogous of Foucault’s concept of the microphysics of power (Foucault 1994: 38-9).


oppressive trends in crime and crime control that have occurred in the last three decades are fundamentally rooted in the political economy of neo-liberalism policies, and its cultural and social concomitants” (Reiner 2008: 13). It can be explained by the fact that “neoliberalism is associated with much greater inequality, long-term unemployment, and social exclusion” (107).

We are in a civilizational malaise, which has shifted the focus of con-temporary society to an obsessive preoccupation with individualism and personal safety. Social inequality has become an important concept with which to explain the social roots of this diffuse violence. For this reason, we must answer the following question: what kinds of processes produce the global outcomes of inequality that we are observing and experiencing? (Therborn 2006)

Young people are particularly affected by the emphasis on individu-alism, the narcissistic cult of individual freedom, all of which stimulates a “winners” and “losers culture,” and which breaks the bonds of sociability. However, youth relate with violence in an ambivalent manner: sometimes as victims, and other times, as aggressors. In contemporary society, they have fought to cohabit as well as to overcome violence. In fact, “the le-thal combination is relative deprivation and individualism” (Young 1999: 48).

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY

In a political context where the influence of the USA and the UK, neolib-eral economics, and neoconservative politics is strong, the neoliberal model of coping with crime has created what we call “administrative criminology.” This model “wanted to hold out deterrent penalties that would be rigorously enforced and tough enough to act as real disincen-tives to potentials offenders. Better, more vigorous policing and harsher, more certain punishments were his preferred solution: more deterrence and control, not more welfare” (Garland 2001: 59).

This orientation was compound by several elements. The right realistapproach has two dimensions: “first, it tends to take an individualized view of crime, looking for explanations in individual choices rather than in broader social or structural conditions; second, right realist responses to the crime problem tend to be coached in terms of greater controls and enhanced punishments” (Newburn 2007: 271).

The right realist position takes conventional legal definitions of crime for granted, ignores the importance of the socioeconomics context in


explaining crime, even translating its principles into genetic and indi-vidualists theories, and proposes that crime is caused by a lack of self-control. It overemphasizes control and containment, accepts the fear of crime as rational, and prioritizes order through deterrent and retributive means of crime control. Indeed, “in the view of the right realists the breakdown of moral values and social controls associated with permis-siveness was central to understanding rising crime rates” (271).

Additionally, administrative criminology appeals to some concepts of rational choice theory. Rational choice theory is premised “on the idea of ‘expected utility,’ assuming that individuals proceed on the basis of maximizing profits and minimizing losses. A rational choice theory al-lows the difficult question of criminal motivation to be reformulated as a calculation – a balancing of cost and benefits” (NEWBURN 2007: 280-1).

Another scholar, Clarke explains that “…the rational choice model regards criminal acts as calculated, utility maximizing conduct, resulting from a straightforward process of individual choice. This model repre-sents the problem of crime as matter of supply and demand, with punish-ment operating as a price mechanism” (quoted in Garland 2001: 130). Moreover, administrative criminology emphasizes control theories (15): “Hirschi states that the common property of control theories at their sim-plest level is their assumption that delinquency acts result when an indi-vidual’s bond to society is weak or broken” (Downes and Rock 2007: 202). In a later version, Hirschi and Gottfredson proposed that “crime…stems from low self-control: it provides an immediate, easy and simple gratification of desires that is attractive to those who cannot or will not defer enjoyment. It can be intrinsically pleasurable because it involves the exercise of stealth, agility, deception, or power” (Downes and Rock 2007: 202; Reiner 2008: 89).

Finally, there is the situational control approach which emphasizes “the purely technical, cost benefit ratio aspects of crime: the opportunity for crime available in the environment and the risks attached to criminal activity” (Downes and Rock 2007: 209). Indeed, this “new administrative criminology with its actuarial stance…reflects the rise of risk manage-ment as a solution to the crime problem” (Young 1999: 27). So, “an actu-arial approach is adopted which is concerned with the calculation of risk rather than either individual guilt or motivation” (45). In others words, “the actuarial stance is calculative of risk, it is wary and probabilistic, it is not concerned with causes but with probabilities, not with justice but with harm minimization, it does not seek a world free of crime but one where the best practices of damage limitation have been put in place; not a uto-pia but a series of gated havens in a hostile world” (66).


As Garland (2001) affirms, this administrative criminology is a “new criminology of everyday life” premised on a “set of cognate theoretical frameworks that includes routine activity theory, crime as opportunity, lifestyle analysis, situational crime prevention, and some versions of ra-tional choice theory” (128). He continues: “… the new approach identi-fies recurring criminal opportunities and seeks to govern them by devel-oping situational controls that will make them less tempting or less vul-nerable. Criminogenic situations, ‘hot products’, ‘hot spots’ these are the new objects of control” (129). Afterwards, “… the new criminology of everyday life approaches social order as a problem of system integration. (…) For these frameworks, social order is a matter of aligning and inte-grating the diverse social routines and institutions that compose modern society” (183).

The administrative criminology of neoliberalism period built up, dur-ing the Reagan’s rule in the US (1981-1988) and the Thatcher mandate (1979-1990) in the UK, a consensus about crime control with five core elements: crime is public enemy number 1; there is an individual but not a social responsibility for crime; victims are more important than offend-ers; crime control works; and a high crime society is normal” (cf. REINER 2008: 124-129). Since the 1980s, this “culture of control” has been exported around the world (GARLAND 2001).

THE “BROKEN WINDOWS” POLICING MODEL IN LATIN AMERICA

During the 1990s, the international transfer of information concerning policing models from the US to Latin America had many forms of influ-ence. Most notably, consultancy security firms were created and projects financed by the US government were implemented. We shall discuss each of these in the following sections.

Consultancy Security Firms

The beginning was the Manhattan Institute created in 1978 as a think-tank organization. According to its website, “The Manhattan Institute has been an important force in shaping American political culture and devel-oping ideas that foster economic choice and individual responsibility. We have supported and publicized research on our era's most challenging public policy issues: taxes, health care, energy, the legal system, policing, crime, homeland security, urban life, education, race, culture, and many


others. Our work has won new respect for market oriented policies and helped make reform a reality” (Manhattan Institute).

The first famous work published by the Manhattan Institute was the book by Charles Murray entitled Losing Ground in 1984. Tom Wolfe (2003) reports that

the triumph of all triumphs was the now famous ‘Broken Windows’ strategy for reducing crime in big cities by first cracking down on the quality of life misdemeanors that create an atmosphere of lawlessness. Criminologist George Kelling and the famous political scientist James Q. Wilson introduced the concept in an article in the March 1982 Atlan-tic Monthly. (…)The quarterly's Summer 1992 issue ran an interview by Kelling with New York's young Transit Police Chief William J. Bratton about putting Broken Windows to the test in New York’s sub-ways. That followed a forum called ‘Rethinking New York,’ starring Kelling. (…). Rudy Giuliani came early stayed late and took notes. He wanted to run for mayor in 1993.

George Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote that “[t]o the extent that this is the case, police administrators will continue to concentrate police personnel in the highest crime areas (though not necessarily in the areas most vulnerable to criminal invasion), emphasize their training in the law and criminal apprehension (and not their training in managing street life), and join too quickly in campaigns to decriminalize "harmless" behavior (though public drunkenness, street prostitution, and pornographic dis-plays can destroy a community more quickly than any team of profes-sional burglars). Above all, we must return to our long abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police and the rest of us ought recognize the importance of maintain-ing, intact, communities without broken windows” (1982: 10).

To work in Latin America, they organized the “Inter American Policy Exchange” so as “to foster increased contact, collaboration, and coopera-tion among institutions and individuals in the Americas that will result in benefits for both hemispheres. (…) The Inter American Policy Exchange will build on the Manhattan Institute’s previous work in the countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile and includes an expansion of our work to Mexico and Venezuela.” A key project of this program was concerned with crime and policing: “On numerous occasions we have brought Insti-tute Senior Fellow George Kelling and former New York City Police


Commissioner William Bratton to Latin America to discuss the reforms they helped institute in New York City that have resulted in a 65% reduc-tion in serious crimes over the past eight years. (…) In addition to large conferences attended by hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people, these trips always include working meetings with police chiefs and top government officials in each country. These meetings have now led to formal consulting arrangements with governments in such places as Bue-nos Aires, Argentina, Caracas, Venezuela and Fortaleza, Brazil to help reform the way policing is done in Latin America” (Manhattan Institute).

Nevertheless, the message was spread not only to the South, but also to Europe. Young reports trenchantly on a seminar at Westminster pro-moted by the Institute for Economic Affairs, in London, in July of 1997, addressed by Bratton which provoked mixed feelings: “The audience was, to say the least, disappointed: they had come to hear that the simple and the dramatic would work but had heard largely a story of common sense laced with self-congratulation” (1999: 124).

Today, the main noticeable consultancy security firms are The Brat-ton Group L.L.C., an international police-management consulting firm created in 1996, and the Giuliani Partners L.L.C., founded in January 2002. These organizations are global security consulting firms, that origi-nated from the New York City Police Department when Major Giuliani chose William J. Bratton as New York City Police Commissioner (1994-1996). Bratton coordinated a successful managerial reform, which was inspired by J. Wilson’s “broken windows” approach, but was also based on the fight against police corruption and the support of a dozen youth-focused social projects.

This model of policing began to be exported to several countries. In Britain, for example, they are used by the Home Office (Young 1999). In addition, many foreign delegations came to the NYPD to be informed about the model (SOARES 2000: 350-376; Maranhão Costa 2004: 145-198). The same year Bratton was removed from his position. Immediately, he founded The Bratton Group L.L.C., an international police-management consulting firm. “From 1996 on, Chief Bratton worked in the private sector, where he formed his own private consulting company, The Bratton Group, L.L.C., working on four continents, including exten-sive consulting in South America” (“Los Angelos”).

Bratton explains that

Latin America is the new frontier of reform for police work. Having taken part in reforming U.S. police departments, including the New York City Police Department, in the 1980s and 1990s, we see enormous potential for the transformation of policing institutions in South Amer-


ica, Central America and Mexico that badly need the shakeup. The good news is that with major efforts from government, business and citizens, the turnaround is happening now. (…) Yet, as consultants in the region over the past five years, we have seen many positive signs. Political leaders notably Alfredo Pena, mayor of Caracas, and Tasso Jereissati, Governor of Ceara State in northern Brazil has made pro-found changes in their police departments. (…) Much of Latin Amer-ica's policing problem is a problem of scale. The region's cities have grown and changed rapidly, but police departments have not grown and changed with them. (…). The military model followed by so many Latin American police agencies further compounds the problem. Ac-customed to military style operations, Latin American police have de-veloped little competence in two essential police functions: preventive patrol and investigation. (Bratton and Andrews 2001).

Since October 2002, Bratton has been the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The other global consultancy security firm is Giuliani Partners L.L.C., founded by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, in January 2002. The firm’s mission expresses commitment “to helping leaders solve critical strategic issues, accelerate growth, and enhance the reputation and brand of their organizations in the context of strongly held values.” One of the five principles of the firm is “Preparedness”: “The public and private sectors face a multitude of risks and challenges stem-ming from terrorism, crime, natural disasters, market performance, and countless other factors that threaten an organization’s ability to survive. Governments are already taking steps to protect civilians and businesses from the effects of a variety of threats. The private sector can do more to prepare to secure its personnel, assets, and future. Relentless preparation develops a culture of responsibility and awareness” (“Giuliani Partners”).

The firm has advised business and government agencies on security, leadership, and other issues, in the US as well as in Trinidad and Mexico City, in 2003. The New York Times reported in 2003 that

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and possibly the world’s best paid crime fighting consultant, ended his first working tour of Mexico City today, after a 36-hour whirlwind of mean streets and chic suites. (…) Mr. Giuliani will seek ways to cut crime in Mexico City, and he promises ideas in four months, results in four years. His visit was the talk of the town, but not so much for his thoughts on civi-lizing the capital. It was the $4.3 million his firm is pocketing that at-tracted attention, along with the security cordon that surrounded him:


about 400 officers, a force far greater than that usually accorded foreign potentates, presidents or pop stars. (…). His promise to come up with crime-busting concepts is being taken with a grain of salt in Mexico City, by citizens and the police alike. (Weiner 2003)

The main orientation of these consulting security firms is to propose “the policies and practices through which American interests and priori-ties are exported around the globe.” But, “the fact that several of the most prominent of these firms so aggressively promote the ‘New York Police Department model’ is also controversial. This model is the approach to crime and disorder taken in New York City under Mayor Giuliani based on a particular interpretation of ‘broken windows policing.’ This model justified especially aggressive law enforcement approach to a number of urban social problems. It is this law enforcement approach that has been exported by leading transnational security consulting firms” (Mitchell and Beckett 2008). In fact, these firms have advised many big cities in Latin America, including Mexico City, Mexico Caracas, Venezuela, For-taleza and Ceara, Brazil and Santiago, Chile.

In the Brazilian case, the Governor of the State of Ceara, Tasso Jere-issati, made a contract with the “First Security Consulting,” coordinated by Mr. Bratton, in 1997. The project’s purpose was to foster the activities of police integration, with an urban design of “models districts of public security” where all the states’ agencies could work together (Barreira 2004: 10).

The “law and order” discourse, in particular, New York’s “zero toler-ance” policy had been imported by conservative political sectors in many Latin American cities, but only in reference to reinforcement of police presence on the streets, the fight against petty crime, but without any attempt to recreate the entire network of associative services which was a part of the original program in New York.

An evaluation of these international policing policies concluded that “[t]he overarching goal of American assistance to foreign police is clear – to safeguard the United States from criminal activity from abroad.” How-ever, the theory of international cooperation seems very clear to Bayley (2006). According to him, “[i]t is based on the theory that crime is most effectively controlled by punishment. American programs give hardly any attention to alternative strategies…” (128-129).

United States Government International Programs

The relationship between the US’s main political agenda and the build up of policing in Latin America has been well documented since the late


twentieth century (Huggins 1998). However, over the last three decades, it is relevant to note the application of US political interests in distinct levels of regional power, not necessarily due to the political demands of the foreign country receiving these programs (Bayley 2006). On the other hand, there is bilateral cooperation over the “Drug War,” specifically Plan Colombia (since 2002) and the Merida Plan (since 2008).4 In addi-tion, policing schools have been established abroad, a strategy that merits detailed discussion here.

The International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) was created in 1995, by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), an interagency law enforcement training organization that has serviced over 87 US federal agencies since 1970, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since 2003 (“Federal Law”). Several academies have been established around the world including in Budapest, Hungary (1995), in Bangkok, Thailand (1999), in Gaborone, Botswana (2001), in San Salvador, El Salvador (2005), and a Regional Training Center in Lima, Peru (2005).

The FLETC mission is to “train those who protect our homeland” by “provid[ing] fast, flexible, and focused training to secure and protect America. They share, for example, the United Kingdom Home Office orientations of “Problem Oriented Approach to Crime Reduction”: “The PSU [Police Support Unit] trains their police force and analysts to look at the cause of the problem for the purposes of reducing the opportunity for the problem to reoccur” (“London Metropolitan Police”).

In addition, the FLETC uses SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment), a problem solving model used in these type of strate-gies. The International Law Enforcement Academy is dedicated “to sup-port emerging democracies, help protect U.S. interests through interna-tional cooperation and to promote social, political and economic stability by combating crime.” The ILEA’s objectives are “to support regional and local criminal justice institutional and law enforcement building; to facili-tate strengthened partnerships among countries in regions served by the ILEAS aiming to address the problems with drugs and crime; to provide high quality training and technical assistance in formulating strategies and tactics for foreign law enforcement personnel; to improve coordina-tion, foster cooperation, and, as appropriate, to facilitate the harmoniza-tion of law enforcement activities within regions, in a manner compatible with the U.S. interests; to foster cooperation by foreign law enforcement

4 Plan Colombia’s full title is the Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State and is described at http://www.usip.org/library/pa/colombia/adddoc/plan_colombia_101999.html. The Me-rida Initiative is described at http://search.state.gov.


authorities with U.S. law enforcement entities engaged in coping with the organized crime and the other criminal investigations; to assist foreign law enforcement entities in the professionalization of their forces in a cost effective manner; and to build linkages between U.S. law enforcement entities and future criminal justice leadership in participating countries, as well as among regional participants with one another.” For example, the San Salvador Academy “has as its objectives, supporting criminal justice institution building and strengthening partnerships among the regions' law enforcement community. The training focus is on transnational crimes, human rights and the rule of law with emphasis on trafficking in narcotics, trafficking in persons, terrorism, money laundering and other financial crimes” (“Federal Law”).

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA: HOW TO OVERCOME ADMINISTRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY

Latin American societies show an increasing structural form of violence that demands a new framework for the sociology of violence and policing. The globalization process, particularly neoliberal policies has led to the creation of social structures determined by exclusion, and has provoked new social conflicts and sometimes posed constraints on the consolida-tion of democracy in this part of the periphery of the capitalist world sys-tem (Tavares dos Santos 2002: 123).

Violence as a new global social issue is provoking changes in the state. We are seeing contemporary forms of social control having the characteristics of a repressive social control. The “penal social control state” is growing more attractive in late modern societies, and it is ac-companied by a systematic appeal to the use of illegal and illegitimate violence (Melossi 1992; Pavarini and Pegoraro 1995; Wacquant 1998: 7-26).

A general crisis of institutional social control has supplemented the democratic transition processes in Latin America. This crisis has included police brutality, difficulty in accessing the justice system, the social se-lectivity of criminal justice, and prison conditions; in sum, it has entailed a loss of legitimacy of formal social control (Pinheiro et al 2000). These elements of the culture of control in Latin America have many dimen-sions and characteristics. First, there is the social production of the para-dox of insecurity such that “[a]n increasing obsession with security prac-tices and paraphernalia, even if successful in reducing crime, can exacer-bate the sense of insecurity by acting as reminders of danger” (Reiner 2008: 115). Second, there is extreme brutality and corruption in police


departments in peripheral countries of the capitalist world system (Chevi-gny 1995). Third, there has been an expansion of private security firms, especially ones that do vigilante work in places of “mass private prop-erty.” Fourth, there is currently mass imprisonment, mainly of young men who belong to the “underclass” or to stigmatized ethnic minorities (Wac-quant 2000). Police officers’ education and their tendency to discriminate on the basis of gender and ethnicity continues to be a huge problem today. Last, but certainly not least, many have observed police officers’ lack of respect for human rights in their everyday practices.

Finally, there is the selectivity of the judicial system, the barbarity of the prisons as atrocious warehouses for men (increasingly becoming an issue as well as for female offenders), the new forms of electronic vigi-lance that threaten democracy and individual and collective freedom (Ta-vares dos Santos 2000; Wacquant 2000). In Argentina and Brazil, there is a discrepancy in the justice system, from the criminal legislation to the prison system, problems in the functioning of institutions responsible for preventing and coping with crime, and the increase in crime control, in other words, in “the loss of legitimacy of the system, its high degree of selectivity and authoritarianism” (Azevedo 2008).

THE PARADOX OF ABSTRACT CRIMINOLOGICAL MODELS AND EMPIRIC CHAOS: THE POLICING CRISIS IN

LATE MODERNITY

The crisis of policing is configured analytically by a series of theoretical and political insufficiencies, and constitutes one of the new global social issues that has manifested itself in several geographic zones. In the U.S., the crisis of legitimacy began in the 1970s. According to Weisburd and Braga (2006), “[t]his was the case in part because of the tremendous so-cial unrest that characterized the end of the previous decade. Race riots in American cities, and growing opposition, especially among younger Americans, to the Vietnam War, often placed the police in conflict with the young and with minorities” (4).

In the United Kingdom, by the 1980s, “the police were subject to a storm of political conflict and controversy. During the 1984 -1985 min-ers’ strike they were in equal measure reviled by the Left and revered by the Right. (…). In the early 1990s, there was a growing consensus be-tween political and police elites about the need to reform policing in a community-oriented direction, aiming to ensure efficiency and quality of service” (Reiner 2000: IX).


In Latin America, the political difficulties of policing results from the processes of democratic transition, during the last twenty years: the ef-forts to institutionally reconstruct law enforcement in the post-dictatorship era (Frubling and Candina 2001).

The configuration of the police issue as one of the new global social questions can be witnessed in the record of several international meetings, ranging from the Human Rights Conference (in Vienna, in 1993, pro-moted by the UN) to the IX World Social Forum (in Belem do Para, Bra-zil, in January 2009).

The debates have centered on the following themes: transformations in contemporary society that began in 1990 with the changes in the forms of crime, including the expansion of diffuse violence and the spread of violence against women, children, old people and ethnic minority and sexual groups; the violation of human rights and the victimization of the poor, the young, and ethnic minorities; the strengthening of civil society and the involvement of local collectivity with human rights and the right to security; and the consequences of these changes on police organiza-tions. The aspects of police organizations that have been affected by these transformations include police management, the experiences of commu-nity police and charges of police brutality, the education of police officers, and the new consortia with universities (Tavares dos Santos 2009).

In sum, these conferences have reached conclusions that are critical of authoritarian and violent police conduct and endorsing the political intention to move towards other kinds of policing.

The age of late modernity has shown an increasing crisis of policing (Reiner 2000: 216; Wright 2002; Bayley 1994). An important piece of evidence for this crisis is the fact that “[o]n the one hand, extensive mal-practice has begun to undermine the status and effectiveness of the pro-fessional public police. On the other hand, a more community-based po-lice seem as yet unable to meet the needs of a diversity of cultures or to be able to control extremes of deviance”(Wright 2002: 16; see also Bayley 1994: 11).

In this context, it is quite important to summarize the debate about the four police models that are in dispute in the contemporary field of social control and policing.

Community policing involves strategies of decentralized action that enable police to work locally with problems and solutions, focusing on social integration and mediation of interpersonal conflicts on a local level (Kádár 2001, point 8; Comité Europeén 2000: 150, 144; Reiner 2000: 10; Young 1999; Weisburd and Braga 2006: 27-73). According to Bailey, community policing aims to prevent crime. Policing is done by a “neighborhood police officer,” who would be “community based in a


double sense.” First, “they would be based in communities, rather than entering them episodically in response to calls for service.” Moreover, “the problems they handle would be those based on community condi-tions” (Bayley 1994: 147; see also Dias Neto 2000).

Management theory is premised on the ideas of “total quality” bor-rowed from the business principles of management for the “new public management” (Wright 2002: 160 - 166). Here, the orientation of the po-lice work is different, because “the adoption of the language of consum-erism in late modern policing is already clear, through the discourse of ‘services’… Police carry out surveys mainly to establish customer satis-faction” (Wright 2002: 174). Frequently, this approach was completed with “third-party policing” (Weisburd and Braga 2006: 191-221).

Tough police confirms a “law and order” point of view about policing in the late modernity societies: “The nubs of my conclusion are that all the reform initiatives of recent years have been vitiated by a failure to reject the ‘law and order’ framework, and to recognize the inherent limi-tations of the policing. They have been fatally damaged by government policies which aggravated unemployment and exclusion, especially among the young and ethnic minorities, creating problems of policing in a new and growing underclass” (Reiner,2000: 10). It means the demand for a tough police, directed by the notion “zero tolerance” in North Amer-ica, Latin America and Europe (Reiner 2000: 1112; Comité Europeén 2000: 144; Kádár 2001: 9-10; Bayley 1994: 143; Young 1999: 123-124; Weisburd and Braga 2006: 77-114). Indeed, in New York City, the crime mapping and the statistical analyses used by the police – the COMP-STAT – became a global innovation in police management (Weisburd and Braga 2006: Part VII, p. 267-301).

The Citizenship Police: Late modern policing is concerned with peacekeeping, conflict management, criminal investigation, risk man-agement, and the promotion of community justice (Wright 2002: XIII, 177). Police organizations sometimes use new approaches to better their relationship, communication, and reciprocity with civil society (Wright 2002: 175). This model necessarily respects the lawful democratic state, approving “professional rules” for the police who keep the balance be-tween “freedom and security” (Kádár 2001: point 3, 7; Comité Europeén 2000: 13, 144, 150; see also Bauman 2006).

We could then think about the construction of a world citizenship, oriented to the prevention and eradication of forms of diffuse violence and the construction of another ideal type of police, the Citizenship Po-lice.

The feature of the reform being discussed includes accountability to the community, proximity, social conflict mediation, and shapes the field


of a democratic social control (Rolim 2006). This is a social field in which different agents of social control participate (police officers, judges, lawyers, prison managers, social scientists, and journalists). They share their theoretical, technical, and political stands in order to develop the practices, the forms of police organizations, and the right to security in the new century (Tavares dos Santos 2004: 89-106).

THE SOCIOLOGY OF VIOLENCE AND THE ALTERNATIVES OF POLICING

“The crisis in criminology is a crisis of modernity” (Young 1999: 32), derived from five majors challenges: “the rise in the crime rate; the reve-lation of hitherto invisible victims; the problems of what is crime nowa-days; the growing awareness of the universality of crime and the selectiv-ity of justice; and the problematization of punishment and culpability” (34).

Arguably, there has been a change in contemporary sociological thought which aims to provide explanations for and solve social prob-lems of our times. Such a trend is particularly notable in the sociology of violence in France (Wievorka 2004), the US (Collins 2008), and strongly in Latin America (Adorno 1999; Zaluar 2004; Misse 2006; Grossiporto 2006; Barreira 2008; Tavares dos Santos 2009). These sociological tradi-tions combine empirical research, theoretical explanations, and social commitment.

This heritage is an intellectual work about modes of domination, so-cial control, social conflicts, and about the invention of new social institu-tions. Consequently, we would like to contribute to the sociology of vio-lence, while also fostering a critical approach that could help to go be-yond the fears of late modernity.

The emergence of collective action and institutional initiatives is the expression of a movement against violence. That movement has been, on the one hand, a multiplication of plans to prevent violence and reduce violent crime, viewed as new alternatives for public security policies capable of guaranteeing the citizens’ right to security. On the other hand, it is the expression of a collaborative effort between public universities and the state which has been advantageous, indicating a movement to-wards the transformation of the curricula, the content, and the conceptu-alization of the police officer’s role.

Thus, in Latin America, certain processes are evident: a) the crisis of effectiveness and legitimacy faced by the police but which has not elic-ited any reform initiatives (Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Ecua-


dor); b) the creation of new police institutions in countries that have suf-fered civil wars (such as in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua); par-tial reforms in Argentina (Província of Buenos Aires), Uruguay, and Co-lombia; communitarian police initiatives (in Chile and Brazil); programs of police education organized by public universities (as in Brazil, Argen-tina, and Província of Buenos Aires ) (Tavares dos Santos 2009; Dam-mert and Bailey 2005; Bobbea 2003; Brinceno Leon 2002; Tagle 2002; Coronado, Rivelois and Moloeznik 2004; Arcon 2003; Chevigny 1995; Cels 2004; Pegoraro 1999; Frubling and Candina 2001, 2004; Gabaldon and Birbeck 2006; Carranza 1997; Huggins 1998; Soares 2000; Maran-hão Costa 2004; Pinheiro, Mendez and O’Donnell 2000; Quintana Ta-borda 2005).

In other words, in the worldization framework, the emergence of the concept of citizen security assumes the social construction of a democ-ratic, nonviolent, and transcultural police organization, which returns to the objective of policing as part of a democratic governmentality. There is a visibility to and a conceptualization of the importance of social strug-gles against the worldization of injustice, as a form of resistance. These small scale and plural struggles also have a positive dimension as well, for they are negations of the forms of exercise of domination. We find new agents of resistance; the social movements confront the centrality of state power over social space-time, but in doing so, these movements affirm the cartography of small experiences in search of a rearrangement of the social world. As IX World Social Forum stated in Belem do Para, Brazil, February 2009: “another world is possible” for a “good living.”

So, Latin American societies should implement a policing that is concerned with the practices of emancipation, and that communicates, in everyday life, with the practices of social groups, of all genders, ethnic origins, and ages. The noteworthy theme is to include the collective secu-rity of citizens in a complex of civil, political, and social rights.

The emergence of a notion of citizenship police, within the perspec-tive of worldization, entails the social construction of a policing oriented to human dignity and equity, on a worldwide scale. Citizenship policing could be a mode of participation in the collective fabric of the sociologi-cal imagination about violence and policing in the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, S. “Violência e Civilização.” In A Sociologia para o Século XXI edited by J. V. Tavares dos Santos and A. Gugliano, pp. 77-106. Pelotas, Brazil: EDUCAT, 1999.


Barreira, C. Cotidiano Despedaçado: Cenas de uma Violência Difusa.São Paulo, Brazil: Pontes, 2008.

Barreira, C., et al. Questão de Segurança. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Relume Dumará, 2004.

Bauman, Z. O Mal Estar da Pós-Modernidade. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Jorge Zahar, 1998.

-----. Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity, 2006. Bayley, D. Police for the Future. New York: Oxford University Press,

1994. -----. Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Bobbea, L. Entre Crimen y el Castigo: Seguridad Ciudadana y Control

Democrático en America Latina y el Caribe. Caracas, Venezuela: Nueva Sociedad, 2003.

Bourdieu, P. Raisons Pratiques: Sur la Théorie de L'action. Paris, France: Seuil, 1994.

Bratton, W. and W. Andrews. “Driving Out the Crime Wave: The Police Methods that Worked in New York City Can Work in Latin Amer-ica.” July 23, 2001. http://www.manhattaninstitute.org (accessed Au-gust 1, 2009).

Briceno L. R., ed. Violencia, Sociedad, y Justicia en America Latina.Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, 2002.

Carranza, E. Delito y Seguridad de los Habitantes. México: Siglo XXI, 1997.

Carrion, F., ed. Seguridad Ciudadana: Espejismo o Realidad? Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO, 2002.

Castel, R. As Metamorfoses da Questão Social. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1998.

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS). Políticas de Seguridad Ciudadana y Justicia Penal. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CELS, 2004.

Chevigny, P. Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas. New York: New Press, 1995.

Collins, R. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Comité Europeén pour les Problèmes Criminels. Les Pouvoirs et Responsabilités de la Police dans une Société Démocratique.Strasbourg: Conseil d´Europe, 2000.

Coronado, J., J. Rivelois, and M.P. Moloeznik. Criminalización de los Poderes, Corrupción y Tráfico de Drogas. Guadalajara, Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2004.


Dammert, L. and J. Bailey. “Police Force Reform and Military Participa-tion against Delinquency.” Revista Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad1(Jan./June 2005): 133-152.

Dias Neto, T. Policiamento Comunitário e Controle sobre a Polícia: a Experiência Norte-Americana. São Paulo: IBCCRIM, 2000.

Downes, D. M. and P. Rock. Understanding Deviance: a Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule Breaking. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Elias, N. O Processo Civilizador: Uma História dos Costumes, Vol. I. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1990.

Elias, N. O Processo Civilizador: Formação do Estado e Civilização, Vol. II. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1993.

“Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.” http://www.fletc.gov (ac-cessed August 1, 2009).

Foucault, M. Dits et Ecrits. Paris, France: Gallimard, 1994. Frubling, H and A. Candina. Policía, Sociedad y Estado: Modernización

y Reforma Policial en America del Sul. Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo (CED), 2001.

-----. Polícia, Participación Ciudadana y Reformas a la Policía en América del Sur. Santiago de Chile, Chile: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo (CED), 2004.

Gabaldon, L. G. and C. H. Birbeck. Policía y Fuerza Física. Caracas, Venezuela: Nueva Sociedad, 2003.

Garland, D. Punishment and Modern Society. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. -----. The Culture of Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Giddens, A. Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 1989. Giddens, A. Para Além da Esquerda e da Direita. São Paulo: UNESP,

1996. “Giuliani Partners.” http://www.giulianipartners.com (accessed August 1,

2009).Grossi Porto, M.S. “Elementos para uma Reflexão sobre Violência no

Brasil dos Anos 90.” Educação e Sociedade 15, no. 48 (2006): 326-337.

Helksinki Commission. Polices in Democratic Transition. Budapest: CDROM, 1998.

Hobsbawm, E. The Age of Extremes: a History of the World 1914-1991.New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Huggins, M. K. Polícia e Política: Relações Estados Unidos /América Latina. São Paulo: Cortez, 1998.

Huggins, M. K., et al. Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.


Jameson, F. Pós-Modernismo: a Lógica Cultural do Capitalismo Tardio.São Paulo, Brazil: Ática, 1996.

Kádár, A. Police in Transition: Essays on the Police Forces in Transi-tion Countries. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 2001.

Kaminsky, G. Tiempos Inclementes: Culturas Policiales y Seguridad Ciudadana. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad de Lanús, 2005.

Kelling, G. L. and C. Coles. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. New York: Free Press, 1996.

“London Metropolitan Police.” http://www.met.police.uk (accessed Au-gust 1, 2009).

“Los Angelos Police Department.” http://www.lapdonline.org (accessed August 1, 2009).

Maguire, M., R. Morgan and R. Reiner. The Oxford Handbook of Crimi-nology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. “Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.” http://www.manhattaninstitute.org (accessed August 1, 2009).

Maranhão Costa, A. T. Entre a Lei e a Ordem. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: FGV, 2004.

Martin, G. and M. Ceballos. Bogotá: Anatomía de una Transformación: Políticas de Seguridad Ciudadana 1995 - 2003. Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2004.

Melossi, D. El Estado del Control Social. Madrid, Spain: Siglo Veintiuno de España, 1992.

Misse, M. Crime e Violência no Brasil Contemporâneo. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Lumen Juris, 2006.

Mitchell, K. and K. Beckett. “Securing the Global City: Crime, Consult-ing, Risk, and Ratings in the Production of Urban Space.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (2008).

Muncie, J, E. McLaughlin and M. Langan, eds. Criminogical Perspec-tives. London: SAGE, 2001.

Murray, C. “The Underclass.” In Criminological Perspectives, edited by J. Muncie, E. Mclaughlin and M. Langan, pp. 120-135. London: Sage, 2001.

Newburn, T. Criminology. Willan: Devon, 2007. Pagon, M., ed. Policing in Central and Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Col-

lege of Police and Security Studies, 1996. Pavarini, M. and J. Pegoraro. El Control Social en el Fin del Siglo.

Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1995.


Pegoraro, J. “Inseguridad y Violencia en el Marco del Control Social.” In Violências no Tempo da Globalização, edited by J. V. Tavares-dos-Santos, pp. 201-228. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1999.

Pinheiro, P. S., J. E. Mendez and G. O’Donnell. Democracia, Violência e Injustiça. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2000.

Quintana Taborga, J. R. Policía y Democracia en Bolivia. La Paz: PIEB, 2005.

Reiner, R. The Politics of the Police. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

-----. Law and Order. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Rico, J. M. and L. Chinchilla. Seguridad Ciudadana en America Latina.

México: Siglo XXI, 2002. Rolim, M. A Síndrome da Rainha Vermelha: Policiamento e Segurança

Pública no Século XXI. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2006. Rosanvallon, P. La Nouvelle Question Sociale. Paris: Seuil, 1995. Sain, M. F. Seguridad, Democracia y Reforma del Sistema Policial en

Argentina. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002. Soares, L. E. Meu Casaco de General. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras,

2000. Sousa Santos, B. A Crítica da Razão Indolente: Contra o Desperdício da

Experiência. São Paulo: Cortez, 2000. Tagle, F. T. El Sistema de Justicia Penal en la Ciudad de México.

México: FCE, 2002. Tavares-dos-Santos, J. V., ed. Violências em Tempo de Globalização.

São Paulo: Hucitec, 1999. Tavares-dos-Santos, J. V. “The World Police Crisis and the Construction

of Democratic Policing.” International Review of Sociology 14(2004): 89-106.

Tavares-dos-Santos, J. V. “The Worldization of Violence and Injustice.” Current Sociology 50, no. 1 (2002):123-134.

Tavares-dos-Santos, J. V. Violências e Conflitualidades. Porto Alegre: TOMO, 2009.

Taylor, I. Crime in Context. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Taylor, I, P. Wallon and J. Young. Criminología Crítica. México: Siglo

XXI, 1977. Therborn, G, ed. Inequalities of the World: New Theoretical Frameworks,

Multiple Empirical Approaches. London: Verso, 2006. Van Swaaningen, R. Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe.

London: SAGE, 1997. Wacquant, L. Punir os Pobres: a Nova Gestão da Miséria nos Estados

Unidos. Rio de Janeiro: REVAN, 2007.


Wacquant, L. “L’Ascension de l’Etat Pénal en Amérique.” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (1998): 7–26.

Wacquant, L. Las Cárceles de la Miseria. Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2000.

Weiner, T. “Enter Consultant Giuliani, His Fee Preceding Him.” The New York Times, January 16, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com (accessed August 1, 2009).

Wiesburd, D. and A. A. Braga. Policing Innovation: Contrasting Per-spectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Wiewiorka, M. La Violence. Paris: Balland, 2004. Wilson, J. Q. and G. L. Kelling. “The Police and Neighborhood Safety:

Broken Windows.” The Atlantic Monthly 249, no. 3 (March 1982). Wolfe, T. “Revolutionaries: on how the Manhattan Institute Changed

New York City and America.” New York Post, January 30, 2003. Wright, A. Policing: An Introduction to Concepts and Practice. Cul-

lompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2002. Young, J. The Exclusive Society. London: Sage, 1999. Young, J. The Vertigo of Late Modernity. London: Sage, 2007. Zaluar, A. Integração Perversa: Pobreza e Tráfico de Drogas. Rio de

Janeiro: FGV, 2004.

Jorge Carrillo126

Challenges for and Practices in the Sociology of Work in Mexico:

Between Global Paradigms and Local Development Paradigms

Jorge Carrillo, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), Mexico1

The field of sociology of work in Mexico (henceforth, SWM) is relatively new, having started in the early 1980s. It has made important advances in its almost thirty years and has solidified into a highly productive and pro-fessionally well-organized sub-discipline both in Mexico and in the rest of Latin America, and not only in sociology. Currently, an association, an academic journal, and at least one solid postgraduate program are dedicated to the sociology of work in Mexico. Mexico’s connections in Latin America have led it to be selected to host the Latin American Con-gress on the sociology of work for the second time. However, in spite of these capable institutional entities and the networks that have been built, SWM faces strong limitations and serious challenges, as we will see throughout the course of this document.

This paper analyzes the practices, challenges, and limitations of the sociology of work in Mexico. In particular, and as an example, this document will look at the study of industrial models, which, in addition to being the SW topic most studied during the 1980s and 90s in this coun-try, is without a doubt the topic subjected to most analysis and that has aroused the most debate. The paper is divided into five sections: intro-duction, institutionalization of the profession, context and practices, pro-ductive models and local development of ideas, and conclusion.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AS A PROFESSION

The sociology of work in Latin America, and specifically in Mexico, was 1 Jorge Carrillo would like to thank Joselito Fernandez for his assistance in writ-ing this document. Dr. Carrillo can be reached at [email protected]. His web-site is www.colef.mx/jorgecarrillo/multinacionales/.

Challenges for and Practices in the Sociology of Work in Mexico 127

institutionally established in the late 1980s and since then has evolved both institutionally and thematically, consolidating its own identity (Abramo et al. 1998). A large body of research exists in the area, particu-larly in Mexico, due to the importance of labor and its influence on the primary social structures (Muro 2007: 541).

Studies on social problems abound, and studies are being developed on labor and the organizational processes of companies and institutions specific to the Mexican experience and that of each regional context stud-ied. These studies are based on sociological, anthropological, demo-graphic, and economic approaches, broadening the range of knowledge on labor. However, despite the wealth of said interdisciplinarity, social research in Mexico does not yet approach sufficient theoretical depth and internationalization; instead, it predominantly produces studies of practi-cal, descriptive, and local character. Nevertheless, this research has evolved toward greater diversity of approaches and methodologies.

Contributions to this field have taken shape in the Latin American Congresses held since 1993 and in forums, researcher networks, associa-tions, and publications such as the “Latin American Sociology Treaty” (“Tratado Latinoamericano de Sociología”) and “The Sitation of Work in Mexico” (“La Sitación del Trabajo en México”) (De la Garza 2001; de la Garza and Salas 2003). Local and national empirical studies have made particularly important contributions. According to one of the most prestigious labor sociologists at the international level, Juan José Castillo (1997), research in Latin America is “first rate,” with important empirical contributions carried out in the past three decades. This has made the academic debate generated in Latin America enter into the international level with strength and personality.

Institutionalization

To summarize, I will highlight four organizations that speak to the strength of the sociology of work in Mexico and demonstrate the institu-tionalization of the profession.

First, the Latin American Association of the Sociology of Work (Asociación Latinoamericana de la Sociología del Trabajo, ALAST) was launched in 1991. At that time, a group of sociologists of work who had informally gathered at the end of a seminar in Mexico City decided to form a professional association at the Latin American level. Their first Congress was held in November 1993. Since then, the ALAST Congress is held every three years in different countries (so far including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay). In 2009, Mexico served as host for the second time, with the sixth ALAST Congress taking place on May

Jorge Carrillo128

19-22.2 The ALAST Congresses bring together between 400 and 500 participants from the American continents. Since 1995, ALAST has also published a Latin American Journal on Labor Studies called the Latin American Journal of Labor Studies (Revista Latinoamericana de Estu-dios del Trabajo, RLET), with 19 issues published to date. This journal has an itinerant character corresponding to the sites of the Congresses. In 2003, the assembly decided that the journal could be hosted by a country distinct from that of the Congress site, due to the financial difficulties that may be faced by the Congress host country. Since 2006, Mexico has served as ALAST headquarters while the journal is edited in Venezuela in response to the lack of financial and human capacity in Mexico to pro-duce two journals on the same theme.

Second, the Mexican Association of Labor Studies (Asociación Mexicana de Estudios del Trabajo, AMET) was founded in 1996 as part of the ALAST strategy to foster national associations. The first Mexican Congress on the sociology of work was held that year in Guadalajara. The goal of AMET is to promote labor studies in Mexico and to foster collaboration among its members, with particular emphasis on promoting the diversity of theories, approaches, and problems within the field of labor studies, not only from sociology but also from related labor disci-plines and sub-disciplines such as anthropology, economics, law, history, and administration, among others. AMET organizes its national congress every two years in alternating cities (Guadalajara, Mexico City, Puebla, Hermosillo, Oaxtepec, and Querétaro), chaired by an executive commit-tee that also rotates. The assembly of all AMET members holds session at each Congress and is the decision-making body. Between approxi-mately 250 and 300 professionals participate in each Congress. The vol-ume of participants varies depending on the economic situation in the country and the capacity of the organizing group. AMET has just under 100 professors-researchers and postgraduate students as regular members. The inscription fee is paid at the Congresses themselves and is around US$50 including membership and Congress participation.

Third, the academic journal titled Work Journal (Revista Trabajo) is published on a semesterly basis and has served as one of the primary out-lets of SWM. Due to financial limitations it has depended highly on sup-port from the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Iztapalapa campus (UAM-I). Fortunately, the journal is currently co-edited by UAM and a commercial editorial press (Ed. Plaza y Valdez). It is now financially supported 50% by the ILO-Mexican branch and 50% by UAM. This

2 Due to the swine flu in Mexico, the Congress was postponed until April 20-23, 2010. See http://www.izt.uam.mx/alast for more information.


journal, while it has had several directors, has been organized primarily by Enrique de la Garza, who is the journal’s current director and is the most prestigious labor sociologist in Mexico and one of the most out-standing in Latin America. Since its origins, the journal developed a unique organization, involving an editorial committee that makes deci-sions collectively. The journal did not originally use blind review proce-dures, but now it does. The journal is not sold commercially but is dis-tributed free nationally and internationally through the ILO and the per-sonal networks of its committee. The articles are currently the products of ad hoc seminars held with ILO funding.

Fourth, the Labor Studies Program is a Master’s and Doctoral pro-gram based at UAM-Iztapalapa in Mexico City. It was initiated in 1989 and to date had graduated 60 students. The program has 30% professors from UAM, and the rest comes from different Mexican and foreign insti-tutions. Eighty percent of the students that have already finished the pro-gram have jobs as professors or researchers in other universities. It is a solid program that is unique in terms of its specialization in Mexico. The program is certified by the National Council on Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT) and is consid-ered a program of international rank (the maximum category). The im-portance of being certified as a program by CONACYT is that all Mexi-can students receive grants to cover living expenses. It is important to note that all public universities and research centers in Mexico are practi-cally free. The student fee (for both undergraduate and graduate students) at UNAM, for example, is less than US$100 annually. These scholar-ships, therefore, enable all the programs to have 100% full-time students.

Research Agenda

Thematically speaking, according to De la Garza (1992), research on la-bor in Mexico has gone through three periods: 1) Until the decade of the 1930s, research in this area was characterized by writings by politicians and union leaders on the doctrine and practice of the student movement. 2) Between 1940 and 1968, research was carried out on labor law and relations between the labor movement and the state. 3) From 1970 to the present, studies have had a more academic character with more varied themes. Four currents and research styles appear in this phase: historiog-raphy, structuralism, labor processes, and productive models.

Regarding this third phase, the historical period corresponds to the 1970s, and the central object of study was the relation between the state and the labor movement (union autonomy, corporativism, democracy in the unions, and worker participation in elections), with a primarily Marx-

Jorge Carrillo130

ist approach and led by militant researchers and students (De la Garza 1992). Priority was granted to studies on collective worker actions in the present and some on pre- and post-revolutionary Mexico (Goldemberg 1980).

The structuralism that also emerged in the 1970s began with popula-tion and labor force studies, from the perspective of the segmentation of the labor market, occasionally following a Marxist economic approach. The range of themes then expanded to migrations, labor force mobility, socio-demographic profiles, and wages. Research on gender and infor-mality also began. Another branch of structuralism aims to link variables such as union affiliation, wage, collective bargaining agreements, con-flicts, and labor strikes. The instruments of this research have been sur-veys and governmental statistics, using the household as a unit of analysis (De la Garza 1992).

The trend toward research on the labor process began in the late 1970s. In contrast to the historiographic current, which analyzes leaders and the relation between labor movements and the state, it considers workers in their working lives, labor conditions, and their transformation. It is linked to pioneering anthropological works about the automotive in-dustry in Ciudad Sahagún and the shoe industry in León, Guanajuato. Its studies are based on “Italian laborism” and influenced by Touraine’s early analysis of the centrality of labor. Its recurring themes have been: labor processes, technologies, and organizations, under the influence of Taylorism-Fordism and flexible production. From that perspective, new methods such as direct observation and participant observation gain new value. This research current declined in the second half of the 1980s as consequence of neoliberalism, the union crisis, and beginning of the process of restructuring production (De la Garza 1992).

Studies on the process of reorganizing production and productive models date from the latter half of the 1980s to the present. They emerged as part of a second phase of research on labor processes and the make up the new labor studies in Mexico (De la Garza 1992; 2000). They are “free of ideological and militant content and theoretically and methodologically better endowed.” Their themes are: the labor process, the labor market, the spatial reproduction of labor, and industrial relations. Labor studies about increasing competitiveness also begin to emerge, in-cluding research on the diffusion of just-in-time and total quality control practices in the maquiladora industry (Carrillo 1995).

Practically all the new labor studies entail extensive empirical re-search and fieldwork. On the one hand, they focus on verifying the exis-tence in establishments and in different industrial sectors of the phenom-ena that occur in developed countries. But, on the other, they are about


understanding and explaining the new phenomena and the local adapta-tion of many of the transferred processes, given that each society is unique. At least two alternative approaches to the same process are thereby developed: one that engages more with economic sociology and evolutionary economics, and another that engages more with political economy, industrial relations, and the philosophy of science, as we will see below.

The sociology of work in Mexico and in Latin America has certain characteristics that differentiate it from other kinds of labor studies (De la Garza 2002):

1. It centers more on workers than on the company. 2. It is not reduced to manufacturing labor processes but rather

encompasses the service and primary materials sectors, the labor market, the social reproduction of workers, and the industrial re-lations system.

3. While predated by 1970s studies on labor processes, it is distinct from these in that: a) It does not respond in the same way to French or American sociology of labor or Italian laborism. Rather, it is in dialogue with the new economic institutionalism (theories of regulation, flexible specialization, and industrial gov-ernance, including neo-Schumpeterian approaches), and new theories of industrial relations and neo-corporativism. b) It does not center on the labor process as part of Taylorism-Fordism, whose main category was “control over the labor process and its repercussions for the worker’s consciousness” (De La Garza 2001), but instead focuses on the restructuring of production and its relation with the neoliberal model. c) It is not based on “economistic,” “structuralist,” or ideological interpretations of labor but rather uses a more integral approach that allows a socio-logical reading. Today, such new labor studies dominate the so-ciology of work in Mexico. Authors such as Aglietta, Lipietz, Coriat, Piore, Sabel, Shaiken, and Burawoy have been very im-portant in this phase.

