Open the Social Sciences by Immanuel WallersteinReview by: Risto HeiskalaActa Sociologica, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1998), pp. 188-191Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4201079 .

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188 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 1998 VOLUME 41

The relevance of this book can hardly be

overestimated, insofar as it touches upon some of the most urgent issues regarding social bonds and social solidarity in modern societies. It deals with the issues of integration and differentiation from new angles, which are

highly important in the context of a class of citizens withdrawing themselves from social contact. Maybe they realize their dreams of a

coherent civil society, but at the same time they are contributing to the severe differentiation,

fragmentation and process of exclusion in

society as a whole. In their emphasis that the real issue of the book is why so many people feel that they need the gates, and what they are

doing to society, the authors approach a

problem of great importance in current sociol-

ogy: what do gated communities imply for the

concept of citizenship? The answer is devastat-

ing to the ideals of inclusive communities and collective citizenship.

One part of the book is dedicated to

presenting the alternative. How better to

respond to the understandable fear of crime and violence? The focus on communities is

obviously not merely an American phenom- enon; the situation comes very close to Scandinavian experiences with efforts to vita-

lize local communities. Although Scandinavian

neighbourhoods are not surrounded with

guarded entrances and video-monitored con-

trol, we do share some experiences. The case of Hidden Hills in Southern California does have its similarities in the decentralized context of

the Scandinavian welfare state. In Denmark, there are similarities when wealthy beach cities

attempt to withdraw from broader societal

responsibilities, according to the interests of

their inhabitants. As stressed in Fortress America,

Democracy is based in part on mutuality and collective citizenship, with the structure of com- munities tying individuals together across their dissimilarities to form a city, a region, and a nation. We now ask, can a nation survive and flourish without inclusive communities to under-

gird the practice of citizenship? Can the nation have any wholeness when communities are

fragmented and pitted against each other socially, politically, and economically? (p. 176)

Lars Hulgdrd University of Roskilde, Denmark and

Aalborg University, Denmark

Immanuel Wallerstein et al:

Open the Social Sciences.

Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the

Restructuring of the Social Sciences.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996

Immanuel Wallerstein has taken on the task

of reforming the social sciences. This was

already evident in his Unthinking Social Science

(Polity Press, 1991), but while the speaker in that book was one scholar, what we are dealing with in the case of Open the Social Sciences is the

joint declaration of an international group of ten eminent scholars; a commission. This

commission, gathered by Wallerstein, president of the International Sociological Association, held three sessions in 1993-95 in which it discussed the emergence, maturity and current

pressures for transformation of the social sciences. Six members came from the social

sciences, two from the natural sciences, and two from the humanities. In geographical terms, two members came from the USA, four from Europe (France, Germany, the UK, Bel-

gium), two from Africa (Kenya, Zaire), one from Asia (Japan) and one from Latin America

(Haiti). There was one woman and nine men.

Judging by the text of the report, they had

inspiring, cosy and not too quarrelsome meet-

ings, the more so because the Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal kindly paid the

expenses. The commission undertakes to tell us how

the social sciences came into being and how we should now transform these sciences. It exe-

cutes this task in three phases. The first phase outlines how exactly the social sciences

emerged in the period approximately from the

middle of the 19th century to the end of World War II. What emerged was a tripartite arrange- ment of disciplines on two hierarchically ordered levels. The first tripartition was the division into the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. The second took

place within the social sciences, dividing them into the core disciplines of economics, political science and sociology. Outside the fields of the three 'nomothetic social sciences' were the

'idiographic sciences', like history and anthro-

pology. The entire construction emerged at a

time when Europe had conquered the whole

world and was, therefore, colonialistically structured to play down the voices of people from other continents.

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Book Reviews 189

The second phase describes what happened after World War II when all this changed. There was unprecedented economic growth and

enlargement of the university system, both in terms of expansion in the USA and Europe and its emergence in most other places. This

implied, among other things, that the social sciences became 'big business' and that they specialized themselves internally. However, voices from other continents and from

repressed groups in the West started to broaden the scope of discussion in the social sciences. At the same time, new disciplines and interdisci-

plinary research programmes such as area

studies, women's studies, cultural studies, etc.

emerged. This led to an increase in those social

phenomena that could legitimately be studied in the social sciences. However, it did not

fundamentally change the division of labour between economics, political science and sociol-

ogy, which is one of the main obstacles to the

emergence of a more adequate social science. This leads us to the third phase.