4. It takes issue with the theory of dependence, which no doubt was an important approach, for failing to explain the current restruc-turing of production, the successful models implemented by for-eign and domestic multinationals, or the use of best practices in labor flexibility that tend to be precarious. Carlota Perez (2007) clarifies this disjuncture:

The enormous difficulties experienced by the great majority of developing countries in their efforts to industrialize have led to

Jorge Carrillo132

pessimistic theories of dependency which hold that there is a permanent structural gap between developing and developed countries. On the other hand, the few recent examples of relative success, which seem to counter that theory arouse an intense in-terest. (2)

Overviews of the sociology of work in Mexico coincide with Oscar Contreras’s argument that the new labor studies generated a large amount of research that, though with varying quality, expands and accumulates knowledge on the phenomena of the restructuring of production, labor flexibility, and labor relations.

Nevertheless, this new direction in the sociology of work in Mexico has not followed as comprehensive a development as the history makes it seem. On the one hand, a) it “de-laborizes,” focusing on the industry, emphasizing and prioritizing value chains, and centering on the firms as its almost exclusive subject. b) In this sense it returns to structuralism as vision of social change (Castillo 1997; De La Garza 2001). On the other hand, the globalization of the Mexican economy and the need to increase the productivity of companies, institutions, regions, and their human re-sources, present an enormous challenge which has convinced labor soci-ologists of the need for multidisciplinary approaches. Anthropology, la-bor law, economic sociology, socio-demographics, and socio-politics in particular have been important ways to comprehend and explain the com-plex labor reality. In fact, Enrique de la Garza –as expressed in inter-view- considers this interdisciplinarity to be the most important strength of SWM. He explains it as follows: the sociology of work arrived late to Latin America, considering that studies of factories began in this conti-nent in the 1970s, while in Europe they started in the early 20th century. Therefore, in Mexico and Latin America there are fewer solid structures of disciplinary division and it is easier to make interdisciplinary combina-tions without risking illegitimacy and without the community viewing the work as suspect, as is the case in the United States and Europe given the precise limits there. There is also greater theoretical and methodological freedom for research. Furthermore, communications among Latin American colleagues have developed in similar conditions and have been cordial, open, and collaborative, which has fostered solid ties and multi-ple exchanges, even though they are by hand. This is the second strength of SWM.


THE NEW ENVIRONMENT AND PRACTICES

The sociology of work has developed in the context of the complex Mexican situation, heterogeneous at the level of industrial sectors or even within companies, but primarily regionally diverse. Globalization and the demand for competitiveness of private firms and public institutions have impacted the discourses, research practices, and ideologies of professors.

The processes of modernization, first, and then globalization, have had important impacts in Mexico. The most evident is the growing open-ness and integration of the Mexican economy and society and, in particu-lar, the incorporation of best practices in companies, the government, and academic institutions. In the social sphere, the impacts appear in the ex-panding polarization of society and the increase in poverty and Mexican emigration toward the United States. But, the sociology of work has also been affected. Although relatively limited, there has been a process of decentralization and modernization of its institutions. The number of universities and research centers has increased, as has the number of re-searchers and academic groups. Networks have also grown of research-ers in alliance with research groups abroad, international agencies and institutions, and excellent universities in developed countries. This ex-pansion of the activities of sociologists of work in Mexico coincides not only with the modernization of production but also with the moderniza-tion of the government and in particular of CONACYT and the upper-level education institutions, as we will see below.

Prior to the 1980s, research in the other sciences was concentrated in Mexico City, in particular in its two main universities, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous Uni-versity of Mexico (UAM). These universities, together with others from the large cities of Guadalajara and Monterrey, formed the research triad in the country. The early 1980s witnessed the beginning of the process of decentralization of higher education. Public research centers emerged across the country in the social sciences and humanities, the natural sci-ences, and the exact sciences (such as math). Meanwhile, CONACYT, founded in the 1970s, became increasingly important in funding research and supporting post-graduate education. By the late 1980s, CONACYT became the body responsible for coordinating and evaluating the activi-ties of the 32 research centers progressively installed across the country. In turn, in the universities, research activity increased both within the in-stitutes at the large Mexico City campuses, but also in various state uni-versities.

It should be recalled that all public universities in Mexico are practi-cally free (annual fees range from US$30 to 200), and in the case of

Jorge Carrillo134

graduate programs, all students who have achieved the necessary certifi-cation receive a grant through CONACYT that covers living expenses in exchange for their full-time dedication to their studies.

Research Financing

Resources for science and research in Mexico come for the most part from the government (80-85%) and to a much lesser degree from the pri-vate sector (15-20%). More and more diverse funds exist within the gov-ernment to support research. Not more than a decade ago, these funds were dispersed among multiple branches of the Federal Government (in each of the ministries, the presidency itself, and in particular in CONA-CYT). There were also resources and programs available in each of the State Governments. But, each entity had its own rules, resources, and agendas, as a result of which there was a large disparity and variation in the allocation of resources. Grant making ranged from open and closed competitions to institutional and personal allocations of funds, forming a broad mosaic of distribution of the resources to support research. Par-ticular emphasis was given to allocating funds to the study of productive modernization, technological development, and productivity, in the case of economic activities. Funds are currently allocated for new topics such as innovation, networks, competitiveness, and the sociology of knowl-edge.

The most transparent and professionally-distributed resources came from international organizations. For example, the World Bank allocated resources as public debt through the Ministry of Labor for training pro-grams (Probecat), modernizing production (Cimo), training and certifying workers in labor skills (Conocer), measuring international migration, and studying labor. Evaluations and audits assured that said programs func-tioned efficiently. These programs, with grants distributed through closed competition among recognized researchers, strongly advanced quantitative and qualitative research and were carried out by scholars of labor. It should be highlighted that these produced the face-to-face sur-veys with statistical representation, such as the National Survey on Em-ployment, Wages, Technology and Training (Encuesta Nacional de Em-pleo, Salarios, Tecnología y Capacitación, ENESTYC), the Survey on Migration to the Northern Border (Encuesta de Migración a la Frontera Norte, EMIF) and the multiple evaluations of governmental social pro-grams, such as Opportunities (Oportunidades).

By the beginning of the 21st century, the disperse funds were concen-trated and coordinated, and a consistent methodology was established for the allocation and evaluation of resources. The funds are now nationally


administered by CONACYT, and all evaluations of governmental pro-grams take place through the National Council for the Evaluation of So-cial Development Policy (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, CONEVAL). This entity carries out enormous ef-forts to streamline innovation and development, as well as research in science and technology (S&T). A large percentage of its employees are or were researchers, and more importantly, its relies exclusively on re-searchers in the formation of councils, commissions, evaluations, etc. Sociologists of work also participate in multiple commissions. To this end, CONACYT has implemented programs such as: 1) Training of Sci-entists and Technicians, which seeks to strengthen the links between companies and universities through sabbatical and post-doctoral residen-cies, labor linkage programs, and post-graduate fairs, 2) Scientific Re-search, which funds basic and applied research and the development of scientists through the National System of Researchers (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores –SNI), and 3) Innovation and Technological Develop-ment, which was created to advance these areas by employing scientific and/or technological developments, for which it grants economic support, capital input, and lines of credit.

The primary sources of governmental funds for research in Mexico are now guided by transparency, open competitions, peer evaluations, operating manuals, and follow-up evaluations. The Internet has been a fundamental tool in this process, as has the participation of all of the re-searchers who belong to the SNI. Nevertheless, like many other pro-grams, these also have important limitations: bureaucracy, the lack of administrative flexibility, and the variability of resources from year to year (due to designated budget amounts and the constant devaluation of the Mexican currency since 1976).

Despite the multiplicity of funds and programs, the accessibility of information about them through their web pages, and the decentralization of funding, Mexico’s investment in science, technology, and innovation is still insufficient. In the past 35 years, investment has not surpassed 0.6% of GDP, and Mexico has been outpaced by emerging countries such as Brazil, which has invested at 1% of its GDP, Korea at 2.91% (2003), and Vietnam at 2% (2005). Developed countries belonging to the OECD (other than Mexico, which is also a member) also invest very different amounts in science, technology, and innovation; for instance, the United States invested 2.68% of its GDP in 2004. In 2008, Mexico only invested around US$ 4.5 billion in science and technology, despite the stipulation in the 2002 Law on Science and Technology that investment should con-stitute a minimum of 1% of the annual GDP.

A new method is being developed for distributing important financial

Jorge Carrillo136

resources through thematic networks formed by research groups that link disciplines in the social, natural, and exact sciences. There are currently thirteen thematic networks in the country supported by CONACYT. These networks aim to link together various university activities. For instance, one of them, whose primary objective is to research complexity, science, and society, is led by sociologists of work, with links to physi-cists, ecologists, and anthropologists.

These advanced network initiatives are being developed to address the challenges posed by globalization and the increasing complexity of Mexican social life. For example, the country is losing competitiveness, its industrial sectors are evolving, and poverty, migration, and insecurity are increasing. Mexico has been losing its competitive advantage at the international level, falling from position 32 to 60 in the period from 2000 to 2008 (Porter & Schwab 2008). The multinational firms in the country (more than 3,000 firms with more than 32,000 sites) have been acquiring greater economic roles, and many of them are in the process of industrial upgrading. Industrial clusters may be found across the country. More than 40% of the population lives in poverty. Between 10 and 20% of the 110 million Mexicans are international migrants. And, there is practi-cally a war going on against drug trafficking in Mexico, particularly in the states along the United States border, such as Baja California and Chihuahua.

National System of Researchers (SNI)

The SNI was founded in 1984 with the goal of supporting scientists dedi-cated to full-time research. Due to the relatively low wages and the con-stant devaluation of the Mexican peso in relation to the US dollar, a monthly economic incentive was established in accordance with individ-ual performance, which aims to compensate researchers permanently committed to research. Currently, and given the devaluation of the cur-rency (now at about 14 pesos per dollar), the monthly amounts range be-tween US$800 and 1,500. There are currently 14,000 researchers in Mexico certified in this system in six areas of science. In the social sci-ences (not including humanities), between 2003 and 2008, approximately 1,000 new researchers were integrated into the system, and 2,500 ad-vanced to new levels (Figure 1). An average of 600 researchers is ac-cepted by the system each year in the all sciences.


Figure 1. Mexico, New Entrants to the National System of Researchers (SNI). Area 5, Social Sciences

Permanent Evaluation Based on Incentive System

Incentives for and evaluations of academic work (institutional and colle-giate) that originates in the open economy are also part of the shift of the sociology of work in Mexico towards rules that prioritize speed and vol-ume of production over quality. The education and formation of research groups is also associated with this methodological institutionalization the sociology of work in Mexico. Globalization and the demand for competi-tiveness in private companies and in public institutions in Mexico have provoked changes in discourses, public support programs, research prac-tices, and professors’ ideologies.

Each university and research center has its own system of perform-ance incentives. While different methods and amounts of economic in-centives exist, the systems generally combine numbers and types of pub-lications, teaching hours, and levels of participation in seminars and con-ferences. The amounts represent approximately 15-30% of the individ-ual’s institutional income. In addition, many professors (more than 15,000) are in the SNI, for which they receive a monthly bonus of be-tween US$500 and 1,500 depending on their level (four levels exist; see Figure 1). The indirect wage of a professor-researcher in any science throughout the country may represent up to 60% of his or her income. In most institutions a series of diverse professional activities is permitted de facto: consulting corporations, doing research, advising and evaluating public sector programs, receiving funds from foundations, teaching classes in other universities, or participating in paid professional commis-sions, among other things. Generally, these resources are not constant and vary widely according to the expertise of each professor-researcher and to the social-professional networks he or she maintains.

All of this results in a wide divergence of institutional incomes among researchers in Mexico, currently ranging between US$1,300 and

Jorge Carrillo138

10,000 per month. Prior to the recent devaluation this range was between US$2,000 and 15,000 per month. There is no doubt that, as in the rest of the country, there is a polarization of wealth; while the majority of re-searchers earns very little, a minority gets a lot. While the directors of research centers currently earn monthly salaries approaching US$10-12,000, a professor with a permanent university post earns US$1,000.

PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS

Decline in the Number of Researchers

In spite of its growth since the 1980s, the number of professors and re-searchers in the sociology of work in Mexico continues to be small and faces central challenges such as the crisis of sociology. The “professional space” is controlled by a small number of people, and given the size of the sector theoretical-analytic confrontations are more visible and even personal. The lack of larger debate makes it hard to reach general con-sensuses or construct broader research agendas. Strong competition and internal inequality exist among research groups. People compete for the same funds at the national level and for participation in groups and net-works abroad. On the other hand, as Oscar Contreras mentioned in a re-cent interview, while research groups have been constituted, they are few, and their status is precarious. Outstanding among them is that of Enrique de la Garza, which may be considered a school of thought (with a para-digm, a journal, a postgraduate program, research projects, and signifi-cant participation in associations and organizations), but it is the only well-consolidated group in Mexico. There are only three or four addi-tional groups. This implies a serious problem of reproduction for new generations.

Competition for Scarce Funds

The funds for research programs and researchers are limited and vary each year, but different perspectives exist on this issue. In his comments in our interview, Enrique de la Garza (2009) considered the problem of limited financial resources to be minor. He reflected, “Not because they are abundant, but rather because there are not that many permanent groups applying for resources all the time; they are divided among a few people. If there were many groups, then yes, competitions would be hard-fought.” In any case, the pursuit of the sociology of work in Mexico is affected by the unequal distribution of resources inside the country,


particularly in comparison with more highly industrialized countries. Perhaps more important is that we lack enough resources to under-

take internationally comparative studies, such as those conducted by re-searchers in developed countries, and that funds are concentrated in the exact and natural sciences. Another issue is that the majority of research in social sciences in Mexico is focused within Mexican territory, while international research, when it exists, is rarely directed and financed from within Mexico.

Another problem associated with finances in Mexico is the lack of a serious culture of project evaluation by academic peers. Enrique de la Garza (2009) commented, “There is too much politics (friends, enemies, in favor of or opposed to a theoretical perspective) … and peers are not very objective.”

Finally, although it applies to all of Latin America, a clear example of economic uncertainty is the ALAST journal. The itinerant character of the journal implies a complex editorial organization; each new journal headquarters must build a work team, assure institutional support mecha-nisms, etc., in other words, “nationalize the publication.” All of this de-volves into a situation in which stable structures are never created and must be reinvented every three years (Iranzo and Lucena 2008). A simi-lar problem occurs with several of the editorial and organizational initia-tives of SWM.

Concentration of Skills Among a Few People

The lack of resources stimulates competition as well as concentration. However, researchers’ necessary mingling in their competition for the limited resources and their participation in associations, groups, networks, congresses, etc., permanently connects members. Nevertheless, the hier-archical relationships between evaluators and appraisers, professors and students, administrative staff and researchers, leaders and followers are transferred to the professional practice.

Loss of Specialization

There are ever fewer sociologists of work who exclusively focus on labor. Researchers are increasingly obligated to diversify their knowledge, up-date it, and address the multiple requirements of universities, research centers, and particularly the various levels of government. Enrique de la Garza (2009) and Oscar Contreras (2009) (another recognized sociologist of labor at the regional level) mention the transience of the research groups, given how members often disperse and move toward other

Jorge Carrillo140

themes and positions (such as governmental administrative posts or posi-tions within the universities themselves). All of this has repercussions for the problem of how to integrate different scholars’ long-term research agendas.

The complex Mexican social environment, with new foci more ori-ented to innovation and competitive advantage on one hand and to press-ing social problems such as poverty and migration on the other, has pro-moted this thematic opening and dispersion of researchers. While the expansion in the number of research approaches, themes, and methodolo-gies is very positive, it no doubt affects the specialization in labor studies. Juan José Castillo (1997) mentions that interdisciplinarity has become trivial in current literature on the sociology of work in Latin America. In addition, the practice of a multi-methodological perspective is not well developed.

Oscar Contreras (2009) mentions that the political and ideological orientation of researchers, generally leaning toward the left, in many cases affects their research. He recognizes that while this is inevitable and may on occasion be beneficial, it is nevertheless a primary problem for SWM, given that it limits the possibilities for analyzing and discover-ing different sides of the world of labor.

Dispersion, “politicization,” and declining social science interest in labor have resulted in the diminishing importance of this field. From its position as a central problem in the 1970s, 80s, and part of the 90s, it has gradually evolved into a marginal theme while political sociology, elec-toral sociology, gender, the environment, and other themes have risen in importance.

Failure to Renew Human Resources

Practically only one teaching program exists focused on labor studies, and despite its high ranking and recognition, it is insufficient to both sup-port the remaining universities and research centers and continue the work of labor sociologists who founded the field in the 1980s. Oscar Contreras (2009) affirms this observation, while mentioning that, in addi-tion to the noted postgraduate program, independent courses and special-ized centers exist in some universities and colleges. In some cases these labor centers have disappeared (such as the COLSON regional research center). The central problem in many cases is the clash between special-ized groups. Central themes such as gender, poverty, reproductive health, and migration, for example, compete for institutional and human re-sources. This has a direct impact on SWM in the form of a certain degree of thematic dispersion, as already noted, complicating the reproduction of


research agendas in the new generation. Furthermore, labor sociology once attracted talented and curious

young people, many of whom had great potential for research. But, new generations have progressively lost interest, in part because of the limited viability of the specialty in labor (Oscar Contreras 2009). For example, there is little content in quantitative methods. All of these aspects repre-sent a great challenge for the continuation of this field. Labor themes must be made intellectually attractive, and professors must foment syner-gies with students, through joint publications and increased exchanges among institutions and research projects.

Dependency on International Organizations

The unequal relationship between sociologists of labor in Mexico and researchers and research groups from the advanced industrialized coun-tries also resounds in the unequal development of the science. The inter-national research that is carried out in Mexico, when it happens, generally depends on funding, resources, methodologies, and analytical proposals from the industrialized countries.

Nevertheless, not only are there leading researchers in the sociology of labor who have international presence and coordinate highly relevant projects, although they are few, but their theoretical collaborations are unorthodox and highly fruitful. De la Garza (2009) considers this a tradi-tion in Latin America. Scholars mutually influence each other, and while the majority of the ingredients come from developed countries, they are neither linear nor mechanical. In other words, sociologists of labor in this continent are not simple disciples of Europe or USA, but rather mix, in-troduce local ingredients, and make their own creations.

Lack of International Experience

The central problems that affect the possibilities for international research are the lack of resources to carry out “truly international research,” re-searchers’ limited international experience beyond attending international congresses, and their lack of English language facility. Contreras (2009) mentions the need to “de-provincialize” the study of work and take it to a more international level, in order to carry out more solid comparisons and have an impact in other regions of the planet.

Jorge Carrillo142

MODELS OF PRODUCTION AND THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS

The topic of production models in Mexico, like in other developed and underdeveloped countries, relates to a wide range of studies, given that it is linked to the supposed “surpassing of Taylorism-Fordism” and the “in-stallation of post-Fordism.” However, in the Mexican case, even Taylor-ism-Fordism has not developed in many of the country’s regions, and forms of pre-industrial production continue to be used. On the other hand, a large percentage of such studies have centered on analyzing production, focusing little attention on differences in country of origin and their re-spective corporate cultures (Japanese, American, Mexican, etc). These differences are vitally important in Mexico in terms of the adaptation of the Japanese Production System (JPS) (Abo 1994; 2004), transferred ca-pacities (Dutrenit et al 2006; Carrillo and Torres 2008), and which sys-tems are truly appropriated (Pozas 2007).

In the Mexican context, studies have focused on large (usually for-eign) companies to understand technological, organizational, and labor change (De la Garza 2001), and to a much lesser degree on previously forgotten sectors such as local family-run companies, with traditional production systems based on paternalistic and informal relationships and oriented to local markets (Carrillo and Torres 2008). These studies reveal different modernization strategies, among which two stand out: 1) flexi-ble modernization that involves the labor force in reducing production costs, and 2) the development of company culture as competitive strategy. Both illustrate the importance of the regional context that conditions and modifies them, given that, as Carrillo and Torres (2008) put it, “The new production systems are not developed in a vacuum but rather inserted within specific labor, social, and cultural contexts, which give content to numerous methods and practices.” These hybrid production systems re-veal particularly regional realities.

In addition, recent studies consider the relationship between the mod-ernization processes in companies located in Mexico and market trans-formations, revealing diverse strategies. A relevant conclusion is that there are no pure strategies in the new production systems. This finding is consistent with the results of studies conducting by Abo (1994; 2004) and Kawamura (2009) over the course of 25 years of research in five con-tinents on the hybridization of industrial transplants.

The studies on models of production in Mexico question the notions of the exact replication of models and the trend toward convergence among them, given the regional heterogeneity and diversity within com-panies (Carrillo 1995; 2008; De la Garza 1998; 2005). Some studies tend


to consider company subjectivities and the construction of company cul-ture important elements in organizational changes, although they still rank companies and systems of production based on a more structural perspective, giving little significance to the social actors, especially workers (De la Garza 2000; Contreras 2000).

After 2000, studies began in Mexico that extended a debate, started in the 1990s in the USA and Europe, about whether the Japanese Production System of export-oriented industrialization truly generates development. This controversy is intimately linked to the current climate in Mexico of declining competitiveness and slow industrial growth in the maquiladoraexport industry in particular, as well as in other dynamic sectors (such as automotive, electronics, and clothing). Scholars have wondered whether these conditions are related with JPS and the development of R&D activi-ties (Carrillo and Torres 2002).

Along with new production models, scholars have also addressed value chains (influenced by Italian industrial districts and Porter’s clus-ters). Production networks have acquired great importance in Mexico, and their characteristics and impacts are very regionally diverse, particu-larly when it comes to noncommercial, local, institutional efforts that support company development and production. Public and private “bridge” institutions (Cassalet 1998) between the government, the educa-tional sector, and companies are very important in the promotion of these industrial clusters.

A central concept that sheds light on the debate on models of produc-tion is “glocalization.” Robertson (1995) introduced the term to make clear that global processes are always embedded in local practices (see also Connell 2007). The continuous process of work restructuring in or-der to stay on track will take on different forms in different contexts. This work restructuring is an ongoing, locally situated process in which actors within organizations play an important role. As illustrated in em-pirical research on Mexico, the way actors shape their everyday work practices differs enormously in different local situations. Nevertheless, even when taking organizational context into account, the increasing im-portance of the global in local processes is obvious.

Another significant theme in the sociology of work in Mexico is geo-graphic relocation, particularly the tension that exists between “clusteri-zation” in Northern Mexico (the regional concentration of firms and jobs and their economic, social, and cultural consequences) and the relocation of labor toward low-wage areas inside and outside the country.

Weick (1995) helps shed light on the processes via which work re-structuring takes place by analyzing how the concept of sense-making is grounded in both individual and social activity. Individual and social

Jorge Carrillo144

activities form the groundwork of each organization in which work is structured and restructured. It is important to emphasize that this sense-making is not taking place in a free or neutral space; on the contrary, the ways people come to make sense of things are strongly connected to power relations (Beukema and Carrillo 2004). Therefore, the rules and resources to which actors can appeal are indispensable to the work re-structuring processes and should be thoroughly taken into account when researching work restructuring. In their actions, people constantly repro-duce the existing situation, but they also try to modify it according to their possibilities and interests (cf. Burawoy 1985; Delbridge 1998; Miller & Slater 2000). Since existing structures within organizations are rather persistent, meanings, norms, values, and power relations will only gradually evolve and cannot simply be changed by force from “above” (e.g., by management) or from “outside” (e.g., by state regulations).

Studies of the restructuring of production in Mexico developed in the context of broad international debates on whether or not the world is flat (Friedman 2005), whether or not there is a best way (Boyer and Freysse-net 2000), whether or not it is possible to transfer JPS to contexts so unlike those in which it emerged (Abo 1994; 2004). Two approaches have spread furthest. The first describes polarization and limited growth, which excludes workers as structuring actors. Rather than evolution, this is social involution of non-winning companies and their workers. The second claims that a process of learning and industrial upgrading is oc-curring in which R&D processes and value-added methods are adopted, along with a company culture of social responsibility and new internal and external relations, particularly with local institutions. Drawing on distinct sources of information and aiming to prove different points, these approaches reach opposing conclusions. More importantly, however, both have developed new interpretations along the way, generating better understanding the evolution over generations of maquiladoras and the adjustment of socio-technical configurations.

The Mexican situation is, apparently, more complex and heterogene-ous at the moment than it was in the 1970s or 80s. As a result, debate, analysis, and policy recommendations about labor are located within broader debates. The central debate in relation to models of production may be synthesized as follows. While some researchers presume polari-zation and segmentation, emphasizing the limitations to endogenous growth based on MNCs, others presume learning and co-evolution, not-ing which capabilities are strengthened and encourage better development. The latter point out that productivity, learning, and evolution are concen-trated in very few foreign firms, while the majority decline, with no pos-sibility of change. Alternatively, some companies gradually develop di-


verse capabilities that allow them to improve working conditions, and in this process they learn and evolve. Of course, both of these approaches offer evidence that this process is not linear and does not apply to all companies and workers. It is therefore structurally heterogeneous. Nev-ertheless, an overview of both reveals opposite trends. This polemic led to the development of two separate working groups that, while comple-mentary, have also had confrontations.

While Mexican analyses of production may be unique, they have not emerged in isolation. Considering the recent development and the future of the sociology of work in Latin America, the central question is: does Latin America need its own sociology of work?3 This question invokes the problems of universalism and contingency (Castillo 1995). Studies of work in Latin America have two themes: a) the origin of foreign influ-ences (mainly from France and the USA) and the way in which foreign concepts were adapted or reformulated when applied to our context, and b) the change in production patterns, how social actors participate in de-velopment, and how sociology can account for it. The main argument is that Latin American social sciences have relied on theoretical approaches used to analyze the evolution of production in industrialized countries, both in the import-substitution phase and in the market-globalization phase. However, Latin American social sciences have been able to de-velop an original path, characterized by the prominence of social change, interest in the labor movement, and the relatively late appearance of the workplace (Abramo and Montero 1995: 1). Carlota Perez (2007) notes that while dependency theorists become frustrated, attempts to copy suc-cessful strategies also prove unrealistic in totally different conditions. She has called for understanding how technologies evolve and spread and under what conditions “catching up” is possible.

Sociological research on production elsewhere makes it possible to understand research groups, visions, methodologies, policy recommenda-tions, and professional practices in Mexico. The unequal relationship between sociologists of work within Mexico and those connected with groups in advanced, industrial countries has been the starting point for the constitution of diverse practices. Based on Italian “laborism,” Lipietz’s version of French regulation, and broad knowledge of the labor move-ment and production in Mexico, Enrique De la Garza (2005) defends an

3 Raewyn Connell (2007) analyzes this issue in a more universal manner. Her concept of “Southern Theory” “calls attention to periphery-centre relations in the realm of knowledge … [and] emphasizes that the majority world does produce theory” (viii-ix).

Jorge Carrillo146

eclectic focus on what he calls socio-technical configurations (Box 1).4 His most recent work on this topic, in which his purpose is most clear, critiques the maquila model in Mexico.

Box 1. Socio-Technical Configurations: A Step Forward in Models of Production?

Enrique de la Garza is unquestionably the leading scholar of both trends in generations of maquiladoras and the viability of this model of industri-alization. Based on the 2003 Survey on Models of Production in the Ma-quila (Encuesta Sobre Modelos de Producción en la Maquila, EMIM 2003), coordinated by de la Garza in Central and Southeastern Mexico and on the ENESTYC maquila modules from 1998 and 2001, de la Garza (2005) asks whether the maquila is an acceptable way to grow the econ-omy and provide dignified employment (15).

His work confronts what he refers to as the optimistic promotion of upgrading by Carrillo, Lara, Hualde, and Contreras. He argues, “This position has been losing force … and theories on the restructuring of pro-duction have abandoned evolutionism” (36). He considers the model of production an intersection of the level technology, the form of work or-ganization, the type of labor relations and work conditions, and the labor force profile (socio-demographic characteristics, skill level, and wage levels) (18). He later adds labor and management cultures.

He statistically describes the impact of each of the dimensions that make up this configuration (although he never incorporates the cultural variables). The purpose is to demonstrate that the percentages and indi-cators of the variables decrease (involution), or that their distribution fa-vors low-technology activities and labor indicators (EMIM 2003). He uses an interval of two years in the case of the ENESTYC, and of only one year for the EMIM survey. His main empirical results consist of the construction of two indices. The first is a set of indicators that reveal the model of work organization (Taylorist-Fordist 76.9% and Toyotaist 23.1%). The second speaks to the level of flexibility: Low (38.7%), Me-dium (46.8%), and High (14.5%) (De la Garza 2007: 421).

His interpretation suggests an extreme polarization. While the author rejects the concept of models of production because it is about “attributes established from theory,” he substitutes it for the concept of “socio-technical configurations of production” (although the title of his book and

4 The concept of socio-technical configurations does not appear in the title of any of the dozens of publications by Enrique de la Garza on production, labor, the maquila model, etc.


publications use the term models of production). He concludes that, in reference to the maquila, there are two dominant configurations: Taylor-ism-Fordism, and Precarious Toyotaism (De la Garza 2005: 68). Both are based on low wages and the intensification of labor (Ibid: 72).

Meanwhile, Jorge Carrillo and others question the level of heteroge-neity in the maquila industrial structure. Do behavioral patterns exist? Analysis of export maquila plants produces an affirmative answer. In 1997, Carrillo and Hualde developed the concept of three generations of maquiladoras to classify different types of firms in terms of how labor, technology, and industrial organization are combined and used (Box 2). A few years later they identified a fourth generation (Carrillo and Lara 2005).

Box 2. Generations of Companies: A Step Forward in Understanding the Maquila Model?

The term generation is understood as an ideal type of firm with a certain socio-technical level and with a tendency to predominate among leading firms during a specific period of time. The concept acknowledges the co-existence of firms from different generations at the same time, and it al-lows us to contemplate not only the evolution of firms but also the strate-gies and policies of industrial promotion and development. In sum, the typology enables us to understand the quality of industrial upgrading through generations of firms (Carrillo and Hualde 1997; Carrillo and Lara 2005). The typology was analytically constructed based on different variables and indices but relies most on trends in company activities and strategies in relation to labor. It is presented below.

The first generation is based on the intensification of manual labor and simple assembly (“assembled in Mexico”). The second generation is based on the rationalization of labor (“lean production”), manufacturing, and the adoption of new technologies (“made in Mexico”). The third generation is based on intensification of knowledge, research, develop-ment, and design activities (“designed in Mexico”). Finally, the fourth generation is based on the centralized coordination of activities for the group of plants located in the country and owned by the same company (“coordinated in Mexico”). The evolution of different generations may be understood using the following scheme: manual labor rational labor creative labor coordinated labor. In other words, labor-intensive technology-intensive knowledge-intensive network-intensive.

In response to criticisms of the typology of generations, scholars at-tempted to measure them to determine how the generations were distrib-

Jorge Carrillo148

uted in the maquila industry and how widespread their evolution was. Two maquila surveys carried out by COLEF in 1990 and 2002 in North-ern Mexico indicate the diffusion of industrial upgrading over time based on the typology of generations of companies: in 1980 100% of maquilaplants were first generation (Carrillo and Hernandez 1985); in 1990 82% were first generation and 18% second (Carrillo and Ramirez 1992); and in 2002 18% were first, 55% second, and 27% third generation (Carrillo and Gomis 2005).

The authors found that it as not a linear evolution, and it did not ap-ply for all companies. The concept of socio-technical configurations is also highlighted here, but relative to the industrial upgrading process. Based on the 2002 survey, six types of companies were identified accord-ing to the combination of technology, innovation, autonomy from the parent company, and vertical integration (Carrillo and Gomis 2005). In the electronics and auto-parts sectors in Tijuana, Mexicali, and Juarez, six groups or conglomerates of companies were found (using a statistical cluster analysis) with similar characteristics in terms of technological fac-tors, vertical integration, and degree of decision-making autonomy, all coexisting in space and time. It is important to add that this hexagonal structure was also found in non-maquiladora manufacturing companies in Mexico by other authors (Dominguez and Brown 2004).

The hexagonal structure in the maquiladora industry and the evolu-tion of generations lead to the following conclusion: first of all, the re-sults call into question typologies that suggest patterns of “dual” progres-sion (for example, modern or traditional) or “three-way” divisions with closed and exclusionary categories (for example, traditional, Fordist, and Toyotaist). The differences among maquiladora plants do not present themselves in pure or delimited categories, but rather in hybrid configura-tions. Secondly, the idea that each plant is unique and therefore hybrid also comes into question, given that groups of establishments exist with similar arrangements (Carrillo and Gomis 2005).

The analysis of the restructuring of production, its relationship to in-dustrial models, and its implications for labor in Mexico serves as an ex-ample of the main challenges faced by research groups and individual researchers. The analysis and debate are depend strongly on the unit and source of analysis used: national surveys (De la Garza 2005) or regional surveys and case studies (Carrillo and Barajas 2007). This may produce not only opposite results (Precarious Toyotaist versus Industrial Upgrad-ing) but may also contribute to the formation of professional identity and the understanding of the primary task of sociology vis-à-vis society. Which of the two approaches is superior or better in analytical, explana-


tory, and public-usefulness terms? Are there complementarities or strict polarity? Some authors have framed their positions in response to these questions (Box 3).

Box 3. The Critique (based on Contreras 2008)

For some time, the dominant approach in academic studies was “neo-Taylorist,” a particularly critical perspective in relation to the economic and social impacts of maquiladoras in Mexico. Among the most valu-able contributions of this current is having shown some of the negative aspects of the maquiladoras: low wages as the primary competitive ad-vantage; almost nonexistent production chains in the national economy; labor intensification as strategy to raise productivity; environmental dete-rioration resulting from indiscriminate and unregulated development; and, finally, multiple labor force control and subordination mechanisms inside the companies.

However, this perspective also had important limitations, such as as-similating the diverse and complex social processes of companies to mere management strategies to reinforce control over the workforce. This type of reductionism impeded adequate analysis of the intense transformations that the maquiladora companies began to experience in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. The introduction of new technologies and new administrative methods were interpreted as company strategies to inten-sify labor burdens, reinforce controls over the labor process, and increase the fragmentation and manipulation of the workers. In an expression that aptly summarized the neo-Taylorist vision regarding the changes in the maquiladoras, in the late 1980s, Alain Lipietz (1995) called it a “shoddy Japanization.” In a more analytical formulation of this characterization, Enrique de la Garza (2005) referred to “Precarious Toyotaism.”

Perhaps more pernicious than this conceptual ambiguity is the as-sumption, widespread among academics who ascribed to this perspective, that the task of academic analysis consists of combating this industrializa-tion model, rather than explaining the trajectory of the industrial model, the social processes of companies, and their relations with their surround-ings.

For its part, toward the late 1990s, the COLEF group converged with another academic network that might be referred to in generic terms as the UAM-X group (in reality, another node that included researchers from various institutions in Central Mexico). The first had considerable experience in empirical research, and the second offered a more sophisti-cated theoretical and methodological platform, connected to the tradition of Latin American critiques of economic development but in particular

Jorge Carrillo150

with recent theories of institutional and evolutionist economics. They addressed themes such as technological learning; problems of adaptation, cooperation, and network formation; and company relations with the in-stitutional context (Villavicencio 2007). This new group carried out stud-ies on the evolution of the technological and organizational capacities of maquiladora companies and their links with supplier industries and sup-port institutions (Dutrenit 2007), which generated knowledge-intensive industrial clusters and resulted in a process of co-evolution, albeit dis-persed, considering that various types of companies were identified (Lara 2007).

Rather than a theoretical or methodological confrontation, the group confronted heterogeneous sets of concepts and variables; rather than a debate that would enable it to assess the explanatory capacity of the theo-ries, the comparison of strategies focused on their political implications. As the extreme, this kind of interpretation more or less mechanically linked the organization of production with forms of domination and ma-nipulation of workers, instead of critically associating new technologies and new administrative methods with development and modernization (Contreras 2008).

CONCLUSION

The sociology of work in Mexico is relatively new. Given its approxi-mately thirty-year trajectory, it has been very productive and has been able to institutionalize, earn recognition, and forge its own identity in the Mexican and Latin American contexts, as well as at a more international level.

Regarding the origins of SWM, in this new stage it is important to recognize endogenous and exogenous aspects. We may situate the do-mestic factors at the beginning of the 1980s in the international seminars organized by UNAM on industrial reorganization and the emergence of new technologies, on one hand, and in the professor training courses or-ganized by UAM, on the other. Professors such as Francisco Zapata and Orlandina de Oliveira of El Colegio de México and Enrique de la Garza of UAM-I were central in this “incubator stage.” In reference to the ex-ternal origins, the interaction with other sociologists of work from Latin America and other countries was a clear catalyst of the construction of the profession. Workshops and meetings with the Latin American Social Sciences Council (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales -CLACSO) in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Argentina were key in the formation of this network and identity. The list is long, and at the


risk of unintentionally omitting key colleagues, for which I beg forgive-ness, I would like to name a few professors who fulfilled very important roles in the first stage of construction of the sociology of work in Latin America, in collaboration with Mexican sociologists of work: Martha Novick and Maria Antonia Gallart from Argentina; Nadya Castro, Marcia Leite, Alice Abreu, and Roque Aparecido da Silva from Brazil; Lais Abramo, Cecilia Montero, and Alvaro Díaz from Chile; María Eugenia Trejos and Juan Pablo Perez Sainz from Costa Rica; Carlos Alá Santiago from Puerto Rico; Luis Stolovich and Marcos Superville from Uruguay; Consuelo Iranzo and Hector Lucena from Venezuela; Rainer Dombois and Ludger Pries from Germany; Juan José Castillo from Spain; Pierre Tripie and Elena Hirata from France; and John Humphrey from the UK.

The central themes which have been addressed by SWM include: technological change, work organization, flexibility in the labor markets, the way the labor force is used, union changes, worker culture and sub-jectivity, chains of production, and company strategies. In general, these topics are related to industrial reorganization, industrial restructuring, the labor market, and labor relations. Particular attention has been paid to the theme of models of production, as a concept that organizes and guides multiple changes.

Among the strengths of SWM are the networks that have been formed linking the diverse disciplines in projects, associations, and work-ing groups, enriching the knowledge and capacities of labor sociologists. The dialogue with and influence from economic-sociology, socio-demographics, socio-politics, and socio-anthropology have been particu-larly relevant. To summarize the benefits of these networks, we could highlight: a) multidisciplinarity; b) greater academic rigor; c) participa-tion in teaching courses, and d) our necessary coexistence due to the mul-tiplicity of activities where we coincide (networks, congresses, forums, workshops, book presentations, and the dissemination of studies). The empirical character of the majority of the studies and the collective work on the most important projects speak to the strategic values of SWM.

On the contrary, the factors that limit the sociology of work as pro-fession are also numerous. They include: a) the preference for descrip-tive, empirical studies with little theoretical innovation; b) the small number of researchers and students; c) the lack of financial resources for research and their instability; d) the lack of financing to carry out com-parative international studies and Mexico’s disadvantaged financial situa-tion in comparison with the developed countries; e) the predominance of hierarchical relations in researcher training, professional relations, and administrative and research teams; f) the lack of specialization due to the diversity of converging approaches, methodologies, and disciplines; g)

Jorge Carrillo152

the absence of sufficient internationalization of scholars, including facil-ity with the English language; and h) the lack of debate and consensus on how to broaden our research agenda.

Finally, the challenges for SWM are vast. Needs include: a) greater internationalization of researchers and students; b) theoretical innovation; c) greater depth and expertise in several labor-related topics; and d) in-crease in the number of researchers and students. Of particular impor-tance is the need to carry out comparative international studies. In this respect, Enrique de la Garza highlights the need to take advantage of new international funds, such as those from the European Union, that have an interest in Latin America, to put together international projects that are truly comparative between countries in the region, but also with other regions of the world. This latter activity could help overcome a very common practice (not only in Mexico): the vast production of books and organization of conferences carried out year after year with the purpose of publishing collections of thematic or regional papers on Mexico or that relate to other countries, but that generally are not comparative. While there are financial resources in Mexico and Brazil, they are very limited in other Latin American countries. It is therefore crucial to diversify the search for funds. It is not only a matter of internationalizing Mexican sociologists of work but also of being able to increasingly attract notable visiting professors from diverse regions of the planet.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abo, T., ed. Hybrid Factory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. -----. Japanese Hybrid Factories. A Comparison of Global Production

Strategies. London: Palgrave, 2004. Abramo, L. J., et al. “The Institutionalization of the Sociology of Work

in Latin America.” Work and Occupations 24, no. 3 (1997): 348-363.

Abramo, L. J. and C. Montero. “La Sociología del Trabajo en América Latina: Paradigmas Teóricos y Paradigmas Productivos.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 1, no. 1 (1995): 73-96.

Boyer, R. and M. Freyssenet. Productive Models: The Condition of Prof-itability. New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, and Gerpisa, 2000.

Berger, S. How We Compete: What Companies around the World are Doing to Make It in Today’s Global Economy. New York: Double-day, 2006.

Beukema, L. and J. Carrillo. “Globalism/Localism at Work.” Research in the Sociology of Work 13 (2004): 99-124.


Burawoy, M. The Politics of Production. London: Verso, 1985. Carrillo, J. “La Experiencia Latinoamericana del Justo a Tiempo y el

Control Total de la Calidad.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 1, no. 1 (1995): 193-217.

-----. “Flexible Production in the Auto Sector: Industrial Reorganization at Ford - Mexico.” World Development 23 no. 1 (1995): 87-102.

----- and R. Barajas, eds.. Maquiladoras Fronterizas: Evolución y Heterogeneidad en los Sectores Electrónico y Automotriz. Tijuana: COLEF, 2007.

----- and A. Hernández. Mujeres Fronterizas en la Industria Maquiladora. Tijuana: COLEF, 1985.

----- and A. Hualde. “Maquiladoras de Tercera Generación. El Caso de Delphi-General Motors.” Comercio Exterior 47, no. 9 (1997): 747-758.

----- and A. Lara. “Mexican Maquiladoras: New Capabilities, Coordina-tion, and the Emergence of New Generation of Companies.” Innova-tion: Managment, Policy and Practice 7, no. 2 (April-August 2005): 256-273.

Carrillo, M., J. Martínez and J. Lara. “El Comportamiento de la Maquila en Querétaro.” In Modelos de Exportación en la Maquila de Exportación en México. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdez/UAM, 2007, pp. 139-168.

Carrillo, M. and J.L. Torres. “El Debate Sobre las Maquiladoras en México.” Internal Document, Universidad Autónomade Querétaro, Querétaro, 2002.

Casalet, M. “The Institutional Matrix and Its Main Funtional Activities Supporting Memoration.” In The Mexican Innovation System, edited by M. Cimoli. México City: OCDE/CONACYT, 1998.

----- and L. González. “El Entorno Institucional y la Formalizaron de las Redes en el Sector Electrónico de Chihuahua.” In La Emergencia de Dinámicas Institucionales de Apoyo a la Industria Maquiladora de Mexico, edited by D. Villavicencio. Mexico City: Ed. Miguel Angel Porrua/UAM, 2006, pp. 49-88.

Castillo, J. J. “¿A Dónde Va la Sociología del Trabajo?” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 1, no. 1 (1995).

-----. “El Paradigma Perdido de la Interdisciplinaridad: Volver a los Clásicos.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 5 (1997).

COLEF. “Encuesta de Aprendizaje Tecnológico y Escalamiento Industrial en Plantas Maquiladoras.” Proyecto Conacyt no. 36947-s Aprendizaje Tecnológico y Escalamiento Industrial: Perspectivas para la Formación de Capacidades de Innovación en las

Jorge Carrillo154

Maquiladoras en México. Tijuana: COLEF/FLACSO/UAM, 2002. Connell, R. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in

Social Science. London: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Contreras, O. “Los Estudios Acerca de la Flexibilidad Laboral en México:

Algunas Observaciones Críticas.” Estudios Sociológicos 18, no. 54 (2000): 727-735.

-----. “Reflexiones sobre la Sociología del Trabajo.” Paper presented at the 6th Congress of the Asociación Mexicana de Estudios del Trabajo, Queretaro, 2008.

-----. Interview by J. Carrillo, Tijuana, February 2009. Delbridge, R. Life on the Line of Contemporary Manufacturing. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1998. De La Garza, E. La Sociología del Trabajo en México: Balances y

Desafíos. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdez/UAM, 1993. -----. “La Situación del Trabajo en México.” In Economia y Sociología

del Trabajo. Madrid: Ministerio del Trabajo, 1994. -----. “La Flexibilidad del Trabajo en América Latina.” Revista

Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 5 (1997). -----, ed. Tratado Latinoamericano de Sociología. Mexico City: Fondo

de Cultura Económica, 2001.-----, ed. Modelos de Exportación en la Maquila de Exportación en

México. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdez/UAM, 2005. -----. “The Crisis of the Maquiladora Model in Mexico.” Work and

Occupations 34, no. 4 (2007): 399-429. -----. Interview by J. Carrillo, Tijuana, February 2009. -----. and J. Carrillo. “Los Fundamentos Teóricos de la Sociología del

Trabajo en México.” Iztapalapa 42 (1997): 15-48. -----., J. Carrillo and F. Zapata. “Los Estudios Sobre el Trabajo en

México.” Revista de Trabajo 2, no. 8 (July 1995): 165-183. -----. and C. Salas, eds. La Situación del Trabajo en México. Mexico

City: Plaza y Valdéz, 2003. Domínguez, L. and F. Brown. “Medición de las Capacidades

Tecnológicas en la Industria Mexicana.” Revista de la CEPAL 83 (August 2004): 135-151.

Dombois, R. and L. Pries. “¿Necesita América Latina su Propia Sociología del Trabajo?” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 5 (1995).

Dutrenit, G. et al. Acumulacion de Capacidades Tecnologicas en Subsidiarias de Empresas Globales en Mexico: El Caso de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación.” Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrua/UAM, 2006.

Friedman, T. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Cen-


tury. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Gioux, 2005. Giuliani, E., C. Pietrobelli and R. Rabellotti. “Upgrading In Global

Value Chains: Lessons From Latin American Clusters.” World Development 33, no. 4 (April 2005): 549-573.

Goldemberg, J. El Movimiento Obrero en el México Post-Revolucionario. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1980.

Hualde, A. Aprendizaje Industrial en la Frontera Norte de México: La Articulación entre el Sistema Educativo y el Sistema Productivo Maquilador. 2nd ed. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdes, 2001.

Humphrey, J. “Nuevas Fuentes de Competitividad Manufacturera: Organización de la Producción y Relaciones Interempresariales.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología LVII, no. 4 (1995).

----- and H. Schmitz. “Governance and Upgrading: Linking Industrial Clusters and Global Value Chain Research.” IDS Working Paper No. 120. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sus-sex, 2000.

----- and H. Schmitz. “How Does Insertion in Global Value Chains Affect Upgrading Industrial Clusters?” Regional Studies 36, no. 9 (2002).

Iranzo, H. and C. Lucena, “Presentación.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 20 (2008): 4.

Katz, J. Reformas Estructurales, Productividad y Conducta Tecnológica en América Latina. Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica y CEPAL, 2000.

Kawamura, T., ed. Hybrid Factories in the United States under the Global Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Lara Rivero, A. Aprendizaje Tecnológico y Mercado de Trabajo en las Maquiladoras Japonesas. México: Miguel Ángel Porrúa/UAM, 1998.

-----. “Packard Electric/Delphi and the Birth of the Autopart Cluster: the Case of Chihuahua, México.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26, no. 4 (2003).

-----. Co-Evolución de Empresas, Maquiladoras, Instituciones y Regiones: Una Nueva Interpretación. Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa/UAM, 2007.

-----, J. Arellano, and A. García. “Co-Evolución Tecnológica entre Maquiladoras de Autopartes y Talleres de Maquinado.” Comercio Exterior 55, no. 6 (2005): 586-599.

Lipietz, Alain. “De Toyota-City a la Ford-Hermosillo: La Japonización de Pacotilla.” El Cotidiano 67 (January-February 1995): 39-47.

Miller, D. and D. Slater. The Internet. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Montero, Cecilia. “Trabajo y Desarrolló Endógeno: Notas para una Ética

Jorge Carrillo156

del Trabajo en América Latina.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios del Trabajo 5, no. 5 (1997).

Muro, Gabriel. “Notas sobre la Metodología Cualitativa en la Sociología del Trabajo.” Consejo de Ciencia y Tecnología de Guanajuato 2, no. 26 (October 2007): 540-551.

Perez, C. “New Technologies and Development.” In The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics 213: Innovation and Eco-nomic Development. Amsterdam: Mytelka, 2007.

Porter, M. The Competitive Advantage of Nations. New York: Basic Books, 1990.

----- and K. Schwab. Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009. Ge-neva: World Economic Forum, 2008.

Pozas, M. “Entre la Generación y la Apropiación del Valor Agregado.” Paper presented at Seminario Fimas Multinacionales en Mexico: de la Innovación a la Responsabilidad Social, Mexico City, November 2007.

Robertson, D. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.” In Global Modernities, edited by M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R; Robertson. London: Sage, 1995, pp. 25-44.

Stallings, B. and W. Péres. Growth, Employment, and Equity: The Im-pact of Economic Reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago: CEPAL-United Nations, 2000.

Toyota Company. The Toyota Production System, Tokyo: Toyota Motor Company, 1996.

Villavicencio, D, ed. La Emergencia de Dinámicas Institucionales de Apoyo a la Industria Maquiladora de Mexico. Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa/UAM, 2006.

Weick, K. Sensemaking in Organization. London: Sage, 1995.

Publishing Sociological Journals in Argentina 157

Publishing Sociological Journals in Argentina: Problems and Challenges

Alicia Itatí Palermo, Council of Professional Sociologists (CPS), Argentina1

The topic I will discuss is the problems and challenges faced by scientific journals of sociology in Argentina.

First, I will talk about the importance of scientific journals. Second, I will present a brief history of scientific journals of sociology in Argentina. Third, I will characterize their current situation and analyze their prob-lems, many of which are shared with other Latin American journals. Fourth, I will review the challenges they face ahead.Scientific journals are the main means that the scientific community has to communicate their research.

As regards the importance of scientific journals, some authors (Cole 2000; Martin Sempere 2001) claim that scientific journals are not only a means of communicating scientific knowledge but also that, from the so-ciological point of view, they constitute part of the system of evaluating research activity.

Martin Sempere (2001) notes, "The concept of journal embodies all the main functions to be fulfilled in scientific communication, and it has as its principal component quality certification." She also mentions the protection of copyright, the dissemination of research results, and the function of storage and accessibility, which ensures the stability of the information. From this perspective, scientific journals are the result of efforts by publishers and other agents in the system of research and de-velopment that, together with researchers, makes their existence possible. The quality of these publications, their dissemination, and their impact in the scientific community reflect the maturity of this research and devel-opment system.

Therefore, editing a journal is a key element not only in the institu-tionalization of any discipline but also for the structure of scientific evaluation. Professional fields are areas with different levels of structur-ing. These fields have limits and rules that establish who is in or has the

1 Alicia Itatí Palermo is the editor of the Revista Argentina de Sociología.

Alicia Itatí Palermo158

skills necessary to enter the field, exercise those skills, and be able to ad-vance in the profession.

There are more structured areas and less structured areas that have more permeable boundaries or are in the process of construction. For many authors, this is the case in sociology, especially in our country, where the discipline has existed for around fifty years.

BRIEF HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY JOURNALS IN ARGENTINA

The history of scientific journals of sociology in Argentina2 shows the absence, for several decades, of a journal that defines the scientific field of sociology, despite several abortive attempts.

Pereyra (2005) argues, "The history of sociology in Argentina has been characterized by an unusual circumstance: the absence of a journal that defines the scientific field of sociology, establishes disciplinary boundaries, and channels discussions about its issues, problems, and chal-lenges, as other countries have carried out in some publications.” He concluded that the founding of the Revista Argentina de Sociología (Ar-gentine Review of Sociology, RAS)3 is an opportunity to establish a new communication channel for Argentinean sociologists and promote greater communication within the field of sociology, a dialogue always necessary for the development of sociological knowledge.

The University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and more specifically the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, had an important role in the history of sociology in Argentina. Even though the major in sociology was estab-lished at the university in 1957,4 the first courses in sociology had existed since 1898, and an Institute of Sociology was founded in 1941 which published the Boletín del Instituto de Sociología 5 and later the Cuader-nos del Instituto de Sociología. Until then, papers in this field were pub-lished in literary journals and in university annals. Pereyra (2005) goes on, "The 50s witnessed another experiment that also failed: the unfin-ished plan to found the Revista Argentina de Sociología. This scientific

oci-2 This historical review builds on Pereyra (2005). 3 The RAS is a sociology journal, published by the Council of Professional Sologist, which began in 2003. 4 Currently, there are sociology majors at the following national universities: Buenos Aires, Comahue, Cuyo, La Plata, Litoral, Mar del Plata, San Juan, San Martín, Santiago del Estero, and Villa María. 5 In 1952 and 1953 this bulletin published papers and proceedings of the First Latin American Congress of Sociology, held in Buenos Aires in 1951.


journal was going to be edited by the Institute of Sociographic Planning at National University of Tucumán ... However, after editing the first is-sue, the journal did not go on sale for reasons as yet unknown.”

At the end of the decade of the 1950s, the journal Desarrollo Económico was founded, a publication which is currently published by the Economic Development Institute, still exists, and has achieved high standards of quality, so one can highlight its role in science social, even when it is not a sociology-specific journal (between 1958 and 1991, only 12% of articles published by this journal were sociological, according to the magazine’s own classification).

In this decade, perhaps with inspiration from the newly-established major in sociology, several national universities began to edit sociologi-cal journals. They included: Cuadernos de Sociología of UniversidadNacional de La Plata (1962); Boletín del Instituto de Sociología Raúl Or-gaz, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (between 1957 and 1973); Inves-tigaciones en Sociología of the Institute of Sociology, Universidad Na-cional de Cuyo (edited with breaks between 1962 and 1970); Estudios de Sociología, published between 1961 and 1965 by Editorial Omega, under the auspices of the Argentinean Society of Sociology and the Interna-tional Institute of Sociology (published between 1961 and 1965), and Latin Sociology of Instituto Di Tella (from 1965 to 1975). This last jour-nal was published in English and included, among the members of its honorary committee, Robert Merton and Talcott Parsons.

The military government6 (1976-2003) complicated the lack of jour-nals even more. The absence of a strictly sociological academic journal deprived academics of a larger debate about the problems of sociology in Argentina. During the 1980s, sociology took refuge in research reports from research centers like the Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES) 7 and the Latin American Council on the Social Sciences (CLACSO).8 In the 1990s, other journals appeared, but they did not suc-ceed.

At present, the picture in relation to academic journals of sociology is: there are few social science journals published by universities or research centers.

ultidisci-r-

6 On March 24, 1976 the military overthrew the government of President Isabel Martínez de Perón and started a de facto government, suspending constitutional guarantees. This dictatorship continued until December 2003. 7 The Center for the Study of State and Society, founded in 1975, is a mplinary center dedicated to studying social, political, and economic issues in Agentina and Latin America 8 The Latin American Council on the Social Sciences, founded in 1967, is an international non-governmental institution, which brings together research and graduate programs in 25 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.


However, in 2003, the catalog Latindex (Regional Information Sys-tem for Online Scientific Latin American, Caribbean, Spain, and Portu-gal), included in its directory (the directory is the record of scientific journals) 190 scientific journals from Latin American social sciences, distributed as follows: Brazil: 33%, Mexico 25%, Argentina 17%, Co-lombia 5% and Venezuela 5%.

This shows that Argentina, despite its low number of journals, is in third place in the region in publishing social science journals. If we take into account the journals included on the list (journals ranked at the highest scientific level), there are only 16 journals classified as sociology:9 Aportes para la Integración Latinoamericana; Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad; Educación, Lenguaje y Sociedad; Espacios Nueva Serie; Estudios del Trabajo; Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos; Geodemos; La Aljaba; Medicina y Sociedad; Mitológicas; Mora; Población y Sociedad; Razón y Revolución; Revista Argentina de Sociología; Scripta Ethonológica y Trabajo y Sociedad. Clearly, not all of these are specific to sociology, and some of them refer only to a branch of sociology.

I would like to draw your attention to the Revista Argentina de Soci-ología, published by the Council of Professional Sociologists 10 since 2003. On the one hand, this is the institution I represent, and on the other hand, in the past few years, the Revista Argentina de Sociologìa has be-come an academic journal of highest level, included not only in the cata-log Latindex at level 1, but also in the Núcleo Básico de Revistas Científicas Argentinas, which is a selection of publications in science and technology published in this country, recognized, and classified as level 1 by the Argentinean Center for Scientific and Technical Information, in the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. Also, it is included in other international indexes, such as the SCA Sociological Ab-stracts, and Cambridge Scientifics Abstracts.

That a few years was enough for the Revista Argentina de Sociologíato establish itself as a top-level journal in the national and Latin Ameri-can field of sociology, with a wide acceptance and recognition among professionals in the social sciences, shows an expected rise in the profes-

a-

9 In Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal Latindex categorizes a total of 129 journals as sociology journals. 10 The CPS was created through a national law in 1988 and governs professional practice within the area of the capital city of Argentina (Buenos Aires), the ntional territory of Tierra del Fuego and the South Atlantic Islands. The CPS has846 sociologists enrolled.


sionalization of the field of sociology, which was absent until that time, despite the existence of a significant number of social science journals.

Interestingly, the Revista Argentina de Sociología is not published by a university. As we saw, the history of sociology in Argentina has shown the existence of research centers and institutions in the field of sociology, with a strong production in social science. The Consejo de Profesionales en Sociología (Council of Sociological Professionals) has developed aca-demic and professional activities continuously since its foundation and has academic cooperation agreements with universities and academic in-stitutions, including the Latin American Sociological Association (ALAS), the Association of Sociologists of French Language (AISLF), the Association of Sociologists of Russia, and the College of Sociologists of Peru. The International Sociological Association (ISA) recognized Argentina’s CPS as a regular member of the Council of National Associa-tions of ISA, given the absence of a federation of Sociology in Argentina and CPS’s prestige and its academic and professional quality.

The Consejo de Profesionales en Sociología organized meetings of sociology associations from Latin America in the congresses of the Latin American Sociological Association. In the Preparatory Meeting of the XXVII Congress of this association, held at the National University of Nordeste, Corrientes, Argentina, in 2008, this institution also organized and coordinated a meeting of Argentinean colleges and professional asso-ciations, in order to initiate efforts to create a sociological federation in Argentina.11 The Association of Sociologists of the Province of Buenos Aires, the Association of Sociologists of San Juan, and the Association of Sociologists Santiago del Estero participating in this meeting.12 These associations had recently restarted operations after a more or less pro-longed period of inactivity.

The leadership role of the CPS in this field is growing and can be viewed in light of its participation in academic and professional fields, in the Institute of Sociological Research, and in the Revista Argentina de Sociología, which has been positioned in Argentina as a channel of expression for social communication and discussions about research in Latin America.

ev-

ue-

lish om

,

11 In our country, a sociological federation existed, but it stopped working seral years ago. 12 In 1985, by provincial law, the College of Sociologists of the Province of Bnos Aires , which now has 220 sociologists enrolled, was established, but it was inactive in the period from 1998 - 2000. In 1986 a law was passed to estabthe College of the Province of San Juan, but this college remained inactive fr1989 until 1998. It now has 36 sociologist enrolled. In 2005, by provincial lawthe College of Santiago del Estero was established, which now has 131 sociolo-gists enrolled.


PROBLEMS FOR SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS IN ARGENTINA

Editing a scientific journal of sociology in Latin America in a time of social and economic crisis like the present is a challenge. Globalization, social inequalities, and high levels of unemployment and social exclusion that affect the majority of Latin American countries are facts about which sociologists and social scientists of varied disciplines have much to con-tribute, both to understanding them and to searching for alternatives to improve the living conditions of the social actors involved.

In addition to this challenge, there are several difficulties that editors have to face. The main difficulties are: this journal’s low visibility worldwide, the low recognition by national science and technology agen-cies and by the authors themselves, the poor preparation of the editors in the process and rules of publishing scientific journals, the lack of funding, the difficulties of editing volumes on time, and primarily the absence of editorial policies that support such journals in most Latin American coun-tries. The following are some of these difficulties.

First, in Latin American countries, when evaluating scholars’ produc-tivity, science and technology agencies give higher scores to articles pub-lished in journals indexed by Social Sciences Citation Index (SCI), of Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). However, Latin American jour-nals are rarely indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index. There are only five Argentinean journals evaluated by ISI and incorporated into the SCI. Of these, only one is in the area of Social Sciences (Desarrollo Económico, edited by IDES, Institute of Economic and Social Develop-ment), but as we saw, this journal is not specific to the field of sociology.

Moreover, there are prejudices against index journals that are not coming from the United States or Western Europe or are not written in English or French. Inclusion in the indexes ensures the visibility of the journal. Latin American journals publish articles of excellent quality, and they are very prestigious, but they have little worldwide visibility. An-other problem faced by Latin American journals is funding, which re-flects the problem of financing the sector of science and technology.

In turn, there is a lack of training in editing for the editors of these journals, who are unaware the rules or processes of editing scientific journals and even choose not to index their journals. These problems made it necessary to work actively to improve Latin American journals.


CHALLENGES FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNALS IN ARGENTINA AND LATIN AMERICA

The problems faced by scientific journals should be addressed both by the government policies and by editors. Policies are needed to improve na-tional scientific journals and provide financial support and training for editors.

On the editors’ side, work is needed in networking, collaborating, and collaboratingwith other editors to create national or regional indexes and networks. Now, I will present a brief overview of what has happened in Argentina in these two areas.

Government Policies.

The Argentinean Center for Scientific and Technical Information is the institution responsible for developing policies related to scientific jour-nals. In order to support national journals, it has joined the Latindex Sys-tem and promoted the scoring of Argentinean scientific journals. Inclu-sion in the Latin American System Latindex marks a change in the ways the contents of journals published in the region are scientifically assessed.

Ana Maria Flores, coordinator of the Scientific Publications Area CAICYT / CONICET, highlights the importance of the Latindex System for Argentinean scientific journals, explaining that LatIndex: 1) is the first national survey of scientific publications from all disciplines, 2) makes it possible to select, evaluate, and prioritize scientific publications according to international standards and set editorial quality parameters for the region, 3) advances the scoring of scientific journals in Argentina, 4) makes a new form of contact with readers, publishers, abstracting ser-vices, and databases for international distribution. All contact informa-tion for journal editors is updated, and the articles are open access on the web.

The Argentinean Center for Scientific and Technical Information also offers national science editing seminars, in order to train the editors of national journals in scientific editing. The aim is to preserve Argentinean publications, which are often the only source of research of local or re-gional interest, the best vehicle to publicize the research being undertaken in universities and research centers in the country, and an important ele-ment of training for young researchers.


Editors of Scientific Journals

Editors also must work to improve scientific journals in the social sciences. As Eduardo Sandoval Forero (2004), the coordinator of the network of Latin American journal editors called Revistalas says, "The complex situation of the journals and their future in Latin America, not only in the national indexes but also in the international context, and the lack of policies that support knowledge dissemination in Latin American countries, require a collective effort that would be difficult for any single publication to solve. Forming networks has the potential to mobilize ef-forts, skills, and editorial policies. Surely, a network will facilitate the creation of common understandings for publishers. A network allows us to organize ourselves as editors, exchange information, establish partner-ships, and, where possible and appropriate, share resources among jour-nals from different institutions and geographic areas.”

In Argentina, the Revista Argentina de Sociología is committed to the important task of promoting the visibility of Latin American scientific journals. Our efforts to communicate scientific knowledge are not lim-ited to editing but extend to the task of establishing a forum for exchange, communication of the problems faced, and cooperative work among aca-demic journals in social sciences in Latin America.

With the aim of working together, in the context of the XXIV Con-gress of the Latin American Association in Arequipa, the editors of a group of Latin American journals founded the network Revistalas, of which I am co-coordinator along with Eduardo Sandoval Forero.

Same of the goals that Revistalas established are: 1) Develop a direc-tory of scientific journals of Latin American social sciences and humani-ties, 2) develop editorial strategies through cooperation, for example, by exchanging articles and referees, and 3) organize meetings of the network at the National and Latin American Congress of Sociology, as well as activities that allow us to discuss the situation of Latin American journals and to seek strategies to improve these journals.

Finally, and as a conclusion, I am convinced that by joining forces and working cooperatively, we will take steps forward to improving Latin American journals. For this, we need specific policies and participation by editors in the establishment of these policies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cole, Stephen. “The Role of Journals in the Growth of Scientific Knowl-edge.” In Blaise Croning and Helen Barsky Atkins, eds. The Web of


Knowledge. Medford, New Jersey: ASIS Monograph Series Informa-tion Today, 2000.

Flores, Ana María. “Las Normas para la Edición de Revistas Científicas: los Índices y la Evaluación de las Revistas Científicas. Aportes y Críticas.” Paper given in the panel “Las Revistas Académicas de Ciencias Sociales: Problemáticas y Perspectivas de la Edición Científica en Argentina.” Presentation at I Encuentro Latinoamericano de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales, La Plata, 2008.

Martín Sempere, María José. “Papel de las Revistas Científicas en la Transferencia de Conocimientos.” In Román Román, Adelaida, et. al.La Edición de Revistas Científicas: Guía de Buenos Usos. Madrid:Centro de Información y Documentación Científica CINDOC (CSIC), 2001.

Palermo, Alicia Itatí. “Editorial.” Revista Argentina de Sociología 4, no. 7 (2006).

Pereyra, Diego. “Las Revistas Académicas de Sociología en Argentina. Racconto de una Historia Desventurada.” Revista Argentina de Sociología 5, no. 3 (2005).

Sandoval Forero, Eduardo. “Ciencias Sociales y Revistas Científicas en América Latina.” Revista Convergencia 11 (2004).

Napoleon Velástegui Bahamonde166

Sociology, Technology Parks, AppliedResearch, and International Accreditation

Napoleon Velástegui Bahamonde, University of Guayaquil,Ecuador1

This presentation to the Conference of National Associations of the Inter-national Sociological Association, the Taiwanese Sociology Association, and the Institute of Sociology of the Academia Sinica, has two central goals, one theoretical and one practical, that, though they are opposites, are also complementary.

First, I seek to contextualize the period that social sciences and soci-ology are going through, an era of profound changes and new ideas and challenges.

Second, I propose to put into use the wealth of social science and so-ciological experience to help focus our attention on ideas coming from the natural sciences and technology, and enhance our ability to respond to current demands for improving the quality of social life, particularly among the world’s most vulnerable people. I suggest we could do this by developing applied research, highlighting the potential of technology parks (areas dedicated to scientific research and supported by business), and democratizing the process of international accreditation in centers of higher education, particularly those in developing countries and espe-cially in Latin America.

SOME THEORETICAL PREMISES: GLOBALIZATIONAND MODERNIZATION

As I noted in the paper I presented at the Sixth World Sociology Con-gress in Durban, South Africa in July 2006, the changes I’m referring to are varied and extensive: social, economic, cultural, ideological, techno-logical. And, humankind has effected these changes in the course of just one generation. However, they are of such magnitude, depth, and gradu-ally increasing speed that the paradigms in place have not been able to

1 Napoleón Velastegui Bahamonde is President of the Federación Ecuatoriana de Sociologos (Ecuadorian Federation of Sociologists).

Sociology, Technology Parks, Applied Research, and International Accreditation 167

interpret and explain them. Today, we are not only witnesses but also fundamentally protagonists

of an extraordinary conceptual revitalization, of the construction of new paradigms that aim, once again, to respond more precisely and more ac-curately when the clock of global warming strikes, increasing peoples’ consciousness about environmental care and protection and about citi-zens’ rights, calling not only for more strength but also importantly, for more flexibility and tolerance.

Therefore, I pointed out at that recent congress, new efforts to exam-ine social scientific and especially sociological problems have emerged in the context of this broad theoretical reconstruction. Sociological thinking is not only moving on to new issues but has also been forced to take on new directions by the combination of these accelerated changes and emerging social dynamics.

We can now say that the multiple themes of social sciences in general and sociology in particular tend, directly or indirectly, to emerge from a matrix of social relations, at once new and old. The axis of these social relations is no longer singular but increasingly represents an “ordered pair,” in a “binary” relationship of inseparable correlation and feedback between two ends: 1) productivity and 2) quality of life. Class competi-tion progressively makes these two sides inseparable, but also, and per-haps most important, their interaction marks – more transparently – an overall trend towards excellence in all human spheres, including eco-nomic, social, cultural, scientific, and technical activities. Productivity is not exclusively an economic category; it is also is becoming a sociologi-cal category.

Now, it is unlikely that a low quality of life will generate high pro-ductivity. We are past the time of Peter the Great, when he would an-nounce, "I will make them progress even if I have to drag them,” or the recent and pathetic example of Pinochet, who carried out Allende’s offer but “kicking and screaming” and in rivers of blood, being sentenced in life.

Instead, we are seeing the dawn of a new era characterized by greater social participation, greater respect, and greater racial, social, and reli-gious tolerance. The ancient contrast of wealth and poverty has dimin-ished but not disappeared. While it remains, its presence will have an increasingly dramatic effect, because humanity will look at it from a greater ethical height, whose greater sensitivity implies an inherent need to help generate answers more quickly. In this new era, we have seen the development of a new social vision in which, in another paradox, the two poles of business and science inform the growth of a multidisciplinary theory where the social sciences need the natural sciences and vice versa.


As always, these extraordinary vital changes follow age old but in-creasingly intense social and historical patterns that also manifest them-selves in the active participation of their diverse components: ourselves.

I agree with the idea expressed in this conference regarding the "end of determinism," or at least the beginning of the end. At the same time we must remember that this will not be the end of determinants, because without patterns there is no science. Entropy is not absolute. As nonlin-ear thermodynamics tells us, in open systems, non-equilibrium states arise. This enables humankind to explain the behavior of biological, so-cial, and other structures and phenomena.

Today, we have conceptual systems in the social sciences that grew up under "the golden tree of life" and were nourished by the strength of other disciplines, particularly the natural sciences. Nevertheless, we must never forget to repeat, with Goethe and to maintain our sanity, that like any theory, natural science is also ambiguous.

At the Durban Congress, I organized my proposal as follows. Re-garding the character of globalization, one of the determining factors I mentioned, I pointed out: 1) Globalization is a historical regularity, a law of socio-economic development, whose basic direction has been oriented towards excellence, quality, integration, and interdependence in all spheres of social and economic life. 2) With regard to the link between globalization and the regional level, I suggested that globalization is go-ing through a stage of regionalization (e.g., the European Union) and si-multaneously, a process of strengthening "the local" is emerging that is helping to forge the identity of nations still in the process of consolidation. The difference is that this time, “local” identity is coalescing around the urban perspective, whereas in the past century developing countries em-phasized the rural. 3) Regarding the great wealth-poverty paradox, I pointed out that globalization, like all contemporary social phenomena, has a paradoxical character, but it is also irreversible and progressive. Its fundamental dynamic is scientific and technological, but it responds to the growing, current demand for productivity and competitiveness in all areas, so it affects all aspects of social life generally, and the urban de-mands of labor markets and culture specifically.

The Americans, with their practical sense, through the words of their former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, define globalization as the fact that almost all products that weigh over ten pounds and cost more than ten dollars are global composites. Beyond theorizing, this simple, cate-gorical definition demonstrates that this “miracle,” the phenomenon of globalization, has already taken a seat at the concert of the real.

Finally, considering the relationship between globalization, regionali-zation, and the processes that occur in regions and nations with low and


medium productivity, particularly in Latin America, I argued that the modernization processes of nations are correlative and complementary to the process of globalization. In low and medium productivity countries, rapid changes in the economic structure make local branches no longer primary but secondary and generally tertiary. As a result, both the state and society as a whole have had to update their role and their structure to deliver better services to citizens. The profound transformations occur-ring in Latin America can only work on the condition that simultaneously with these changes, enough resources, in both quality and quantity, are generated to support a new brand that merges business vision with greater social responsibility.

SOME PRACTICAL POINTS: TECHNOLOGY PARKS

The second theme of this paper concerns contemporary processes like the "Bologna Process," the Technological "Nobel" and operational proposals for technology parks.

As a source and as a result of the changes noted above, there has emerged a new organizational culture around innovation, risk, entrepre-neurship, environmental management, civil rights, the optimization of resources, and the control of corruption, among other things. This new outlook reflects strategies to consolidate and reinforce the changes that have converged from various parties, approaches, and efforts, in this case in Latin America, influenced by global, regional, national, and local fac-tors. We will not mention any particular social strategies emerging in this continent – since that’s not the purpose of this paper – but suffice it to say that although none of these efforts are the same, all of them share a com-mon factor: the desire to resolve, in the local environment and at the con-temporary level of social development, the secular paradox of an unequal world.

In Europe, one of the oldest continents and the cradle of important civilizations and social science ideas, which today epitomizes the region-alization phase of the globalization process, technology parks have emerged as a means to stimulate the relationship between research, de-velopment, and investment.

Technology parks are one of the most visible expressions of the many, diverse responses demanded by this new organizational culture and the new social relations among science, technology, society, state, and the market. The rate of growth of these “knowledge cities” in Europe, for instance, is different from that in Latin America. This situation itself provokes a few questions.


In the specific case of Ecuador and its main port city, Guayaquil, one might ask of academia and higher-level institutions for knowledge, “What are the challenges universities, and particularly the University of Guayaquil (UG), face for institutional development and leadership in the next 50 years?”

An important part of the response revolves around the fact that to ad-vance towards a knowledge-based society, in any country in Latin Amer-ica just as in the EU, universities in general and the University of Guayaquil in particular need to begin an accelerated modernization proc-ess, both in their relations with the state and in their relations with busi-nesses and society. The energy needed, including extensive financial re-sources, cannot be wasted on the current high levels of chaos, which mis-use resources that are essential to meeting the population’s demand for an improved quality of life.

To orient ourselves, let’s examine a few international experiences. First, in Europe, in the “Bologna Process,” begun in 1999 and lasting

until 2010, 40 countries are working to strengthen their academic auton-omy and expand their roles in innovation and economic development.

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that the four finalists for the “Nobel Prize” in Technology in 2008 (the third edition of the Mille-nium Technology prize being for 1,150,000 Euros), coming from 26 countries, are committed to doing research to “improve peoples’ quality of life.”2

Just these two cases demonstrate the wide range that extends from the “jumping off point” of the Bologna Process to the technological inven-tions supported by the “Nobel” in technology, imply that at the moment,

2 These finalists included: 1) Andrew Viterbi (USA, University of South Califor-nia), whose contribution revolutionized cell phone communication technology through the “Viterbi” algorithm, which has been crucial to improving computers and MP3 storage capacity in wireless networks. 2) Alec Jeffreys (United King-dom, University of Leicester), who developed DNA fingerprinting, which has resolved thousands of paternity and immigration cases, among other uses. 3) Emmanuel Desurvire (France, Director of Physical Research, Thales Corpora-tion), who applied enriched Erbium to enhance fiber optic networks, transform-ing the world of broadband and long distance communication, and 4) Robert Langer (USA, MIT, Department of Health Sciences and Technology), who pio-neered several fields of biotechnology, including the application of medication without injections to combat malignant tumors. Likewise, the first edition of the Millennium Technology Prize went to Tim Berners-Lee (USA), “father” of the Internet, and the second went to Shuji Nakamura (Japan), inventor of the LED (Light Emitting Diode) semiconductor, a replacement for the “traditional” elec-tric lightbulb that gives off a pleasant white light, consumes little electricity, and lasts for a long time.


the destiny of sociology and the social sciences should begin from its in-tersection with the natural sciences and technology. This intersection will allow us to generate new offers or create new universities to face the fun-damental challenge of international accreditation and to fulfill a strategic role.

One important mechanism for such innovation is technology parks, which encourage broad responses, filled with the contemporary spirit of innovation and entrepreneurial quality, such as water resource manage-ment, environmental protection, citizen participation and rights, and the creation of early warning systems for risks and disasters, among other things, all based on science and technology. The research from such sites makes it possible to produce real products, new conceptual systems, and direct applications in production, culture, and technology transfer to ad-dress these challenges.

Currently, it’s well known that universities no longer have exclusive control over science. For this reason, new relations between science, technology, society, businesses, and the market demand a rapid reorienta-tion in order to jump start them towards the future, towards a knowledge society. Only absolutely “stable” and “traditional” topics and institutions are neophobes, and as a result, are generating a cycle of inevitable and irreversible obsolescence that is driving them towards an outdated institu-tional fundamentalism.

The University of Guayaquil, like other centers of higher education, must act immediately to confront this challenge. If it does not, it will not be a protagonist but a passive witness. Its international accreditation as well as its own strategic development as an institution are in danger, given the immanent risk of becoming seriously isolated and excluded by an intense competition for available financial resources. Access to re-sources depends on developing a new management approach, which will be effective to the extent it equips itself with a holistic and interdiscipli-nary vision, oriented towards inclusiveness, empowerment, and redirect-ing resources.

This means reworking the university’s scientific, technological, and cultural leadership, as well as the management of the institution, for the next 50 years. For the University of Guayaquil (UG), the urgent needs include the following: 1) the immediate formulation of background con-ditions and a workplan to help us obtain membership in the International Association of Science Parks, 2) the creation of a UG Technology Park Foundation, 3) the formation of an interdisciplinary team of specialists to design the UG technology park, 4) the development of a UG research system, 5) a legal framework for the UG technology park, 6) a design for studying the current and potential supply and demand for UG within its


realm of influence, based on planning policies that overcome traditional divisions based exclusively on the political and administrative division of provinces, counties, and towns and, instead, take watersheds3 into ac-count, 7) the redesign of the university campus and selection of the most appropriate location for the UG technology park, 8) the selection of com-panies to support the UG technology park, 9) a study of the most produc-tive areas within UG’s area of influence, particularly in the Guayas River Watershed, 10) to highlight these areas of productivity, the creation of a new paradigm, a “wealth map,” to complement the earlier “poverty maps,” and 11) the distribution of these results.

All this is so that a new organizational culture of entrepreneurship and innovation emerges synergistically at the heart of the university and contributes significantly to peoples’ struggles to improve their quality of life through progressively increasing our productivity and competitive-ness. We hope the technology park, whose study area will be the Guayas River Watershed, becomes a catalyst of this process.

As the International Association of Science Parks (IASP) defines them, technology parks are physical spaces that maintain formal and op-erational relationships with universities, encouraging the development of businesses by adding valuable knowledge from the third sector, to build the university of the future. The IASP explains that a technology park should have a stable management agency that promotes technology trans-fer and fosters innovation among the companies and organizations that use the park. This agency should also provide a team of specialized pro-fessionals to meet social and business demands. The team should be ori-ented to raising productivity and competitiveness through a culture of business innovation and knowledge sharing among institutions within the park or associated with it. It should also help stimulate the flow of knowledge through cultivation, “spinoff,” or other similar things.

The nature of the UG technology park will be diverse, since the economy of its city and the region of its area of influence is diverse.

The potential themes for the technological park’s services to the public, private, and community sectors include mainly information and communication technologies (ICT); communication and social networks; nutrition and agro-industry; medicine and health; small, medium, and large industries; renewable and environmental energy management; water management; tourism and trade; business management; innovation and risk; engineering; and consulting. The technology park will form net-

3 Watershed: an area defined by a natural water drainage system, delimited by the section of a river to which it refers and the summit line, which is also called the “water divider” of hydraulic resources. Since the 1970s, watersheds have been used for planning the use of natural resources.


works of technology and innovation transfer; it will integrate projects linked to local, regional, and national development efforts; and it will address the demands of the nation and the market.

However, because the natural and social sciences have an interde-pendent relationship, the natural sciences alone will not be able to fulfill this mission. In order to meet the aforementioned challenges, the natural sciences will be insufficient without active citizen participation and the interpretation and systematization of social facts on the part of social sci-ences and sociology.

Now, the equation is: productivity + welfare = competitiveness. This equation could not have emerged in an earlier period. It required that people build up more social and business maturity, as manifested in the decline of clientelistic networks. Now, in Ecuador, increasing citizen participation in electoral processes and in the dismissal of presidents and governments demonstrate that we have overcome the past.

However, as we know, resistance to change is always sustained by the most powerful of forces: the force of habit.

The present and, more importantly, the future of this equation de-pends on the emergence of new responsibilities imposed on scientific dis-ciplines and higher education centers. These tasks will be related, on the one hand, to the real and potential needs in their areas of influence and, on the other hand, to their relationships with social movements, which should also rebuild and reconstruct an outdated social psychology, based on dilapidated, clientilistic, and permissive customs.

In the recent past, in Ecuador, one of the factors that contributed de-cisively to generating the biggest crisis in the history of the republic was the role played by “swallow capital,” closely linked to huge, unparalleled waves of corruption. Apparently, the bait was very “attractive:” some investors were willing to pay up to 80% and more of the annual bank in-terest rate! This phenomenon emerged in a context of inflation and de-valuation. It pulverized the monetary reserve. More seriously, in this nefarious period emerged not only speculative, devaluing, partisan mac-roeconomic government policies but also a system of social concepts and practices that were similarly distant from the fundamental objective: pro-ductive investment.

Large social groups turned their backs on fruitful work and ended up living a parasitic “lifestyle.” For instance, in Guayaquil, it was common to see money changers on October 9 Street and Pichinca Street, com-pletely occupied with responding to the enormous demand for buying and selling dollars from residents inflamed about the immanent and daily de-valuation of the national currency.

In due time, the swallow capital left in search of new and fresh niches,


the financial system collapsed, and the economic crisis turned into a po-litical and social one. Any resemblance to what has happened in other countries is not just a coincidence. Poverty passed the 80% mark, we hit rock bottom, and now we’re trying to lift ourselves up and advance as rapidly as possible towards increasing productivity levels. Only by in-creasing the productivity of businesses, workers, and the nation will we be able to confront the challenges of international markets, and this will not be possible without simultaneously working to increase peoples’ standard of living.

It is imperative to absorb a new economic and social category that re-flects the rapid contemporary changes: competitiveness. This basic con-cept, which comes from managers and those who seek quality and excel-lence, expresses the close relationship between productivity and wellbe-ing. It speaks to the link between the degree of productivity that a com-pany or a nation can reach while still being able to improve workers’ standards of living.

One factor that will be discussed in a new light is the relationship be-tween the the gross operating surplus (GOS) and workers’ compensation (WC). The crisis of 1998, 1999 and 2001, when we reached a 20% un-employment rate, got taken out on the backs of labor. The gross operat-ing surplus for those years was 67%, 75% and 84%, respectively, while the proportion of workers' pay was 33%, 27% and 16%, respectively. The GOS in this period increased by 26% while workers’ compensation diminished 53%. A crisis administered that way turns out to be a good deal for a few people, and this was a starting point for changing the political actors in Ecuador.

Another issue that we should consider is training and education, which will be pillars of these processes, but will do so, above all, within a new image of the contemporary era that gradually assimilates the patterns of globalization, modernization, and regionalization, and is linked to the appearance of the era of information, knowledge, and more aware social participation.

In the face of current social needs, people in Ecuador have become ever more aware of their rights and duties. They recognize that the law can be a “limit on their rights” that expands with their active participation and mobilization. As a result, their demands can only be resolved through real responses based on scientific research, technological innova-tion, and entrepreneurship. There is a profound feeling in the nation that there is emerging a new relationship between state, market, society, sci-ence, and technology that makes it possible, at the same time, to protect natural resources and generate the enormous financial resources to reduce massive gaps in services and significant social inequalities.


In particular, the sphere of influence of the technology park of the University of Guayaquil will include a watershed made up of ten of the 25 provinces of Ecuador, with 27 sub-watersheds that cover an area of 50,489 square kilometers, representing 18.7% of the total land surface of Ecuador. This area is home to nearly 5.5 million inhabitants, amounting to 40% of the total current population and has more than 1,200 companies on record employing about 100,000 workers and generating more than 48 billion dollars in production, which represents about 50% of the country’s total GDP.

One of many examples of potential of the UG technology park would be to use technical information gathered to develop an early warning sys-tem, which is the only way to prevent and mitigate the impacts of perma-nent flooding. Similarly, one might make use of the technology park to moderate the impacts of the drought seasons on the population located in this area. Sociology, together with other scientific disciplines, can and may seek connections with specific activities that support the develop-ment of a proactive awareness, particularly of the rural sector, applying and building upon community action methodologies.

At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, one of the resolu-tions was to "Increase cooperation to reduce the number and impact of natural and man-made disasters." In Ecuador, natural disasters consis-tently have greater impacts on the most vulnerable sectors of society, who have an insufficient capacity to face disasters of this magnitude. The floods caused by the El Niño phenomenon in 1982-83 (in Guayaquil, the cumulative annual rainfall during those years exceeded 4,000 mm.) gen-erated damage that exceeded $650 million US dollars, with important losses in the productive sectors (63%), infrastructure (33%), and the social sectors (4%), particularly among the most vulnerable and for those under the poverty line. The total damage caused by the El Niño phe-nomenon in Ecuador in 1997-1998, meanwhile, was estimated at $2.869 billion US dollars. Economic losses in the latter years were more than four times those in 1982-1983, with reports of dozens dead, 3,700 evacu-ated, 10,000 injured, and around 2,000 dwellings damaged. There are some communities where a high percentage of the population disposes of sewage into septic tanks or directly into their back yards, which makes such areas very vulnerable to disease transmission. The paradox is that the population of most of these communities do not even have potable water service. Only 9 towns (17%), 3 rural and 6 urban, have piped water; generally, water comes from wells.


CONCLUSIONS

Until just a few years ago in my country, at a meeting of the national or-ganization for science and technology (Fundación para la Ciencia y Tec-nología, FUNDACYT), people discussed the very existence of social sci-ences. Today, there is not a candidate or a traditional political party that does not use the category “social,” even if in name only, in its pursuit of the popular vote (and the battles in this new era will be primarily elec-toral). While this fact expresses the chameleon-like flexibility of the forces of the past that refuse to die, it also speaks to the importance of social issues in the contemporary environment.

Today, at the international level, the social sciences play an increas-ingly prominent role in the prognosis of critical social phenomena, such as in the case of the consolidation of the European Union, whose emer-gence marked a step forward for social development. Likewise, sociol-ogy has taken information collected automatically from Internet servers to understand market demands, and it has contributed to the solution of health problems (pandemics and their relationship with life overall), nu-trition, production in general, culture, and even art.

In Ecuador, the constitution recently adopted by a vast majority vote includes various articles that expand the guiding force of social science as a tool for achieving social rights, equality, citizen participation, and envi-ronmental care and protection. In general, it is almost unanimous that we now have a more tolerant, less fundamentalist, more livable world than even just a half century ago.

Globalization was demonized yesterday as unilateral, but today we can look at this multidimensional phenomenon in its highs and lows as a process that above all demonstrates progress towards a more dynamic and informed society.

The nations of Latin America are coming together like tributary riv-ers in a great basin of impetuous and irrepressible social, economic, cul-tural, and ideological changes, but satisfying peoples’ just demands can only happen if we have a sufficient quantity and quality of resources.

The concept of productivity is transforming itself and expanding to include a sociological character. The possibility of generating high pro-ductivity with a low quality of life is ever smaller. The new concept, competitiveness includes both faces of the same coin. The eras of Peter the Great or Pinochet, the latter only a few years ago, are now inconceiv-able. Social participation reveals patterns of more respect and tolerance in various spheres of sociological activity, which is now more prestigious and at the same time more demanding of creative approaches and “more achievable utopias.”


What can we say about the new science of thermodynamics - and its increasing updates - that closely links natural and social sciences? Tech-nology parks are part of this new type of interdisciplinary response. It is certain that there will occur an “era of transition,” where forces that iden-tify more with the market coexist with those that emphasize the social sides of life.

In Ecuador and especially in Guayaquil, its main port city, the latest elections of leaders at the national and local level, respectively, reaf-firmed these two currents. Beyond the struggle that will emerge in the next five years, there is a common ground: people share the idea that the development of technology parks is a practical means to address regional needs.

This era, full of changes and like no other before, deserves a para-digmatic system of self-renovation, feedback, and proactiveness that avoids, to the extent possible, or at least defers the natural expiration of the theoretical tools that have been unable to absorb the growing accel-eration of the course of humanity towards excellence. By the end of this century, at a rate of growth of zero resulting from the natural decline in the overall rate of fertility, the planet will reach approximately twice the population we have today. Along with that, the world will reach its “adulthood,” which will release an extraordinary flow of financial re-sources to resolve problems and not only for growth but also for devel-opment. This will make it possible to produce cleaner energy to address the legacy of a more contaminated planet, which will condition the emer-gence of new forms of social conduct and new and more diverse socio-logical topics.

For now, the role of technology parks and their contribution to the development of new universities, much more linked to the real task at hand, has put in place a cornerstone for creating more achievable utopias.

Universities and organizations related to sociological work, such as the ISA, should foresee that this implies that they need to prepare the ground for sociologists to enter into new domains and acquire new exper-tise. Physics and math will be ever more distant from the analyses of our discipline. Programs that utilize hermeneutic processes, such as the At-las.ti program for qualitative analysis, will emerge to grant us skills for qualitative analysis and to improve the environment in which our disci-pline develops. The “state of the art” must engage with the spirit of the age that encourages sciences, social science, and especially sociology to arise.

Under these conditions, institutions linked to sociological work in high productivity countries can and must contribute to the takeoff of re-search in lower productivity ones, through policies, programs, projects,


and special events arranged for this purpose, in order to attempt to resolve the challenges of an increasingly unequal world. A clear example of this is precisely this conference of the ISA, where we are gathered in the wel-coming Taipei.

PART III:

AFRICA

Practical Responses to the Challenges for Sociology in the Face of Global Inequality 181

Practical Responses to the Challenges for Sociology in the Face of Global Inequality

Layi Erinosho, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria1

This paper will attempt to provide (a) an overview of the historical re-sponses of sociology to global inequality and (b) a preview of sociology in Africa in the context of global discourse. The paper will conclude by challenging sociologists at both the global and local (i.e., African) levels to appreciate a return to grand theory or theorizing in order to understand and explain social inequality and inequity as well as to reclaim their rele-vance in world scholarship.

OVERVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY

The principal goal of Western sociology is the quest for social order in all contexts of human existence. This overarching concern prompted the founders of the discipline to articulate an all-inclusive theory that is an-chored in the assumption that orderliness in modern societies depends on the capacity of their constituents units (i.e., individuals, social groups, social institutions) to relate to one another as well as to function opti-mally. No society, in the opinion of the founders of Western sociology, can sustain social order if its constituent units fail to perform their as-signed functions optimally.

However, the inadequacy of the classical theories of Auguste Comte (2003) and Herbert Spencer (1887) on the interplay between a sustainable social order and social inequality in modern societies prompted the re-joinder from Marx and Engels (1969). Sustainable social order in mod-ern societies, according to the Marx, does not necessarily depend on the effective performance of the customary functions by its constituents but on a revolution that redresses perceived and/or real disparities or inequal-ity among two major subgroups: the owners of the means of production and workers. The determination by each of these subgroups to pursue

1 Layi Erinosho is the President of the African Sociological Association. He can be reached at c/o Department of Sociology, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria, or at [email protected] or [email protected].

Layi Erinosho182

and/or protect its interests could, according to Marx, lead to a revolution that would bring about a classless society.

One of the critical elements in the contest between the free marketers and the Marxists is over the scope and limits of the power of the state in social engineering. While the former were of the opinion that a free mar-ket economic system engenders rapid economic growth and the flowering of human spirit, the latter claimed that such sentiments are unrealizable unless the state plays a commanding role in economic affairs.

Western social thought prior to the collapse of the former Soviet Un-ion was crafted in the context of this debate about the most effective strategy for tackling social inequality in modern societies. The contest on how best to organize modern societies and also mitigate social inequality continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which spearheaded the Marxian position.

The collapse of the former Soviet Union signaled the end of the de-bate and also vindicated the protagonists of free market. Most Marxist scholars melted away or now grudgingly accept the free market theoreti-cal paradigm as the key to rapid economic growth and the flowering of human spirit. The Russians have now embraced the market while the Chinese are gradually itching towards that paradigm.

One of the unanticipated outcomes of a unipolar world order is the decline of interest in grand theories and the proliferation of middle-range sociological theories which appear to dull the relevance of the contribu-tions of sociologists to the analysis of social order and inequality. Soci-ology has veered towards post-modernism and applied research, and the discipline is today about everything and anything. Some sociologists conduct small-scale studies or propound theories of limited utility, some work as applied scientists, others cast their role more or less as social workers, and quite a number theorize on key aspects of human behavior, groups, and societies. This trend has led to the emergence of a more dif-fused sociology that fails to address a key problematic in a globalizing world: social inequality.

SOCIOLOGY IN AFRICA IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL SOCIOLOGY

Social anthropology pre-dated sociology in Africa because the latter emanated from the colonial enterprise. However, sociology gathered greater momentum than social anthropology due to the commitment of African nationalists and scholars to de-colonizing curricula. Social an-thropology fell into disrepute in the eyes of nationalists and scholars be-


cause it sought to define or perceive non-Western societies as primitive, in contrast to sociology, which is presumably bereft of value in the study or classification of human societies. It is therefore not surprising that sociology departments span the institutions of higher learning in all parts of Africa today, in contrast to social anthropology.

This notwithstanding, a few sociology departments have sought to in-tegrate social anthropology courses into their programs or combine the two. Even then, the emphasis has always been on sociology rather than on social anthropology in such departments. Besides, a significant fea-ture of sociology is the interest in social administration and social work, resulting in the tendency to offer or integrate these disciplines (i.e., social administration and social work) into sociology degree programs in places like Lesotho, Swaziland, and some institutions in Nigeria.

There are a little over 350 universities and innumerable polytechnics and colleges of education in Africa, the largest numbers in the populous countries in the continent, namely, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa. Other countries with a sizeable number of institutions that offer sociology include Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal.

The deregulation of the higher education sector in Africa created a window of opportunity for the private sector to open universities and polytechnics (Varghese 2004). Consequently, African countries now boast both public and private universities. The number of private univer-sities is higher than the number of public ones in Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya, and it is about equal in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Senegal.

The demand for degree programs in the social and management sci-ences is great, and sociology appears to be one that enjoys high enroll-ment by students. Thus, sociology is offered at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in many institutions in Africa. The most developed programs are available in South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and Kenya, where large number of bachelors and a handful of doctorate degree hold-ers are produced annually. Sociology is also offered as an ancillary sub-ject in polytechnics and colleges of education while the curricula of pro-fessional disciplines like medicine, engineering, architecture, and agricul-ture also accommodate relevant sociology courses.

Strands of Western and Arab sociologies traverse the continent. While the institutions that are south of the Sahara embrace Western soci-ology, those in North Africa are inclined to regard Ibn Khaldun as the founder of the sociological enterprise (Baali 2003). Thus, there is a re-markable difference between the curricula for sociology north and south of the Sahara. Generally, the courses that are offered can be sub-divided into the following core areas: history of social thought, including socio-logical theories (both classical and contemporary, especially in the con-

Layi Erinosho184

text of Western sociology); research methods (both qualitative and quan-titative); and the various thematic areas in sociology. Of critical interest among the thematic areas are those dealing with industry and develop-ment, crime and law, race and ethnic relations, health, gender, population studies, family, youth, ageing, etc.

The greatest challenge to African sociology is in the indigenization of social theory or theories. Pioneer African sociologists were preoccupied with the contest between the social system/structural functionalism on the one hand and the Marxian and neo-Marxian theorizing on the other, prior to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Others sought to situate change that has characterized the social structure and life in Africa in the context of the impact of colonialism. However, some scholars argued for the domestication of theories and the social sciences in International So-ciology more than a decade ago (Akiwowo 1986; Loubster 1988; Sanda 1988; Lawuyi and Taiwo 1990). Overall, vast numbers of works by most African sociologists seek to apply extant Western theories to understand-ing their continent, are applied, and/or are generally descriptive.

By and large, sociology in Africa is characterized by a declining in-terest in theories and theorizing due to the perceptible drift towards ap-plied sociology or public sociology. This orientation has largely been influenced by the expanding support of international foundations, bilat-eral and multilateral, for social research on socio-medical problems like HIV/AIDS, child abuse, gender discrimination, environmental degrada-tion, ethnic conflict, identity and citizenship crises, etc. Consequently, a wide range studies by African sociologists is descriptive rather than ana-lytical. The aim is to demonstrate the relevance of sociology and how it can be used to solve the problems of development. Therefore, the trend is towards problem-solving studies that are bereft of theory and theorizing but whose outcomes are, however, presented in a lucid manner (with graphs, bar charts, etc.). The reports from such studies usually contain ample policy recommendations that are meaningful for funders, policy makers, and program managers. It is generally believed that this shift to-wards applied sociology or public sociology underscores the credibility and relevance of the discipline in the “eyes” of wary publics, policy mak-ers, and program managers.