The third phase involves determining what is wrong with the social sciences and what can be done to correct the situation. To begin with, the social sciences are facing serious threats of

budgetary cuts in the USA, Europe and possibly all over the world (the report is not always very specific in pointing out in what parts of the world certain processes are taking place and

identifying their scope. In fact, all empirical data and even references to literature are

missing.) There are unsympathetic university administrators who try to target cuts by counting patents, donations from external sources, etc. with the intention of reducing the definition of science to R&D, while failing to see that the impact of the social sciences is

largely realized in other ways. At the same time, there is competition from more practice- oriented 'new quasi-disciplines and/or "pro- grams'" (p. 71). There is a whole spectrum of these quasi-disciplines and interdisciplinary programs. Thus we are at a turning point: '[T]he process of establishing the disciplines [i.e. the core social sciences] between, say, 1850 and 1945 was one of reducing the number of

categories into which social science might be divided into a limited list . . . largely adopted world-wide'; after that, however, the process 'has begun to move in the other direction' (p. 72). This movement has been evident since World War II, but today we are in a situation where the social sciences may well lose the battle and fade away if they do not prove their

relevance. This is why the Gulbenkian Commis- sion was needed.

But it is not just a matter of money There are also more substantial reasons to 'open the social sciences', as the title of the report goes. Traditional definitions of the relationship between researcher and research are not

satisfactory, as they do not sufficiently acknowl-

edge that 'no scientist can ever be extracted from his/her physical and social context' (p. 75). This has implications for the definition of

objectivity and our understanding of the

relationship between the universal and the

particular. Objectivity is defined from a per- spective where social science is seen as an

attempt 'to develop systematic, secular knowl-

edge about reality that is somehow validated

empirically' (p. 90); at the same time, this

attempt is understood as situated. This empha- sis on contextuality also makes understanding of all universalism historically contingent, and

justifies the idea that all propositions claiming to be universal and objective must be con-

tinuously tested and negotiated in an open (and at least potentially global) discourse.

It should be understood that time and

space are not factors external to the social

process, but social constructions the role of which should be analysed as part of the study of

society. In a similar vein, the artificial boundary between humans and nature must be broken down, and human beings must be seen as part of nature.

These claims essentially say that all human

beings are offshoots of nature and that all human beings should be given equal opportu- nity to join the debate. Remembering the colonialist origins of the social sciences, these are radical claims. Yet there is an even more radical claim which strikes at the very core of the social sciences as an analytical field. This claim is that we should 'overcome the artificial

separations erected in the 19 th century between supposedly autonomous realms of the

political, the economic, and the social (or the cultural or the sociocultural)' (p. 76). In other words, the disciplinary separation of the 'nomothetic social sciences' from history and

anthropology, i.e. from time and place, should be overcome. In addition, the artificial bound- aries between economics, political science and

sociology should be erased, as Wallerstein puts it in his Unthinking Social Science. Open the Social Sciences puts it somewhat more mildly, but the essence is the same: the disciplinary canon of the social sciences needs to be reorganized to

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190 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 1998 VOLUME 41

make adequate analyses of social phenomena possible.

Another radical claim is that the three nomothetic social sciences have been based on the idea that 'the state is the natural, or even the most important, boundary of social action'