One could therefore surmise that there is a convergence between what is happening at the global and local (i.e., African) levels in sociol-ogy. Sociologists and sociologies, whether around the world or in Africa, have drifted towards applied or public sociology in order to demonstrate their relevance for the public, policy makers, and program managers.


CONCLUDING REMARKS

One of the principal reasons for the current worldwide economic crisis is the pursuit of self-interest regardless of its negative impact on the public good.2 Another worldwide problem today revolves around conflicts and wars within and between nation-states that exacerbate social inequality. Economic meltdown, conflicts, and wars are ostensibly motivated by non-rational pursuit of individual, group, and/or national interests. The world is poorer due to the economic meltdown and certainly not safer because humankind is experiencing all sorts of conflicts and wars3 that have resulted in carnage, physical and social dislocation of large popula-tions, misery, poverty, etc.

These trends inevitably lead to the following questions, which deserve serious sociological analysis:

a. What new insight, by way of theorizing, can sociologists bring to bear on the seemingly non-rational behavior patterns of individuals, groups and nation-states that are exacerbating social inequality in modern societies? b. Can the current economic meltdown provide a template for understand-ing human behaviors and societies? If yes, how, and if not, why not? c. Is there a common trend that sociologists can pinpoint underlying these wars? d. Can sociology regain/reclaim its voice, force, and relevance as the me-dium for understanding humankind and societies? The sacred assumption that human beings are sufficiently rational

and will presumably behave in manner that will not undermine the public good is now in doubt. Similarly, it is doubtful whether sociologists have sufficiently interrogated the basis of social conflicts and wars. In view of the foregoing, it is vital for sociology to reclaim its relevance in discourse on human behavior and societies through a return to grand theory and/or theorizing. This will, in the author’s view, be one of the practical ways by which sociology can respond to challenges in the face of global ine-quality. Such efforts could also provide the anchor for worthwhile ap-plied research on poverty reduction.

2 An example is the behaviour of bankers who are inclined to extend credit to the undeserving and/or claim generous bonuses regardless of their untoward impact on the economy. 3 No one could have imagined the scale of human carnage in the wars in the for-mer Yugoslavia (in Europe), Chechnya (Russia), Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Darfur in Sudan and also Southern Sudan, Spain, Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc. in the past 25 years.

Layi Erinosho186

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Akiwowo, A.A. “Contributions to Sociology of Knowledge for an Afri-can Oral Poetry.” International Sociology 1 (1986): 343-358.

Baali, F. The Science of Human Organization: Conflicting Views of Ibn Khaldun’s 91332-1406) llm-al-umran. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.

Comte, A. Positive Philosophy, Part 1. Translated by Harriet Martineau. New York: Kessingner Publishing, 2003.

Lawuyi, O.B. and Taiwo, O. “Towards an African Sociological Tradition: A Rejoinder to Akiwowo and Makinde.” International Sociology 5 (1990): 57-73.

Loubser, J.J. “The Need for the Indigenisation of the Social Sciences.” International Sociology 3 (1988): 179-187.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1969.

Sanda, A. Muyiwa. “In Defence of Indigenization of the Social Sci-ences.” International Sociology 3 (1988): 189-199.

Varghese, N.V. Private Higher Education in Africa. International Insti-tute for Educational Planning, 2004. (external link: http://www. unesco.org/iiep).

Spencer, H. The Factors of Organic Evolution. London: Williams & Norgate, 1887.

Social Sciences in Egypt 187

Social Sciences in Egypt: The Swinging Pendulum between Commodification and

Criminalization Mona Abaza, American University in Cairo, Egypt 1

“I am an agent of social change.” -- Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Specialists who have closely observed the evolution of the fields of soci-ology and anthropology in Egypt seem to agree that there are insur-mountable paradoxes that continue to loom in the professional and aca-demic sphere due to the intricate relationship between intellectuals and the long history of the authoritarian military state.

The retired professor at the American University in Cairo, Saad Ed-din Ibrahim, (jailed twice between the years of 2000 and 20032 for “tar-nishing Egypt’s reputation” along with several other charges that will be tackled further3 in this paper and who is currently in exile4), the late French Arabist Alain Roussillon and the contemporary “doyen” (Dean) of “indigenous” national sociology in Egypt, Mohammed Al Gohari,5 all have brilliantly traced in different ways the genealogy of the birth of so-

1 I would like to thank Dina al-Khawaga for sharing her ideas and time with me. As program officer at Ford she also facilitated the task of providing me with all the material available. This paper would not have been written without our inten-sive discussions. Barbara Ibrahim, has been very generous in letting me use the extensive documentation that the Ford Foundation has compiled on the trial of Saad Eddin Ibrahim. I warmly thank her as well as Nicholas Hopkins who com-mented carefully on the paper. 2 Saad Eddin Ibrahim was jailed for approximately three years and put on trial four times. Over the past two years, he was charged for multiple trials while he continues to be in exile. 3 See Appendix I on the court ruling. 4 Yet Saad Eddin Ibrahim continues to publish in leading opposition newspapers in Egypt such as al-Dustur and al-Masry al-Yaum. Recently, he has started to publish his memoirs on a weekly basis in al-Dustur newspaper. His wife Bar-bara Ibrahim is highly influential in the English-speaking world in development research and foreign funding in Egypt. Barbara Ibrahim ran for a year the Popu-lation Council in Cairo and today runs the expanding Philanthropy Gerhart Cen-ter at the American University in Cairo. 5 For the three essential articles on Egyptian sociology see Ibrahim (1997), Roussillon (1999) and al-Gohari (1990).

Mona Abaza188

ciology in Egypt, its evolution and the external influences that have shaped its dominant discourses. Interestingly, all these scholars agree that although sociology in Egypt emerged at about the same time as other de-partments of sociology in several European universities, Egyptian sociol-ogy’s development and evolution seems to have been stifled by the fact that it was largely saturated with the discourse of reform, often tainted by conservative overtones. Al Gohari insists that the field of sociology mostly was confined to offering its services to the then emerging post-colonial state for the purposes of “social engineering” (interview with Al-Gohari, May 24, 2008). In his analysis of the post-colonial generation of Egyptian sociologists of the 1950s and 60s, such as ‘Abdel ‘Aziz ‘Ezzat, Ibrahim found that ‘Ezzat mostly praised the then young military regime, and even dedicated his book to Gamal Abdel Nasser; this illustrates the extent to which ‘Ezzat’s central mission was to offer his knowledge for the service of the prince, i.e. the military (Ibrahim 1997: 550). An offer which ironically, was repeatedly made by Ibrahim himself and in doing so, Ibrahim managed to remain close to the regime for many years until the establishment turned against him. It seems that for both Ibrahim as well as for the fifties/sixties generation of sociologists, advising the “princes” turned into a bad experience. Time and again it seems that so-ciology failed to emancipate itself from the discourse of “state building and “scientism”. Overall, it failed to create a critical independent school of sociological investigation.

Other observers have pointed to the fact that sociology in the Arab world has been recurrently referred to as being in state of perpetual “cri-sis”—a crisis stemming from a serious absence of theorizing (Ghazalla and Sabbagh 1986: 373). Furthermore, it was understood as lacking any reflection about the applicability of Western methods in a different local context. Several authors pointed to the fact that Arab sociology has turned into an insipid mimicry of Western sociology. Arab sociology has basically been restricted to translating and copying without much original analysis.6 Sociology was “disfigured by the political institution… it was an impossible practice.”7 Up until the mid-eighties, some even argued that sociology had yet to emerge (Ghazalla and Sabbagh 1986).This also explains why, at the time, in the mood of decolonizing sociology, the claims of “indigenizing” the field as a counter-project to Western hegem-ony extended first to “Arabizing” sociology during the phase of Arab na-tionalism and later on to “Islamizing” sociology with the rise of Islam-

6 This critical stance is clearly expressed in the writings of Mohammed al-Gohari, Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Iman Ghazalla and Georges Sabbagh. 7 Al-Kanz cited by Iman Ghazalla and Georges Sabbagh, p. 379.


ism.8 But the discourse of “crisis” has been in fashion for a while. For many intellectuals, the state of “crisis” refers to their struggle to articulate a shifting and blurred identity with the advent of modernity, reform and with the constant and painful encounter with the “Other” colonial and post-colonial West. The Moroccan historian Abdallah Laroui has bril-liantly theorized on this very struggle.9 The discourse of “crisis” has also refered to the attempt to decipher the ambiguous relationship of the intel-lectuals and the literati to the state. This relationship has oscillated be-tween two different extremes: either the intellectual’s oppression by the state and extreme violence against this oppression or his/her cooption and submission to the state whereby the intellectual is transformed into the producer of culture as an “enlightened”, official government intellectual. In the latter situation, the intellectual also seems to have adopted a sim-plistic technophile perspective entailing a blind adoration of science.10

This paper explains the culmination of “criminalizing sociology”11

through the cause célèbre of the trial of the sociologist Saad Eddin Ibra-him, who was charged with allegedly spying, spreading false information and tarnishing the country’s reputation. The gathering of empirical data and the practice of sociology as a profession have a long history of elicit-ing distrust from the regime. Ibrahim’s case can be read as a logical con-tinuation of a “public culture” produced by a long history of clashes with an authoritarian state that neither needed nor understood why sociological investigation should exist.

With Egypt’s entrance into the global market, the pervasiveness of corporatist culture was strongly felt in many spheres including the aca-demic one. However, it is necessary to be mindful of Egypt’s specificity as a Third World country that receives massive development aid from the North. For example, Egypt has never before witnessed a flowering of pri-vate research centers as what has occurred today, a flourishing that coin-cided with the privatization of research and academia with a strong reli-ance on foreign funds. Paradoxically, in interviews conducted by al-Ahram Weekly with university professors, most interviewees stated that these research centers play a insignificant role as think-tanks influencing politicians (el-Ghitany 2005).12 And yet one wonders about the extremely

8 On this point, see Morsy, Nelson, Saad, and Sholkamy (1991) 9 See Laroui (1977). 10 See Salvatore (1991) for one of the most interesting works on the discourse of “crisis” and Arab intellectuals. I borrow the idea of the “technophile intellectual” from Laroui (1977). 11 The term has been used by several sociologists such as Mohammed al-Gohari and Hania Sholkamy. 12 According to the Cairo University professor of political science Mustafa

Mona Abaza190

poor academic sociological production that has barely any impact or readership. One can only agree with Sari Hanafi’s observations about the pervasive impact of the foreign donors in settings the research agendas and how the prioritizing of consultancy has hurt scholarship. Interest-ingly, Hanafi refers to the currently much debated 1990 conference or-ganized by Saad Edin Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies on the Copts as a minority. The conference was strongly attacked by several intellectuals not only because it was supported by foreign funds, but also over the question of whether or not the Copts should have been designated as a minority. The conference was then used by Hanafi as an example to pinpoint that there are clashing interests between local and foreign research agendas (Hanafi 2009).

In addition to the opposition from other intellectuals, Ibrahim faced hostility from the government because he brought public attention to the violent confessional events taking place at the time in the village of al-Kush in Upper Egypt. Importantly, in a book he later published on the question of minorities (Ibrahim 1992),13 Ibrahim starts with the following premise: namely, that the Arab-Israeli conflict did not produce as many victims as ethnic and confessional conflicts in the Middle East. He argues that the Arab-Israeli conflict produced 150,000 deaths, whereas civil wars in only three Arab countries—Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan—produced half a million victims; the same could be said, Ibrahim claims, about the finan-cial costs of such conflicts which far surpassed those of the Arab-Israeli conflict.14

The book starts with the simple question: why did Arab unification fail? The cleavages amongst Arab countries were in fact exacerbated. Ac-cording to the book’s argument, nationalist ideology failed to grasp the Arab reality and its complex material and psychological intricacies. It failed to understand the spirit of the nation. Arab unity was hampered by its elites, who failed to understand existing structural contradictions. That nationalist thinking did not address the social roles of these ethnic entities. Ibrahim is obviously right in this claim; however, many were troubled by the premise that the Arab Israeli conflict was secondary in human and financial cost to Arab civil wars.

Kamel El Sayyed, there are 30 research centers specializing in political and stra-tegic studies. 13 He also published an extensive volume of some 950 pages, titled al-milal wal nihal. (See Appendix II). In this study, Ibrahim explains that he had great trouble in publishing it because of the uproar the conference produced. It is nevertheless a thorough historical and sociological survey of minorities in the Arab world. 14 Suzan Mubarak is thanked in this work over and above in the thick volume of al-millal wal nihal for having been his faithful assistant.


However, let us return to the issue of the neo-liberal agenda in aca-demia. The liberalization of the sphere of education has led to an explo-sion of lucrative private foreign and local universities that cater to the better-off classes. Seeking education has turned into a consumption ex-perience. One can choose between German, American, Canadian, French, and British systems of education, and comparing university fees and technical trainings that could open up opportunities in the overseas labour market and in international companies located in Egypt, has become a national sport.

I borrow Michael Burawoy’s concept of “Third Wave Marketization” to argue that in our part of the world, the effects of marketization and the commodification of sociology have become extremely pervasive (Bura-woy 2007). In particular, this has been the case with the intervention of development agencies, and funding for causes related to democracy, civil society or poverty. With the case of Saad Eddin Ibrahim case, I wish to show the limits and problems faced by social scientists when wavering between market forces—that is, foreign funding and set research agen-das—and political activism, within the confines of a complex relationship with an authoritarian state which denies any function for the social sci-ences apart from disciplining the unruly. And yet, there is a growing market for a “scientistic”, quantitative market-oriented sociology.15

DOUBLE LANGUAGES AND PROFESSIONS

“Western educated”, well-trained Egyptian social scientists are today more than ever in demand in the market for development. In fact, they seem to be overworked and are doing well. I know from my colleagues that they are often over-solicited by foreign donors to conduct research on poverty, peasantry, education and other acute problems. Often, a capable social scientist has become a rarity in high demand. However, this tells only one side of the story and discards the thousands of jobless graduates of Egyptian universities, who can hardly start any career with their train-ing and who in the past have ended up as translators and foreign language teachers. Anthropologist Hania Sholkamy (1999) writes the following about the state of anthropology in Egypt today:

Anthropology has been ‘born again’ in Egypt. National policy makers and international donors working in Egypt (and perhaps elsewhere)

15 Hania Sholkamy argues that today, qualitative research as well as research oriented towards focus groups are experiencing a boom in Egypt.

Mona Abaza192

have an increasing awareness of the contribution that anthropology can make to social research and human understanding. In fields as diverse as health sciences and medicine, demography, and other population sci-ences, ecological and environmental research and advo-cacy…anthropologists who had barely been humoured previously are now sought and heard. But on closer inspection one finds that anthro-pology has been born again as a collection of qualitative meth-ods………Quasi-anthropological techniques are in demand, not anthro-pology with its precepts and concepts. (119)

One also needs to differentiate between the English language produc-tion for international consumption and the Arabic market. Each market targets a different readership and different concerns. Hania Sholkamy addressed the issue of the crisis in Egyptian sociology in terms of reader-ship and consumption, concluding that Arabic readers and consumers do pose a serious problem in the reception of critical sociological imagina-tion, since critical findings can be disturbing and perceived as insulting (Sholkamy 1999). Thus many of us are faced with the dilemma of want-ing to communicate with readers and colleagues that are far from ready to accept our findings. This could then explain why many of us find our-selves in a situation of double discourses according to the language we are using. If we write in English we certainly aspire to target the interna-tional community where we are much less likely to face restrictions and censorship. Because he publishes in several different languages, Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been recurrently attacked by his enemies for maintain-ing multiple discourses. Addressing different audiences often meant maintaining nuanced views, and perhaps also different vested interests. Since there is neither a significant academic audience, nor a large reader-ship for sociological production in the Arab World, let alone, specialised academic Arab journals, it is not a coincidence that academics resort to using the media and the press in order to communicate with wider Arab audiences. They end up writing in lay language and using the populist style that appeals to the press. These academics are invited to talk shows on al-Jazira channel or the dozens of other successful Arab channels. Equally, be it journalists or academics at local universities, writing for the press has become an important way of earning one’s living.

It is possible to argue that the public figure has quickly replaced the academic. One can make a bet that most of the bestselling books pub-lished by the leading Egyptians intellectuals and academics in Egypt are basically newspapers articles that turn to be compiled in volumes. The style is easier and quicker to publish.


SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM CONNECTING THE MARKET WITH POLITICAL ACTIVISM.

“One does not play with wolves.” -- Mohammed al-Gohari

When Saad Eddin Ibrahim was taken to jail for the first time in 2000, he was a tenured, internationally known professor at the American Univer-sity in Cairo. He was well-published in Arabic and English and had a long list of edited volumes. The fact that he holds a double Egyptian-American nationality, which implied benefits and privileges, was repeat-edly mentioned in the press as a disadvantage, as if he had troubled dou-ble loyalties. When Nasser stripped him of his Egyptian nationality in the sixties, he was a student in the US. Ibrahim was punished by the Nasser regime after having expressed strong disappointment with the military regime. For some nationalists and leftists, this has been seen as yet again another suspicious incident. The status of such a private institution of learning as the American University in Cairo is noteworthy: it is consid-ered an oasis of privilege compared to the national system of higher edu-cation. Indeed, the university’s higher salaries (competitive with overseas standards), the high quality of its research facilities, its sophisticated li-brary and the bookshop holding abundant English speaking publications on the region are all reasons to speak of two higher education systems: one elitist and foreign influenced versus the less privileged national edu-cation system. These are all reasons why Ibrahim was not only resented by national sociologists but also regarded by them as an outsider who did not need to play the internal power games of the Cairo, Helwan and Ain Sham Universities. Perhaps, because he did not really care about follow-ing the hierarchical chain of the transmission of sociological knowledge, Ibrahim was labeled as arrogant.

It is important to be reminded that Ibrahim was one of the most suc-cessful sociologists in obtaining large (foreign) funds for organizing con-ferences and research. He was a tycoon in the world of research and de-velopment.16 For many, his success was a source of envy, because he

16 In the early eighties al-Ahram al-Iqtissadi weekly opened fire about the impact of foreign funding on research and in particular the role of the Ford Foundation. At the time, the Foundation funded projects at Cairo University and al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies concerning Egypt’s foreign policy options and the role of the Egyptian bureaucracy. According to Ann Lesch, who was the officer of the Ford Foundation from 1977-1984 and in Cairo from 1980 to 1984, Saad Eddin Ibrahim was receiving funds at the time from the World Bank. Nonethe-

Mona Abaza194

tackled many daring problems such as the ones related to the Coptic “mi-nority” and the confessional sedition, democracy, and civil society. Fur-thermore, he has been very prolific in publishing in Arabic in both the press and the academic field. In earlier times he was amongst the first sociologists to work on the perceptions of Arab nationalism, on urban problems and he became famous through his work on militant Islam. Ibrahim was one of the most intelligent and up-to-date sociologists of his generation. The Ibn Khaldun Center published significant and novel data about political violence, showing that among those killed, there were far more terrorists who died than police officers. The publications of the cen-ter provided valuable information on the state of politics and society and they were solicited by numerous international donors.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim has stirred many controversies not only amongst government circles but even more so within the Egyptian intelligentsia, particularly amongst leftist and nationalist circles. In fact, many would argue that his unpopularity and the fact that his jailing neither produced an outcry nor general support from intellectuals is bewildering. Is it that the civil society he aspired to cultivate, turned out to be totally marginal-ized? Is it that civil society is itself conservative and well-indoctrinated with the propaganda produced by regime machinery? Is it the fact that Ibrahim played on too many dangerous registers including showing strong support for the Americans? Was this a major factor that led a large section of intellectuals to draw back their support for him? Or was the ambivalence simply driven by the fact that he was a tycoon in the world of research? A tycoon who accumulated obvious material capital, fame and international attention. A tycoon who managed a center and organ-ized successful conferences, talks and publications and employed numer-ous research assistants and whose academic enterprise involved a lot of money. A tycoon, who held a monopoly over the donor and funding scene. A tycoon who was brilliant in speaking the language of the West: the language of democracy, of human rights and of civil society. But in the Marxist-nationalist worldview, tycoons do not necessarily work that well together with the discourse of justice and equality. Many saw private interests, fame, media attention and the accumulation of wealth as the prime motive behind Ibrahim’s actions. When he compared himself to Nelson Mandela, many intellectuals expressed anger, feeling that the comparison was inappropriate. Some would recall that when Ibrahim first published his empirical findings on the militant Islamic groups in the

less, he wrote an article criticizing foreign funding in Egypt, which undermined his credibility (Personal communication with Ann Lesch, May 2, 2009).


eighties,17 he had stirred the resentment of the project’s co-members who had helped him conduct intensive interviews in jail. The project on Is-lamic militants was originally meant to be conducted by a collaborative research team sponsored by the national Center for Sociological and Criminological Research. Apparently, Ibrahim appropriated the findings - and he was the only sociologist - or rather he was credited as being the first sociologist to publish on Islamists in English at that time.18 The clash between Ibrahim and Ahmed Khalifa, the director of the Center for So-ciological and Criminological Research at the time, exploded, making national newspaper headlines. Here, again, Ibrahim’s American citizen-ship was brought up in reference to the question of how far the state could allow information gathering about imprisoned Islamists. It seems that at the time, Ibrahim had already collaborated with the Ford Founda-tion in Egypt, which again raised questions about the role of foreign fund-ing. Still, however, do these previous events in Ibrahim’s history consti-tute a sufficient reason for his jailing and public humiliation in the nine-ties?

It’s unclear to me why Ibrahim’s unpopularity continued well after his release.19 But one thing is clear: Ibrahim’s case did not produce much support from nationalists and left-wing intellectuals. There were a few exceptions, however, including Said al-Naggar, Kamal Abul Magd and Abdel Moneim Said, all of whom presented their testimonies at trial. Late Mohammed Sid Ahmed, a journalist, Mohammed al Sayyed Said, a re-searcher, late al-Wafd deputy Ibrahim Abaza, and former Ambassador

17 See Ibrahim 1996. In addition, his article entitled “Anatomy of Egypt’s Mili-tant Groups: Methodological Notes and Preliminary Findings,” first appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume 12 in 1980. Further-more, the reader which he helped compile with Nicholas Hopkins, Arab Society in Transition, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1977, formed many generations of AUCians who are regarded as today’s political and cultural Egyp-tian elite. 18 Although he does acknowledge in Ibrahim (1980) that his findings are part of team research. 19 However, Egyptian regional and international human rights organizations ex-pressed protest and defended Saad Edin Ibrahim. See for instance, the statement of the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists (APA) issued on 24/5/2001. The statement raised several important questions, including: What is the signifi-cance of the trial precisely at that point? Does the government want to punish a “big man to frighten the small people”? Does it wish to silence all human rights organisations? Or does the trial have something to do with Ibrahim’s double na-tionality and therefore is it a way for the state to publicly express its authority to imprison Americans in Egypt? Or is the trial a way to prepare the ground for passing a new law to further harass the activities of NGOs and human rights ac-tivists?

Mona Abaza196

Hussein Ahmed Amin defended Ibrahim. Most importantly, Issam al-Aryaan, a leading figure in the Muslim Brothers, strongly defended Ibra-him, having himself been incarcerated for several years. However, Ibra-him’s unpopularity in intellectual circles continues into today. 20 The skirmishes between opponents of the regime and Ibrahim still continue. This reveals that his image in Western media as “championing democ-racy” is much more nuanced in reality. It is not astonishing that several “leftist” intellectuals did align themselves with the government against Ibrahim because they considered American intervention in his favour as a form of American imperialist bullying in local affairs. For example, when 75 members of the US Congress petitioned against the jailing of Ibrahim, Al-Usbu’ newspaper characterized it as an insolent interference in na-tional affairs, an argument praised by leftists and nationalists. The con-gressmen’s petition was again reported as yet another pro-Israeli Lobby campaign (Al-Usbu’, July 9, 2001). The government played the national-ist card several times. Thomas Friedman also defended Ibrahim by pub-licly stating that the trial was a “sham” and a “travesty” (El Magd 2001). Instead of tarnishing Egypt’s image, Americans “should be” proud of Ibrahim. In short, it looked like an ongoing war between the biggest su-perpower in the world and its second largest aid recipient and ally in the region.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim went to Israel and received invitations to give talks there. This move was considered a major betrayal of Egypt for some. Others saw it as typical of Ibrahim’s eccentricity to include, for example, in his most recent tour before his exile, Sheikh Nasralahh, the leader of Hizb Allah. Ibrahim argued that change could not be generated from in-side because society was stagnant and devoid of dynamic agents of change. Thus, he believed that the American invasion of Iraq would trig-ger a wave of democratization and shake the Arab regimes out of their state of inertia. This is an argument that has been promoted in recent years by new liberals in the Middle East. Others saw the change-from-outside argument as a familiar Marxist stance similar to the conclusion that colonialism brings its own contradictory seeds of destruction. How-ever, for many, this position was taken as a great betrayal of the Middle

20 The Marxist philosopher Mahmud Amin al ‘Alem, and the novelist Moham-med al-Bussati expressed strong antipathy towards Ibrahim. They praised the government for taking a firm stance against Americans who arrogantly interfere in Egyptian politics (al-Mussawar, January 6, 2001). Those who expressed an-tagonistic sentiments against Ibrahim included Sayyed Yassin (the former direc-tor of the center for Strategic studies, and who worked closely with Ibrahim for years in Jordan), Nader Fergany (economist) and Mohammed Abul Ghar, (a leading figure in the opposition national Universities movement of 9th of March.)


East and a sign of full-fledged support for the Bush neo-imperialist ad-ministration. The fact that neo-cons in Iraq consulted Ibrahim was yet again reason to attack him.

For many years, Saad Eddin Ibrahim was close to the Egyptian re-gime. He had close friendships with several high officials and ministers 21who studied with him in the US. His book (1992a) on Anwar al-Sadat is crucial in understanding his rapport with the power structure. A few month before Sadat´s assassination, Ibrahim was approached by Sadat’s wife, Gihan al-Sadat who Ibrahim described in his book as a witty, bright and attractive lady. She obviously organized the meeting with Ibrahim in hopes of soliciting his help in creating a reconciliation between the intel-ligentsia and Sadat, but her plan clearly failed. Ibrahim wrote again a highly controversial book on Sadat, published ten years after Sadat’s death, in which Ibrahim describes the only two memorable encounters with the late president. The first encounter was when Ibrahim was still studying in the US in 1966. Already in this perioda, Ibrahim was highly disturbed by Sadat’s high admiration of the US, even though he was visit-ing the country as member of the revolutionary council. Ibrahim had then predicted that if Sadat were to come to power, he would be the strongest promoter of a pro-American policy. Ibrahim’s second encounter with Sa-dat happened in August 1981, (barely two months before the assassina-tion) when Sadat apparently wanted to learn more about the Egyptian opposition and about Ibrahim’s critical writings against the regime. Ac-cording to Ibrahim, it was clear that Sadat was not at all happy with Ibra-him’s political analyses regarding the Islamic opposition. It was also clear that Sadat felt threatened by the opposition. Accordingly, Sadat wanted to take violent measures, which he conveyed to Ibrahim in an unpleasant manner. Nevertheless, Sadat wanted to still test his popularity or rather unpopularity amongst the Egyptian intelligentsia with Ibrahim.22 It seems that Sadat wanted Ibrahim to organize negotiations and dialogues be-tween the oppositional Arab intellectuals and himself. Just a month after this encounter, in September, Sadat jailed nearly 1,500 intellectuals (in-cluding Muslims, Copts and leftists). Sadat’s action revealed that he

21 One can mention here Ali Eddin Hilal, a former professor of political science, who closely collaborated with Ibrahim in earlier times and became Minister of Youth during Mubarak’s rule. 22 Among the jailed were feminist Nawal Al-Saadawi, known Nasserite journal-ist Hassanein Haykal, former Minister Ismail Sabri Abdallah, Marxists like Lutfi al Khuli and Amina Rashid, members of the Islamic groups, Pope Shenuda, as well as many other public figures. Perhaps I am wrong but Ibrahim seems to minimize the effect of the “autumn of wrath” as a major political event that fol-lowed his meeting with Sadat.

Mona Abaza198

hardly intended to create a dialogue with his opposition. At the time, many jokes were made about how no intellectual managed to escape in-carceration. Luckily, Ibrahim was not jailed.

Ibrahim narrates that he waited approximately ten years before he de-cided to publish the book, because he wanted to avoid both those who either falsely praised or cursed Sadat. The book then attempts to reinstate Sadat, who has been portrayed as either merely a traitor because he signed a peace deal with Israel, or a hero. Ibrahim then attempts to com-pare and draw criticisms of both Nasser and Sadat’s regimes by empha-sizing how these long years of military rule erased any possibility of dia-logue and objective evaluations.

In fact, in his recently published memoirs, Ibrahim does not hide that he asked Suzan Mubarak to help place his relative in the military acad-emy, tellingly illustrating how he himself profited from the favouritism of the system. For many years, Ibrahim was perceived as belonging to the establishment. Also, he was amongst the first to propose to the regime the rehabilitation of repentant terrorists into society. Whenever an American delegation was visiting Cairo, the Ibn Khaldun Center took them for a tour in the popular quarter of Imbaba to meet the rehabilitated Islamists who worked with him. Suzan Mubarak did her Masters degree in sociol-ogy at the American University in Cairo under his supervision. Further-more, Ibrahim was for several years the advisor to Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan. He had created an institutional cultural and publication project with the Kuweiti Princess Suad al-Sabbah and some other writers and intellectuals who became known for its troublesome termination. His close contact with several highly placed politicians and well known fig-ures such as Sheikhah Moza23 has been subject to many attacks by several intellectuals, years before the case exploded. It is not a coincidence that in the two books he has published on minorities in the Middle East, Ibra-him has thanked Suzanne Mubarak, his student, for having helped him in gathering data (Ibrahim 1992b).

Another crucial work (2000) by Ibrahim that is worth mentioning in this context is The Thinker and Power. Ironically, read with a contempo-rary lens, it could be perceived as a soothsaying for what followed for Ibrahim. The book opens with a play of two words that sound alike—“al-baheth wal mabaheth”—meaning the researcher and the internal security forces, to explain the differences and similarities between these two pro- 23 Sheikhah Moza of Qatar is portrayed as a promoter of gender equality and a philanthropist sponsoring advanced technology. She is known for having launched the Doha debates which were inspired by the Oxford Union. Moza has been advertised recently by the Ibn Khaldun Center as a pioneer of democratiza-tion. See Ibn Khaldun Center (2009).


fessions. Al-Baheth (the researcher) wal-mabaheth (the internal security employee) both bear similarities in their search for truth. Both search for documents and information. Both start with premises from which they reach conclusions; however, the difference is that the researcher exposes his conclusion to the public in conference, articles and studies. His main goal is to seek knowledge whereas the mabaheth (internal security em-ployee) keeps his information for himself and his main aim is “security.” The researcher publishes his sources and publicizes the ways in which he collected his information. Moreover, the committed researcher is often interested in conducting research in sensitive areas, like religious fanati-cism, class conflict and religious intolerance, which often raises suspicion. But the researcher‘s central concern is to create and disseminate knowl-edge. The irony is that precisely such an introduction to counsel rulers did not spare Ibrahim from being attacked later for being a traitor and an “in-formant” to foreign states. The chapter titled “Narrowing the Gap be-tween the Prince and the Intellectual” could be read as yet again a reple-tion of the same idea, namely, “how to advise regimes” on how to man-age and integrate in the system the growing militant opposition. Ibrahim refers to the Japanese reformists of the 19th century to argue that change was brought forth via the alliance of the intellectual and the ruling elites. The Fabians in England played a similar role in public life.24

Additionally, Ibrahim is a “mediatic” figure. He is very often sought out to give talks on television, and is well cited in the American press such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.25 After his re-lease, he relied heavily on the American press to continue putting pres-sure on the Egyptian regime to the point that US aid to Egypt became associated with his trial. He is jet-setting scholar, from whom Arab politi- 24 The rest of the book consists of a collection of articles, published earlier in al-Ahram, al-Ahram al-Iqtissadi, and Civil Society, and dialogues that took place in Arab Thought (Muntada al-Fikr al-‘Arabi), Amman, Jordan. The articles are mildly critical of Mubarak, but in general they seem to be supportive of him, if not in praise of him. The vindictive tone and personal attack of the President can be traced to period after Ibrahim’s imprisonment. 25 See for instance the article on Ibrahim’s imprisonment by Mary Anne Weaver (The New York Times Magazine, June 17, 2001). Weaver’s article provided a strong criticism of the regime’s authoritarian politics and its tendency to jail its biggest opposition group, the Muslim Brothers. The article produced a strong resentment in Egyptian official circles. The regime took it as an affront precisely when Ahmed Maher, the Minister for Foreign Affairs was preparing his visit to the US. He then issued a statement that “Egypt will not allow any interference in its internal affairs. Nobody should imagine that pressure can be put on us” (al-Hayat, June 18, 2001). See also Amany Radwan’s article, “Having the last Laugh: A Wise-Cracking article may have triggered the arrest of a leading Egyp-tian Human Rights Activist” (Time, May, 21, 2001).

Mona Abaza200

cians and the American establishment constantly solicit advice. The memorable encounter with Bush during the past few years was one rea-son why he was then advised to stay in exile after his release from jail.

It is true that during the trial the yellow press played a devastating role in smearing26 Ibrahim’s reputation, making him out to be a spy and an agent of foreign powers. But that is not the whole story. To many, his personality and his tendency to constantly resort to Western media be-came bothersome. The Marxist intellectual Farida al-Naqquash, and a member of the leftist-Nasserite coalition party the Tagamu’, together with the leader of the 9th of March protest movement, Mohammed Abul-Ghar, recently opened fire on Ibrahim. Both characterized him as the region’s “man of the Americans” and an unconditional admirer of the American system. Ibrahim himself narrated this attack. In addition, he challenged Abul-Ghar by arguing that although they had not met personally, Ibrahim had read Abul-Ghar’s works and was very well informed about his activi-ties, which he held in high esteem. However, Ibrahim insisted that Abul-Ghar merely repeated populist false ideas about him. Ibrahim then dedi-cates the rest of his article to demonstrating how he others had misunder-stood him and how he has always been critical of Americans (al-Dustur, February 18, 2009). These settling of accounts, however, with the leftist nationalist intelligentsia were taking place in the opposition newspapers of al-Masry al-Yaum (February 21, 2009) and al-Dustur. Ibrahim de-cided to publish his memoirs in al-Dustur on a weekly basis; by doing this, it seems that Ibrahim is responding to the allegations that the Ameri-can Embassy had intervened directly in the case, by putting pressure on the Egyptian legal system. Moreover, talk circulated that the US would halt aid to Egypt because of Ibrahim’s exile. Ibrahim recalled precisely which Ambassador visited him in jail and the exact number of times he was visited. He then emphasized that he warned the American Ambassa-dor to reduce the frequency of his visits so as to not exacerbate the situa-tion. The appearance of these memoirs coincide with other front page newspapers statements that Obama has been recently putting pressure on Mubarak to release political prisoners including the founder of the banned party al-Ghad, Ayman Nur (jailed nearly four years ago for pre-senting himself as a presidential candidacy) and allowing the return of Ibrahim as a way of reinstating democracy (al-Shuruq, February 21, 2009).

26 Al-Usbu’ newspaper was the most ferocious in its attacks, as well the tabloid weekly Rosa al-Youssef, which cheaply lumped together former actresses and belly dancers who reconverted to Islam and wore the headscarf, fanatic preachers, together with Saad Eddin Ibrahim. See Rosa al-Youssef (September 6, 2001).


FAILED PROMISES OF EGYPTIAN SOCIOLOGY

“As a formal academic discipline, sociology was first offered in the newly established (1908) secular Egyptian University in 1913 only 20 years after the University of Chicago (1892), 7 years after the University of Paris (1906), and 6 years after the London school of Economics and Political Science. Indeed, Cairo’s Egyptian University introduced sociol-ogy ahead of most Western European Universities, which did so only af-ter World War I. Scandinavian universities had no professorships of soci-ology until after World War II” (Ibrahim 1997: 547).

All social scientists working on Egypt tend to express disappointment about how the field of sociology could have turned into a wonder, but failed to do so. All also agree that sociology in Egypt could have been on par with Western traditions when we are reminded of the significance of the presence of Saint Simonians in Egypt as early as the 1820s. They seemed to have influenced the grand transformations that led up to the creation of modern Egypt under the rule of Mohammed Ali (1776-1849). We are told by Ibrahim again that it was the Saint Simonians who were behind the massive reform projects in irrigation, public health and infra-structure. Mohammed Ali was inspired by Comtian notions of “order” and “progress” which led him to send students to France and implement systems of discipline and rule (Ibrahim 1997). There is much debate amongst historians on whether Saint-Simonians were successful in Egypt. One thing however is clear: according to the French historian Ghislaine Alleaume, the Saint-Simonians played a crucial role in forming the first generation of engineers and technicians. They clearly influenced one of Egypt’s first technocrats and modernizers, Ali Mubarak, by shaping his vision of public works. They also played a pervasive role in creating polytechnic and artillery schools (Alleaume 2002).

Alain Roussillon and Saad Eddin Ibrahim insisted that the first gen-eration of Egyptian sociologists were mainly influenced by Emile Durk-heim and his nephew Marcel Mauss when they were students in Paris.27

One of the most well known students was the blind Azharite Taha Hus-sain who wrote his PhD thesis on Ibn Khaldun with Emile Durkheim. Roussillon made the observation that the pioneers of Egyptian sociology including Mansur Fahmi and ‘Abdel ‘Aziz ‘Ezzat, were all trained in France. But from the moment of its birth, sociology was tainted by re-formism; teaching sociology at the then young Cairo University had to play a cohesive role in society. It was understood as merging of interests of the palace and nationalist forces by redefining a national identity in a

27 Ibrahim mentions that Marcel Mauss taught in Cairo in the thirties.

Mona Abaza202

colonial context. According to Roussillon, Egyptian sociology’s very re-formist premise was one reason why sociology remained entrapped in a linear vision of progress. Sociology was then understood as a science that would help narrow the gap between two worlds—the European and Egyptian societies—through the application of sociological laws.

Mohammed al-Gohari is another sociologist who sees that the field’s problems today can be traced to the conservative worldview of the early generation of sociologists of the twenties. Clearly, social engineering was enforced through a claim of objectivism. According to al-Gohari, ‘Abdel ‘Aziz ‘Ezzat often told his students at Cairo University that they had to be social engineers in the literal sense of the word (intum mohandessin ijtima’iin). Al-Gohari remarks that compared to contemporary Egyptian philosophers who were much more able to raise fundamental questions, the sociologists of the time remained conservative because they insisted on an “artificial understanding of objectivism.” 28

Al-Gohari insists the social sciences were most damaged by the 1952 revolution when a law was passed decreeing that any researcher wanting to undertake research had first obtain permission from CAMPAS (Cen-tral Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics) which was run by an officer under the Egyptian military regime. This was the moment that marked the beginning of the “criminalization of collecting data and con-ducting research.” The revolution instituted a law making it illegal to gather information that could harm the state. The law also put restrictions on fieldwork and the collection of statistics. The researcher could only gather information that was limited to 50 units (or 50 persons) per re-search proposal. All questionnaires had to be approved by the govern-ment. According to al-Gohari, this law, passed in the 1950s was what initial triggered the association of sociological investigation with spying and information-gathering for the “enemy”—in other words, Israel.29 All in all, the law meant the criminalization of the profession and from which we continue to suffer today. This was yet again part and parcel of the au-thoritarian system’s efforts to silence protesting voices. As a result, sev-eral Egyptian PhD candidates at American Universities experienced a lot of trouble while doing their field research in Egypt. Their field notes were confiscated (at times during their flight to the US to complete their PhDs), and returned only after they were reviewed by highly-placed government officials.

28 It is unclear what really Gohari meant by this statement. 29 We should remember that the state of Israel was already created by this time. The 1948 war and the memory of British colonialism were reasons why the mili-tary felt threatened.


Nearly half a century after this law was passed, Hania Sholkamy (1999) today writes the following:

To obtain a research permit in Egypt, a researcher is required to apply at the Center for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAMPAS). Appli-cations must include some basic documentation and a variable sum of money for processing. Those who can obtain a cover to do research, in the form of an official or official-looking letter, generally avoid the procedure. However, doing fieldwork without the requisite license is a public crime. Part of the documentation required is a written question-naire. This document is given priority since it is supposed to reflect the intentions of the researcher and research. Obviously it is not an impos-sible request. Many myself included, who have had no intention of us-ing a questionnaire have made up a mock one to satisfy this require-ment. (127-128)

Al-Gohari argues that the system institutionalized the suppression of information, even when the government commissioned these studies. Sci-entific investigation lost all value as a consequence. This was clear when the government commissioned several sociologists to undertake research on the state of the army after the 1967 defeat. When the government real-ized that the findings were too critical of the regime, they ordered the dis-appearance of thousands of questionnaires and valuable documents. Al-Gohari remarked how demoralised the team was when they realised that long years of work had been thrown away; nothing has been published on the army since then. A study on poverty sponsored by the National Insti-tute for Planning (Ma’had al-takhtit al-Qawmi) is another example cited by Al-Gohari. After this study was completed, Minister al-Ganzuri called upon the responsible researcher and reproached him: the study’s finding that 36% of the population lived under the poverty line could not be pub-lished. After negotiations with the government, the government statistic ended up stating that the poverty level was only at 19 %. Al-Gohari con-cludes that sociologists are constantly negotiating over scientific scales and facts, in an effort to adapt their findings to the national level political reality (tafawud siyassi litakhfid nisba ‘ilmiyya).

Al-Gohari considers himself to be “a man of the regime.” Even as a highly placed state functionary responsible for coordinating research in all Egyptian universities and as a former President of Helwan University and Dean of the Faculty of Literature at Cairo University, on several oc-casions, the regime has clearly conveyed to him that his knowledge is ultimately useless. For example, when peasant rebellions spread in the early nineties with the new law tenancies, al-Gohari offered to study the

Mona Abaza204

relationship between landlords and tenants. He even proposed to the gov-ernment alternative peaceful solutions for the implementation of security measures. His research was never taken into consideration. Every soci-ologist who approached the regime with projects and solutions or in hopes of working in the official state apparatus was rejected. All of them obtained a clear rejection and their research was either discarded or con-fiscated. This might explain why social scientists often missed out on op-portunities to provide critical analyses of major issues. The most obvious example was when the National Research Center for Social Research un-dertook a study on the sexual behaviour of women in Egypt conducted by a group of distinguished psychologists and anthropologists. The research was strongly attacked by the official press because it was debunking ta-boos. The government ordered the project to be halted; the study was only rescued as a result of Gihan al-Sadat’s intervention. A retired pro-fessor of sociology, Nicholas Hopkins, who has lived in Egypt for almost three decades, has a different opinion, however. According to him, the failures of Egyptian sociology have less to do with state interference and more to do with the nature of the field itself: he finds the discipline to be insufficiently analytical. Hopkins argues that sociology has tended to fo-cus on society as a totality rather than looking at different parts in con-trast to each other. This can equally explain why class analysis has not prospered, according to him. If Marxism was applied, it was done so in a mechanical popular way. Thus sociologists who took up subjects like communities or ethnicity or gender were then suspected of trying to di-vide the country. However, the major drawback is really “the absence of a forum for intellectual discourse, whether about social problems or social theory.…. There is no real criticism of methods and approaches, much like there is no systematic review of work and projects so that the good is encouraged and the bad eliminated” (Personal communication with Nicholas Hopkins, March 3, 2009).

THE CONTINUED CRIMINALIZATION OF SOCIOLOGY

The real reason behind Ibrahim’s incarceration was that he crossed the line when he provided the media with sardonic statements about the far-cical nature of political succession in the Middle East. Ibrahim spoke of the emerging regimes of Gumlukiyya (a joint word between jumhuriyya,republic and malakiyya, meaning royalty) i.e. the return of a generation of royalties as offspring of (military) republics.

Ibrahim argues that he made a comparison between two royal re-gimes, Morocco and Jordan, with five republics to conclude that while


these republics started with promising revolutions, they have aged badly. Over time, these regimes have become increasingly more authoritarian and corrupt (al-Hayat, January 20, 2004).

Furthermore, he appeared frequently on American media with highly acerbic criticism of the Egyptian regime. In The Wall Street Journal, Ibrahim portrayed Mubarak as the Pharaoh keen on maintaining an image of himself as healthy. Ibrahim mockingly stated that Mubarak and the rest of his ageing cabinet were in fact dyeing their greying hair. These re-marks were made when the president fainted during a speech he was de-livering in parliament.30 Ibrahim thought he was immune, but he was wrong. Others have mentioned Ibrahim’s arrest was motivated by his at-tempt to monitor the parliamentary elections whose results were found to be fraudulent. Right in the middle of the trial another charge was filed against Ibrahim for allegedly instigating the violent confessional killings, which had occurred in the village of al-Kush in Upper Egypt. The argu-ment was that Ibrahim inflamed public opinion with false information both in the country and in international forums about the mistreatment of the Coptic minority.

CONCLUSION

What lessons can we draw from Ibrahim’s case concerning the future of sociology in a third world country like Egypt? First, the media’s smear campaign against Ibrahim reinforced the systematic association between espionage and sociological investigation. As a result, in the popular imagination, sociology has become synonymous with spying. In 2008, another charge was filed against Ibrahim for being a “traitor” and for his alleged collaboration with foreign forces. Following the same chain of associations, although the privatization of research undermines agenda- setting, foreign donors should not be radically condemned. Given the de-clining budgets for university research worldwide, given also the sad working conditions in Egyptian national universities and the lack of con-cern for research, these foreign donors are still one major alternative for academics to buy time and dedicate themselves to research. The national-ists have tended to often demonize all foreign funding. In particular, funds from the Ford Foundation are held with suspicion and assumed to come from an institution with a hidden agenda, given its history. Unfor-tunately, this viewpoint dismisses the fact that the institution’s policies

30 The article was reproduced in the issue of Civil Society and Democratizationin the Arab World, July 2004, vol. 10, issue no. 116.

Mona Abaza206

regarding whom they fund and for what purposes has significantly changed over the past two decades. Indeed, in the last few years, the Ford Foundation has funded several interesting cultural, artistic and academic projects which have little to do with the world of consulting and devel-opment agencies. Unfortunately, however, a simplistic understanding of “good” versus the “evil” exists in reference to foreign funding. Second, the press raised many concerns among academics who felt alarmed by the implications of Ibrahim’s trial on academic life. For instance, during the trial, Ibrahim was reproached for having presented papers dealing with sensitive political issues in international conferences. Participation in such conferences and the exchange of knowledge more generally was framed as “selling information” as though the expression of critical ideas overseas automatically meant compromising Egypt’s “national interest.” There was also concern expressed about foreign scholarships for PhD candidates. We all know that these scholarships are crucial for students who wish to study overseas and they are considered to be a form of aid to developing countries. Would this be yet another excuse for the establish-ment to exercise control over PhD holders who they suspected of spread-ing “false information” through their theses?

Third, the press claimed that Ibrahim was guilty of having undertaken research and received funds from the European Union without having obtained government permission. Ibrahim’s defenders responded with the argument that such bureaucratic measures only applied to NGOs whereas the Ibn Khaldun Center was registered as a private company (Cairo Times, June 7-13, 2001). Time and again this is the same old story re-peated since the 1952 military rule. Gohari who testified on behalf of Ibrahim and who defended him as one of the most prominent sociologists in the court, argued that Ibrahim could not be considered guilty for this reason, since nearly 80% of all research in Egyptian universities are for-eign funded (Hafiz 2002). The prominent researcher and journalist at al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, Abdel Mon’em Said, defended Ibra-him by arguing that the state-owned al-Ahram newspaper and research center get 30% of its funds from abroad. The case further revealed how dependent NGOs are on the authority of the military and the state. Ac-cording to The Cairo Times, a 2002 court ruling decreed that NGOs as well as the acceptance of unauthorized foreign funding can be forbidden by military decree (Cairo Times, December 27-January 2, 2002). This reveals one important point: namely, the ironic pairing of “ultra national-istic” rhetoric of the government concerning foreign funds with the fact that Egypt is the second largest US aid recipient in the Middle East after Israel. The regime seems to want to maintain a double discourse to cope with its complete material dependence on the West by punishing one of


its most clever interlocutors with the West. Ibrahim’s case nicely illus-trates how despite the era of globalization and the withering away of bor-ders, there is a revival of primordial sentiments.

An alternative reading of Ibrahim’s case is one that emphasizes the regime’s willingness to sacrifice one of its men as soon as he challenged the regime’s limits. This brings us to an argument made by the late politi-cal scientist Ilya Harik regarding Ibrahim’s case: that guided despotism is unjustifiable (al-Hayat, May 23, 2001). Ibrahim was for a long time re-garded as an establishment intellectual. But his case revealed once more the complete absence of a public vision amongst the political and intellec-tual elites regarding injustice and oppression. The most dangerous sign for civil society is when elites are submissive to the establishment and opportunistic regarding the justification of despotism.

According to the classical argument justifying Mubarak’s guided au-thoritarianism, many intellectuals support the government in its struggle against the Muslim Brothers, who are portrayed as dangerous and unin-terested in public opinion. Harik insists that for many intellectuals, the Ibrahim case was confusing. It was perceived by intellectuals as a stupid move on part of the government, even though Harik concluded neutrally by arguing that civil society was reluctant in defending Ibrahim. This can also mean that civil society can be more conservative than the ruler—a problematic issue if one associates democracy with civil society.

One last question still remains. Bridging the gap between the intellec-tuals and princes have so far proven to be a royal failure. Ibrahim’s case reveals that the margin for protest and contestation is very thin. Perhaps, Ibrahim miscalculated his influence by imagining that the Americans and the international community would rescue him. In the end, they did res-cue him: although he was sentenced to seven years in jail, he was re-leased after only a couple of years.

Others saw it as yet another internal power struggle of the regime. Ibrahim came out of this case as a media star in the West, but having cre-ated more enemies among leftist-nationalist intellectuals. The harsh set-tling of accounts between Ibrahim and these intellectuals and between Ibrahim and the government continues to be documented by the Egyptian press. But the story has not ended. After all, who knows if Obama will be able to push for Ibrahim’s return to Egypt.

Mona Abaza208

APPENDIX I: COURT RULING IN IBN KHALDUN CASE31

First defendant

1.Received donations without permission from the appropriate authority, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Ibn Khaldun Center for Develop-ment Studies, the sum of 145.00 Euros, and in his capacity as Treasurer of the Egyptian Women Electors Fund, affiliated to Ibn Khaldun Center, the sum of 116,000 Euros from the European Union, without prior per-mission, nor subsequent notification of the appropriate authority.

2. As an Egyptian national he deliberately propagated false information and vicious rumours abroad, dealing with some internal conditions in the country which would weaken State’s prestige and integrity. He an-nounced several bits of information abroad dealing with vote rigging in any elections that take place in the country as well as the existence of re-ligious persecution in the way elaborated in the investigation.

3. Managed, by way of swindling, to seize the amounts indicated in the investigation, which belonged to European Union. He made the EU be-lieve in the existence of a false project and forged facts. He concluded with a deal to fund Ibn Khaldun Center for development Studies and to spend the money in the way defined by the grantor. He issued illusive cheques alleging that they covered the salaries of the staff at the said cen-ter. He fabricated 60,000 election cards for Egyptians, and bills of false charges and expenses as the cost of obtaining those cards. Through such swindling, he could seize grantor’s money. Pp. 2-3.

The Court

And since the court has been convinced by what came in the case and felt satisfied with the investigation and the information extracted from the documents which resume in that the first defendant, Saad Edin Mohamed Ibrahim sought to establish and create the Ibn Khaldun Center, apparently to act as a center for development studies, information was received from Major Nasser Mohammed Mohieddin, of the State Security Investigation Service, advising that the said Professor in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of trustees of Ibn Khaldun Center, was using such activity as a 31 This is an informal translation of the court ruling (August-September, 2002), reproduced here from Ford Foundation Documents, Courtesy of Barbara Ibrahim and the Ford Foundation.


cover up for undermining the country’s prestige and inventing false mat-ters against Egypt touching all its elements, Government, people, material and moral foundations, in order to do harm to its integrity through suspi-cious activities.

And as the officer continued his investigation to check the informa-tion he received, the information, followed by the investigation, showed that the first defendant concluded an accord with the EU under which the latter funded a so-called Project of Political Education and Orientation of Electors. It also provides to assist the Egyptian Women Electors Support Service. In his pursuit to procure such funding, he propagated abroad false information and vicious rumours about some internal conditions in the country, pertaining to forging any elections that took place in the country and the existence of religious persecution in it. He resorted to swindling action vis-à-vis the EU, in collaboration with defendants Nadia…

On checking such cards against the lists of electors at Security Ser-vices, they were found to be forged. They also wrote statements about getting election cards and bills involving charges and expenses due for citizens in some Governorates, contrary to fact, and issued cheques of illusive sums alleging to have paid them to staff at the center, but they countersigned them and deposited the money in the personal accounts of the first defendant, who sent the documents to the EU to make it believe that effort was made and required funding. Through such swindling, he managed as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Ibn Khaldun Center, to seize from the EU the sum of 145,000 Euros, and in his capacity as Treasurer of the Egyptian Women Electors Service, to get 116,000 Euros, without prior permission from the competent authority, nor did he subse-quently advise such authority about that. P. 5-6.

APPENDIX II: WORKS OF SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM IN ARABIC LANGUAGE

Itijahat al-ra’i al-‘aam al-‘arabi nahw mas’alat al-wahda, dirasa may-daniyya (Trends in Public Opinion Regarding Arab Unity, a Field Study). Beirut: Marquaz dirasat al-wahda al-‘arabiyya, 1982.

Ta ‘amulaat fi mas’ alat al-aqualliyyat (Reflections about the Question of Minorities). Marquaz Ibn Khaldun, 1992.

I’aadat al- i’ tibar lil ra’ I al-Sadat (Reconsidering, (or) Reinstating President Sadat). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1992.

Mona Abaza210

Al-milal wal-nihal, humum al-aqualliyaat fil watan al-‘arabi (The Con-cern about Minorities in the Arab World) Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1994.

‘Ilm al-nakabat al-‘arabiyya fi idarat al-siraa’ al-‘arabi al-israili (The Science of Disasters or Defeat in Administering the Arab-Israeli Conflict). Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1998.

Al-muffakir wal sulta (The Intellectual and Power). Cairo: Dar Qabaa’ lil tibaa’ wal nashr, 2000.

Azmat al-Muthaquafin wal thaquafa al-‘arabiyya (The Crisis of Intellec-tuals and Arabic Culture). Cairo: Marquaz Ibn Khaldun, 2006.

Edited Volumes

Masr wal ‘uruba wa thawrat yulyu (Egypt, Arabism and the 1952 July Revolution).Beirut: Marquaz al-Wahda al-Àrabiyya, 1982.

Azmat al-dimuqratiyya fil watan al-‘arabi (The Crisis of Democracy in the Arab World). Beirut: Marquaz dirasat al-wahda al-‘arabiyya, 1987.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alleaume, G. “L´économie politique saint-simonienne et les élites techniques de l´ègypte moderne.” In Ètudes Saint-Simonienes, edited by Philippe Régnier, pp. 305-334. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2002.

Al-Gohari, M. “Qira’a naqdiyya fi tarikh ìlm al-ijtima (A Critical Read-ing in the History of Social Sciences).” In al-majalah al-‘ilmiyyah, Jamiyat al-Qahira, Cairo, 1990.

Al-Gohari, M. May 24, 2008. Garden City, Cairo. Al-Nimnim, H. “Hal kaan al hukm qaassiyan?” (How Tough Were the

Charges?). Al-Mussawar, January 6, 2001.

Al-Usbu’. July 9, 2001. Burawoy, M. “The Future of Sociology” Sociological Bulletin of Indian

Sociological Society 56, no.83 (2007): 339-354. Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. Civil Society and Democra-

tization in the Arab World: 2004 Annual Report.(http://www.eicds.org/english/publications/reports/annualreport05/egypt.htm).

El Ghobashy, M. “Speaking too soon.” Cairo Times, June 7-13, 2001, p. 7.


El-Ghitany, M. “What’s in a Center?” Al-Ahram Weekly, January 6-12, 2005: issue 724.

El Magd, N. A. “On the Next Chapter?” Al-Ahram Weekly, May 31, 2001. Retrieved June 6, 2001. (http://weeklyahram.org.eg/2001/536/eg5.htm).

Ghazalla, I. and G. Sabbagh. “Arab Sociology Today: A View From Within.” Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1986): 373-99.

Hafiz, A. A. “Muhakamat Saad Edin Ibrahim” (The Trial of Saad Eddin Ibrahim). Cairo: Rosa al-Youssef, 2002: p. 261.

Hanafi, S. “Donor Community and the Market of Research Production Framing and de Framing the Social Sciences.” Presented at the con-ference of the Council of National Associations, March 23-25, 2009, Taipei, Taiwan.

Harik, I. “Haalat saad eddin ibrahim mithalaan ala fassaad maqullat al-istibdad al-rashid” (Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s case as an example of the hollowness of the Notion of Guided Despotism). al-Hayat, May 23, 2001: p. 16.

Hopkins, N. Personal communication. March 3, 2009. Hopkins, N. and S. E. Ibrahim, eds. Arab Society in Transition: A Reader.

Cairo: The American University in Cairo, 1977. Ibrahim, S. E. “Hard Birth of a New Arab Leadership.” Ibn Khaldun Cen-

ter.(http://www.eicds.org/english/publications/saadarticles/2004/hardbirh.htm).

Ibrahim, S. E. “Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Groups: Methodological Notes and Preliminary Findings.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12(1980).

Ibrahim, S. E. L’aadat al- i’ tibar lil ra’ I al-Sadat (Reconsidering (or) Reinstating President Sadat). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1992a.

Ibrahim, S. E. Ta’amulaat fi mas’ alat al-aqualliyyat, (Thoughts about the Question of Minorities). Cairo: Marquaz Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Khaldun Center, 1992b.

Ibrahim, S. E. Egypt, Islam and Democracy, Twelve Essays. Cairo: The American University Press, 1996.

Ibrahim, S. E. “Cross-eyed Sociology in Egypt and the Arab World.”Contemporary Sociology 26, no. 5 (1997): 547-551.

Ibrahim, S. E. Al-muffakir wal sulta (The Thinker and Power). Cairo: Dar Qabaa’ lil tibaa’ wal nashr, 2000.

Ibrahim, S. E. “Fiqh al-gumlukiya al-‘arabiya” (In the Interpretation of the Arab jumlukiyya). al-Hayat, January 20, 2004.

Ibrahim, S. E. “The Memoirs of Saad Edin Ibrahim.” Al-Dustur, February 18, 2009: p. 17.

Mona Abaza212

Ibrahim, S. E. “Hiwar al-yaum ma’ a mohammed abul ghar wa farida al-naqqash” (Daily Dialogue with Mohammed Abul Ghar and Farida al-Naqquash). Al-Masry al-Yaum, February 21, 2009.

Laroui, A. L´idéologie arabe contemporaine. Paris: François Maspero, 1977.

Lesch, A. Personal communication. May 2, 2009. Morsy, S., C. Nelson, R. Saad and H. Sholkamy. Anthropology and the

Call for Indigenization of Social Sciences in the Arab World, edited by E.l. Sullivan, J.S Ismail. Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 1991.

Roussillon, A. “Durkheimisme et Réformisme, Fondation identitaire de la sociologie en Egypte.” Annales, Histoires, Sciences Sociales 6 (1999): 1363-1394.

Saleh, M. “‘an khalfiyyat quadiyyat saad eddin ibrahim” (On the Back-ground of Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s Case). al-Hayat, June 18, 2001.

Salvatore, A. Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity. UK: Garnet Publishing and Ithaca Press, 1991.

Sholkamy, H. “Why is Anthropology So Hard in Egypt?” In Between Field and Text: Emerging Voices in Egyptian Social Science, edited by Seteney Shami and Linda Herrera, pp. 119-138. Cairo Papers in Social Sciences 22, no. 2 (1999).

Weaver, M. A. “A Trial in Mubarak’s Egypt.” The New York Times Magazine, June 17, 2001. (http://www.nytimes.com).

“Shocked Again.” Cairo Times, December 27-January 2, 2002.

South African Sociology 213

South African Sociology:Current Challenges and Future Implications:

A Review and Some Empirical Evidence from the 2007 National Survey of Sociology

DepartmentsMokong Simon Mapadimeng, University of Johannesburg,

Johannesburg, South Africa1

Sociology as a social scientific discipline is not new to debate, especially among sociologists themselves, and this has also been so in South Africa (SA). Featuring strongly as key contributors to a debate on South African sociology are Groenewald (1991), Jubber (1983), Grunding (1994), Sitas (1996), Crothers (1998), Webster (1985), Webster and Hendricks (2001), Burawoy (2003 and 2004), and Uys (2004). The central concern in this debate has been and remains to establish an understanding of the outlook and role of SA sociology, its state at different historical points, its historical evolution in SA, and, most importantly, its future role and position in the post-apartheid globalization period. In the last 13 years of democratic administration in SA, the debate has increased in intensity, whereby the latter concern, i.e., the future role and shape that sociology is taking in SA, has been the main concern. The debate found expression mainly through the podium provided by the South African Sociological Association (SASA) and in its journal formerly known as Society in Transition (now renamed South African Review of Sociology), in which keynote addresses on this topic where published. Still other publications of the debate occurred through the journals of the International Sociological Association (ISA), to which SASA is an affiliate, and especially in its journal Current Sociology.

In this article, I provide a review of this debate in a way that synthesizes key views held on SA sociology. This is done with the view

1 Mokong Simon Mapadimeng is a Research Associate at the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a member of the National Arts Council of South Africa and the President of the South African Sociological Association.

Mokong Simon Mapadimeng214

to deciphering from the debate the current state of SA sociology, its role and challenges, as well as its future prospects as a discipline. In doing so, attention will also be paid to the outcomes of the recently conducted national survey of the sociology departments in SA, whereby issues such as staff profiles, student numbers, student: lecturer ratios, and research activities were investigated. The survey was conducted by SASA with financial support from the National Research foundation (NRF). The article starts with a review of the debate and an examination of the empirical survey data and then proceeds to outline observations made from the review. On the basis of these, some concluding remarks are then made on the role, challenges, and future prospects of sociology in the post-apartheid, democratic South Africa.

A REVIEW OF THE DEBATE ON SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIOLOGY

The debate on SA sociology takes into account the history of sociology as a discipline and field of study and practice, whereby it is traced to as far back as the early twentieth century. As Webster (2004; 2007) and Burawoy (2004) point out, during this period, sociology formed part of social work programs, with its main preoccupation being its contribution to social administration and social policy. Its main concern was client-welfare agencies and government (Webster 2004; 2007). In the later period of the 1950s and 1960s, the discipline underwent changes, as some of the leading sociologists, notably Professor Cilliers of the University of Stellenbosch, sought to professionalize the discipline and give it a sense of autonomy from social work through the injection of the Parsonian functionalist theoretical framework (Burawoy 2003; Webster 2004; Uys 2004). The result was a break away from social work, giving rise to an independent growth of the discipline of sociology in SA. What was promising to become an independent, vibrant discipline, however, came to be bedeviled by racial and ethnic divisions under the apartheid regime, very much in line with the racially-based separate development government policies that sought to promote and uphold white racial supremacy. This saw sociology growing as a divided discipline in different universities, taking different directions in terms of its role and interventions in the society. In the English-speaking universities, Webster (2004) speaks of what he refers to as the emergence of “oppositional sociology,” opposed to apartheid, while in Afrikaans-speaking universities it was labeled “Afrikaner sociology,” serving the apartheid system. In black universities, sociology was only introduced in


the 1960s, developing a strong Marxist thrust against apartheid (Webster 2004: 28-29).

Racial divisions within sociology in SA also manifested themselves at the organizational level when the South African Sociological Association (SASOV) was created as exclusively white sociological body for largely Afrikaans-speaking universities, only later to be challenged through the establishment of much more liberal, non-racial counter body in the form of the Association of Sociology in Southern Africa (ASSA). While SASOV was uncritical of the apartheid system, ASSA openly struggled against and condemned the system (Uys 2004; Webster 2004). The two associations were later merged to form the present-day South African Sociological Association (SASA) in 1993, in order to appropriately locate the community of sociologists in the post-apartheid democratic SA and ensure that it plays a constructive role for the advancement of the democratic system.

In the late 1970s, sociology had, according to Webster (2004), developed into a critical, vibrant discipline, with New Left intellectual influences which began, through the ASSA congresses, to engage critically with the SA society’s problems, like racial inequalities and racial domination. This was followed in the 1980s by sociologists’ engagement with these issues through “dialogue with social movements struggling against apartheid” (Webster 2004: 30).

This historical evolution of sociology in SA up to the 1990s, Webster argues, in agreement with Burawoy (2004), is consistent with and is best explained by the latter’s model (see table 1 below) which he developed to make sense of the sociology as a discipline worldwide.

Table.1. Burawoy’s Model: The Discipline of Sociology

Academic Audience Extra-Academic Audience

Instrumental Knowledge Professional Sociology Policy Sociology

Reflexive Knowledge Critical Sociology Public Sociology

Based on the above model, different sociologies are said to have characterized and dominated in different historical periods of the evolution of the discipline in SA. These are described as professional, policy, public, and critical sociology. Professional sociology is,


according to Burawoy (2004), practiced mainly in universities with the aim of generating “abstract knowledge, seeking scientific legitimacy, accountable to a community of peers,” while policy sociology is concerned “with concrete knowledge, legitimated by its effectiveness, and accountable to a client …” (19). This, he argues, is in contrast with critical sociology, as the latter “rests on foundational knowledge, rooted in moral vision accountable to a community of intellectuals.” Public sociology, on the other hand, is considered by Burawoy to be dialogic and “relevant to the public to which it is answerable” (19). Beyond these differences, Burawoy sees all the four typologies as dependent on each other, and this is best reflected in his argument quoted below:

Critical sociology is the conscience of professional sociology, uncovering the assumptions and values upon which it rests and by so doing always suggesting alternative foundations. Critical sociology discloses the connection between sociology and the world it studies, demystifying claims to pure science, demonstrating the futility of a completely self-referential system of knowledge. With its interest in values, critical sociology lays the basis for public sociology’s engagement with the audiences beyond the academy. However, critical sociology is first and foremost an academic sociology, nurtured by a community of intellectuals that might span several disciplines, whose raison d’être derives from an ingrown professional sociology (17).

These sociologies, Burawoy argues, are relevant to different categories of audiences, i.e., academic and extra-academic audiences, and they lead to the production of different knowledges, i.e., instrumental knowledge, which is concerned mainly with orientations of means to specified ends, and reflexive knowledge, which promotes discussion of those ends and values (18).

The debate on sociology not only provides insights into the historical evolution of the discipline in SA but also helps in understanding two other vital aspects pertaining to sociology in SA, i.e., the definition of the nature of the discipline and the challenges facing it in the present period. As far as the former aspect is concerned, Burawoy’s model and contributions from SA sociologists help in clearly defining sociology and its role. In her defense of sociology as a discipline, especially in the light of propositions such as Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1998) that efforts should go into promoting the culture of social sciences as opposed to discipline-specific cultures such as sociology, Tina Uys (2004) identifies defining features that distinguish sociology from other disciplines. In doing so, she makes reference to Goran Therbon’s (2000) “three spaces of


identity,” i.e., a space of discipline, of everyday practice, and of imagination and investigation. What makes sociology distinct, Uys argues, is “its sociological imagination, it emphasis on unmasking deceptions and illusions, and its commitment to improving the world we live in,” and furthermore that it “has always been associated with social intervention and social action” (9). This understanding of sociology and its role both reinforces Burawoy’s models, according to which the four types of sociologies are mutually dependent on each other, and points to a general consensus on the understanding of the role and nature of sociology. For instance, the late Chachage (2004), in his assessment of the future of sociology in Africa, argues for the need to rethink the object of sociological study beyond a rather ambiguous view that sociology is simply concerned with the study of society. For Chachage, sociology should continue on its rich tradition of being primarily concerned with seeking to generate a body of knowledge around contemporary and relevant social problems and social movements which have always been critical to the stimulation of the sociological imagination. This is clearly captured in his argument pertaining to African sociology, as quoted below:

Given the problems facing Africa – civil strife, ethnicity, racism, corruption, terrorist governments … unemployment, land and natural resource disputes, famine, economic hardships, etc., it is about time sociology in Africa rethought the whole question of the state (administrative power) and its relation to the civil society; military power and war; democracy and democratic forms; gender, nation, race and ethnic relations, and many others (60).

Hence, in his view, “Our sociological knowledge will have to reflect the social conditions of struggles through which men and women simultaneously transform their circumstances and themselves” (60).

Challenges facing sociology in SA today and in the future are, as can be deduced from the debate in SA, varied and complex. Among these challenges are those of an institutional nature. Webster (2004) noted that there has been a significant change in the institutional landscape and context in which sociology is practiced in SA, as a result of the over-emphasis on the need for SA to become globally competitive. Notable institutional changes include: 1) the strengthening of policy research through transformation of and increased support for the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) which conducts policy research; 2) the creation of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) with the main aim of developing a vocationally-oriented educational system; 3)


the creation of the National Research Foundation (NRF) for a single science-funding system as well as to promote interdisciplinarity; 4) and the trend towards commercialization and/or corporatization of universities whereby the emphasis is on producing graduates with marketable skills, thus seeing students as clients (Uys 2004; Webster 2004). While these present opportunities, according to Uys and Webster, they also pose some serious threats, which could see a move away from public sociology towards more professional sociology, whose emphasis is on publishing in professional journals. These changes impose pressures that could see a balance between different sociologies and their complementary roles being distorted and lost. They also could have a negative impact in terms of inhibiting creativity and innovations in sociology.

Other challenges and constraints facing sociology in SA that could further exacerbate the negative consequences on the discipline’s growth and development were unearthed through the survey conducted in 2003 in 15 South African universities. Uys (2004) noted from this survey a number of challenges to the discipline ranging from race (white dominance) and gender (male dominance) imbalances in terms of levels of seniority and numbers to inequalities between the historically black and white universities in terms of research activities and publications output. Uys also found other constraints to innovative and creative sociology, such as heavy teaching loads and greater reliance on text books produced in the West, as well as low teaching staff: student ratios of 1:71 (7). During the time of the survey, only 7,400 students were registered for sociology, with only a few for the postgraduate studies, i.e.,107 for honors, 222 for master’s degrees, and 79 for doctoral degrees (7). Notwithstanding these constraints and challenges, Uys (2005) ended with optimism, arguing that SA sociology is responding creatively to the local challenges and problems and hence is ideally suited “to make reasoned judgments and engage in actions aimed at promoting the well-being of human beings,” while not abandoning analytical knowledge (episteme) and technical know-how (techne) (9). Basically, here, Uys refers to the ability of SA sociology, despite the challenges it is confronted with, to still strike a balance between Burawoy’s four sociologies. Part of the reason for Uys’s optimism is what she finds to be a positive trend amongst the SA sociologists marked by a move beyond past tendencies to choose either quantitative or qualitative methods, towards adopting an integrated multi-strategy approach that combines different methodologies.

However, the findings of the recent 2007 survey of SA sociology departments conducted with the SASA’s mandate by its recent past president, Johan Zaimaan, with the financial support of the NRF, presents


a picture that both supports and challenges this optimistic assertion by Uys. The findings show a significant improvement in students enrolled for sociology courses. The 7,400 number of the 2003/4 academic year more than tripled to 22,968 registered undergraduates and 1,364 registered postgraduates in the 2007/2008 academic year. Of the 1,364 registered at postgraduate level, 656 are for honors degree (which has tripled); 557 for master’s degree (which has doubled) and 133 for PhD degree (which has almost doubled). While this augurs well for the future capacity within sociology, although not all undergraduates will necessarily proceed with the major in sociology or even to the postgraduate level, there is a downside. Staff: student ratios are still unimpressive. The recent survey found that throughout the country, universities have a total of 170 full-time staff members and 11 part-time staff members working out to a staff: student ratio of 1:143.

This implies low capacity for both teaching and supervision or coaching, especially in view of the increased number of postgraduate students. As open interviews with staff in various universities revealed, staff are heavily loaded with teaching and supervision, leading to a compromise not only in quality in teaching and supervision, but also and importantly imposing constraints on ability and time to conduct research and publish. The implications are negative for development of a strong professional sociology needed for effective critical, public, and policy sociologies. This may explain the survey’s findings that staff complained about the low quality of students and that, in the context of heavy teaching loads and poor salaries, it is becoming increasingly difficult to retain staff, especially black academic staff who are in huge demand both in the private and government sectors, which happen to pay at market rates and offer attractive fringe benefits. The point about the quality of students is consistent with the assertion once made by Tom Lodge (1999), a prominent political scientist, that the new generation of students are not interested in ideas but only in certificates as passports to employment.

The above scenario is even graver within the historically black universities (HBUs). Although staff: student ratios in both the HBUs and the historically white universities (HWUs) are more or less similar and are therefore almost equally overloaded with teaching, the difference lies in the fact that while most of the HBUs have no more than four staff members, most of the HWUs have at least 13 staff members each. This implies that within the HWUs, there is a relatively larger community of scholars creating a vibrant, dynamic, and competitive intellectual environment with numerous intellectually challenging and exciting activities, such as seminar series in which staff and senior students are able to present and discuss their ongoing research. This helps to cushion


the impact of heavy teaching loads and constraints imposed on reach productivity. This point was noted in previous research such as that by Webster and Mosoetsa (2001: 73). Another plus for the HWUs but missing in the HBUs is that amongst the former’s staff, there are several senior/full professors and scholars who provide intellectual and academic leadership as chairs and heads of disciplines. This is generally missing within the HBUs, where more often than not, academic leadership is left in the hands of staff in the middle levels of their careers, i.e., either without doctorates or currently registered for doctorates, and with lower scholarly standing and poor publishing records. The result is the overstretching of those in these levels within the HBUs, creating further strain on getting them to complete their doctoral degrees and get into becoming productive in terms of research and publishing.

This set of people, which is referred to as the “missing middle,” characterized by higher loss of staff at this level, is indeed bound to continue for a long time to come, as predicted by Alexander and Makhura (2006). The implications for the development of sociology, not only to ensure that racial equity is achieved but also that diversity of sociological perspectives, viewpoints, and voices that reflect the socially and culturally diverse nature of the SA society are heard in knowledge development endeavours, are serious and negative. Also likely to continue to be inadequately represented within the sociological writings in SA are works on the issues affecting the rural sector by scholars based in rural areas, and how this sector links with urban sector issues and complexities. This is especially so because most of the HBUs are situated in the former homelands and Bantustans, and we know by now that within these universities, the research output has always been low. Furthermore, the above implies that the contribution to knowledge development by sociologists will continue to be dominated by white scholars, reinforcing the fear expressed by Alexander and Makhura that, in the light of evidence that shows insignificant improvement of publications by black sociologists in the last decade and a half, we still have a long way to go in terms of addressing racial imbalances. Even more serious is that the current situation, marked by over-dependence on outside sociology textbooks and other reading materials (mainly from Western countries), is likely to continue. The current low research productivity, especially in the HBUs and among black sociologists, could be worsened by the poor conditions of service under which they are working as well as low remunerations. Already, researchers have seen university-based sociologies, pressured by institutional and financial factors (e.g., corporatisation of higher education, reduced funding, and de-motivating rating systems), opting to spend more time on


commissioned policy-type research that is funded and owned by the state and the private sector, dealing a heavy blow to production of scholarly research meant to advance sociological knowledge needed for development of other sociologies, i.e., public, policy, and critical.

CONCLUSION

It is clear from the review above that the future of sociology rests on ensuring a healthy balance between the four types of sociologies with their different audiences, to make them mutually enriching and reinforcing. It is, however, even more clear that for both public and policy sociology to be strengthened and made meaningful, they require strong university-based sociologies, i.e., professional and critical sociologies. I argue here that while sociology in South Africa in the past was marked by divisions, mainly racial and ideological, as well as fragmentation with various historical eras characterized by the domination of certain sociologies, the situation in the post-apartheid period is much more complex. This complexity suggests that there are both opportunities to strike a balance in the development of different but complementary sociologies as categorized by Burawoy (hence, Uys’s optimism that Chachage’s vision of the role of sociology in Africa is possible) and challenges and/or constraints that could stifle the achievement of this balance, possibly resulting in continued historical divisions and weaknesses.

Opportunities suggesting great prospects for SA sociology can be seen from the increase in the numbers of students, which could result in improvement in the numbers of sociologists to boost the current situation of only 170 full time employed sociologists in the academic sector. While the increased number of students could be seen as a sign of optimism, it is, however, off-set by the current low number of academic staff/sociologists, implying heavy teaching and supervision loads, with a subsequent negative impact on the quality of teaching and training. Other points of concern include the disparities between the HWUs and the HBUs. The former boast large communities of sociologists with a good number of senior scholars providing the highly needed academic leadership and inspiration to those at entry level in the discipline as well as those in the middle of their careers within the discipline. On the contrary, the latter (HBUs) are seriously lacking in this regard. The implications, as I have mentioned already, are negative for not only the strong development of sociology in the HBUs but also in the entire country, especially from the point of view of knowledge development


that adequately reflects the diverse nature of the SA society and has relevance to a wide range of complex realities and problems facing the country. This scenario is likely to perpetuate the racial divisions and inequalities within SA sociology as inherited from the past. This implies that the SA sociology is unlikely to respond creatively and innovatively to and engage critically with what Alexander and Makhura (2006) call “the post-modern agenda,” drawing from Patel’s view of globalization as creating the need for “The possibility, of reconnecting fields of knowledge: joining political economy and culture, far away places and hidden social forces with local problems and new identities, and structure with agency and possibilities for social change” (as quoted in Alexander and Makhura 2006: 19).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, P. and P. Makhura. “Sociology Research in Contemporary South Africa.” Paper presented at the South African Sociological Association (SASA)/National Research foundation (NRF) Workshop, Johannesburg, 2006.

Burawoy, M. “Public Sociology: South African Dilemmas in a Global Context.” Society in Transition 35, no. 1 (2003).

Chachage, C.L.S. “Higher Education Transformation and Academic Exterminism.” Globalization and Social Policy in Africa. AfricanBooks Collective, 2004.

Crothers, C. “Sociology and Social Research in South Africa.” In Gathering Voices: Perspectives in the Social Sciences in Southern Africa, edited by T. Silva and A. Sitas. Madrid: International Sociological Association, 1998.

Groenewald, C. “The Context of the Development of Sociology in Southern Africa: A Reply to Visser and Van Styaden.” South African Journal of Sociology 22, no. 2 (1991).

Grunding, A. “Structures for Sociologists: A Historical Perspective on the Association for Sociologists in South Africa (1967-1991).” In Social Theory, edited by N. Romm and M. Sarakinsky. Johannesburg: Lexicon, 1994.

Jubber, K. “Sociology and its Sociological Context: The Case of the Rise of Marxist Sociology in South Africa.” Social Dynamics 9 (1983).

Lodge, Tom. Daily News, April 16, 1999. Sitas, A. “The Waning of Sociology in South Africa.” Society in

Transition 28 (1996).


-----. “The African Renaissance Challenge and Sociological Reclamations in the South.” Current Sociology 54, no. 3 (2006).

Therbon, Goran. “At the Birth of Second Century Sociology: Times of Reflexivity, Spaces of Identity, and Nodes of Knowledge.” BritishJournal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 37-57.

Uys, T. “In Defense of South African Sociology.” Society in Transition35, no. 1 (2004).

Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Time of Space and the Space of Time: The Future of Social Science.” Political Geography 17, no. 1 (January 1998): 71-82.

Webster, E. “Competing Paradigms: Towards a Critical Sociology in Southern Africa.” Social Dynamics 11, no. 1 (1985).

-----. “Sociology in South Africa: Its Past, Present and Future.” Societyin Transition 35, no. 1 (2004): 27-41.

----- and F. Hendricks. Transforming the Discipline: The State of Sociology in South Africa. Pretoria: National Research Foundation, 2001.

Tina Uys224

Resistance to Rating: Resource Allocation, Academic Freedom and Citizenship

Tina Uys, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Since the early eighties universities worldwide have been confronted with the need to adapt to the pressures of marketisation. They have become ‘knowledge factories.’ The traditional role of the university (as espoused in the middle ages) as ‘the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake’ has been replaced by the ‘pursuit of useful knowledge’ (David 1997: 4). This pursuit is characterised by the fact that scientific research is often transformed into technology, due to the demands of externally determined research agendas (Wasser 1990: 112).

Marketisation is not the only factor which impacts negatively on the academic’s time for reflection and ‘…the freedom to pursue research and excellence in conditions of security’ (Miller 1991: 124). Under the guise of the demands of globalisation, governments are placing pressure on universities to make a contribution to increased international competitiveness. This represents a strengthening of links between the university and industry (Kaplan 1997: 69). Thus, knowledge is used for commercial purposes and the focus is on short-term, applied research aimed at developing marketable products (Orr 1997: 47).

Research is increasingly undertaken in order to make a profit, which leads to a greater emphasis on knowledge as private property and the pro-tection of intellectual property rights. Free and open dissemination of knowledge is a thing of the past in the market university. The traditional unity of research, teaching and study or scholarship is increasingly being eroded with the development of more and more teaching-only or re-search-only institutions (Orr 1997: 50-59). Wasser (1990: 121) argues that the university is evolving from the traditional into the entrepreneurial; governments favour research that has an economic benefit along with vocationally orientated courses.

The development of the entrepreneurial university is often referred to as “academic capitalism.” Ylijoki (2003: 308) defines it as consisting of “both direct market activity, which seeks for profit, such as patents, li-cences and spin-off firms, and of market-like behaviour, which entails competition of external funding without the intention to make a profit, such as grants, research contracts and donations. In both senses academic

Resistance to Rating 225

capitalism promotes market-orientation and competition in university research.”

In South Africa higher education is experiencing what Webster and Adler (1999) call “a double transition.” A new curriculum (Curriculum 2005 or so-called outcomes-based education), and the South African Qualifications Authority was introduced , which were supposed to in-crease the mobility of students between campuses, promote transforma-tion, reduce or eradicate duplication and ensure the ‘delivery’ of gradu-ates with marketable skills who would be productive members of society. This was to be achieved by the development of so-called programmes focused on equipping students with the necessary skills to operate suc-cessfully within a particular work context. At the same time “the restruc-turing of the higher education landscape” (Jansen 2003: 304) took place. This entailed the merging of universities and technikons (the South Afri-can term for technical colleges which provide post-school vocational training) in order to achieve the supposed ideal number of 21 institutions of higher learning.

All of these sorts of transformation initiatives are undertaken at the behest of the Minister in charge of the Department of Education. The Higher Education Act of 1997, and subsequent amendments, has empow-ered the Minister in significant ways. Not only is institutional autonomy on the decrease, but state interference has increased. For example, the Minister has to approve loans for sound and financially unsound universi-ties. In this way, financial flows are controlled by the State, and not by the institution in question. Moreover, the Department of Education claims that mergers took place so as to help economically inefficient higher edu-cation institutions to become less so when joined with more efficient in-stitutions. However, it is clear that the mergers were politically efficient, in terms of an attempt to regulate equity imbalances, as opposed to the bottom line. In this way, the state’s transformation agenda has been po-litically, rather than economically driven (Moja, Cloete and Olivier 2002: 36-46).

Considering the above, role-players in South Africa have to deal with a double-edged sword, wherein global economic pressures and local po-litical concerns intersect. On the one hand, they need to transform univer-sities to address the legacies of the past, and on the other they need to consider the role of the university as producers of ‘useful knowledge.’ This represents a juggling act whereby universities enrol more students from previously disadvantaged communities, transform councils, senates and academic staff to reflect the demographic realities of South Africa, participate actively in community upliftment, but also, due to increased financial constraints, need to consider their own viability. This viability is

Tina Uys226

addressed in terms of attracting state funding but also private sector dona-tions, which, in turn, can compromise the ‘independence’ of the univer-sity under consideration.

The rapidly changing socio-historical context has also made an im-pact on the way in which state funding for research is structured and managed. Academic freedom in research is no longer simply the freedom of academics “to speak their own minds, to teach in accordance with their own interests, and to develop those interests according to their own re-search agenda” (Nixon 2001: 175). It has become entwined with ac-countability and international competitiveness. This paper explores the system of evaluation and rating introduced by the South African National Research Foundation for researchers in the social sciences and humanities in 2002. In particular, the resistance amongst sociologists in terms of the impact of the system on resource allocation, collegiality and the freedom of sociologists to determine their own research agendas is considered. In so doing, attention will be paid to the ways in which state resource allocation and transformation agendas impact perceptions of academic freedom, and how it is being navigated.

THE HISTORY OF STATE FUNDING FOR RESEARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA

Support for research in universities in South Africa has a long history dating from 1942 when General Jan Smuts, initiated the idea of establishing a national research body in South Africa. As a result the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was founded in 1945 through an Act of Parliament. An important item on the agenda of the first council meeting was the promotion of research in universities through grants and bursaries (NRF 2005: 3).

In the early 1980s a concern developed among researchers at universities with regard to the absence of clearly defined and generally accepted criteria for the allocation of funds. After an investigation the CSIR Foundation for Research Development (FRD) was formed in 1984, tasked with the awarding of research grants and bursaries to applicants in the natural sciences. The FRD became an independent body in 1990 (NRF 2005: 3).

Until the late nineties the social sciences and the natural sciences in South Africa operated in totally separate enclaves as far as research in the higher education sector was concerned. While funding and research support for the natural sciences was administered through the FRD, the social sciences received their funding and research support through the


Centre for Science Development (CSD), a division of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). In both cases support entailed grants for conducting research as well as bursaries for students. The FRD also made funding available for equipment and research infrastructure.

From 1982 the FRD developed an evaluation and rating system for natural scientists which was implemented for the first time in 1984. This rating system made the following distinctions: A-rated scientists (Leading international researchers), B-rated scientists (Internationally acclaimed researchers), C-rated scientists (Established researchers) and Y ratings (Promising young researchers).

The National Research Foundation was established in 1999 through the National Research Foundation Act, Act 23 of 1998. The new organisation entailed the amalgamation of the FRD and the CSD into a new funding body charged with the promotion of and support for research across all fields of the humanities, social and natural sciences, engineering and technology. Significantly this new agency was based at the CSIR, the previous home of the FRD.

From 2002 the NRF extended the evaluation and rating system previously in place for the natural sciences to the social sciences and humanities. This paper describes the review process and considers the strengths and weaknesses of such a system of individual evaluation and rating for the social sciences in general and for sociology in particular.

THE AIM OF THE EVALUATION AND RATING SYSTEM

The main aim of the evaluation and rating system is to provide an objective determination of the quality of the research output of individual researchers in higher education based on their recent track record and outputs in research by means of peer evaluation. The definition of research used for by the NRF for this purpose is reflected in Table 1. The following criteria are used to perform the peer evaluation:

• The quality of the research outputs of the preceding eight years • The impact of the applicant’s work in his/her field and how it has

impacted on adjacent fields. • An assessment of the candidate standing as a researcher in the field in

terms of a South African as well as an international perspective.

In order for the peer evaluation to be conducted the candidate needs to submit a research portfolio listing research outputs in particular books of scholarship, chapters in scholarly books, peer-reviewed journal articles

Tina Uys228

and research-based publications such as refereed conference publications and edited books. Other evidence of research proficiency such as book reviews, editorship of journals, official positions in professional associations, and the impact of higher degree supervision on a reseach programme, visiting professorships, staff development and research-based improvements of the quality of higher education are also considered. Apart from keynote or plenary addresses conference papers seem not to carry much weight in the peer review process.

Table 1 Definition of research

For purposes of the NRF, research is original investigation undertaken to gain knowledge and/or enhance understanding.

Research specifically includes: • The creation and development of the intellectual infrastructure of sub-

jects and disciplines (e.g.) through dictionaries, scholarly editions, catalogues and contributions to major research databases);

• The invention or generation of ideas, images, performances and arte-facts where these manifestly embody new or substantially developed insights;

• Building on existing knowledge to produce new or substantially im-proved materials, devices, products, policies or processes.

It specifically excludes:• routine testing and analysis of materials, components, instruments and

processes, as distinct from the development of new analytical tech-niques.

• the development of teaching materials and teaching practices that do not embody substantial original enquiry.

Source: National Research Foundation (2005: 8).

It is clear from the above that the evaluation and rating system focuses nearly exclusively on the promotion of professional sociology as defined by Michael Burawoy (2004). It is also an individualistic system that rates single authorship ouput more highly than collaborative efforts. As a special incentive to apply for rating researchers who have received a rating are allowed to apply for five-year funding for a project from the NRF’s Focused Areas programme as opposed to the two years for non-rated researchers. Once the programme of rating has been running for a few years non-rated researchers will not be allowed to apply for research money from the NRF as a project leader at all.


THE PROCEDURE OF EVALUATION AND RATING

Applications for evaluation and rating are open to all full-time, part-time or contract researchers based at South African higher education institutions (HELs), museums or any other NRF recognised research institution. An NRF recognised research institution is one

• that conducts basic research or applied research, • of a pre-competitive nature, • promoting the long-term knowledge base, • within the declared NRF focus areas. • It should have a research training component leading to master’s

degrees and doctorates, while being committed to equity and redress.

The research portfolio must be submitted via the research office of the institution that the applicant is based at and needs to be supported by the research office. After screening by the Evaluation Centre acceptable applications are sent through to the appropriate specialist committee for the appointment of peer reviewers.

There are presently 21 such specialist committees of which 11 are for the social sciences and humanities. The eleven specialist committees for the social sciences and humanities are the following:

• Anthroplogy, Development Studies, Geography, Sociology and Social Work

• Communication, Media Studies and Library and Information Sciences • Economics, Management, Administration and Accounting • Education • Historical Studies • Law• Literary Studies, Languages and Linguistics • Performing and Creative Arts, and Design • Political Sciences, Policy Studies and Philosophy • Psychology • Religious Studies and Theology

Each of these committees consists of three to six respected members of the South African research community in each of the fields of research.

As is clear from the above sociology is grouped together in one specialist committee with anthropology, development studies, geography and social work. It is interesting to note that this specialist committee includes the widest array of disciplines of all the social science and

Tina Uys230

humanities committees. Education, historical studies, law, psychology and religious studies each have their own separate specialist committee. The specialist committee appoints the peer reviewers, evaluates their reports and allocate a rating. At least six reviewers are appointed of which at least half are from prestigious institutions abroad. Reviewers are not informed about the previous evaluation or rating of applicants, or about the rating categories that are used by the NRF. Provision is made for an appeals process.

Three categories of ratings are used. The first category deals with researchers who have established themselves in their field. The following distinctions are made:

• A – Leading international researcher: judged world leaders in their field

• B – Internationally acclaimed researcher: has considerable international recognition as an independent researcher

• C – Establised researcher: demonstrates a solid body of research which reflects an ongoing commitment in their field

The second category distinguishes between two kinds of ratings that are awarded to young researchers, normally younger than 35 years with a doctoral qualification of less than 5 years.

• P – NRF President’s Awardee: are recognised internationally as having the potential to become leaders in their field in the future.

• Y– Promising young researcher: showing the potential to become established reseachers within a five-year period after evaluation.

Provision is also made for those researchers, normally younger than 55 years who have shown promise or ability as researchers in the past but have been prevented from developing this ability because of the absence of a research environment, time spent in industry or family responsibilities.

Finer distinctions are also made in the rating in terms of A1, A2, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, Y1 and Y2. A more detailed explanation of the ratings that can be awarded is reflected in Table 2.


Table 2: Definitions of rating categories and research

Category Definition Sub-category Description

A Researchers who are unequivocally recognised but heir peers as leading international scholars in their field for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs.

A1

A2

A researcher in this group is recognised by all reviewers as a leading scholar in his/her field internationally for the high quality and wide impact (i.e.) beyond a narrow field of specialisation) of his/her recent research outputs.

A researcher in this group is recognised by the overriding majority of reviewes as a leading scholar in his/her field internationally for the high quality and impact (either wide of confined) of his/her recent research outputs.

B Researchers who enjoy considerable international recognition by their peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs.

B1

B2

All reviewers concur that the applicant enjoys considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his/her recent research outputs, with some of them indicating that he/she is a leading international scholar in the field.

All or the overriding majority of reviewers are firmly convinced that the applicant enjoys considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his/her recent research outputs.

Tina Uys232


B3 Most of the reviewers are convinced that the applicant enjoys considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his/her recent research outputs.

C Established researchers with a sustained recent record of productibity in the field who are recognised by their peers as having:

Produced a body of quality work, the core of which has coherence and attests to ongoing engagement with the fieldDemonstrated the ability to conceptualise problems and apply research methods to investigating them

C1

C2

C3

While all reviewers concur that the applicant is an established researcher (as described), some of them indicate that he/she already enjoys considerable international regonition for his/her high quality recent research outputs.

All or the overriding majority of reviewers are firmly convinced that the applicant is an established researcher (as described).

Most of the reviewers concur that the applicant is an established researcher (as described).


P Young researchers (normally younger than 35 years of age), who have held the doctorate of equivalent qualification for less than five years at the time of application and who, on the basis of exceptional potential

Researchers in this group are recognised by all or the over-riding majority of reviewers as having demonstrated the potential of becoming future leaders in their field, on the basis of exeptional research performance and output from their doctoral and/or



demonstrated in their published doctoral work and/or their research outputs in their early post-doctoral careers are considered likely to become future leaders in their field.

early post-doctoral research careers.

Y1 A researcher in this group is recognised by all reviewers as having the potential (demonstrated byresearch products) to establish him/herself as a researcher with some of them indicating that he/she has the potential to become a future leader in his/her field. (Applicants on the borderline between P and Y should be rated at this level.)

Y Young researchers (normally younger than 35 years of age), who have held the doctorate of equivalent qualification for less than five years at the time of application, and who are recognised as having the potential to establish themselves as researchers within a five-year period after evaluation, based on their performance and productivity as researchers during their doctoral studies and/or early post-doctoral careers.

Y2 A researcher in this group is recognised by all or the over-riding majority of reviewers as having the potential to establish him/herslef as a researcher (demonstrated by recent research products).

L Persons (normally younger than 55 years) who were previously established as researchers of who previously demonstrated potential through their own research products, and who are considered capable of fully

This category was introduced to draw an increased number of researchers with potential from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as women into research. It also caters for persons previously established as researchers who have

Tina Uys234


establishing or re-establishing themselves as researchers within a five-year period after evaluation. Candidates should be South African citizens or foreign nationals who have been resident in South Africa for five years during which time they have been unable for practical reasons to realise their potential as researchers.

Candidates who are eligible in this category include:

• blackresearchers

• female researchers

• those employed in a higher education institution that lacked a research environment

• those who were previously established as researchers and have returned to a research environment.

returned to a research environment after periods in industry or elswehere. Applicants must demonstrate that they could not realise the potential or sustain their research ability by virtue of a lack of a research environment, or time spent in industry, or on maternity leave, or raising a family. For candidates to qualify for this category the employing institution must have demonstrated its financial commitment towards a development strategy for the staff member concerned

Source: National Research Foundation (2005: 7-8).


After the initial rating have been awarded researchers at recognised research institutions who have been rated A, B, C, P, Y or L are invited to submit documents for re-evaluation in approximately five-year cyles. Should a researcher choose not to respond to this invitation, his/her rating will lapse and will affect funding cycles. Applicants who have not been awarded a rating have to wait three years before they may apply for re-evaluation. They may apply for special re-evaluation sooner if the relevant authority of the employing institution believes that the applicant has made sufficient progress since the precious rating that it warrants re-evaluation. A new application then has to be sent to the NRF other with a motivation indicating why a special re-evaluation is justified.

THE RESPONSE FROMTHE SOCIAL SCIENCE COMMUNITY

The number of applications for rating received by the specialist committees for the social sciences and humanities as well as their success rate at receiving a rating are reflected in Table 3 below. It is clear that the rating system was not received with great enthusiasm by the social science community. Furthermore, if anything, the slight inital enthusiasm dwindled rapidly from 380 applications in 2002 to 113 in 2003, 81 in 2004, 100 in 2005 and 82 in 2006. In 2007 only 274 applications were received which includes applications for re-evaluations for those who applied for the first time in 2002. The average success rate over the five year period is 68% and 64% of ratings awarded are as Established researchers (C). In 2006 only 513 (32%) of the 1606 rated researchers were from the social sciences and humanities (NRF 2007: 7).