(p. 85). This has been so especially in the period from 1850-1950. But 'the times they are a-

changing', as Bob Dylan says. The power of the state and people's trust in it as a privileged executor of all social reforms is diminishing. We are now entering the new world of trans-state

phenomena where the internationalism of

comparative studies, with states as the unit to be compared, is not enough. This has been evident since the late 1960s in attempts in such areas as international political economy, the

study of world cities, a global institutional

economics, world history, civilization studies, renewed concern for 'regions', and - not very surprisingly - world system analysis. Following the lead of these and similar attempts to 'think

globally and act locally' without the straitjacket of the state in the social sciences does not, however, mean denying the central role of the state as a key institution in the modern world. But it does mean acknowledging that 'the state- centrism of traditional social science analyses was a theoretical simplification that involved the presumption of homogenous and equiva- lent spaces, each of which formed an autono- mous system operating largely through parallel processes' (pp. 84-85). As some people in cultural studies have recently noticed, in addition to the more historical attempts men- tioned above, 'the limits of this kind of

simplification ought to be even more evident in the study of complex historical social systems than they were in the study of atomic and molecular phenomena, in which such methods are now considered a thing of the past' (p. 85).

Here it is in a nutshell. What will have to

stop in the social sciences is colonialism; the belief in objectivity and universalism without contextual bonds; abstract interpretation of

people's social life as something taking place as separated from time, space and nature; the division of labour between economics, political science and sociology; and the state-centred

way of interpreting reality. Specifying how this will be realized is a task the commission is

unwilling to accept. Instead, it wants to start an

open discussion where everybody is listened to and in which, even if this is not spelt out

explicitly in the report, the ISA XIV World

Congress of Sociology in Montreal at luly 1998

is, without doubt, intended to be a landmark. For such a discussion, the commission outlines four 'tentative proposals' (p. 95), all to do with institutional arrangements meant to ensure that the social sciences will be 'opened': first, the expansion of institutions which bring together scholars working on specific urgent themes in interdisciplinary exchange pro- grammes for about one year's work. Secondly, establishing interdisciplinary research pro- grams which have funding for a limited period of time (five years, for example). Thirdly, the

compulsory joint appointment of professors to two departments with the additional rules that all professors should have full rights in both

departments, and each department must have at least 2 5 per cent members who do not have a

degree in that discipline. Fourthly, joint work for graduate students in two departments.

As the report is not meant to serve as a code of law, but a basis for discussion, is there

anything that can be said about it? It seems that three things at least can be noted. First, the concrete proposals, tentative as they may be, are frightening. It is certainly correct that

interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary debates

among economists, sociologists and political scientists, not to mention several other dis-

ciplines, are needed, and there is a good chance that some of those debates might even turn out to be fruitful. Jointly appointed professors at some departments in some universities might well serve this task (as they actually do at the

present time). The compulsory joint appoint- ment, however, is a different thing. Institution-

ally enforced joint appointment without a cultural basis would ruin the structure of

every department and produce chaos.

Secondly, the commission seems to believe in inclusion rather than exclusion as a source of power in science. It invites everybody to join the debate in its effort to 'open the social sciences'. As noted by Michael Hechter, how-

ever, there is an alternative view that 'the social sciences suffer from too much diversity, not too

little', and 'a new social science must be built on the foundation of consensus in theory and method' (Hechter in Times Literary Supplement, January 24, 1997). This, of course, is a much more traditional and believable view of what the scientific work is all about. The credo of Wallerstein et al. sounds good as a political programme for any ordinary republic (and a

good normative standard for the construction of the world society as well), but it is doubtful whether we have any real use for it in the

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Book Reviews 191

republic of the learned, where having a credo of

'anything goes' is not exactly the best way to

achieve popularity. Thirdly, we may recall the danger against

which the commission fights, the emergence of

'new quasi-disciplines' and 'interdisciplinary'

'programs' (p. 71), which compete for funding with the 'real' social sciences. When we now

look at the commission's strategy in this

struggle, it must be said that one rarely finds

a more polite enemy than the quasi-disciplines and programs have in the commission. All their

concrete proposals would, if realized, increase

the emergence of new quasi-disciplines and

interdisciplinary programs, and their more

general attitude and credo is beautifully in

line with that: 'open the social sciences'. One

might say that it becomes impossible to tell the

disease from the cure! But of course it is too early to judge.

Whether this report will be one of those parallel actions so sarcastically described by Robert

Musil in his Der Mann ohne Eigenshaften (Rohwolt, 1956) or, against the odds, the

start of the emergence of a new architectonics for the social sciences, is something that

remains to be seen in the future.

Risto Heiskala

University of Helsinki, Finland

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