Table 3: Applications and ratings 2002-2006 in social sciences and humanities

Success % Ratings received Year Applications A B C P Y L 2002 380 269 71 6 59 175 5 16 82003 113 81 72 1 17 52 1 7 32004 81 43 53 2 9 26 0 2 42005 100 72 72 1 7 43 3 11 72006 82 48 59 4 0 31 0 7 6Total 756 513 68 14 92 327 9 43 28

Source: National Research Foundation (2007: 5-7).

Tina Uys236

It is also of interest to consider the spread of rated researchers across specialist committees in the social sciences and humanities as is reflected in Table 4.

Table 4: The spread of rated researchers in the social sciences and humanities - 2006

Specialist committee – the social sciences and humanities

Rating

A B C Total Anthropology, Development Studies, Geography, Sociology and Social Work

2 9 37 48

Communication, Media Studies & Library and Information Sciences

0 2 15 17

Economics, Management, Administration and Accounting

0 7 46 53

Education 1 6 38 45Historical Studies 2 12 19 33Law 2 15 57 74Literary studies, Language and Linguistics 5 21 58 84Performing and Creative Arts and Design 0 10 16 26Political Studies, Policy Studies and Philosophy 0 7 18 25 Psychology 0 6 28 34Religious Studies and Theology 2 5 20 27Total 14 1001 352 466 Source: National Research Foundation (2007: 11).

The lack of interest from sociologists is particularly evident when their participation is considered. In 2006 only 13 sociologists were rated where 8 had an established researcher rating (C), two an internationally acclaimed rating (B), two a promising young researcher rating (Y) and only one had managed to achieve a leading international researcher or A rating. The absence of sociologists among the rated scientists is largely due to the fact that South African sociologists are generally very resistant to the system. During workshops held by Webster and Fakier (2001: 13-14) the participants raised six problems foreseen by South African sociologists with extending the rating and evaluation system to researchers in the social sciences and humanities.

1 Some researchers are linked to more than one specialist committee


The first problem was related to an important difference between the natual sciences and the social sciences, namely that of the diversity in approaches and orientations within the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular. This diversity, it was argued, makes it problematic to obtain consensus on the criteria that should be used for any ranking of social scientists as well as for the actual ranking in terms of a simple hierarchy.

Secondly, it was argued that sociologists consider their subject matter to be inextricably linked to finding solutions for social problems over which there is no agreement. Most sociologists find it impossible to “divorce their own views as citizens from their work as sociologists” (Webster & Fakier 2001: 13). This lack of basic agreement among sociologists in different societies with regard to the way in which judgements of intellectual work should be conducted, makes the ranking of sociologists on the basis of their international standing highly problematic.

A third problem with the rating system is “that the social sciences and the humanities are grounded in a particular geographical and historical context” (Webster & Fakier 2001: 14). In particular scholars working in Area Studies, where their focus is on a specific region, such as in the case of African Studies, cannot easily be ranked together with scholars working in a specific discipline in terms of one inclusive ranking system.

The fourth problem has to do with the generalist nature of sociology. The sociological community in South Africa is relatively small, which makes it difficult “to find sufficient numbers of scholars who are familiar both with the substantive focus and the method of investigation of a researcher” (Webster & Fakier 2001: 14). The review process is therefore inherently susceptible to all kinds of errors of judgement, while consensus building among practitioners is difficult to achieve.

The fifth problem identified by participants is related to the indvidualistic nature of the rating system. South African sociologists generally prefer a more collective approach where a department or research centre is evaluated rather than an individual. The feeling is that research is centred on team work and that the achievements of researchers as a team should be evaluated.

Lastly, inadequate recognition of the need for capacity building of researchers is considered a flaw, especially the fact that insufficient credit is given to applicants for the contribution they are making in this regard.

These concerns were identified in 2002 before the present rating system was extended to the humanities and social sciences. It was therefore necessary to revisit the views of South African sociologists after the process had been in operation for five years.

Tina Uys238

RESEARCH DESIGN AND PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS

In collaboration with Bronwyn Dworzanowski-Venter, an electronic sur-vey of South African sociologists was conducted in 2007/8 in order to explore how they understand ‘academic citizenship,’ and how, if at all, it is experienced and/or practised. As part of the electronic questionnaire that was sent to a cross-section of sociologists they were asked to express their views of the current NRF-rating system. We received a total of 38 responses from eight universities.

The biographical characteristics of the respondents are reflected in Table 5.

Table 5: The biographical characteristics of the respondents

Race Black – 5; Coloured/Indian – 5; White – 28

Gender Men – 20; Women – 18

Age <45 – 15; 45-54 – 9; 55+ - 14

Junior academics (junior lecturer and lecturer) 8 in

total

6 female, 2 male 1 black, 3 Coloured/Indian, 4 white <45: 7; 45-54: 1; 55+: 0

Middle-level academics (senior lecturer)

9 in total


Seniority

Senior academics (professor and associate professor) 21 in

total


SOCIOLOGISTS’ VIEWS ON THE EVALUATION OF RESEARCH PERFORMANCE

The majority of sociologists who responded to the questionnaire were senior (55%), white (74%) and male (53%). As the majority of the re-spondents were already fairly established in their careers, one would have expected participation from a substantial number of them. However, only five of the respondents admitted to having applied for rating and these were the five rated sociologists. Each of these mentioned that they ap-


plied for rating as they received pressure from the university to do so. Moreover, there was a strong sentiment that the NRF would part with funds more easily to rated scientists and that their university-employers would be sure to advance more research funding upon the achievement of rated status. A number of universities provide incentives to rated scien-tists such as an amount of research funding being provided depending on the level of rating achieved as well as funds for the appointment of a re-search assistant.

Having established the linkages between the NRF, rating and re-search funding, we considered why the vast majority of our respondents chose not to apply for rating. Their responses were as follows:

• do not qualify for rating • qualify for rating, but choose not to apply for rating

o object in principle to the rating system and process o will not apply as able to access more funds elsewhere o will apply for rating once more research work has been com-

pleted (i.e. these respondents qualify for rating, but feel it is too early in their careers to be rated)

o was going to apply for rating but decided that it was too late in one’s career to do so

Although the respondents generally acknowledged the central role of peer review in determining the quality of research work, they questioned the principle on which the present system is based as well as the legitimacy and structure of the process by means of which a rating is achieved. A senior rated sociologist expressed his concerns as follows:

It is a misguided attempt to imitate a dubious practice in the natural sci-ences. It is a flawed idea in the humanities that you can rank academics along nine different levels. We do not have such a consensus in our dis-ciplines and it open to abuse by those who have powerful networks. Above all, I think it leads to a narrow preoccupation with publication –especially in international journals - at the expense of our core business, which is teaching and building the new generation. This responsibility is absolutely central in a country and university such as mine where we are desperately trying to follow Harvard and Oxford at the expense of building our own timber.

This view is supported by another unrated middle-level respondent who argues:

Tina Uys240

In the last while I have not been following debates on the NRF very closely, but my sense is that this is an ambitious, but deeply flawed process. While I do understand part of the logic to expand the rating system used in the natural sciences to the social sciences, because it is seen to confer some prestige to this Cinderella of the academy, this is not an international practice, partly because there are deep and substan-tial differences in research practice and the nature of the knowledge generated in these two parts of the academy. In addition, the South Af-rican research community is simply way too small to allow for the kind of bureaucratic indifference and distance in which a fair and relatively undamaging (to the individual applying) process of evaluation can flourish.

In particular the NRF rating system is viewed as interference by the state in the determination of research agendas. One respondent expressed a strong view in this regard:

I see it as a an attempted form of state control over tertiary research agendas (as these are predetermined to a large extent) where the hon-our of being rated is exchanged for monetary “rewards” in the form of research funds to be allocated and administered within University con-text by the rated scientist on behalf of the NRF.

Another respondent indicated a similar view, although less ex-plicitly:

I have not submitted to it as I think it is another of those externally originated and imposed structures that erode autonomy, professionalism, integrity and ownership of one’s work. Philosophically, there are too many problems to evaluating sociological work to have confidence in any ranking of outputs and hence rating of scholars. A sense of injustice and illegitimacy is thus unavoidable.

Respondents also view the university management as being complicit in the undermining of academic freedom as is clear from the following quo-tation:

I also hold the view that universities undermine the conditions of autonomous and critical scholarship to the extent that they overtly or covertly coerce academics to apply for rating. The system and the prac-tices are rendered particularly invidious to the extent that such coercion is attached to – or veiled by – material inducements. The imposition of


a monopolistic arbiter of academic quality and dispenser of material largesse is in itself destructive of scholarly values.

A further problem expressed is related to the fact that the rating system as presently conducted favours specialisation rather than cutting across disciplines. Those scholars involved in interdisciplinary work are therefore disadvantaged when it comes to the determination of a rating by a more narrowly focused research committee. Two respondents expressed this sentiment in the following way:

The current NRF-rating system does not allow one to be regarded as a good generalist (i.e. academic/scientist that has made high quality re-search contributions in one’s field). The more specialized one is, the better. I think that this is a bit restricting.

Many university-based SA scholars in the social sciences are compelled to be generalists – which seems to be undervalued by NRF criteria.

Concerns are also expressed about the way in which the academic capital-ism engendered by globalisation impacts on the expression of academic citizenship and collegiality:

In the broadest sense corporate globalization which promotes individual competitiveness and materialism which implies concentrating on one’s own career and undertaking research on behalf of the powerful and the privileged who can pay for it. In the immediate context the rating sys-tem which is built on vanity, egoism and competitiveness rather than sharing and co-operation.

Moreover, the NRF rating system does not give recognition to the academic citizenship displayed by applicants. In a developing society such as South Africa it is very important that scholars should be willing to devote some of their time to building up the various institutions within which research work is conducted, such as their departments, national journals and professional associations. The amount of work that is done in this regard should be considered in awarding the eventual rating that a particular researcher receives.

A serious concern is the fact that the rating system as presently conducted and the link that it has to the possibility of being awarded research funding by the NRF could give rise to the so-called Matthew Effect, namely that those who have received more opportunities in the past at doing research, are more likely to receive them in the future

Tina Uys242

(Laudel 2006: 377). This is especialy the case as no consideration is given to the working conditions at the particular institution of the researcher or the extent to which they provide a disabling or enabling environment for conducting good quality research.

Finally, the NRF is viewed as giving inadequate recognition to the sociohistorical context within which the rating of South African social scientists is taking place. As one senior sociologist expressed it:

The NRF criteria place too much emphasis on “international recogni-tion” (in apparent ignorance of the political and social structures of knowledge hierarchies in the academic world), [and associated with the above] indicators such as citation indexes reflect, for the most part, both the geographical concentrations of scholarship and the density of para-digmatic, research tradition and thematic communities (which are often exclusivist and difficult to penetrate) which are not easily accessible to SA scholars – and which perforce subject their work to scrutiny by as-sessors that may be relatively ignorant of a particular field of specialisa-tion.

In particular, the emphasis the NRF rating places on the applicant’s inter-national standing directs South African social scientists towards ensuring that their research has a sufficient international flavour so that it would be of interest to sociologists elsewhere.

In order for an applicant to achieve a high ranking (A and B), most of their reviewers must be convinced that the applicant’s research has a considerable international reputation. This system is prejudiced against any applicant who studies a society outside Western Europe and North America. The reason for this is the colonial nature of social science. Whereas the subject matter of physicists or chemist remains the same the world over, South African sociologists are obliged to study South African society rather than British society. No matter how pathbreaking and excellent, a study of South African society would have no impact on debates about British society. The colonial character of social sci-ence is such that only studies of Western European and US society are considered ‘international’. So, for example a study of social class in the US would be considered a key contribution to debates about social class. A study of class in South Africa would be considered relevant only to South Africa or maybe Africa or the developing world. On these terms, it is therefore much more difficult for social scientists to achieve ‘con-siderable international recognition.’


CONCLUSION

The value and functioning of the NRF rating system is debated within and without the social sciences in South Africa. This is clearly reflected in the responses obtained from our cohort of sociologists. The fact re-mains that even the harshest critics of the rating process choose to resist in absentia, rather than taking on the state and the NRF in a more direct way.

In conclusion, it could be argued that although the rating system as implemented in South Africa at present, is flawed in many ways, it also has distinct advantages that could be retained through a thorough rethink of the system. It is the only way in which we can benchmark ourselves to our colleagues nationally as well as internationally. As far as could be determined, this system of peer reviewing is unique in the world. It provides some objective mechanism, however imperfect, of comparing the research ability of scholars with each other. The feedback that is provided by the NRF to the individual researcher makes an important contribution towards improving the quality of his/her work. At the very least, completing the research profile that is required forces researchers to consider what they are doing and why they are doing it. It is a system that should be improved and refined rather than being rejected altogether as many South African sociologists presently are inclined to do.

Sociologists should actively engage the NRF, the state and university managements rather than withdrawing. In this way we would acknowl-edge our acceptance of the basic academic principles of peer review and benchmarking. However, the principles and the process of rating should be revisited, making it transparent and open to input from all stakeholders. In particular, there should be recognition of the collective nature of the research enterprise through the rating of departments rather than indi-viduals. An appreciation for the importance of the academic citizenship role of researchers and the redefinition of international recognition should form an important part of the reconstitution of the evaluation of research quality in South Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buchbinder, H. “The Market Oriented University and the Changing Role of Knowledge.” Higher Education 26, no. 3 (1993): 331-347.

Burawoy, M. 2004. “Public sociology: South African Dilemmas in a Global Context.” Society in Transition 35, no. 1 (2004): 11-26.

Tina Uys244

David, P. “The Knowledge Factory.” The Economist 345, no. 8037 (1997) supplement.

Jansen, J. “The State of Higher Education in South Africa: From Massifi-cation to Mergers.” In State of the nation: South Africa 2003-2004edited by J. Daniel, A. Habib, and R. Southall, pp. 290-311. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2003.

Kaplan, D. “Universities and the Business Sector: Strengthening the Links.” Social Dynamics 23, no. 1 (1997): 68-76.

Laudel, G. “The ‘Quality Myth’: Promoting and Hindering Conditions for Acquiring Research Funds.” Higher Education 52 (2006): 375-403.

Miller, H. “Academics and Their Labour Process.” In White-Collar Work: the Non-Manual Labour Process edited by C. Smith, D. Knights and H. Willmott, pp. 109-37. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Moja, T., N. Cloete, and N. Olivier. “Is Moving from Co-operative Gov-ernance to Conditional Autonomy a Contribution to Effective Gov-ernance?” CHET report, 2002.

National Research Foundation. Workshop with Convenors of Assessment Panels and members of the executive evaluation commitee.Unpublished document. Pretoria: NRF, 2004.

National Research Foundation. Rating Brochure: The Evaluation and Rating of the Research Performance of Researchers in South Africa through the National Researach Foundation. Pretoria: NRF, 2005.

-----. Evaluation and Rating: Facts & Figures. Pretoria: NRF, 2007. Nixon, J. “‘Not Without Dust and Heat’: The Moral Bases of the ‘New’

Academic Professionalism.” British Journal of Educational Studies 49, no. 2 (2001):173-186.

Orr, L. “Globalisation and Universities: Towards the Market University.” Social Dynamics 23, no. 1(1997): 42-67.

Wasser, H. “Changes in the European University: From Traditional to Entrepreneurial.” Higher Education Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1990): 110-22.

Webster, E. and K. Fakier. Evaluating research performance: the need for a developmental approach in sociology. Unpublished report. Johannesburg: SWOP, 2001.

Webster, E. and G. Adler. “Toward a Class Compromise in South Africa’s ‘Double Transition’: Bargained Liberalization and the Consolidation of Democracy.” Politics and Society 27, no. 3 (1999): 347-385.

Ylijoki, O-H. “Entangled in Academic Capitalism? A Case-Study on Changing Ideals and Practices of University Research.” HigherEducation 45, no. 3 (2003):307-335.

Poverty Fighters in Academia 245

Poverty Fighters in Academia: The Subversion of the Notion of Socially

Engaged Science in the Mozambican Higher Education System

Patrício Langa, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique andUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa1

This paper is a free-ranging discussion of several issues that arose for me in the course of public debates I was involved in on universities, academ-ics’ engagement with society (Serra 2007a), the appointment of vice-chancellors by the head of state, and the role of universities in society, for example in the alleviation of absolute poverty (Ali 2005), that are taking place in Mozambique and elsewhere. It is intended neither as a focused commentary on these debates, nor as a systematic analysis of their argu-ments and evidence. The aim here is to raise certain issues that emerge, or are presupposed, in discussions of the role of universities and academics, as well as the limits of political discourse within the academic space. Specifically the paper contests the emergent conceptualisation of the uni-versity in Mozambique as an instrument for addressing government so-cioeconomic agenda, in this case, fighting absolute poverty.

The ongoing instrumentalization of the university in Mozambique is consistent with a number of notions of socially engaged science. Scholars have promoted “Mode-2 science” (Gibbons et. Al 1994), “mandated sci-ence” (Salter 1988, 2003), “postacademic science” (Ziman 1996, 2000), and “socially robust science, or science in the agora” (Nowotny et al. 2003). These scholars have developed an all-encompassing body of knowledge with slightly different nuances, but that preaches and agitates for a socially engaged approach in science. This new approach is mainly characterized by accounting for the fundamental changes in the relation-ship between science, higher education (universities), and the exogenous world (particularly industry), in what has been called a third “mission”—or “triple helix”—of the university (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000).

1 The author can be reached at [email protected].

Patrício Langa246

Overall, this notion has been promoted as an approach to academic prac-tice that is aimed at contextualising both teaching and research for opti-mal social intervention. It is argued that this approach to science has im-plications for the relationship between the state and the university, espe-cially with regards to the values of academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and knowledge production.

Globally, higher education systems, and universities in particular, come in a remarkable variety of forms, including in their basic relation to the state and the political economy (Du Toit 2006). Thus, notions such as “institutional autonomy,” “academic freedom,” and “accountability,” for instance, need clarification and need to be contextualized before attempt-ing any kind of analysis. Claims about the absence or presence of “aca-demic freedom” may have different meanings according to the nuance these notions take in a particular context. A historical background of the higher education system is thus crucial in order to contextualize the use of the term “academic freedom” and “institutional autonomy” for the purposes of this paper.

Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are important condi-tions for the development of science (Mamdani and Diouf 1994). Aca-demic freedom comprises the freedom to operate in line with an individ-ual and institutional teaching and a research agenda that is not directly linked to immediate political objectives. I acknowledge that academics would be within their right to pursue scholarship that is linked to imme-diate political objectives. However, there is the risk of compromising the establishment and pursuit of an academic project that contributes to (qualify) science. Therefore, academic freedom relying on “swing agen-das” of the politics of the day is worthless to pursue. This is also valid for institutional autonomy. As I understand it, the concept of autonomy en-tails the institutional power to decide on the mission, vision, and objec-tive of the institution within the broader lawful framework of the state.

This paper is organized into four sections. I start by providing a brief historical background of the Mozambican higher education system. In the second section, I look at some theoretical remarks on the issue of socially engaged science and present the problem in question. In the third section, I provide some evidence from the Mozambican experience. The fourth section is the conclusion.


HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MOZAMBIQUE’S HIGHER EDUCATION

This section provides a brief socio-political and historical overview of the Mozambican higher education system and its evolving features. For pur-poses of this analysis, the country’s history of higher education is divided into three phases.

Phase One: Colonial Higher Education

The first phase covers the period from 1962 to 1975. In 1962, the Portu-guese colonial government established Mozambique’s first higher educa-tion institution, the General University Studies of Mozambique (EGUM), for the children of Portuguese settlers (Mário et al. 2003: 7; Beverwijk 2005: 15; Langa 2006: 15-16). In 1968, EGUM was granted the status of a full university and changed its name to University of Lourenço Marques (ULM). The ideology prevailing at that time conceived higher education as an exclusive privilege of a certain category of individuals: the sons and daughters of the Portuguese settlers. Thus, indigenous Mozambicans were excluded from the country’s higher education system (Mondlane 1997). Social engagement of the university – if at all discernible at this stage – merely strengthened and perpetuated the colonial divide between settler and native. The sole university was merely a branch of a Portu-guese university on colonial territory.

Phase Two: A Socialist Experiment

Covering the period from 1975 to 1986, the second phase is marked by the experiment of the socialist regime that followed the country’s inde-pendence in 1975. In 1976, the sole university left by the Portuguese was transformed into a national university and named after Eduardo Mond-lane, the assassinated first president of the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the ruling party since independence. In 1977, the FRE-LIMO government adopted Marxist-Leninist ideology with single party rule, which led to a centrally planned higher education system with clear prescriptions regarding mission, curriculum, staff, students, and the entire infrastructure (Beverwjik 2005: 15). It was the task of the Ministry of Education to centrally plan and establish the number of students to enrol in primary, secondary, and tertiary education, decide on the location and the kind of institutions to be opened every year (Resolução 8/79 de 3 de Julho de 1979; Mário et al. 2003; Gonçalves 2007: 614). The university thus stood at the forefront of the socialist revolution attempt and the con-

Patrício Langa248

struction of the new nation-state with science being regarded as the tool to liberate the people by its first president Samora Machel (Machel 1974a, 1974b, 1976). There was no space to even consider issues such as auton-omy and academic freedom at the time; these were non-issues.

According to Mayntz (1998), one of the basic structural characteris-tics of the science system in socialist countries has been the concentration of state-financed, basic, and problem-oriented research in national acad-emies. While in the Western tradition, academies were primarily, and have largely remained, learned societies, the term signified large research establishments of national scope in socialist countries. Here, the notion of a socially engaged science and university gains some relevance, since the state defines science and higher education as a developmental tool for the country (Drori et al. 2003). It was with this approach that two more uni-versities that are public were subsequently established. In 1985 and 1986, respectively, the government created the Higher Pedagogical Institute (ISP) and the Higher Institute for International Relations (ISRI). The former was responsible for training secondary school teachers. In 1995, ISP was granted full university status, becoming Pedagogical University (UP), without a major mission shift. Former president Joaquim Chissano while in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instigated the estab-lishment of ISRI. Its mission was to train diplomats at a higher level (Mário et al. 2003; Langa 2006). Later on, I will explore the implications of this historical legacy, highlighting that it determines the role of univer-sities and academics even today.

Phase Three: Transition to Democracy and Market Oriented Economy

This phase covers the period from 1986 to date. During this period, the country experienced a transition from socialism to democracy and mar-ket-driven economy with implications for higher education. The most important change within the higher education system was the introduction of a new law (No.1/93, and revised in 2002) (Mário et al., 2003:10; Beverwijk, 2005: 15; Langa, 2006: 18). This new law marked the begin-ning of a new era of multiple suppliers of higher education including pri-vate ones. Importantly, the new law lays particular emphasis on the no-tion of autonomy. It describes “autonomy” and “academic freedom” as follows:

Autonomy is the capacity of higher education institutions to exercise their powers, perform the necessary obligations, to pursue academic freedom at an administrative, financial, patrimonial and scientific-


pedagogic level, according to the institutions’ objectives, strategies of the sector, policies and national plans (MESCT 2003: 3).

The new law had a number of major consequences. The most visible one was the mushrooming of new privately owned higher education insti-tutions. From three public universities in 1993 the number of higher edu-cation institutions increased to more than 30 institutions, both private and public (Langa 2006: 108).

The first private university to open was the Higher Polytechnic and University Institute (ISPU), followed by the Catholic University (UCM). Both were established in 1995. ISPU and UCM were followed in 1998 by the Higher Institute of Science and Technology of Mozambique (ISC-TEM), and by the Islamic Mussa Bin Bique University (UMBB). In 2000, the Higher Institute of Transport and Communication (ISUTC) was also established. Currently, the higher education system in Mozambique com-prises a diverse and differentiated constellation of institutions (Beverwijk 2005; Langa 2006: vii).

At the systemic level, it is considered that the introduction of the new law aimed to reduce the level of direct government intervention. For pub-lic universities, government would be restricted to paying staff and main-taining facilities and equipment. Decision-making rested with the respec-tive public universities (Beverwijk 2005). Berverwijk also notes that the advisory role assumed by the vice-chancellors to the government on higher education policy is a sign of substantive freedom in terms of insti-tutional management. For instance, vice-chancellors of public universities would negotiate funding for their institutions directly with the Minister of Planning and Finance. These are some of the indicators of a changing system, increasingly focusing on the “autonomy” of its institutions.

Overall, recent developments in the Mozambican higher education system display a process of expansion, differentiation (public and private). From one institution located in Maputo, higher education institutions were established almost in each of the 11 provinces in the country, in what could be considered one of the most rapid processes of expansion.

THEORETICAL REMARKS AND THE PROBLEM

In recent years, universities have been experiencing mounting pressure to contribute to the economic, social, and environmental well-being of the regions in which they are situated and to establish closer links with the regions (Harding et al. 2007). As higher education institutions strive to survive in times of fundamental changes and financial constraints, a new

Patrício Langa250

character of the institutions and new attitudes of academic staff emerge. An example of such emergent institutional characters is what Slaughter and Leslie (1997) describe as “academic capitalism” or the involvement of colleges and faculties in market-like behaviours.

This newly evolving discourse of socially engaged science as op-posed to traditional ways of producing science and running universities, is arguably responsible for the emergent subversion of the core businessof universities, undermining the very “raison d’être” of that distinctive institution. This subversion occurs when social engagement is pursued in advance of a well-established scientific base or disciplinary oriented knowledge (Muller 2000). Muller argues that Mode 2 (problem-solving base science) knowledge production depends on Mode 1 (disciplinary base science) knowledge production. Thus, it is indispensable, as a first step to strengthen and consolidate Mode 1 in the institutions; Mode 2 de-velopment would then follow. Mode 2 does not have to be created since it is market-driven: it has to be facilitated, or encouraged to develop, and regulated (Muller 2000: 45). This point is suggestive because from what I have observed in Mozambique, the political discourse of fighting abso-lute poverty is driving institutions to prematurely move from Mode 1 to Mode 2 whilst Mode 1 remains very underdeveloped, as I will attempt to demonstrate.

Historically, universities have developed an academic culture grounded in a fundamental belief in academic freedom, institutional autonomy, as well as the unity of research and teaching. In stark contrast to these underlying principles, Mozambican politicians have resorted to the notion of social engagement (fighting poverty) as legitimation for their interference in the business of universities. The increasing impor-tance ascribed to universities in the context of globalisation and knowl-edge economy, has propelled governments all over the world, and par-ticularly so in developing countries, to regulate universities in order to transform them into instruments of social change and economic and tech-nological development (Kellermann 2007; Boulton and Lucas 2008).

As argued by Boulton and Lucas (2008: 5), public policy sees uni-versities as vectors of the contemporary skilling of an increasing segment of the population and as providers of innovation that can be translated into advantage in a fast changing global economic environment. Yet they also stress that, whereas universities help to create an environment sym-pathetic to and supportive of innovation, especially where it is associated with high quality and internationally competitive research, innovation itself is predominantly a process of business engagement with markets in which universities can only play a minor role. The essential aspect of this argument is that universities’ commitment to education in the deepest


sense—knowledge for its own sake—remains to its exploration of the limits of human understanding. While the narrow view of higher educa-tion frequently focuses on science and technology—as I will attempt to demonstrate later with the case of the dismissal of the social sciences in Mozambique as useful disciplines to fight absolute poverty—it is the so-cial sciences and humanities that are more prepared to the describe the “topography” of society as suggested by Macamo (2005).

The social sciences and humanities can be concerned with issues that are fundamental to the constitution of poverty as social phenomena, not with the preached teleological belief of its eradication. They can provide a framework to understand why and how poverty presents itself as a real-ity as well as how it is constructed and experienced differently by differ-ent individuals, groups, and cultures. Such forms of understanding pre-vents poverty to be regarded as a technical problem of a malfunctioning society seeking technical solutions from science and technology or from the one-size-fit-all prescription and programmes of development and pov-erty eradication of the development aid industry (e.g. World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Millennium Development Goals) (Sachs 2005).

As Elzinga (2002) has convincingly argued in his critique of Mode 2 and Triple helix,

the projection of new research policy models fixes only on a small clus-ter of areas in a broad and variegated tapestry of modern science, which includes all kinds of sites and institutions. They largely take events in areas like biotechnology and microelectronics and now also increas-ingly research into advanced industrial materials as their main reference, areas where the promise of commercial profits is strongest. We hear nothing about changes in astronomy, natural history museums, lan-guage laboratories or departments of archaeology and musicology. Thus, the new models are fostering a new particularism while claiming generality. Furthermore, they conflate technical characteristics of semi-automation in knowledge production at the science-society interface. Consequently, the new images of scientific knowledge production have a social epistemology that is rather limited in scope. They are ideologi-cally coloured totalizations of another segment of the knowledge pro-duction landscape. (19)

The misconception of the role and limits of universities to solve so-cial problems leads to the use of regulations and incentives, especially financial, to obtain forms of behaviour in universities that provide out-comes defined as desirable within a short-term frame of reference. The

Patrício Langa252

general attitude of the Mozambican government that underlies its policies towards higher education, for instance, is based on some serious misun-derstandings of the role and function of higher education, particularly those of the universities. The Mozambican government under president Armando Guebuza regards the higher education system as no more than an army, whose soldiers should fight for economic development and pov-erty eradication. It should be noted that while soldiers are expected to unquestionably follow the orders of their commander, in academia, scholars are expected to be independent thinkers seeking understanding through research analysis and rational argument. The political discourse about the role of the university derives not only from a flawed and reduc-tionist understanding of the role of the university, but also undermines its very foundations and capacity to socially engage meaningfully.

Universities in Africa particularly, but elsewhere as well, are under pressure to become more responsive to exogenous demands and pressures (Cloete et al. 2006; Muller 2001). There is pressure to produce applied research as opposed to basic research (Glaser 2001); socially “relevant” and policy-driven and problem-solving research (Gibbons et. al 1994). It is argued that knowledge needs to be “socially robust” as its validity is no longer determined solely by scientific communities, but increasingly by much wider communities of engagement, comprising knowledge produc-ers, disseminators, traders, and users (Nowotny et al., 2003; Gibbons 2001, 2006; Hall 2008). There is also mounting pressure to increase the number of graduates from programmes that are market-oriented as well as areas that are considered to increase production.

Even though there may be different approaches in accounting for these pressures, it is also true that most higher education systems are go-ing through changes that are strongly marked by global trends and pres-sures (Maassen and Cloete 2006). How higher education institutions are responding to these pressures is a matter that concerns various academics in their research (Rip 1997; Muller 2001; Gumport 2000). It has become customary to say, that the “republic of science” is turning into the “entre-preneurial university” (Slaughter and Leslie 1997) because it has lost the autonomy upon which it was built (Rip and van der Meulen 1996; De-lanty 2001).

Current debates on the function of universities tend to consider two kinds of challenges universities face in contemporary society: on the one hand, it is considered that society presents itself with a new and growing demand for higher education, while on the other, the state at the same time applies increasingly restrictive policies to the funding of its activities (Conceição et al. 1998: 203). Gumport also suggests that “if one uses the lens of “social institution” to examine the institutional imperatives for


public higher education, one sees educational organizations devoted to a wide array of social functions that have been expanded over time: the development of individual learning and human capital, the socialization and cultivation of citizens and political loyalties, the preservation of knowledge, and the fostering of other legitimate pursuits for the nation-state” (Gumport 2000). Castells distinguishes four major functions on the theoretical level whose specific weight in each historical era defines the predominant role of a given university system and the specific task of each university within the overall university system: firstly, the genera-tion and transmission of ideology; secondly, the selection and formation of the dominant elites; thirdly, the production and application of knowl-edge, and fourthly, the training of the skilled labour force (Castells 2001: 206-10).

Some of these perspectives may sound quite problematic, such as Castells’ four functions, as they are more normative in nature than actu-ally describing the functions of universities. Consider, for instance, the function of “generation and transmission of ideology” or that of “selec-tion and formation of elites.” They are so normative that anyone could identify them in any university system as long as he or she is inclined to. However, in fulfilling some of these functions, higher education institu-tions need to maintain a functioning relationship, for instance, with both the state and the market without becoming a willing tool of either, as suggested by Weiler (2008). For, as Weiler maintains, universities are marked by a profound ambivalence in their quest for a clear and unambi-guous role in society. This seems to be the case with the Mozambican higher education system, where public institutions struggle to maintain a clear and consistent identity when it comes to their role in society.

Public universities are being asked to become more locally relevant, connect aggressively with the productive sector and promote “useful” knowledge, graduate more students than their installed capacity and so forth. Academics, on their part, are being urged to engage directly in pro-jects that will contribute to poverty alleviation. The fact that the govern-ment always find a way to impose its agendas on public higher education institutions is not new; however, the manner in which this is being con-ducted in Mozambique (discussed in the subsequent section) raises some pressing concerns. The struggle against absolute poverty is becoming a serious threat to academic freedom in the country today. This struggle, which was placed on top of the political agenda by the ruling FRELIMO party and its president Armando Guebuza upon his election in 2004, ap-pears to be constraining academics in their ability to formulate the issues relating to poverty in strict observation of scientific criteria. The instru-mental view of academics as social engineers with professional skills to

Patrício Langa254

fix all social problems is driving academics away from their main “raison d’être”: to formulate problems scientifically in ways that allow decision-makers to take action according to their own political priorities. My claim here is that academics are being confronted with ethical responsibilities as opposed to a research agenda.

This problem, however, is not limited to Mozambique, but pertains to the entire continent. In October 2008, the e-forum on African - US e-consultation formulated the vision that universities in Africa should, if they were to receive any financial support, pursue strong links with the productive sector and increase the number of graduates in areas consid-ered strategic for the production of basic needs and goods (MacGregor 2008a). Country leaders, international donors, and other social agents influencing the life of universities in Africa constantly reinforce this idea of the university on different occasions. Because of this, and as will be demonstrated below, academics are stranded in their space of limited le-gitimacy by the poverty fighters in academia.

Concluding this section, I should highlight that the challenge for pub-lic universities in Mozambique lies in maintaining their integrity by keep-ing core institutional features intact, while at the same time pursuing these new approaches under the mounting political pressure from gov-ernment. This may appear to be a “mission impossible” given that the “political discourse,” more so than the discussed epistemological “ide-ologies,” seems to be the main force constraining the lawfully established autonomy of higher education institutions. In the next section, I will at-tempt a characterization of the academic environment and the relationship between academics and politics in Mozambique.

FROM POLITICS OF RELEVANCE TO RELEVANCE OF POLITICS

In the subsequent discussion, I attempt to illustrate the instrumentalisa-tion of the university in Mozambique and how political imperatives are interfering in the determination of research agenda and institutional autonomy.

Role of Academics

In Mozambique, the pressures on public universities to socially engage with their communities became more visible with the introduction of the poverty eradication agenda by Guebuza’s government beginning 2005. Indeed, it appears as though academics are following in the steps of the


freedom fighters of the liberation struggle and have become “poverty fighters.” At every opportunity, the president and members of his cabinet address public universities and they emphasise the vital role academia should play in the fight against poverty. In this process, the complex re-lationship between higher education and development as well as poverty eradication risks being overlooked.

In fact, academics are no longer suspicious of the problematic rela-tionship between their role in academia and the edges of social and politi-cal engagement. A major consequence of this trend is the subversion of a genuine “academic culture” marked by academic values and practices such as the production of knowledge for its own sake, academic peer re-viewed publications, and conferences concerned with the progress of dis-ciplinary knowledge, to mention just a few. By pursuing these values, academics would be in a better position to formulate scientific problems in a manner that positively informs policy.

While pursuing the political agenda of fighting poverty, Mozambican academics are lagging behind in every aspect that concerns the values and culture of conventional science and “academic culture.” If we take scien-tific publications for instance, Mozambique’s contribution is appallingly insignificant. According to a forthcoming article in the journal Scien-tometrics on the state of science and technology across the continent, Af-rican researchers produce only 1.8% of the world’s total scholarly publi-cations – half the figure of Latin America and substantially less than In-dia. South Africa and Egypt produced half of all of Africa’s internation-ally recognised publications between 2000 and 2004, while 88% of in-ventive activity was concentrated in South Africa (MacGregor 2008b). Mozambique does not make it onto the list, as their figures of scientific publications are not worth mentioning. The country occupies the penul-timate position in a ranking of 32 countries on the bibliometrical per-formance profiles of African countries (Mouton 2008).

If a research project does not somehow state as its central purpose its contribution to the eradication of absolute poverty, it is likely to be re-garded as irrelevant. If we take a quick glance at the projects that are eli-gible for funding from the National Funds for Innovation (NFI) of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), we will soon notice that every single project has its virtue mostly based on how the ultimate goal of eradicating poverty is articulated. Here, there is no need to mention that the social sciences are entirely excluded from eligibility for such funds seeing as they are considered (utterly) irrelevant. Out of 42 grants for research and innovation projects approved by the NFI in 2007/2008, only one went to education and none to social science. In fact, social sci-ence ranked at the bottom of the top priority areas of research (Alsácia

Patrício Langa256

2008). There is no doubt that the main criteria of relevance here is politi-cal. A research project has to be “politically correct,” i.e. focus on fight-ing poverty, even if its scientific claims would make the least qualified scientific board raise their eyebrows. This is the context in which public universities are being urged to socially engage. What we can therefore infer from the current academic environment is that the “politics of scien-tific legitimacy and relevance” are being overthrown by “politics of so-cial engagement, legitimacy, and relevance.”

This means that whereas the former is compatible with the scientific determination of priorities concerning social engagement by virtue of the fact that academics themselves set the agenda, the latter inevitably leads to the political determination of public universities’ priorities and ethical responsibilities.

Law, Autonomy and Academic Freedom

In the following, I present specific articles of the new law on higher edu-cation to draw attention to the discrepancy between the provisions of this law and the lack of practical implementation of its progressive objectives. The new Law (2003) of higher education stipulates in Article 5 with re-gard to the notion of autonomy that the institutions themselves are to de-cide on what is relevant for the university in Mozambique. The autonomy attributed to higher education institutions in conformity with their objec-tives and national policies and plans, particularly regarding education, science, and culture, encompasses the following powers: (1) defining the areas of study, plans, programmes, scientific, cultural, and artistic re-search projects; (2) teaching, lecturing, and researching according to the convictions of the academic staff and without any form of coercion; (3) creating, suspending, and discontinuing courses (programmes); (4) de-signing the course curriculum and developing the respective plans (pro-grammes) in collaboration with the labour market; (5) approving aca-demic regulations; (6) creating or disestablishing units such as academic departments, schools, and faculties, and defining the respective statutes; (7) recruiting, promoting, discharging, and exercising disciplinary actions against the academic staff, researchers, administrative staff, and students in accordance with the law; (8) availing of the infrastructure in accor-dance with the applicable law; (9) generating the necessary income for its activities in observance of the applicable law; (10) managing the budget transparently in accordance with applicable law; (11) and establishing cooperation agreements in scientific, teaching, and extension (services) domains with national and international entities. As the listed stipulations


clearly show, this law appears to be highly progressive as it lays down the major principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

Progressive laws, however, do not necessarily entail a progressive implementation. The gap between what the law preaches and its imple-mentation is a separate story. In the case of Mozambique, the public po-litical discourse of poverty eradication brought about by Guebuza’s gov-ernment is eager to set the agenda for public universities and therewith undermines academic freedom. The president constantly stresses what he considers ought to be the role of higher education in his plan to “fight absolute poverty.” At any given opportunity, he reiterates the role that technical, professional, and higher education should play in job creation, the promotion of health and hygiene, and in promoting production which, in turn, will lead to the reduction in prices. In a recent interview with a journalist, he stated that “we cannot eradicate poverty without university and technical education, because it is at these universities and schools that people learn the strategies for attacking poverty [my emphasis]” (Guebuza 2008).

Theoretically, while universities and academics may have the capac-ity to distinguish between the political discourses of state politicians and party officials and the rights granted to them by the new law, the rem-nants of socialist forms of authority and obedience to the leader or party officials seems to tacitly creep into the university environment and un-dermine the academic power to criticise. For instance, the surreptitious reinstitution of party cells (a small organisational structure of the ruling party that gathers regularly in specific areas) within public offices includ-ing the universities is creating a suspicious environment within academia and is regarded by some academics as a means to control their activities and minds. While party structures and activities are not necessarily un-welcome in the academic environment and not even against the law, they may pose a serious threat to academic freedom and institutional auton-omy in cases like Mozambique due to its recent communist past.

As Clarke (1983: 152-154) acknowledges, in developing countries, particularly where communist rule strengthened explicit political forms of coordination by means of the dual and interpenetrating dominance of a single political party and the one-party regime over all, there is a deepen-ing involvement of politics in education. Politicians tend to see education as a basic sector for nation-building efforts, ranging from the training of essential experts to the building of national culture and consensus. They often feel—and this seems to be the case in Mozambican higher educa-tion—that they must intervene so as to ensure the system’s relevance to pressing practical problems (regarding poverty, land use, and industriali-zation, for example) and which politicians feels professors might other-

Patrício Langa258

wise ignore in their pursuit of the academic models they know best but which are imported from highly developed societies. Therefore, politici-zation, in the most primary sense, is frequent and intense in developing societies in the contemporary period, often producing bitter struggles be-tween state officials and academics.

Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

The “politics of social engagement, legitimacy, and relevance” in the struggle against poverty pervades higher education in Mozambique and subverts the logic of “politics of scientific legitimacy and relevance.” In this section, I provide some evidence for this form of subversion with a few examples of recent appointments of new vice-chancellors at public universities by the president. Quotes from the inaugural lecture delivered at EMU in 2005 by the current Minister of Education and Culture will shed some light on my argument.

The president’s discourse of “fighting absolute poverty” is mostly echoed by senior members of government, particularly the Minister of Education and Culture as well as by the recently appointed vice-chancellors of public universities. It is important to mention in this con-text, that it is the president, who appoints the vice-chancellors of the pub-lic universities in Mozambique. In this regard, he is not compelled to ap-point the nominees that come out of the internal—“democratic and autonomous”—selection process that takes place within the universities. This is another legacy of the former socialist regime (as the status of vice-chancellors was equivalent to that of deputy-ministers), which has been left untouched. That means universities can engage themselves in an in-ternal—“democratic and autonomous”—process to select three nominees, one of whom the president then appoints as vice-chancellor. However, he can simply skate over the internal selection process, dump these names, and appoint someone totally unrelated to a particular university.

This happened recently when the president appointed the current vice-chancellors of three public universities: Eduardo Mondlane Univer-sity (EMU), Pedagogic University (PU) and the Higher Institute for In-ternational Relations (ISRI). For instance, the current vice-chancellor of EMU Filipe Couto is the fifth since independence in 1975. Until his nomination in 2008, he had no connections whatsoever with EMU. Even though he has a background in education management, as he was the former vice-chancellor of the Catholic University of Mozambique. His strong links with the ruling party (he was a freedom fighter) are com-monly said to be the reason behind his nomination (MediaFAX 2007).


This is not the only case of an “academic outsider” being appointed as vice chancellor based on his political connections. EMU’s former Vice-Chancellor Brazão Mazula held office for nearly twelve years. For-mer President Joaquim Chissano appointed him after he had served as the president of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from 1992 to 1994 and organized the first general democratic elections in 1994. Chis-sano won these elections. More so than his academic credentials, it was the reputation he gained from conducting what was considered a success-ful electoral process for a country that had just emerged from 16 years of “civil” war. Apart from the recently deceased Fernando Ganhão, ap-pointed as the university’s first vice-chancellor in 1976, only Narciso Ma-tos, a chemical engineer and the third in the list, was from the university. The second vice-chancellor, the Jurist Rui Baltazar, used to be Minister of Finance. After Narciso Matos follows Brazão Mazula from the NEC, as I have mentioned earlier. This situation has led some academics (Serra 2007b; Langa 2007, 2008) to question the existence of an internal selec-tion process for nominees, seeing that the president, another outsider, can simply appoint whomever he considers the appropriate vice-chancellor.

The current vice-chancellor of EMU has adopted the political catch-phrase of the president’s “manifesto”—fight against absolute poverty—and made it his main task to implement at the university. In his first inter-view with the press following his appointment, the vice-chancellor issued the following statement commenting on what he would consider the main priorities of the university.

Increase EMU participation in the fight against absolute poverty by strongly engaging with the districts,2 training graduates of high quality and extraordinary visions to create their own jobs. This role should not be regarded as ‘undermining’ the institution, but as an important contri-bution to the national cause [my emphasis]. This role should to be pur-sued in partnership with different state institutions. As EMU is huge, these tasks should be decentralized, where my collaborators should have a more active and incisive role. (…) another important point is the establishment of a firm collaboration with state institutions, where es-sential subjects such as Agronomy, Veterinary and Genetics should be matter of co-operation between UEM and the state. (Couto, quoted in Filimone 2007: 3)

2 In Mozambique, the district is the local level of the state administration. It is a subdivision of the supreme level of the local administration of the state above the province. The district is then subdivided into administrative posts and these in turn into localities, the lowest hierarchical level of state administration division in Mozambique.

Patrício Langa260

The example of EMU very much resembles the current situation at other Mozambican public higher education institutions. The new vice chancellors’ views are in tune with the slogan “fight absolute poverty,” that the government has declared as its main priority. The saying “who pays the piper calls the tune,” therefore, certainly rings true for the cur-rent state of the relationship between politics and academics in the con-text of higher education in Mozambique.

Useful and Useless Sciences

The Minister of Education and Culture, whose former cabinet adviser was the current vice-chancellor of EMU, reduced the practical utility of social sciences and humanities by considering them useless for the “honour-able” national duty to “fight absolute poverty.” In an inaugural lecture at EMU, he voiced his concerns about the current structure of the curricu-lum and programmes of universities, which graduate more students en-rolled in these programmes (social science and humanities) than in natu-ral sciences (see table 1):

Areas such as Economy, Social Sciences and Law are important to build our society, for management enhancement and the development of a state of law. Nonetheless, in order to meet the millennium devel-opment goals, and to strengthen the action plan for absolute poverty re-duction, it is important to strengthen training areas directly related to production, health care, and education. (Ali 2005: 5)

Table 1: Students enrolled, graduated and admitted by scientific area

Students University 2005 2006

Scientific area Registered Graduated New Admissions Registered Graduated New

AdmissionsPublic

Education 1522 293 526 16860 1202 9036

Arts and Humanities 2723 585 938 1019 116 308

Social sciences, management,

law 5868 629 1422 4113 414 1338

Natural sciences 3547 337 1339 3224 281 832


Students University 2005 2006

Scientific area Registered Graduated New Admissions Registered Graduated New

AdmissionsEngineering, Industry and Construction

2242 134 336 2790 304 584

Agriculture 1071 126 142 1237 140 252 Health and

welfare 1115 47 254 1280 51 265

Services 775 143 301 794 83 285 Unspecified

areas … 243 … 764 201 589

Sub-total 18,863 2,537 5,258 32,081 2,792 13,499Source: Ministry of Education and Culture, Mozambique.

The Minister’s speech had public resonance and raised a controver-sial debate on the role of social sciences for development in the country. The speech had a number of implications, some of them “bizarre,” in-cluding, for example, the introduction of scientifically ambiguous pro-grammes christened “fight against poverty.” This shows how political discourse and slogans can interfere with the academic environment that is highly permeable. Studies of this form of political interference and the relationship between academics and politics are still rare in Mozambique.

Criticising the inaugural lecture, the Mozambican sociologist, Macamo (2005) said the following:

It takes a considerable amount of imagination to suppose that the exis-tence of medical doctors, agronomists and professors necessarily im-plies the successful struggle against disease, starvation and ignorance (illiteracy). There is a deep gap separating these things, the topography of which needs to be described. (Macamo 2005: 1)

Macamo argues that social science is, in fact, the discipline, which rightfully claims the capacity to undertake a description of that topogra-phy. When medical doctors, engineers, agronomists or even professors are capable of doing so, it is because they receive subsidies from the so-cial sciences.

The arguments and discourses, to which Macamo is reacting, have in-filtrated the university at various levels. From the top management of the university down to the departments and even the students, the mantra “fight absolute poverty” reverberates. There are no studies that look at how and why students choose their final mini-dissertation research topics;

Patrício Langa262

the same is valid for academic staff and researchers. My own experience as a lecturer has shown that commonly most students write about the so-cial representation of HIV/AIDS and themes related to the fight against poverty agenda. I presume that declaring the fight against absolute pov-erty the ultimate objective of one’s research project makes a strong politi-cally correct argument. This shows the extent to which the political dis-course has come to permeate the university system and academia in Mo-zambique.

If this is correct, it would be appropriate to warn against the “politics of social engagement, legitimacy, and relevance” as represented in the political discourse of the struggle against poverty that implicates the sub-version of the university for political purpose, constraining academic freedom and institutional autonomy. As I attempted to demonstrate with the selected examples from the role of academics, the new law of higher education and nomination of vice-chancellors, politics of relevance are downplayed by the relevance of politics.

INCONCLUSIVE CONCLUSIONS

My claim in this paper is that academics are being confronted with ethi-cal responsibilities rather than a research agenda. I distinguish between “politics of scientific legitimacy and relevance” and “politics of social engagement, legitimacy, and relevance.” I have argued that whereas the former is compatible with the scientific determination of priorities con-cerning social engagement by virtue of the fact that academics them-selves set the agenda, the latter inevitably leads to the political determina-tion of the priorities of public universities and academic ethical responsi-bilities for political purposes. Some may argue that this is a radical posi-tion; however, none of this is to say that the idea of socially engaged uni-versities is either indisputably good or bad. The more conventional mod-ern science still has a role to play in many places and is not without its bright satanic virtues. There is, however, a mounting pressure to assume a partisan position, supporting new kinds of science unequivocally against usual science. In Mozambican higher education, there is no open forum for discussions on issues such as university engagement and conventional science, which has left academia more vulnerable to political meddling. The subversion of the notion of socially engaged science entails that aca-demics appear to be constrained in their ability to formulate issues in ob-servation of academic criteria that for instance are related to poverty alle-viation.


In concluding, I acknowledge that there remain a number of ques-tions that strike me when I think of the invasion of academia by “poverty fighters.” If we consider for instance, the assumption that it is possible to eradicate absolute poverty as Jeffrey Sachs unpersuasively advocats, what would academics do in a world without poverty? What if they could solve all social problems, what would then be their next “honourable” cause for social engagement? Would they return to conventional science, i.e. sci-ence as the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake? Certainly, none of these questions derives from a socially robust programme of the philoso-phy of science. What is wrong if someone does not want to be a “poverty fighter”? In fact, whichever model of science we choose to practice, one thing can likely be agreed upon: universities face great exogenous pres-sure and challenges in these times, not only in terms of the depth and width of the questions they are expected to address, but in the dialectic of what seems to be simultaneously greater public trust in science and greater scepticism about its costs and benefits. However, I am not sure whether socially engaged and robust science is the solution or part of the problem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AIM. “Guebuza Stresses Education in Fight against Poverty.” 2008. http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200804251056.html (retrieved April 26, 2008).

Ali, B. A. Os Desafios do Ensino Superior e da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane no Desenvolvimento de Moçambique. Oração de Sapiência. Ministério da Educação e Cultura, Maputo, Mozambique, 2005.

Alsácia, A. “Balance das Actividades do FNI: Promovendo a Educação Ciêntífica e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico.” IIIo Conselho Coorde-nador da Ciência e Tecnologia. Pequenos Libombos, August 6-8, 2008.

Beverwijk, J. The Genesis of a System: Coalition Formation in Mozambi-can Higher Education, 1993-2005. Czech Republic: CHEPS/UT, 2005.

Boulton, G. and C. Lucas. “What are Universities For?” 2008. http://www.leru.org (retrieved November 2008).

Castells, M. “University as Dynamic Systems of Contradictory Func-tions.” In Challenges of Globalisation. South African Debates with Manuel Castells, Vol. 4, edited by J. Muller, N. Cloete, and S. Badat,

Patrício Langa264

pp. 206-223. Cape Town, South Africa: Maskew Miller Longman, 2001.

Clark, B. R. The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.

Conceição, P., M. Heitor, and O. Oliveira. “Expectations for the Univer-sity in Knowledge-based Economy.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 58 (1998): 203–214.

Drori, G. S., J. W. Meyer, O. F. Ramirez, and E. Schofer. 2003. Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Du Toit, A. “Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom and Public Ac-countability. Towards Conceptual Clarification: A Thought Experi-ment.” CHE Colloquium. Working Paper. University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2006.

Elzinga, A. “The New Production of Particularism in Models relating to Research Policy. A Critique of Mode 2 and Triple Helix.” 2002.http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/WebCSI/4S/download_paper/download_paper.pdf. (retrieved February 2009).

Etwkowitz, H. and L. Leydesorf. “The Endless Transition: A ‘Triple He-lix’ of University-Industry Government Relations. Introduction.” Mi-nerva 34, no. 3(1998): 203–208.

Filimone, H. 2007. “Padre Filipe Couto: Um Reitor que já foi um Grande Sapateiro.” Notícias, March 9, 2007, Maputo, Sexta-Feira. http://www.clubofmozambique.com/solutions1/solutions/mozambique/personalities/Padre_Filipe_Couto.pdf (retrieved November 2008).

Gibbons, M. “Engagement as a Core Value in a Mode 2 Society.” Paper Presented at the Community Engagement in Higher Education Con-ference, September 3-5 2006, Cape Town, South Africa.

-----.“Engagement as a Core Value for the University: A Consultation Document.” 2001. http://www.acu.ac.uk/policyandresearch/research/engagement.pdf. (retrieved April 26, 2008).

Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott, and M. Trow. The New Production of Knowledge: Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pub-lications, 1994.

Glaser, J. “Limits of Change: Cognitive Restrains on ‘Postmodernization’ and the Political Redirection of Science.” Social Science Information39, no. 3(2000): 439-465.


Gonçalves, A. C. P. “A Concepção de Politecnica em Moçambique: Contradições de um Discurso Socialista (1983-1992).” Educação e Pesquisa 33, no. 3(2007): 601-619.

Gumport, J. P. “Academic Restructuring: Organizational Change and Institutional Imperatives.” Higher Education 39, no. 1(2000): 67-91.

Hall, M. 2008. “Community Engagement in South African Higher Educa-tion.” NRF/CHE Workshop on Research on Community Engagement: A Discussion Forum, CSIR Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Af-rica, August 23, 2008.

Harding, A., A. Scott, S. Laske, and C. Burtscher, C., eds. Bright Satanic Mills: Universities Regional Development and Knowledge Economy. Hampshire, MA: Ashgate, 2007.

Kellermann, P. 2007. “The University as a Business? Social Division of Labour and the Commodification of Knowledge and Science.” 2007. http://www.euresearch.ch/fileadmin/documents/events2007/ESSRHA07/Kellermann__Paul.pdf. (retrieved November 2008).

Langa, P. “De Novo a Nomeação de Reitores para Universidades Publicas.” 2008. http://www.circulodesociologia.blogspot.com/2008/08/ de-novo-nomeao-de-reitores-para.html. (retrieved November 25, 2008).

-----.“Rogério Utui Sucede a Carlos Machili na UP.” 2007. http://oficinadesociologia.blogspot.com/2007/02/cientistas-emgajados-ou-desengajados-1.html. (retrieved April 26, 2008).

-----.“The Constitution of the Field of Higher Education Institutions in Mozambique.” Master’s thesis. University of Cape Town, South Af-rica, 2006.

Maassen, P. and N. Cloete. “Global Reform Trends in Higher Education.” In Transformation in Higher Education: Global Pressures and Local Realities, edited by N. Cloete, P. Maassen, R. Fehnel, T. Moja, T. Gibbon, and H. Perold. Cape Town, South Africa: Juta, 2006.

Macamo, E. “Outros Tipos de Pobreza.” Working Paper. Maputo, Mo-zambique, 2005.

Machel, S. A Classe Trabalhadora Deve Conquistar e Excercer o Poder na Frente da Ciência e da Cultura. Maputo, Mozambique: Universi-dade Eduardo Mondlane, 1976.

-----.1974a. Fazer da Escola a Base para o Povo Tomar o Poder. FRE-LIMO. Carderno.n6 (Colecção Estudos Orientais).

-----.1974b. Estudemos e Façamos dos nossos Conhecimentos um Instrumento de Libertação do Povo. Maputo, Mozambique: Depar-tamento do Trabalho e Ideologia da Frelimo, n8 (Colecção Palavras de Ordem).

Patrício Langa266

MacGregor, K. “Africa: Relevance: Financial Support, Says E-Forum.” 2008a. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20081123 (retrieved November 24, 2008).

-----.“AFRICA: Researchers Lag in Science and Technology.” 2008b. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20081120 (retrieved November 25, 2008).

Mamdani, M. and M. Diouf, eds. Academic Freedom in Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA, 1994.

Mário, M., P. Fry, and A. Chilundo. Higher Education in Mozambique: A Case Study. Oxford: James Currey, 2003.

Mayntz, R. “Socialist Academies of Sciences: The Enforced Orientation of Basic Research at User Needs.” Research Policy 27 (1998): 781–791.

“Padre Filipe Couto: O Homem do Presidente em frente da UEM.” Me-diaFAX. Maputo, February 26, 2007, No3730.

MESCT. Nova Lei do Ensino Superior. Maputo. Republica de Moçambique, 2003.

Mondlane, E. Lutar por Moçambique. Lisboa, Portugal: Sá da Costa, 1977.

Mouton, J. “Regional Report on Sub-Saharan Africa: Study on National Research Systems. A Meta-review.” Presented at the Symposium on Comparative Analysis of National Research Systems, January 16-18, 2008, UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

Muller, J. “Responsiveness and Innovation in Higher Education.” Com-missioned Paper: University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2001.

-----.Reclaiming Knowledge: Social Theory, Curriculum and Education Policy. London: Routledge Falmer, 2000

Nowotny, H., P. Scott, and M. Gibbons. “‘Mode 2’ Revisited: The New Pro-duction of Knowledge, Introduction.” 2003. http://www.

p r e sc o t t . ed u / f a cu l t y_s t a f f / f ac u l t y / s c o re y / doc u men t s / NowotnyGibbons2003Mode2Revisited.pdf. (re-trieved: April 26, 2008).

Rip, A. “Cognitive Approach to Relevance of Science.” Social Science Information, 36, no. 4(1997): 615- 640.

Rip, A. and B. J. R. Van Der Meulen. “The Post-modern Research Sys-tem.” Science & Public Policy 23 (1996): 342-352.

Sachs, J. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Lon-don: Penguin, 2005.

Salter, L. “Science and Public Discourse. History of Intellectual Culture.” 2003. http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/website/2003vol3no1/articles/2003%20pdf/salterpdf.pdf (retrieved February 28, 2008).


Salter, L. Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making of Standards. Holland: Kluwer Academic Publications, 1988.

Serra. C. “Cientistas Sociais: Engajados ou Desengajados.” 2007a. http://oficinadesociologia.blogspot.com/2007/02/cientistas-emgajados-ou-desengajados-1.html (retrieved April 26, 2008).

-----.“Reitores: Endogenia, Eleições e Mandatos.” 2007b. http://oficinadesociologia.blogspot.com/2007/02/reitores-endogenia-eleies-e-mandatos.html (retrieved April 26, 2008).

Slaughter, S. and L. L. Leslie. Academic capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Weiler, H. N. National Unification, Global Competition and Institutional Reform: The Dynamics of Change in Higher Education. Cape Town, South Africa: CHET, 2008.

Ziman, J. Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

-----.“‘Postacademic Science’: Constructing Knowledge with Networks and Norms.” Science Studies 9 (1996): 67–80.

Ifeanyi P. Onyeonoru268

Challenges of Doing Sociology in aGlobalizing South: Between Indigenization

and Emergent Structures Ifeanyi P. Onyeonoru, University of Ibadan, Nigeria1

As sociology emerged from the womb of the industrial revolution in Europe and the challenges of the anomic socio-economic environment, the concern of its founding fathers naturally gravitated around Western ideologies and challenges. The modernization paradigm facilitated the hegemonic ascendancy of Western sociology in the South until the recent ideological impasse, when the South began to grope for fresh insights. Currently, attention is still being drawn to the sociological significance of emancipation from systemic inequality created by social structural vari-ables in the development process globally but particularly in poorer coun-tries. This study, therefore, draws from Professor Peter Ekeh’s (1983) “Colonialism and Social Structure” and his (1975) theoretical statement on the two publics to highlight the consequences of uncritical engage-ment in the Periphery with the sociology of the Core, the importance of agency in post-imperialistic thinking in sociology, and the implications for repositioning sociologists in the South for the task of a more creative local engagement with globalizing ideologies that are integral to main-stream sociology in the North. The paper also highlights the roles of in-ternational, regional, and national associations such as the International Sociological Association (ISA), the African Sociological Association (AFSA), the Nigerian Sociological and Anthropological Association (NASA), and the Council for the Development of Social Science Re-search in Africa (CODESRIA) in setting the agenda.

1 Ifeanyi Onyeonoru is the Secretary General of the Nigerian Anthropological and Sociological Association (NASA) and a member of the Department of Soci-ology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]

Challenges of Doing Sociology in a Globalizing South 269

INTRODUCTION

The development of sociology and anthropology in Nigeria can be di-vided into three broad but related periods as follows: the colonial to im-mediate pre-independence period, characterized by foreign domination and utilization of academic research; the period of indigenization efforts from 1959 to the 1980s; and the period of systemic crisis and neo-liberal globalization from the 1980s onward. Many of the major works cited in this paper were part of the proceedings from the first conference of the Nigerian Anthropological and Sociological Association held in 1971. The theme of the conference, “Sociology and Anthropology for Nigeria: What For?” was a reflection of the concern among Nigerian scholars at that time about the domestication of the discipline. Here I highlight the works of anthropologists and sociologists that strove for the indigeniza-tion of social scientific knowledge. I also reflect on the crisis period in the Nigerian university system characterized by unwholesome expansion beginning in the 1970s and the twin dictatorship of the market and the military that paved way for a rather irresponsible state relationship with the Nigerian academia within the framework of neo-liberal globalization - what I regard as the second incorporation. Mention is also made of res-cue attempts by a number of institutions, including NASA.

THE PERIOD OF FOREIGN DOMINATION OF SCHOLARSHIP

The initial activities in sociology and anthropology in Nigeria were founded on foreign interests and ideology as well as external experience. Little or no effort was made to integrate borrowed knowledge with local experience or generate indigenous theories that explained the post-colonial African or Nigerian social structure. Hence, at the onset of so-cial sciences in Nigeria, working in the area of sociology and anthropol-ogy was characterized by foreign control of ideas and research. The process was driven by colonial and imperial institutions and a number of establishments including the Nigerian Institute of Economic and Social Research which supported research scholars most of whom were expatri-ates funded by charitable academic foundations with their own political and economic agendas. The establishment of the Faculty of Economics at the premier university in Nigeria - the University of Ibadan - did not improve the situation, because it was headed by an Irish Professor who had little regard for Nigerian scholars (Nzimiro 1971).


The pioneer anthropologists, in particular, worked as the intellectual arm of the colonial masters. Some of them were establishment anthro-pologist whose commitment to their work was to support the colonial government so as to ensure the effective political domination of Nigeria. For instance, such anthropologists guided numerous district officers who wrote over two hundred intelligence reports on the Igbo people after the 1929-3 Women Riots. Since the above institute and its new faculty were controlled by expatriate scholars, they made little or no intellectual con-tribution to the changing Nigerian society (Nzimiro 1971). Their com-mitment to Nigeria was marginal, since they concentrated on conducting research, gathering materials, and going home to publish in journals abroad, on the basis of which they were branded experts in particular Ni-gerian tribes or aspects of a particular branch of social science (Otite 1971). Similar trends were observed in Australia (Connell 2007).

In the post-independence era, according to Nzimiro (1971), foreign scholars funded by American foundations such as Rockefeller and Ford whose allegiance was more to these benevolent donors became African-ists (so-called) and lecturers in various American Universities, where they established African centres in such places as Boston, UCLA, Co-lumbia, Howard, Northwestern, and Wisconsin. In Nzimiro’s (1971) words, “The field of studies that come within our discipline has been dominated by these establishment scholars most of them serving the in-terests of imperialist governments, but camouflaged as scientific objec-tive studies” (4).

Otite (1971) similarly observed that in this process of academic scrambling, social anthropologists carved out “territories” for themselves through a glorification of exclusive symbols and relationships founded on some kind of grand theories based on these symbols. The colonial system of indirect rule tended to consolidate the socio-cultural units marked out by these anthropological and quasi-anthropological investigations. Relat-ing Western-dominated social science to imperialism, Ake (1971) stated, “When Western scholars turned their attention to the study of Africa and other Third World regions, they did so not by inventing new analytical tools, but by using the tools already in vogue, especially those which were conducive to the comparative study of Western countries and Third World societies” (127).

While it is not necessary to assume a conspiracy to or consciousness of serving imperialism among Western scholars working on Africa and other parts of the Third World, the foregoing nevertheless suggests that the practice of sociology and anthropology in the colonial period in Nige-ria were rarely founded on a passion for the development of Nigerian so-ciety but on an exogenous agenda designed to meet the hegemonic colo-


nial and imperial project motivated by the desire for external control of the emergent Nigerian state.

THE INDIGENIZATION EFFORT

A couple of events that tended to modify the above scenario towards the indigenization of sociological and anthropological work are noteworthy: the founding of the Nigerian Economic Society in London in 1959 by Nigerian scholars (including sociologists); the establishment of the Nige-rian Journal of Economic and Social Studies (NJESS) that provided pub-lication opportunities for Nigerian social scientists; and the founding of the Nigerian Anthropological and Sociological Association (NASA) in 1971 and the Nigerian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology that served as the publication outlet for sociologists and anthropologists in Nigeria. As used above, “indigenization” broadly refers to the contextu-alization of sociological theory and methods to account for the peculiari-ties associated with neo-colonial structures and features of underdevel-opment in non-Western societies like Africa. It implies a re-orientation of sociological research towards the development of Africa through the generation and application of endogenous concepts (not necessarily lan-guage) to illuminate indigenous social reality. It involves an effort to explain emergent social patterns in the neo-colonial situation, some of which have no equivalent in the West. Emphasis is placed on a guarded application of social theories and methods emanating from Western ex-periences onto non-Western situations.

The above development provided a platform for a more indigenous explanation of social reality in Nigeria. Prominent among these was Akiwowo’s (1971) work titled “Contributions to the Sociology of Knowl-edge From Oral Poetry.” The work stimulated debates on the issue of in-digenous sociology (See Akiwowo 1971; 1983; 1986; Connell 2007; Adesina 2000; Otite 2008). Indeed, in his presidential address to the First Conference of NASA in 1971, Akiwowo emphasized the need for the utili-zation of sociology for the development of Nigerian society, stating, among other things, that NASA should give strong moral support to the develop-ment of social indicators for the measurement of societal growth compara-ble to the economic indicators used by economists (Akiwowo 1974). The United Nations Development Programme accomplished this in the 1990s.

Professor Peter Ekeh, on his part, contended that there was a significant distinction between civil society in Western society and that found in Africa. He observed that unlike civil society in the West, which has one public realm mediating between the state and the individual or the family, there is


no single public realm in Africa. Instead, the heritage of the post-colonial social structure in Africa has produced a non-homogenous public realm divisible into two: the civic public and the primordial public. Contrary to the situation in Western society, where the public realm and the private realm are defined by a common underlying societal morality, there is no monolithic public realm in Africa enjoying common morality with the private realm. Instead, the public realm is divided into two. One is a primordial public within which the social behaviour of individuals is guided by norms defined by societal morality and is therefore bound to the private realm. The other is a civic public that is devoid of any claims to morality and hence amoral. Colonial engagement with Africa, therefore, bred a duality of moral perspectives in the new states, generating two broad spheres of moral and amoral behaviour, as distinct from the moral and the immoral typical of Europe.

It is, for instance, the institutionalization of amorality as a principle of social existence in the colonial and neo-colonial state that may explain the manipulation of ethnic groups by class identities in Africa – in the socio-economic and political interests of the latter (Ekeh 1975; 1992; 1996). The civic public is also the realm of contests for political, economic, and social resources with competing ethnic groups, both at the collective and interpersonal levels. In this sphere the moral content of competition is considered insignificant and this tends to promote corruption at various levels of society in Africa. Passing philosophies like “it depends,” underpinned by a free rider attitude, tend to define the struggle for power and wealth in the civic public realm. Hence, as Ekeh (1992) puts it:

There are in European nations single consolidated public realms, which effectively offer common platforms for the activities of the state and the public behaviors of individuals. Here on the contrary there is segmentation of the public realm. There is a civic public realm over which the state presides and over which the ordinary man (or woman) does not feel that he is part-owner of this realm. When he is wronged in it he withdraws from it to his own primordial public realm whose ownership he asserts vigorously. (198)

Ekeh’s thesis on the two publics in Africa is enhanced by his position on the nature of African social formation in colonialism. The first form is the “transformed pre-colonial indigenous institutions.” These consist of traditional structures, which in their transformed states operate within the new meanings and symbols of colonialism and in a widened new socio-cultural system and framework. Ekeh (1983) explains, “The moral and social order which formally encased the pre-colonial indigenous institutions


is burst by the social forces of colonialism and they seek new anchors in the changed milieu of colonialism” (11). Sometimes, such a transformation is the product of a process of dynamic social adjustments in the emergent plural and competitive social environment.

The second is “migrated social structure and constructs.” These are Eurocentric institutions, models, principles, ideologies, and institutions that were almost literally parcelled or imported wholesale from the imperial West and uncritically grafted onto the new colonial situation. Bureaucracy, rational organization, federalism, and the modern military are examples (Ekeh 1983).

The third form is the “emergent social structures” which are neither indigenous to Africa nor imported from outside. They are peculiar social structures that developed from the space and time of colonialism, with a logic of their own - distinct sociological entities with remarkable complexity. Although they may have similarities in the West and elsewhere, these emergent social structures have a logic all their own, and their peculiar situation in colonialism marks them out as distinct political and sociological structures, sometimes of baffling complexity. They grew with colonialism and in colonialism; these emergent social structures are generated by colonialism itself. They emerged to meet societal needs that indigenous social structures and the migrated social structure could not fulfill in the new colonial environment (Ekeh 1983).

Emergent structures present enormous explanatory challenges to scholars engaging with neo-colonial Africa’s social formations. Unlike the first two types of social formations in colonialism, emergent social structures are difficult to discern for two major reasons. First, while the first two represent formal aspects of the colonial and post-colonial situations, the emergent social structures represent the informal elements of colonialism. Second, "The emergent social structures are very often consciously smeared with tradition or modernity, to give them the appearance of ultra-tradition or ultra modernity" (Ekeh 1983: 20). An example of this is also the ethnic group. Nigerian ethnic groups have their socio-political meaning only in terms of the development of Nigeria. For our work, this has implications for ethnic configurations and class composition; the shifting social boundaries and coalitions constructed by primordial/ethnic groups and other plural identities in Nigeria; the dynamics of class structuration of ethnicity and conflicts; the social processes involved; as well as the nature of morality thrown up. Ekeh's thesis on the two publics was put forward as a general theoretical statement applicable to various social scientific analyses.

Meanwhile, two things are noteworthy from the foregoing. First is the fact that social life in Africa is characteristic of Ekeh's emergent structures and constructs. Second is the fact that the morality and loyalty of the


average African is rooted in the primordial public in contrast with the civic public. According to Ekeh (1992):

In most of Africa, historically, the civic public was seen as the property of the imperial European rulers. In the post colonial period, it is owned by their successors - the soldiers and personal dictators who have ceased its power. When a frustrated Nigerian exclaims, "Nigeria is not worth dying for", he is complaining that he has no share in the control of the civic public realm. But he would be ready to fight and die for his primordial realm - which is managed and owned by his own ethnic group. (198)

The foregoing corroborates the Nzimiro’s (1971) observation that every Nigerian traditional community is founded on the lineage structure or the line of descent through which the individual derives his social at-tachment. Nationality is, therefore, a structure that has grown from the lowest descent unit, the clan and sub-clans, and emerged into a wider group: a nationality, an ethnic group. Although the sizes of these nation-alities vary, each nevertheless has cultural indices in common. Colonial domination brought these nationalities together under the modern influ-ence of European civilization. The new institutions of the colonial re-gime exposed all Nigerians to new norms, values, and cultures of the West. These new norms were generated by the new institutions – political, economic, educational, and religious, - and these norms became the new binding forces that brought all the ethnic nationalities together. The colonial domination which brought Nigerians together under the modern influence of European civilization also exposed them to the values of new nationhood and impregnated them with the ideals, concepts, and values of Western economics. Nigerians were taught to accept the profit motive and the selling of labour power in the labour market, be it the labour market controlled by voluntary agencies, by commercial enterprises, or by government institutions. Nigerians came together under these various economic institutions and worked under the directions of the British, who controlled most of these institutions.

The complexity of what is described above has implications for doing sociology in Nigeria: the Nigerian sociologist and anthropologist, the so-cial scientist for that matter, should be committed to understanding the dynamics of social changes related to the emergent social structure and constructs in their society. They should pay less attention to marginal research and investigating aspects of the society that are not intrinsically vital to the development of the nation. This follows from Nzimiro’s ob-servation that the pioneers of social science and sociology were men committed to searching for solutions to the social problems of their coun-


tries. They were not just doing that out of intellectual curiosity alone. They had a sense of history, and they influenced social change through their ideas. They were both deeply involved in the affairs of their father-land but, as social scientists, were also detached enough to analyze social facts. There was no contradiction between their involvement and de-tachment. There was no false idea of “objectivity” devoid of participa-tion. Both were synonymous to them. As Nzimiro (1971) noted:

No social scientist of note can operate if he or she is ignorant of the structure and functions of our society. This understanding is his first in-tellectual weapon. He can understand it if he knows the structure and functions of our traditional society before he can understand the intrica-cies of the changing modern society. The tasks of the anthropologists and sociologists are crucial, and here I must state that the sociologists who limits himself to the understanding of the modern European socie-ties without studying the social structure of our society in its traditional setting has not yet completed the picture of his image of our society. It becomes imperative that he must know both if he is to operate scientifi-cally. (9-10)

The heterogeneity and complex nature of present African society in its traditional setting, internal conflicts, and contradictions should attract more endogenous investigation in focus and design that would not simply impose functionalist regularities on the system. In Nigeria and much of Africa, for instance, the functionalist consensus, order, and structuring of the parts to sustain the whole are rarely applicable. More visible are so-cial tensions and disorder associated with allegiance to ethnic and ethno-religious groups to the detriment of the nation-state as well as primarily self-interested political elites and the parasitic ruling classes, whose atti-tudes are antithetical to the public interest. In all of this, the character of the parts is in contradictory relation to the whole, suggesting difficulties in the application of the Western-dominated sociological paradigm for explaining and interpreting emergent structures in Africa. Given the lack of explanations in the specific case of Nigeria, such trends have come under the mythical term “the Nigerian Factor.” African social reality is not quite the same as that of Europe, and this should inform the applica-tion of classical sociological theory in the region. As Horowitz (1994) observed in a related argument, the beauty of theory is the explanation of specific events, while the curse of theory is the use of the same, over-generalized explanations to interpret unlike events. Also important for our discourse is Horowitz’s (1994) view that, “The function of sociologi-cal theory, in contrast to ideological posturing, is to put into full view the


nature of the specific paradox that divides people along class, religious, gender, racial and ethnic lines … to show the forces at work in moving a specific paradox to resolution or dissolution” (185).

CRISIS OF THE 1980s AND BEYOND: TOWARD THE SECOND INCORPORATION

Beginning in the 1970s, educational policy in Nigeria emphasized that the greatest investment the nation could make for the development of its eco-nomic, political, sociological, and human resources was in education. The development of universities, therefore, followed the trajectory of rapid expansion: government control of curricula, admissions quotas and policies; free tuition and minimal other charges; and government domi-nance of provision and funding of university education. To ensure firm government control, a National Universities Commission (NUC) was es-tablished in 1962 to regulate the establishment of new universities, dis-tribute government grants to universities, and approve programmes.

By 1982 the number of universities had risen to 28, and student en-rollment exceeded 120,000. This led to a dramatic increase in student intake with a nearly 120% increase between the 1974/75 session and the 1979/80 session; the NUC on its part received less than 30% of its re-quirement for the university system. Since this rapid expansion occurred at a period of economic decline, it resulted in inadequate funding of the universities (Onyeonoru 2000). The decline in funding became worse over the years; 1996 and 1997 total recurrent grants were, for instance, only half the levels of 1988. The effect on remuneration was frustrating for academia, and it resulted in a brain drain, both internal and external. By internal brain drain, I refer to the fact that the social reproduction of sociologist was impeded by pull factors accounted for by better remu-neration in the private, formal sector of the economy. First class gradu-ates were drawn away from the university system to the corporate world by better conditions of service, posing a problem for capacity-building through mentorship. The second aspect of the brain drain had to do with the out-migration of sociologists and other members of academia to the West, America, and Southern Africa. This affected teaching and learning standards in Nigerian universities.

In these circumstances, there was little systemic capacity for creative work that could contribute or advance the initial effort at indigenization of sociology or indeed doing sociology at any level. This was particu-larly so with the constraints engendered by the non-availability of local research grants and funds for conferences, both local and international.


External funding continued to reinforce the hegemonic scholarship of the West and of the external funders. Atomization of research efforts and the lack of databases for researchers and their work hampered opportunities for collaborative scholarship, intellectual development, and the harness-ing of synergies in the system.

The crisis period accounted for the moribund state in which NASA found itself between 2000 and 2007. Of particular note was the ascen-dancy of neo-liberal globalization within the framework of the twin dicta-torship of the market and military rule. The state “rolled back” much of its funding responsibility while increasing its administrative strangle hold on the university system, denying the system autonomy and academic freedom (Onyeonoru 2004). The likes of the World Bank and the Inter-national Monetary Fund became the policy dictators, while sociologists and other Nigerian scholars and their research findings were confined to the four walls of the universities. Two parallel knowledge/policy tracks, therefore, seemed to be in operation: one for academics derived from re-search, the other, which informed policy in practice, for the government, imposed by the World Bank and IMF. Benefits accruing from the mutual relationship between town and gown were, therefore, compromised. The situation has not really improved in the current dispensation.

Challenges facing teaching and learning sociology in Nigeria include environmental, infrastructural (poor physical structures, poor librar-ies/current teaching and learning materials, and the digital divide), and due to embassy aggression (visa refusals). Several strikes embarked upon by the university staff unions2 to compel Nigerian governments to pay adequate attention to the crumbling structures and poor remuneration of university workers did not succeed in making the reward system a matter of concern for the government. Given the struggles for economic sur-vival, members could not meet their financial obligation to NASA until the resuscitation effort by scholars in Ibadan in 2007.

The erratic power supply, though only one example of a wider infra-structural problem in Nigeria, deserves special mention. Power genera-tion in Nigeria has declined from 30.61 Kilowatts in 1996 to about 15.58 Kilowatts in 2007. This was grossly inadequate for the country’s more than 140 million people. It translated to about 0.06 kilowatts of energy consumption per million people behind Ghana’s 0.43 (International En-ergy Agency 2007). 3 By 2009, power generation further declined to about 10.00 Kilowatts (National Bureau of Statistics 2007). The frustra-

2 Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU), and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU). 3 See http://www.eia.doe.gov/.


tions arising from this scenario have negatively affected teaching and re-search. Electricity, water, telephone lines, and Internet access all raise productivity, but they are also severely inadequate in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank 2009).

A combination of emphasis on the private sector within the frame-work of neoliberal economic globalization and the poor state of infra-structure in public universities in Nigeria tend to make private universi-ties the preference of the elite class. The issue of quality assurance is however, a major concern.

Meanwhile, on the issue of the digital divide, it is noteworthy that in six short years (1992-1998), the number of Internet host computers worldwide increased from less than 1 million to almost 30 million. But, the core of the information society still resides in the developed countries. For instance, one quarter of American households use the Internet on a daily basis (less than one-tenth of academics do in Nigeria), and more than half of all Internet users live in the United States or Canada. The information revolution has not gained a foothold in most developing countries, including Nigeria, because they lack the basic infrastructure: phone lines, electricity, and literacy. The digital divide between people who are Internet-empowered and those who are not is wide and real.4

A most critical issue for Internet access in Africa is the poor infra-structure and ridiculous bandwidths in a large portion of countries. The number of African Internet users is somewhere between 1.5 to 2 million out of a continental population of about 750 million, and most of these (about 1.5 million) reside in South Africa. As of 2002 in Africa each computer with an Internet or e-mail connection usually supports between 3 and 5 users. This puts the number of users of Internet in Africa at around 5-8 million. The figures represent about one user to every 250-400 people compared to a world average of about one use for every 15 people and a North American and European average of about one in every 2 people. Internet in Africa is characterized by low connectivity density and very little local or indigenous African content, even among institutional users who have direct Internet access. Even when they have access to email, government ministries and research centers rarely have web sites; where Internet is used, email predominates, or websites with relatively poor contents and education. Sciences and community devel-opment sites have the least content.5 The low Internet support relates with the fact that many university teachers and researchers from the South utilize Yahoo email, which is often treated as “insecure” and hence

4 See http://www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/spring00/article.asp.5 See http://demiurge.wn.apcorg/africa/afstat.htm


not accepted by several websites in the North. This also limits the rate of international interaction by Southern scholars, with implication for exclu-sion. The above situation has negatively impacted the level of scientific production (Nwagwu 2005) and visibility of African scholars in the global scientific community.

STABILIZING EFFORTS: CODESRIA, AFSA, AND NASA

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) has been at the vanguard of capacity building among Afri-can intellectuals. This is evident in the following programmes of the Council: the Multinational Working Group (MWG) on Youth and Iden-tity; the Transnational Working group (TWG) on Africa and its Diasporas; future research in collaboration with the African Futures Institute; South-South Comparative Research Workshops; National Working Groups (NWG); Programmes on Gender, Humanities, and Transnationalism; Comparative Research Networks and Working Groups; and South-South Research Collaboration.

The magnitude of the capacity building challenge for teaching and learning in Africa is reflected in CODESRIA’s observation in 2006, with reference to its TWG, that only a few of the proposals came from schol-ars residing in Africa and even fewer from second, third, and fourth gen-eration diasporan Africans. Thus a conscious attempt was made to enrich the composition of the group with researchers drawn from both recent and distant African diasporas around the world (including Asia, Melane-sia and Polynesia, Australia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.6

The African Sociological Association (AFSA) had its debut confer-ence on July 15-18, 2007 at Rhodes University in Grahamstown-iRhini, South Africa. The theme, “Sociology: the African Challenge,” was a re-flection of the concern to make sociology in Africa relevant to regional needs. The conference witnessed the participation of a large number of African scholars. The association has been very active, among others, in providing information on opportunities for capacity building for African academics.

6 See http://www.codesria.org/Links/Home/annual_report06.


CONCLUSION

Doing sociology in Nigeria has passed through various challenging peri-ods. Currently, the most pressing challenge for sociologists in Nigeria, and indeed Africa, is to develop a critical capacity not only for explaining and interpreting African social reality, enhanced by endogenous models that capture the nature of the paradox and tensions in the emergent social structure, but also the character of agency thrown up by such a process. To achieve this, we need a paradigm shift, perhaps towards the sociology of everyday life. These pose a challenge for NASA and AFSA as profes-sional associations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adesina, J. O. “Sociology and Yoruba Studies: Epistemic Intervention or Doing Sociology in the ‘Vernacular’?” Journal of the Nigerian An-thropological and Sociological Association, Special Edition (2000).

Ake, C. Social Science as Imperialism: The Theory of Political Devel-opment. 2nd ed. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1972.

Akiwowo, A. “Presidential Address: Association for What?” The Nige-rian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1, no. 1 (1974).

-----. “Ajobi and Ajogbe: Variations on the Theme of Sociation.” Inau-gural Lecture Series 48. Ife: University of Ife Press, 1983.

-----. “Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge From an African Oral Poetry.” International Sociology 1, no. 4 (1986).

Connell, R. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. London: Allen and Unwin, 2007.

Ekeh, P. P. “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” Comparative Studies of Society and History 17, no. 1 (1975).

-----. “Colonialism and Social Structure: Inaugural Lecture at the Univer-sity of Ibadan.” Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1983.

-----. “The Constitution of Civil Society in African History and Politics.” In Democratic Transition in Africa, edited by B. Caron, A. Gboyega and E. Osaghae. CREDU Documents in Social Sciences and Humani-ties, 1992.

-----. “Political Minorities and Historically-Dominant Minorities in Nige-rian History and Politics.” In Governance and Development in Nige-ria: Essays in Honour of Professor Billy J. Dudley, edited by O. Oyediran. Ibadan: Agbo Areo Publishers, 1996.


Horowitz, L. L. The Decomposition of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

International Energy Agency. World Energy Outlook 2007: China and India Insights. Paris: OECD/International Energy Agency, 2007.

National Bureau of Statistics. National Accounts of Nigeria 1981-2006.Abuja: National Bureau of Statistics, 2007.

Nwagwu W.E.E. “The Open Access Movement: Interrogating I.T.’s Po-tentials for Inserting Africa in the Global Scientific Information Chain.” Ibadan Journal of the Social Sciences 3, no. 1 (2005).

Nzimiro, I. "The Social Scientists and the Challenge of our Civilization." Paper Presented at the First Annual Conference of the Nigerian An-thropological and Sociological Association, ABU, Zaria, December 16-18, 1971.

Onyeonoru, I. “The Nature and Management of Students’ Conflicts in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions.” Annals of the Social Science Acad-emy of Nigeria 12 (Jan-Dec 2000).

-----. “University Autonomy and Cost Recovery Policies: Union Contesta-tion and Sustainable University System.” Paris: UNESCO, 2004.

Otite, O. “Anthropological Responsibilities in Nigeria.” Paper Presented at the First Annual Conference of the Nigerian Anthropological and Sociological Association, ABU, Zaria, December 16-18, 1971.

-----. “Four Decades of Sociology in Nigeria.” Keynote Address Pre-sented at Conference to Celebrate Four Decades of Sociology, Fac-ulty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, October 16, 2008.

World Bank. World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2009.

Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad282

Globalization, Sociological Research, andPublic Policy in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Relevance of Socio-Legal Research to

the Development Needs of Nigeria Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria1

Globalization as a process and phenomenon remains an issue whose dis-cussion is entangled in its own complexity and in the controversy gener-ated by the widely polarized positions held in regard to it. For this reason, this paper will examine the concept by looking at some “myths” about the concept. Here, myth is defined as a collection of stories or ideas we use to understand and interpret our life-worlds. These stories and ideas do influence, on the one hand, the kinds of research we do as scientists (so-cial and/or natural), and, on the other hand, the kind of policies that are rolled out by governments. Again, these public/government policies may be informed by scientific research being conducted or may not at all. The position of this paper is that because of the myth of globalization, the government and the public tend to perceive some disciplines as more im-portant and relevant than others, especially with regards to their contribu-tions to a nation’s development. Contrary to that myth, this paper dem-onstrates the relevance of socio-legal research to development in a Third World nation such as Nigeria.

WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?

The concept globalization, both as a process and phenomenon, is better understood now than in the 1980s. However, the concept still remains an issue whose discussion is entangled in its own complexity and in the con-troversy generated by the widely polarized positions held in regard to it. For this reason, we feel the concept can better be understood by looking

1 Abdul Mumin-Sa’ad is a Professor of Sociology (Criminology) in the Depart-ment of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, and he is a member of NALC. He can be reached at [email protected].

Globalization, Sociological Research, and Public Policy in Nigeria 283

at some “myths” about it. Myth here does not refer to an untruth or a simple fiction. Rather, the myth of globalization, like any other myth, is a collection of stories or ideas we use to understand and interpret our life-worlds. Myths are therefore as much about the present as they are about the past and the future. Through repeated re-telling of stories, the imagi-nation of each storyteller adds its own distinctive shade, each story be-coming a history of its perpetual formation and deformation as each teller imbues the story with his or her own language of the ideal and the real.

First Myth of Globalization: The “Radical Rupture”

Globalization is considered part of the postmodern era, and one theme that runs through almost all postmodernist theorizing is the declaration of a radical rupture or break between modernism and postmodernism. The irony here, of course, is that modernity also saw itself as a radical break: the processes of industrialization and the machine age replacing and transforming all previous modes of production. In this sense, postmoder-nity can be viewed as a disruptive child that has renounced its parents, modernity.

At this stage, we can argue that a death-drive haunts and motivates postmodern and/or globalization theory: a denial of the past, of the paren-tal and the symbolic, in favour of forcing onto the world a new symbolic code. Here, as rightly observed by Adams (2002), postmodern and glob-alization theory are part of a wider current in Western philosophy that privilege death over birth. The privilege accorded to death, according to Adams, is part of “the encoded fear of non-existence, of nothingness after the end, and the desire for mastery and control over the inevitable” (14).

Second Myth of Globalization: “The Transformative Power of ICTs”

Today, we are being made to believe that Information and Communica-tion Technologies (ICTs) will transform the world and make it a better place through instant communication across spaces, times, and cultures over the Internet. We are told that we live increasingly in a “network so-ciety” and that the winners in this society are the semiotic workers who decipher the information flows to the masses and make life easier for all. This is a myth in the sense that evidence from the developed countries, especially the West and America, indicates exactly the contrary. Just as building new roads tends to lead to new traffic jams, as computers and information networks have increased in power, the pressure and stress of the workplace has increased; the pressure to multitask in order to handle all the data flows increases. In other words, far from being inherently


transformative, advancement in ICTs is increasingly used to legitimate and reinforce market capitalism and new variants of wage slavery.

To expose this mythic dimension of technology is not to deny that new technologies do have some transformative power, but rather, simply, to assess critically the idea that technology is inherently transformative. In short, just like all other inventions of ICTs throughout history (paper, the printing press, the radio), new technologies can be liberating and transformative as much as they can become the instrument of oppression, domination, and propaganda.

Third Myth of Globalization: “The End of the Nation State”

Undoubtedly, the world economy today is dominated by market forces and transnational corporations that have no consideration for the sover-eignty of nation-states, national economies, national cultures, or territorial borders. In other words, transnational corporations increasingly relocate anywhere in the world in order to gain market advantage, without loyalty to their country of origin. This “flow” and “flexible mobility” is believed to be due to technological advances, which are supposedly in the interest of all, irrespective of nation-states. The myth here is the failure to recognize imperial power as it rears its ugly head again; factories of production may be located in so-called developing nations, yet the financial gains continue to be circulated via the economies of the developed world. The money market operates through and for the benefit of rich countries or through the country whose currency is used as the international reserve currency.

Fourth Myth of Globalization: “Competition”

The myth here is the idea that the “liberalization” of markets and the wonders of “free trade” are responsible for the phenomenon of globaliza-tion. On the contrary, however, subsidies are increased to the maximum to protect Western agriculture and industry, while the old command or order to continue to open up markets to imports is sent out to the develop-ing countries. Closely linked to this myth are the importations of such concepts as “good governance,” “liberalization,” and “democratization.” On the surface, these concepts reverberate as good ideas. The object ap-pears to be about how to get Africa or the African leaders to stop the en-demic corruption at all levels of society; to involve civil society in the democratic process; to stop the orgies of violence that have become part of daily life on the continent; not to engage in self-destruction; and so on. However, without a critical approach to these issues we are at risk of be-


lieving the myth that though the developed world/West has introduced the concepts, we can make them meaningful to our situation and radical-ize them, which then prevent us from making the connection between the rhetoric of good governance, liberalization, and democratization and the need to penetrate largely untapped African markets.

Undoubtedly, it is very good to promote good governance and democratization, but we also need to ask how serious its promoters are, given the fact that key national services and institutions have been eroded and undermined by market forces, that the employed and marginally em-ployed worker is expected to work for 12 hours or more a day for a mis-erly amount, and that the presence of minimum wage and trade unions is seen as unfavorable to potential investors.

Fifth Myth of Globalization: “The Erosion of Local Cultures”

One of the most popular myths of globalization is that Western or Ameri-can cultural is increasingly homogenizing the experience of the rest of the world. The so-called “McDonaldization effect” means that the American consumer can travel wherever she or he wants and not feel too far from home. She or he can eat burgers, drink Coca Cola, and remain semi-immersed within the same brand environment (Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, etc.). While McDonaldization is undoubtedly taking place, we must also know that the relationship between the global and the local involve more complex processes. While so-called global culture is having an impact on the local, the local is also appropriating global culture in its own pecu-liar ways. In other words, the global is in fact very many syntheses of different forms of locality. In short, the global is an abstract concept that doesn’t exist in reality anywhere, whereas the local is concrete and exis-tent. In the African village, one finds, for example, an American product: Coca Cola. Here, the “global brand” is in reality a miniature of American culture set afloat from its origins, and in this African village the Coca Cola drink will not have the same cultural meanings it has in America. What is therefore missing in the globalization-homogenization thesis is the power of places, which are not simply physical locations but also con-figurations of language, need, aspirations, desires, and a set of moral boundaries. Global flows do have the ability to modify these configura-tions, but it is equally true that local places themselves have the ability to reconfigure the global flows.


THE RELEVANCE OF SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH TO THE DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF NIGERIA

It is common knowledge that among the disciplines being taught in Nige-rian universities, some are regarded as more relevant than others by the government to the development needs of the country. The various myths of globalization discussed above are partly responsible for this prevailing situation. Generally, the entire set of natural and physical sciences are considered more relevant than all the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. More specifically, among natural and physical sciences, medi-cine is regarded as the most important and relevant. Among the arts, hu-manities and social sciences, law is regarded as the most relevant. In fact, the government does not even consider political science, which is more directly concerned with the institution of government, relevant to devel-opment needs of Nigeria, and much less other social science disciplines like sociology and sociology of law, which is “just” a branch of the latter. The immediate past president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, once stated publicly that courses such as sociology should not be taught in our educa-tional institutions. Such disciplines are branded “rhetoric,” “academia,” “theories” or “inexperience” (Usman 1979). Thus, if we keep screening the various disciplines being taught in our universities in Nigeria, we shall in the end find that most of them are considered to be irrelevant or not so relevant to development needs of the nation. This is why these days a student is more likely to receive government sponsorship to study medicine than social sciences such as sociology and political science.

If one reflects upon the prevailing situation in Nigeria in terms of the so-called globalization thesis, it will appear neither strange nor miracu-lous that both the government and the lay person have this unfortunate conception. The importance of the natural and physical sciences like medicine and engineering and disciplines like law, accounting, and eco-nomics can be seen clearly by almost everybody, because their so-called important contributions to development appear obvious, since they are in material form. We so value human medicine, because we value our lives, to which we feel only diseases and injuries constitute threats. Therefore, we think human medicine alone will reduce the probability of these things causing an untimely loss of our lives. We value engineering be-cause we so value and need houses, cars/lorries, ships, trains, planes, ex-press roads, rails, bridges, tall buildings, electric power, atomic and nu-clear power, and so on.

We value accounting and economics as disciplines, because we value money and wealth. We value law as relevant to Nigerian development needs, because we value social order as an important element for devel-


opment. So, like Comte, the government and people of Nigeria see soci-ety as both “static” and “dynamic” (Coser 1971: 23-24), which are actu-ally incompatible. It is therefore not terribly surprising if a discipline like the sociology of law, whose contribution is not in material terms, is con-ceived of as irrelevant to the development needs of Nigeria. In fact, the sociology of law is even conceived of as a threat to law, which, to the government, is an instrument of social order concomitant with the nation’s development. However, rather than destroying the law, sociology in general and the sociology of law in particular aid the law. In the analysis of crime and delinquency, for example, the juvenile courts in the United States have long recognized that unaided by such disciplines like biology, sociology (including sociology of law) and psychology, the law is incompetent to decide what is the adequate treatment (Steward 1978: 11).

Actually, the importance of disciplines like the sociology of law is not easily observed by people, because their contributions to national de-velopment are not material but social. Unlike the law, their emphasis is not social order as such, which human nature tends to cherish but which is not necessarily the essential element for progress or development. However, if we have a wider understanding of development which goes beyond the material, then the sociology of law is very relevant to the de-velopment needs of any society especially Nigeria. At this juncture we need to pose such questions as: What is development? Why development? Development for whom? To truly do justice to these questions even pe-ripherally, we shall hear ourselves answering thus: Development means advancement in both material and social conditions of human beings. We should promote development so that we are free from all problems – so-cial, political, cultural, and material. A viable development of a nation should be reflected in every citizen of the nation or the country. So, for the government to think that such disciplines like the arts, humanities (other than the law), and social sciences (including the sociology of law) are irrelevant to the nation’s development because they are not materially oriented is for it to say that development is essentially material, which is false. It also tantamount to a bundle of contradictions to the first three and last of Nigeria’s five national objectives, which are basically not eco-nomic, yet the government itself saw them as worthy of doing.2 Again, one would ask, is it surprising for a government such as that of Nigeria’s

2 The five national objectives are: i) a free and democratic society; ii) a just and egalitarian society; iii) a united, strong, and self-reliant nation; iv) a great and dynamic economy, and v) a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens (Federal Republic of Nigeria 1977: 4).


to contradict itself? After all, contradictions are characteristic of a capi-talist socio-political order.

To the extent that it is obvious that development is never complete and viable if it is only material and not also social, the sociology of law, whose contributions to the nation’s development are socio-legal, is as important as any discipline being taught in Nigerian universities, as we are going to substantiate below. In the rest of the paper, we demonstrate the relevance of the sociology of law to the development of Nigeria through various socio-legal research approaches and methods. But, to begin with, we are going to give a brief definition of the sociology of law in terms of its tasks, since it is from its tasks that we shall be able to see its relevance to the development needs of any society that is ready, unlike Nigeria, to make use of the discipline. Podgorekki (1974) defined the task of the sociology of law as follows: “Its task is not only to register, formulate, and verify the general interrelations existing between the law and other social factors (law could then be viewed as an independent or dependent variable), but also to try and build a general theory to explain social process in which the law is involved and in this way link this disci-pline with the bulk of social control” (32).

The sociology of law is a discipline more recent in origin than sociol-ogy, to which it constitutes an essential branch. This lag in the develop-ment of the sociology of law was mainly because of the conflict between sociology and jurisprudence, which was the result of narrowness and ab-errations in the conception of the object and methods of the respective disciplines (law and sociology). But, by the development of both sociol-ogy and jurisprudence, sociology and law have finally met, and the meet-ing place is the sociology of law (Gurvitch 1973: 1-2). Since then, soci-ology of law has developed through three consecutive stages, namely: the problematic stage; the empirical stage; and the engagement in policy-making stage (Podgorekki 1974: 261). This last stage that the discipline has reached makes it all the more important and very relevant to the de-velopment needs of any nation. At this last stage the sociology of law is not speculative or philosophical. It is scientific and empirical. It em-ploys various social scientific and empirical methods to discover regulari-ties in law and society and translate them into the language of concrete advice. In other words, it uses social scientific methods to make func-tional studies of law, of legal mechanisms, of social causes of legal rules, of the divergence between laws and their administration, of the effects of legal rules, and comparing the law and mores and practice of a society. With the above studies, the sociology of law will therefore be able to pro-vide policy makers with concrete advice on the social consequences of legal rules; the general understanding of how different kinds of legal sys-


tems work; the enforceability of legal rules, etc. All these, to be sure, will be very useful indeed to the development needs of a nation socio-legally if the nation is willing to use the fruitful knowledge accruing from sociology of law just as it is willing to use knowledge accruing from medicine, engineering, and other natural and physical sciences.

SOCIOL-LEGAL RESEARCH, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF NIGERIA

Now let us see how sociology of law is relevant to the development needs of a nation like Nigeria by the discoveries it makes or can make through the various scientific methods at hand like historical-descriptive methods, ethnographic-comparative methods, methods for e analysis of legal mate-rials, experimental methods, and survey methods.

The Historical Descriptive Method

In the sociology of law, the historical method assumes the diachronic ap-proach in research, reaching back into the past. Traditionally, when ap-plied to law, the method was supposed to describe this or that legal en-actment, statute, or institution in its unique historical perspective. The modern version tries to compare types of social systems and the legal sys-tems corresponding to them. This new version offers a far-reaching theo-retical perspective and makes clear the fact that there are not only “tech-nical innovations” but also “social innovations” (i.e., legal ideas and con-structs). Thus, some nations adopt legal systems just as they adopt tech-nologies, because they are needed; they are functional and in accord with new socio-economic trends. Through this method, therefore, the sociol-ogy of law will lead us to better understanding of the direction of and rea-sons for the flow of legal innovations and the unexpected by-product of these exchanges (Podgorekki 1974: 33-34). Undoubtedly, therefore, this method, if properly applied to the Nigerian situation by socio-legal schol-ars, will help in discerning or discovering the negative by-product of the English legal system imposed upon the country by the colonialists and discard them immediately. This will also help the nation to adopt a new legal system based on real principles of need. Thus, Nigeria will not adopt the legal system of a country such as the US simply because it wants to “develop” like the US.


The Ethnographic Comparative Method

This method has been useful in identifying the limited validity of a gen-eralized definition of law (i.e., there is hardly any single definition that applies to all societies) and its limited influence on human behavior (Podgorekki 1974: 35-36). With regard to the latter, it can also contribute to the development of Nigeria socio-legally and economically if policy makers are ready to consider this definition and repeal laws that are inef-fective. This will help to reduce unnecessary costs and also to avoid the creation of secondary crimes, criminal self-images, and criminal subcul-tures in the country. This is because there are limits to what one can do with the law, since it has been found that the main source of social con-trol is internalized group norms and interpersonal pressures, rather than formal regulatory forms. Arguments to substantiate this are: 1) there are extreme difficulties in maintaining control in interpersonal relations through law. For example, only diplomacy, economic aid, and bargain-ing are used. 2) In the area of commercial contacts, it appears most par-ties prefer settling disputes through other means. As rightly noted by Aubert (1969), “You can settle a dispute [better] if you keep the lawyers and accountants out of it” (200). 3) The pain-pleasure penal principle is inadequate. The death penalty for armed robbery in Nigeria, for example, does not seem to reduce the rate of armed robbery in any way. This ade-quately substantiates the socio-legal argument that “if mores are adequate, law is effective, if inadequate law is ineffective” (Podgorekki 1974: 13). 4) Crimes known as “victimless,” such as abortion, gambling, drug abuse, adultery/fornication, etc., are created by laws that are designed to affect or enforce private morality. 5) Two types of laws in particular have failed: i) those that are used as means of providing social services in the absence of other public agencies, such as the family non-support laws to assist a needy family in obtaining support from a deserting spouse, and ii) those that are used as a disingenuous means of permitting the police to do what the law forbids them to do directly, such as disorderly-conduct and vagrancy laws. While the behaviors that most of these laws are trying to affect are due to poverty, they make it appear as if poverty itself is a crime.

It need not be overemphasized that the above socio-legal problems constitute a hitch to the development of Nigeria. That the problems could have been avoided if the importance of socio-legal studies and research was recognized early enough by the government and citizens of Nigeria and a large turn over of graduates in socio-legal studies from universities into the public services had been encouraged. Nigeria would have real-ized early enough that the law is futile in bringing about certain changes


in society and therefore should be limited: that it should not interfere in the private life of the individual; that it cannot be effective in stopping social problems which are not its creations but the creation of the prevail-ing social, political, and economic orders in the country; that although law can be used as an instrument of change, there are conditions under which that is the case (Aubert 1969: 96); and that such conditions should therefore be discovered to guide more rational social and legal policies. Could all these be said to be unimportant and irrelevant to the develop-ment needs of Nigeria?

The Method for Analysis of Legal Materials

The method for analysis of legal materials that is utilized by socio-legal scholars also reveals very fruitful empirical information about the legal systems that a nation like Nigeria needs if it is to develop socio-legally. This method analyzes materials that are stored in legal documents. Such materials are usually indicators of legal behaviors that are possible or that in fact took place. Since what really counts in socio-legal studies is the legal behavior itself, this method is very valuable (Podgorekki 1974: 38). In Nigeria, for example, one needs only to visit one of the magistrate’s courts in action for a day or two without even analyzing materials stored in legal documents to understand that the magistrate court system in Ni-geria is unfamiliar to most plaintiffs.3

It is no wonder, therefore, that many people in Nigeria appear to prefer settling disputes amongst themselves at homes, and when they have to go to court at all, as much as possible they avoid the English type of courts in favor of customary and alkali (Shari’a) Courts (Sa’ad 1994; 1991; 1988; Ajomo and Okagbue 1990). Undoubtedly, therefore, through analyses of legal materials, socio-legal scholars can illuminate the need for overhauling our court procedures and actions so that every Nigerian can feel at home in the court and thus become encouraged to turn to the law for protection of their interests. But, at the moment, Nige-rians believe winning or losing a case depends only on whether you have a good or bad lawyer (Sa’ad 1994; 1988; 1991; Ajomo and Okagbue 1990). In other words, Nigerians do not see justice prevailing in the Eng-lish type of courts, but then, as rightly pointed out by Aubert (1960), “It is

3 Several socio-legal studies employing analysis of legal materials were con-ducted in Nigeria, and they revealed serious injustices in the English legal sys-tem operating in the country, especially on the masses of Nigerians. This is due primarily to this system’s economically, politically, and socio-culturally foreign nature. See for examples, Sa’ad (1994; 1991; 1988) and Ajomo and Okagbue (1990).


in the offer of justice that the legal system makes its major output in ex-change for the input of motivation to accept the court as a problem solv-ing structure” (20).

The Experimental Method

This method can also be used by socio-legal scholars to support the de-velopment needs of Nigeria. It can be used, for example, “To study the law in force because of the binding value of equality before the law” (Podgorekki 1974: 40). Through this method, we can ensure that the laws about to be introduced and enforced really reflect and protect the interest of the larger society, rather than those of the few that make the law. This is particularly important in Nigeria, where legislators, judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and administrators of laws themselves are among the elite groups of society, and the laws are always imposed rather than experimentally tested before adoption. Given that law actually creates and elaborates on the rights and duties conferred on the various members of the society, there is no doubt that the law in Nigeria supports and maintains the status-quo, i.e., the unjust and non-egalitarian social and politico-economic order. Friedman (1979) means the same thing when he asserts, “Law is not a strong, independent force but responds to outside pressure in such a way as to reflect the wishes and powers of those social forces which are exerting the pressure” (4).

The Survey Method

Some laws are accepted completely and internalized, and they guide the behaviors of the individual. Some are accepted but not so strongly and internalized to convince people to behave in line with the law. Finally, some laws are only superficially and hypocritically accepted, so the indi-vidual behaves in such a way as to make people believe that she or he accepts the law but internally she or he does not (Podgorekki 1974: 40). Socio-legal scholars can, through the use of survey questionnaires and interviews, empirically distinguish between these laws in any given soci-ety.4 Surely, this must be very important and relevant to any nation which truly aspires toward “a just and egalitarian society; a free and de-mocratic society,” knowing fully that acceptance of the law makes the law more binding and justifiable in society than just imposing it upon an

4 I have conducted two such studies in Nigeria. The first study was on the Kilba, Mumuye, and Jukun in Adamawa and Taraba States (Sa’ad 1988: 157-226). The second was on the Gwoza Hills Dwellers of Borno State (Sa’ad 1994: 93-103).


unwilling populace. And, for those who are more concerned about mone-tary value, this is still very important because acceptance of law reduces the cost of law enforcement.

One can go on and on demonstrating the importance and relevance of socio-legal research to the development needs of Nigeria enough to fill a full textbook. Clearly therefore, if a discipline like the sociology of law is regarded as less important and relevant than the natural and physical sciences or professions like law and accounting, which is far from being true, there must be underlying reasons for such misconceptions, espe-cially in Nigeria. We have either explicitly or implicitly sought to bring these out clearly above. Some of these underlying reasons are discussed more clearly in the next section of this paper, with a view to offering pos-sible solutions to the problems.

REASONS FOR THE LACK OF IMPACT OF SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH ON PUBLIC POLICY IN NIGERIA

As we have demonstrated clearly above, the sociology of law is very relevant to the public policy and development need of Nigeria. Its lack of real impact on the minds of Nigerians in general and on policy makers specifically as an important and relevant discipline to the developmental needs of Nigeria is predicated on extraneous factors that either directly or indirectly hinge on the myths of globalization we have explained above. Some of these extraneous factors are explained briefly in the following paragraphs.

Narrow Perception of Development

Like in any neo-colonial capitalist society, development in Nigeria is considered only in material rather than in social terms. Even in material terms, the dominant perception is limited to infrastructural development, such as the existence of good roads, high-rise buildings, the excess of vehicles plying dual carriage roads, lighted streets and apartments, etc. The technological and industrial aspects of material development, which are more fundamental, do not seem to be important. Most unfortunately, however, even the government places too much emphasis on infrastruc-tural development. The social (particularly the socio-legal) aspects of development are ignored almost completely. This is reflected in the fact that none of Nigeria’s national development plans since independence touched on socio-legal problems as an area requiring concrete attention.


Of course, over the years, the government seemed to realize the impor-tance of social development as a prerequisite to material development by putting in place a number of programs directed at dealing with social problems in the country such as poverty, illiteracy, gender inequality, etc.

Administrators’ Prejudice against Academics

Policy makers and administrators have very deep-seated prejudice against academics, particularly those academics whose policy recommendations generate few contracts for the administrators. Such academics (including socio-legal researches) are considered by most administrators and policy makers to be out of touch with the realities on ground. Thus, policy rec-ommendations based on well-researched knowledge from such academics are more often than not condemned as “theories,” “rhetoric,” or “inexpe-rience,” especially when a good number of these recommendations ap-pear to be against administrators’ vested interests. As rightly wondered by Odekunle (1981), “How do we expect judges, magistrates, and lawyer-officials in the ministries of justice to accept and implement a proposal which sees the legal profession for what it is and recommends the fram-ing of laws in simple language and the adjudication of most criminal of-fences through lay neighborhood and community juries?” (199).

Inadequate and Inappropriate Media for Transmitting Socio-Legal Knowledge

The major media of transmission of social science knowledge in the country are journals, research reports, conference/seminars/workshops attendance and/or proceedings, and classroom teaching. First of all, let us take journals. There is no single journal in the country devoted to pub-lishing articles on socio-legal issues alone. Such articles are therefore published in more generalized social science and/or interdisciplinary journals scattered around the country, thereby making access to such arti-cles very daunting to administrators in the relevant field. This problem would have been smaller if socio-legal scholars were to publish their findings and recommendations in newspapers and weekly or monthly news magazines. However, the criteria for promotion in academia re-quire one to publish in reputable and recognized academic journals rather than in dailies and news magazines.

Meanwhile, research reports are usually submitted to those that spon-sored the research. These sponsors are usually foreign research founda-tions. The government hardly sponsors research to help it formulate and execute viable policies. At best, they sponsor and/or organize confer-


ences, seminars, or workshops. What’s more, only very few administra-tors attend such workshops, seminars, and conferences, and they, as rightly noted by Odekunle (1981) appear to be more interested in “the estacodes5 of the trips and other allowances” than in the knowledge they will gain there and bring ideas back to their work and organizations (198).

With regard to classroom teaching as a media of transmission, crimi-nology is not taught in most universities and colleges in the country, much less sociology of law, which can be regarded as a branch of crimi-nology. Thus, our policy makers and administrators who went through universities and colleges either before they became administrators or through in-service training hardly got exposed to criminology in general and sociology of law in particular. Consequently, the chasm between socio-legal scholars and policy makers remains, perpetuating narrow-minded suspicion and mistrust between them.

Lack of an Organized Body of Recipients of Socio-Legal Knowledge

The only organized body in Nigeria for the government to receive socio-legal knowledge is the Law Reform Commission, whose activities are over-centralized and lack adequate publicity. What’s more, the personnel of the commission is dominated by legal professionals. The commission is therefore as good as non-existent. As a result, even if and when policy recommendations based on well-researched knowledge are made avail-able in research reports, journal articles, conferences, seminars, workshop papers, and guest lectures, they, as rightly noted by Odekunle (1981), “Either remain on paper, are short-lived in terms of actual practice, or their execution is left to the whims and caprices of individual officers and officials” (198).

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

We have attempted in this modest paper to debunk the various taken-for-granted positive arguments for globalization and to establish the rele-vance of socio-legal studies particularly that of the sociology of law to the development needs of Nigeria. We have also attempted to clearly bring out the major impediments to real impact of socio-legal studies on policy and development in Nigeria that have to be removed if we are to move forward. In the following concluding paragraphs, we attempt to

5 Estacodes are the allowances given to government officials for their travels either inside or outside the country.


suggest some of the things that can be done to remove these identified impediments to the potential of socio-legal studies for real impact on pol-icy and development in Nigeria.

The first major impediment identified in this paper is the govern-ment’s narrow conception of development, which is partly due to its mis-guided understanding of globalization. It is high time the government and lay people of Nigeria realized that a well-rounded development goes beyond infrastructural, technological, industrial, and economic develop-ment. In addition to these material aspects of development, social aspects (including socio-legal aspects) are very necessary for a well-rounded de-velopment. It is only proper, therefore, that social aspects of develop-ment be given equal treatment with technological and economic aspects in our national development plans. The onus of making this possible lies partly on the Social Science Academy of Nigeria, which was established primarily to ensure that social sciences have a much needed impact on public policy in Nigeria. The council should also press for the establish-ment of an Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, which would be responsible for promoting socio-legal aspects of development through teaching, research, and policy recommendations and/or plans for the gov-ernment on socio-legal matters.

The second impediment to real impact of the sociology of law on public policy is administrators and policy makers’ prejudices about social scientists in general and socio-legal scholars in particular. These preju-dices are born out of ignorance. The lawyers, officials, judges, magis-trates, police, warders, etc., usually condemn recommendations based even on research knowledge as theories, rhetoric, or inexperience, be-cause such recommendations appear to run counter to their interests, when in fact they do not. The Hausa people say, “Gyara kayan ba sauke mu raba ba ne,” meaning that if somebody observes that a load you are carrying on your head is not properly placed and cautions you to place it properly, he is not begging for a share of what you are carrying. He or she merely wishes you well. In other words, recommendations by socio-legal scholars are usually meant to improve the legal system in general and the efficiency, effectiveness, and welfare of those working in the sys-tem.

They are not meant to destroy the system. We think the best way to remove this prejudice is to reduce the communication gap between policy makers and administrators and socio-legal scholars and researchers by encouraging worthwhile, functional interactions among them. For exam-ple, the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice to be established should involve public servants in the relevant ministries and agencies as guest lecturers. The institute should be able to obtain funds from the


government, relevant ministries and agencies, and foreign research foun-dations for policy-oriented research, and it should involve public servants in the whole exercise of doing the research and making policy proposals and/or recommendations based on the research. On their part, the gov-ernment or relevant ministries and agencies should, as much as necessary, involve socio-legal scholars from the institute in the implementation of their socio-legal policies.

The third impediment to the real impact of socio-legal studies relates to media of transmission of socio-legal knowledge. We observed that these are limited in terms of both number and reach. In terms of number, they include only journal articles, research reports, conferences, work-shops, seminars, and classroom teaching. In other words, they exclude popular media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. With regards to journals, we observed that there is no single journal spe-cifically devoted to publishing socio-legal materials. In terms of reach, we observe that socio-legal scholars are communicating only with each other, rather than with administrators and policy makers, through their limited number of media of transmission identified above. The reasons are that while on one hand academic media are not popular with adminis-trators and policy makers, on the other hand the popular media (i.e., elec-tronic and print) are not attractive to most socio-legal scholars because publishing in print media or giving radio and TV talks do not count much toward career development in academia.

Four solutions suggest themselves here. First, there is a dire need for founding at least one viable socio-legal journal, namely “The Nigerian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice.”

Second, higher institutions of learning and research centers, particu-larly the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice (ICCJ) that is to be established, should begin to highlight contributions in electronic and print media among their criteria for promotion. Socio-legal scholars, on their part, should endeavor to publish simplified versions of their journal arti-cles in print media for a wider readership.

Third, there is a need for would-be lawyers, judges, and magistrates to compulsorily take some key criminological courses such as law and society; comparative legal systems; legal psychology; psychiatry, crime and delinquency; sociology of crime and delinquency; sociology of pun-ishment and corrections; etc., before they are finally called to the Bar. They can take these courses in universities that offer such courses or in the proposed Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice; something similar to internships for medical students. As for police and warders, they should be taught these courses in their colleges or training camps by


socio-legal scholars as guest or part-time lecturers if they cannot find qualified socio-legal scholars to employ on permanent basis.

Finally, attendance at two to three day conferences, workshop, and seminars by public servants should be replaced by longer training work-shops and seminars lasting between two and three months and involving tests at the end of the workshops or seminars and follow-up workshops and seminars for three weeks after about a year. In the follow-up work-shops, participants should be made to report back what knowledge and skills they have been able to take back to their workplaces and organiza-tions. This will make attendance at workshops and seminars by public servants less motivated by estacourts and other related allowances than by the value of the workshops or seminars themselves. The proposed ICCJ should serve as a center for such training workshops and seminars.

The fourth impediment to the real impact of socio-legal studies on public policy identified in this paper relates to the recipients of socio-legal knowledge. We observed that there is only one organized body of recipients, namely the Law Reform Commission, whose membership is composed predominantly people of the legal profession and whose activi-ties are over-centralized and not adequately publicized. There is there-fore the dire need for the commission 1) to establish branches in all the states of the federation, including Abuja, and to expand its personnel to include not only legal professionals but also sociologists, particularly criminologists, and trained representatives of non-governmental organiza-tions such as the CDHR, CLO, CSWS, FOMWAN, etc. The commis-sion’s concern should be to assert “studied, documented claims for changes in legislation and in state or parastatal structures” (Dias and Paul 1981: 376). In this regard, the commission should work hand-in-hand with the proposed ICCJ. 2) The commission should also, on its own, go to the people who have grievances in places and at times that provide frank, full, and uninhibited deliberation. It should then publicize the grievances and lobby for reform (Sa’ad and Mamman 1994: 11). In this regard, the commission should work hand-in-hand with pressure groups and organizations.

The fifth and final impediment to the real impact of socio-legal stud-ies on public policy as explained in this paper is the various myths about the benevolence of globalization and its processes. These myths are clearly identified in this paper, and the precautions required in dealing with them have also been pointed out in the relevant sections. Govern-ments, researchers, and lay people in developing countries such as Nige-ria need, therefore, to be alert to them.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ajomo, M.A. and L.E. Okagbue. Human Rights and the Administration of Justice. Lagos, Nigeria: Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 1990.

Aubert, V. Sociology of Law. London: Penguin, 1969. Coser, L.A. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and

Social Context. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1971. Dias, C.J. and J.C.N. Paul. “Lawyers, Legal Resources, and Alternative

Approaches to Development” In Lawyers in the Third World: Com-parative and Developmental Perspectives, Dias, C.J. et al, eds. Upp-sala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1981.

Federal Republic of Nigeria. National Policy on Education. Lagos, Ni-geria, 1977.

Gurvitch, G. Sociology of Law. London: Routledge, 1973. Podgorekki, A. Law and Society. London: Routledge, 1974. Sa’ad, A.M. “Justice in Borno State, Nigeria: An Assessment of Prison-

ers’ Experiences of the Criminal Justice Process.” Unpublished M.Phil. Thesis, University of Cambridge, UK, 1984.

-----. “In Search of Justice for Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Formal and Informal Justice Systems in Gongola State of Nigeria.” Unpub-lished D.Phil. Thesis, University of Sussex, UK, 1988.

-----. “The Courts and Protection of Human Rights: An Assessment of Plateau and Kano States.” Research Report submitted to the Social Science Council of Nigeria, Ibadan, 1991.

-----. “Law and Justice among Gwoza Hills Dwellers in Nigeria: An As-sessment of the Viability of Informal Justice in Democracy.” Re-search Report submitted to the Department of Public Administration, O.A.U., Ile-Ife and Centre for African Studies, Florida State Univer-sity, 1994.

----- and P.T. Mamman. “Empowering the Rural People in Nigeria: Overcoming Legal Constraints.” Paper presented at seminar on the Crisis of Rural Development in Nigeria, Department of Political Sci-ence and Administration, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, 1994.

Steward, V.L. The Changing Faces of Juvenile Justice. New York: New York University Press, 1978.

Usman, B. For the Liberation of Nigeria. London: New Beacon Books, 1979.

Feleke Tadele300

The Relevance of Sociological Studies and Training for Social Realities,Development Policy, and Practice

in EthiopiaFeleke Tadele, Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists, Ethiopia 1

This brief paper seeks to investigate the relevance of sociological training and research and its contribution to social realities, development policy, and practice in Ethiopia. In the context of the successive social transformation process and the increased number of sociology students in the country, can sociology play a constructive role in development policy and practice in Ethiopia? Given the protracted nature of social transfor-mations and poverty in Ethiopia, can sociological studies and training contribute to a better understanding of social changes and structures? The paper attempts to tackle these and other relevant questions. It begins with a brief historical overview of sociological training and research in Ethiopia. This is followed by the presentation of the relevance of socio-logical studies and training to development policy and practice in the country. Then the roles of the Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists (ESSSWA) in linking sociological training and research are presented. Finally, the challenges to effective sociologi-cal training and research are highlighted, and recommendations for future courses of action are suggested.

1 Feleke Tadele is the President of Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists (ESSSWA). The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and they do not necessarily reflect or represent the opin-ions of either ESSSWA or the Department of Sociology at Addis Ababa Univer-sity. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

The Relevance of Sociological Studies and Training for Social Realities, Development Policy, and Practice in Ethiopia

301

SOCIOLOGICAL TRAINING AND RESEARCH IN ETHIOPIA: A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Some studies indicate that sociology as a discipline began to be practiced at a tertiary level following the establishment of the then University Col-lege of Addis Ababa and the subsequent establishment of the Haile Selassie I University in the early 1950s (SOSA 2006; Admassie and Yn-tiso 2006). In the relatively long period of time since then, sociological training has reportedly passed through three major historical periods. The first phase, covering the period between 1951-52 and 1978-79, was marked by the stage when sociological courses were offered as part of the general education program of the University College of Addis Ababa. This culminated in the establishment of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology as one of the departments under the Faculty of Arts. An-other relevant development within the same period was the establishment of the School of Social Work in 1959, which initially offered a two year diploma program and was upgraded to a degree program in 1966. These educational units appeared to have some functional distinctions. While the sociological component of the training and research program was fo-cusing on social change and “modernization” associated with urbaniza-tion, industrialization, and socio-economic development, the anthropo-logical component was specializing in the study of cultures of different ethnic groups and nationalities.

The second phase of training in sociology has coincided with the re-organization of higher education in the country following the socialist revolution in 1974. The restructuring and revision of curriculum has re-sulted in the merger of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the School of Social Work and the emergence of the Department of Applied Sociology (APSO) under the then-created College of Social Sci-ences of Addis Ababa University. The curriculum, which followed the reorganization, went into effect in the 1978-79 academic year and contin-ued to offer undergraduate BA degree-level training in the combined fields of sociology, anthropology, and social work for about seven years. This period was also marked by ideological correctness and overloading of the discipline of sociology with Marxist-Leninist courses such as Marxian Sociology and Marxian Anthropology (Selassie 1986).

A subsequent revision of the undergraduate curriculum was under-taken in 1985-86, which, once again, resulted in the renaming of the de-partment as the Department of Sociology and Social Administration (SOSA). This revision has resulted in the dropping of redundant courses and introduction of new courses like History of Social Welfare, Social

Feleke Tadele302

Administration, and the Application of Quantitative Procedures in policy formulation (Selassie 1986).

The third phase of training in sociology was associated with the fur-ther renaming of the department as the Department of Sociology and So-cial Anthropology in 2002-3, which resulted in the offering of a balanced and unified training in sociology and anthropology at BA degree level and, to some extent, in social work at MA degree level. These arrange-ments are believed to have provided a solid foundation for specialized and independent sociological training at MA degree level since 2006.

The MA courses include sociological theories like the history of so-ciological theory in the classical period; discussion of the nature and structure of contemporary sociological theories; rigorous and comprehen-sive examination of the main theoretical perspectives in contemporary sociology, including the macro-structural perspectives of structural func-tionalism and conflict theory as well as the micro-interactionist perspec-tives of symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, exchange, and ra-tional choice theories; and more recent developments and debates in so-ciological theories, including the macro-micro and the structure-agency integration as well as the debate on modern versus post-modern social theories.

Some of the development-related courses include an overview of ur-ban and rural sociology as fields of study; social structure and social or-ganization in a comparative and historical perspective; the crisis of rural livelihood in the Third World; rural and agrarian transformation in a his-torical and comparative perspective; paths of capitalist agrarian transition; political economy of the modern global food and agricultural system; the rise of giant agro-business transnational corporations (TNCs); the para-dox of Third World food dependency; the paradox of food insecurity and famine in the midst of plenty; the food and agrarian crisis in Africa; the debate on sustainable food and agricultural systems; the environmental impact of the model of industrial agriculture, agro-biotechnology revolu-tion; rural development in theory and practice; rural development policy and planning in a comparative perspective; the adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations and technologies; and socio-cultural, institutional, and agro-ecological barriers and facilitators of development.

Social policy and planning course that cover theories and policy processes include social policy planning principles and values; policy development, implementation and analysis in socio-economic and cul-tural contexts; conceptual and analytical skills for understanding the process and organization of social policy and planning issues. There are also courses on contemporary social issues through an open and flexible seminar course. This course has created the opportunity for the students


303

to discuss and debate topical and important national and global social issues including gender, family, religion, social identity, crime, famine and food security, environment, and globalization (SOSA 2006).

The Department of SOSA at Addis Ababa University further reports that its sociology graduates have strong theoretical, methodological, and practical competencies in the socio-cultural dimensions of the process of urbanization, industrialization, and socio-economic development as well as their ramifications at the local, regional, national, and global levels. They are reportedly trained to follow the rich sociological tradition in developing and transmitting critical thinking and understanding of issues of social change and continuity, consensus and conflict, social action and structure, as well as individualism and social solidarity that underline the challenges of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth. They are offered courses that expose students to various sociological per-spectives and methods of investigation concerning the processes of urbanization, industrialization, and socio-economic development. The graduates are provided a broad range of sociological perspectives and skills in designing and implementing socially viable and sustainable de-velopment programs and projects. Through their thesis and term papers, graduates are encouraged to coordinate and lead quality, multidisciplinary, basic, and applied research projects that take into account and integrate social and cultural dimensions in the development process.

As the Department of SOSA (2006) states, “The Graduate Program in Sociology has begun to contribute towards the development of the disci-pline of sociology in the country by training high caliber sociologists in advanced sociological theory and research methods. It also responded to the research and teaching staff needs of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology as well as those of other higher learning and re-search institutions in the country. It has produced professional sociolo-gists capable of managing and administering social development pro-grams in the public, private, and civil-society sectors.”

Despite the continuous revision of the sociology curriculum, one can see uniformity in the patterns and the origins of the courses. They seem to have been dominated by the orientation towards “Western theories,” which present themselves as “universal” knowledge and global perspec-tives in influencing sociological thinking. Little effort was exerted on indigenous theorizing and introducing alternative perspectives through courses grounded in Ethiopian and African social thinking as well as “Southern” social theories and philosophical pursuits (Sumner 1998; Connell 2007).

These courses have had little opportunity to explore the social think-ing and social movement discourses that have emerged and developed in

Feleke Tadele304

the “South,” the Islamic world, or even in Ethiopia in both oral and writ-ten culture. For instance, Nereri’s African Socialism, Nelson Mandela’s social reconciliation, Kwame Nkrumah’ s model of social change and pan-Africanism, and Bantu Philosophy have significant relevance to the study of sociology, and they were not given due considerations in the courses which have so far been designed by the department. Similarly, the 19th and 20th century noblemen, intellectuals, and statesmen from Ethiopia; the literary works of Gebre Hiywet Baykedagn and Afework Gebre Yesus; the social significance and co-existence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Muslim League; and the role of significant numbers of Ethiopian social institutions which have continued to shape and re-shape social change process in Ethiopia were not covered well in the courses taught at the department. Furthermore, social movements and social philosophy from Asia like Sayyid Jamal ad-Din (Afghanistan) and Mahatma Gandi’s and Nehru’s thinking (India) could be included as al-ternative sources for sociological thinking and research in Ethiopia. Therefore, I argue that the Department of Sociology, Addis Ababa Uni-versity, has done little to theorize indigenous thinking and introduce al-ternative perspectives through sociological courses grounded with “Southern” social theories and philosophical pursuits.

THE RELEVANCE OF SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES AND TRAINING TO DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND PRACTICE

Since the 1990s, the growing recognition of the importance of participatory and sustainable development approaches in Ethiopia has created a positive, enabling environment for development practitioners (working for both government and non-governmental organizations) to work proactively with their target communities and community-based organizations. This, among other things, has created the demand for professional sociologists. Accord-ingly, the sociology department has enjoyed a massive increase in student enrollment at Addis Ababa University, and a growing number of students are employed in development policy and practice in government and non-government offices. Some assessments (Tadele and Admassu 1996) indi-cate that there has been a growing demand since the 1990s for the engage-ment of sociologists in development practice. This has coincided with the growing number of employment opportunities, notably in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, and the integration of participa-tory development approaches into technical government ministries such as the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Works and Urban De-velopment, which used to be less interested in social science graduates.


305

Based on the analysis of organizational assessment data of an um-brella organization for the NGO sector in Ethiopia, Tadele (2006) re-ported that sociologists comprise 38% of the top six professional labor forces in the NGO/CSO sector that promote bottom-up development ap-proach. They are followed by accountants (34%), health workers (13%), economists (7%), agronomists (6%), and engineers (3%). These sociolo-gists are assigned to work in occupational areas that include community development / social sector development, community-based project man-agement, gender and development, social policy and advocacy, as well as social survey and diagnosis work.

Interviews with sociology professionals in the above areas of work reveal that they have played significant roles in conducting community diagnosis and social surveys whose findings have been used to design socially appropriate and economically cost-effective programs for poor urban and rural people. They have served as program officers or program managers of development initiatives that were intended to facilitate social change with the most vulnerable and socially deprived groups. With emerging contemporary development issues and current development work (such as HIV/AIDS, climate change, rural livelihoods, social capital, and local economic development), most of the interviewed sociology graduates indicated that some of the social theory courses that they have taken during their stay in the university were less relevant or too obsolete to be applied in their development work. They expect the Department of Sociology or ESSSWA to create the platform for refreshing their ideas and perspectives on contemporary social issues, development policies, and practices.

THE ROLE OF THE ETHIOPIAN SOCIETY OF SOCIOLOGISTS, SOCIAL WORKERS, AND

ANTHROPOLOGISTS (ESSSWA) IN LINKING SOCIOLOGICAL TRAINING AND RESEARCH

The Ethiopian Society of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology (ESSSWA) was founded in June 1996 as a professional society of soci-ologists, social workers, and anthropologists. It currently has over 400 members, who are working in various organizations in the NGO sector, higher learning institutions and universities, government offices, UN or-ganizations, and grass roots civil society organizations and communities.

The primary goal of ESSSWA, among other things, is to promote professional competence and ethics in the discipline of sociology and the widespread application of the discipline in poverty reduction and devel-

Feleke Tadele306

opment. It also strives to develop members’ professional competence and enhance their effective contribution to the country’s development in their fields of specialization. It assists Government, NGOs and the private sec-tor and communities in translating the various development policies and strategies into action. ESSSWA also advocates for the creation of a more enabling environment and the development of a vibrant civil society in the country, and it actively engages in policy analysis, research, and ad-vocacy with a view to nurturing pluralism and offering alternative options.

A closer look into the operational and policy environment in which ESSSWA is currently functioning reveals some considerable accom-plishments. It has conducted annual conferences, which are believed to have created opportunities for the exchange of ideas and experiences among members. It has promoted empirical and policy oriented research and debates in pertinent social development issues, particularly child de-velopment. In this regard, the national professional association has initi-ated capacity-building seminars and short-term training workshops to strengthen the capacities of its members, particularly in relation to chil-dren development and social policy issues. It has now begun to establish and maintain links with continental and international professional asso-ciations like the International Sociological Association.

Nevertheless, the national professional association has encountered gaps and challenges in its endeavors. There is the challenging task of making a meaningful contribution to the ongoing global and national fight against poverty. A critical gap relevant to the association’s mission and role in this regard is perhaps its ineffectiveness in working towards the creation of a policy and institutional environment that could help ad-dress the social dimensions of poverty such as social exclusion, neglect, and abuse, as well as rising social evils and problems such as the disinte-gration of the family, beggary, prostitution, homelessness, streetism, crime, and substance abuse.

This professional association is also faced with the daunting chal-lenge of bridging the current gap between social education and social practice in the country. Discussions held in this regard with members of ESSSWA, including both development practitioners and academics, indi-cated the existence of a visible gap between the system of social educa-tion and the system of social practice in the country. The former is said to be, by and large, theory-driven and in most cases outdated. This calls forth the need to make interventions that aim at bridging the gaps, par-ticularly in the area of enabling the system of education to catch up with the reality on the ground and to be as effective as possible in solving problem on the ground.


307

CHALLENGES OF SOCIOLOGICAL TRAINING AND STUDIES IN ETHIOPIA

As noted in section three of this paper, the professional study of Ethio-pian societies had been dominated by foreigners such as Bahrey in the 16th century, Abu Rumi in the late 18th century, and Liq in the early 19th

century. However, in the 20th century there were some intellectual con-tributions by a few Ethiopian scholars such as Gebre Hiywet Baykedagn and Afework Gebre Yesus, who studied issues that have significant social importance. Despite the continuous revision of the curriculum of sociol-ogy, one can see uniformity in the patterns and origins of the courses. They seem to have been dominated by an orientation toward “Western theories,” which present themselves as “universal” knowledge and global perspectives in influencing sociological thinking. Little effort was ex-erted on theorizing indigenous thinking and introducing alternative per-spectives through courses grounded with Ethiopian and African social thinking, as well as “Southern” social theories and philosophical pursuits (Sumner 1998; Connell 2007; Pankhurst 1996). Sumner’s (1998) recent book on African Philosophy was also a significant contribution to theo-rizing African social thinking and philosophy. Instead of building on these contributions, the sociological courses at the Department of SOSA, Addis Ababa University, trace little back to social knowledge grounded in indigenous perspectives. This is further evidenced by the limited ca-pacity of the Department of Sociology to promote academic research and generating a theoretically-embedded, policy-relevant, and cumulative body of knowledge.

Another institutional factor that has challenged the quality of the study of sociology is the high student to instructor ratio (currently over 90), which is almost four times what it used to be two decades ago. While it is encouraging to note the ever-increasing demand for sociologi-cal courses by students, the university cannot cope with the increasing demand for teachers and reading materials necessary to train such num-bers of sociology students. These factors, along with the massive admis-sion of students, have continued to threaten the quality of training and research activities in sociology (Admassie and Yntiso 2006).

Furthermore, the absence of financial and budgetary resources, as well as the lack of incentives for researchers, has negatively affected the quality of teaching and research in sociology. There are little time, re-sources, and publishing opportunities available to university teachers, who are overloaded with teaching, administrative work, and a shortage of books and reference materials (Selassie and Admassie 1989).

Feleke Tadele308

The Department of Sociology does not seem to have proactive rela-tions, systematic engagement, or continuous linkage and collaboration with relevant governmental, non-governmental, and international partners. The scholarly relations and collaborations with similar sociology pro-grams, particularly with other African research institutions, seem to be limited.

The policy-making environment in the country seems to have little appreciation for using expert views and sociological research findings for key decision-making purposes.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

After a journey of almost half a century, sociological training and re-search at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia is in a better state, as mani-fested through the design of curricula at the BA and MA levels, the avail-ability of increased number of training and research staff, as well as the supply of books and other resource materials.

The department’s sociological training has produced professionals who are serving their nation in various capacities. The training has pro-vided vitally needed human resources for various governmental institu-tions as well as non-governmental organizations. The post-graduate pro-gram in sociology has strengthened the local capacity for social research and publication and provided the basis for sustainable teaching staff in sociology.

In spite of these positive contributions, the training and research ef-forts in sociology have remained challenged by budget constraints, the absence of academic research, high teacher-student ratios, and lack of research and training incentives for university teachers.

Above all, few attempts were made during the revision of the sociol-ogy curriculum to construct or draw “epistemological schemes” that are deeply rooted in and informed by social and academic thoughts from Ethiopia, Africa, and Asia.

As Ethiopia now enters into its new millennium, it is important for the Department of Sociology and other social science scholars to engage in special projects that help them to revisit the relevance of sociological training and research in light of constructing an epistemological scheme and knowledge foundation that would help Ethiopia create an independ-ent sociological view of itself and its social horizon.

The end.


309

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Admassie, Yeraswork and Gebre Yntiso. “African Sociological Review 10.1.2006.” CODESRIA. Dakar, Senegal, 2006.

Connell, Raewyn. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Australia: Southwood Press, 2007.

ESSSWA. Strategic Plan Document: 2006-2008. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2006.

Pankhurst, Alula, ed. Bulletin of the Founding Workshop of ESSSWA, Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropolo-gists. Addis Ababa, 1996.

Pankhurst, Alula, ed. Proceedings of the Second Conference of ESSSWA, Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropolo-gists. Addis Ababa, 1999.

Selassie, Seyoum G. and Yeraswork Admassie. “The Teaching of An-thropology and Sociology in Ethiopia.” In Seyoum G. Selassie and ei-Wathig Kameir, eds. Teaching and Research in Anthropology and Sociology in Eastern African Universities. New Delhi: OSSREA, 1989.

SOSA. Curriculum of the Bachelor of Arts Program in Sociology and Social Administration. Unpublished Document. 2003.

-----. Revised Curriculum of the Master of Arts Program in Sociology.Unpublished Document. 2006.

Sumner, Claude. African Philosophy. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa Uni-versity Press, 1998.

Tadele, Feleke. “Diary of A Misunderstood Sociologist.” In Pankhurst, Alula, ed. Bulletin of the Founding Workshop of ESSSWA, the Ethio-pian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists.Addis Ababa, 1996.

----- and Anania Admassu. “The Contributions of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists.” In Pankhurst Alula, ed. Proceed-ings of the Second Conference of ESSSWA, Ethiopian Society of So-ciologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists. Addis Ababa, 1999.

Challenges for a Global Sociology310

Challenges for a Global Sociology 311

CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE: INTRODUCTION, LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA

Preface

Acknowledgements from the Local Organizers PART I: INTRODUCTION

1.Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley, USA

2.Challenges Facing Human Society in the 21st Century Yuan-Tseh Lee, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

3.Sociology in Times of CrisisMichel Wieviorka, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

4.The Imperative and the Challenge of Diversity: Reconstructing Sociological Traditions in an Unequal WorldSujata Patel, University of Hyderabad, India

PART II: LATIN AMERICA5.Revitalizing the Sociological View in Latin America

Marcos Supervielle, Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Uruguay6.On the Internationalization of Brazilian Academic Sociology

Tom Dwyer, State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil7.The Dialogue between Criminology and the South’s Sociology of Violence: The

Policing Crisis and AlternativesJosé-Vicente Tavares dos Santos, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

8.Challenges for and Practices in the Sociology of Work in Mexico: Between Global Paradigms and Local Development ParadigmsJorge Carrillo, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), Mexico

9.Publishing Sociological Journals in Argentina: Problems and ChallengesAlicia Itatí Palermo, Council of Professional Sociologists, Argentina

10.Sociology, Technology Parks, Applied Research, and International AccreditationNapoleon Velástegui Bahamonde, University of Guayaquil, Ecuador

PART III: AFRICA11.Practical Responses to the Challenges for Sociology in the Face of Global Inequality

Layi Erinosho, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria


12.Social Sciences in Egypt: The Swinging Pendulum between Commodification and CriminalizationMona Abaza, American University in Cairo, Egypt

13.South African Sociology: Current Challenges and Future Implications: A Review and Some Empirical Evidence from the 2007 National Survey of Sociology DepartmentsMokong Simon Mapadimeng, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

14.Resistance to Rating: Resource Allocation, Academic Freedom and CitizenshipTina Uys, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

15.Poverty Fighters in Academia: The Subversion of the Notion of Socially Engaged Science in the Mozambican Higher Education SystemPatrício Langa, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique andUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa

16.Challenges of Doing Sociology in a Globalizing South: Between Indigenization and Emergent StructuresIfeanyi P. Onyeonoru, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

17.Globalization, Sociological Research, and Public Policy in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Relevance of Socio-Legal Research to the Development Needs of NigeriaAbdul-Mumin Sa’ad, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria

18.The Relevance of Sociological Studies and Training for Social Realities, Development Policy, and Practice in EthiopiaFeleke Tadele, Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers, and Anthropologists, Ethiopia

VOLUME TWO: ASIA

PART IV: WESTERN ASIA19.Donor Community and the Market of Research Production: Framing and De-Framing

the Social SciencesSari Hanafi, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

20.A Critical Review of the Iranian Attempts at the Development of Alternative SociologiesMohammad Amin Ghaneirad, National Research Institute for Science Policy, Iran

21.Israeli Sociology's Position in International Sociology and the Challenges It FacesSammy Smooha, University of Haifa, Israel

22.The Center-Periphery Relationship between Turkish and Western SociologiesAytül Kasapoğlu, Nilay Çabuk Kaya, and Mehmet Ecevit, Sociological Association of Turkey


23.Challenges for Sociology in AzerbaijanAbulfaz D. Suleymanov, Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Law, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Azerbaijan

24.Modernization of Sociology in Post-Soviet ArmeniaGevorg Poghosyan, Armenian Sociological Association

25.Challenges to Sociology in the Gulf States: A Case Study of KuwaitFahad Al-Naser, Kuwait University, Kuwait

PART V: ASIA-PACIFIC26.The Definition and Types of Alternative Discourses

Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore, Singapore27.Indigenization, Institutionalization, and Internationalization: Tracing the Paths of the

Development of Sociology in TaiwanMau-kuei Chang, Ying-hwa Chang, Chih-chieh Tang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

28.Are Asian Sociologies Possible? Universalism versus ParticularismYoshimichi Sato, Tohoku University, Japan

29.Doing Sociology in Native Languages in a Globalizing World: Thinking about its Significance and Difficulty in JapanTakashi Machimura, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

30.Antipodes: Australian Sociology’s Struggles with Place, Memory, and NeoliberalismRaewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia

31.New Zealand Sociology in a Neoliberal Era: Strands of Political Economy in New Zealand Social ScienceCharles Crothers, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

32.Contesting Mainstream Sociology and Developing Alternative Public Sociologies in IndonesiaRochman Achwan and Iwan G. Sujatmiko, University of Indonesia, Jakarta

33.Policy-Driven Research, Audit Culture, and Power: Transforming Sociological Practices in the PhilippinesEmma Porio, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines

34.Vietnamese Farmers Face the WTO: Implications for SociologyVu Hao Quang, Institute of Public Opinion Research, Vietnam

35.Sociological Enterprise at the Periphery: The Case of Sri LankaSiri Hettige, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

36.Indian Sociology Faces the WorldIshwar Modi, India International Institute of Social Sciences, Jaipur, India

37.Fifty Years of Bangladesh Sociology: Towards a “Hybrid Sociology”?Shaikh Mohammad Kais, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh


VOLUME THREE: EUROPE AND CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

PART VI: WESTERN, NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE38.Diversity or Fragmentation in Europe’s Sociology: Lessons to be Learned?

Christian Fleck, University of Graz, Austria 39.The Relevance of Relevance: Social Sciences and Social Practice in Post-Positivistic

SocietyPekka Sulkunen, University of Helsinki, Finland

40.Mode 2 Sociologies in Denmark? From Crisis to Stabilization in Times of Pressures for Policy-Relevant Research, 1980s-2000sKristoffer Kropp and Anders Blok, Copenhagen University, Denmark

41.The Increasingly Dominated Fraction of the Dominant Class: French Sociologists Facing the Challenges of Precarity and Middle Class DestabilizationLouis Chauvel, Sciences Po, Paris, France

42.The International Benchmarking of Sociology: The Case of the UK John Holmwood, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

43.Our (Scientific) Community and Our Society: Rethinking the Role and Dilemmas of National Sociological Associations:The Portuguese CaseLuis Baptista and Paulo Machado, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

44.Facing a Globalizing World: Some Suggestions for a Global SociologyMarina Subirats, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain

PART VII: EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE45.Sociology in Eastern Europe or East European Sociology: Historical and Present

Janusz Mucha, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland46.Internal and External Models in Hungarian Sociology

Dénes Némedi, Eötvös University, Hungary47.Value-Free Sociology: Withstanding Political Pressures

Georgy Fotev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria48.The Role of Theory: Sociology's Response to the Bologna Educational Reform in

CroatiaInga Tomić-Koludrović, University of Zadar, Croatia

49.Changes and Problems of Russian SociologyValery A. Mansurov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

50.Challenges to Teaching Sociology in Slovakia Posed by Entry into the European UnionRastislav Bednárik, Institute of Labour and Family Research, Slovak Republic


PART VIII: CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 51.Practical Responses to the Challenges for Sociology in the Face of Global Inequality?

Jan Marie Fritz, University of Cincinnati, USA 52.Reflections on the ISA National Associations Conference on Sociology in an Unequal

World Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, University of Haifa, Israel

53.Facing an Unequal Sociology: Comments and SuggestionsArturo Rodriguez Morato, Universidad de Barcelona, Spain