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Interaction and Confrontation bet.
Area Studies and Disciplines (1) –
Blurring the Disciplinary Boundaries
Liu Yao Zong (I34033)
Arifah Raja Falency (I34014)
Area studies and the discipline: A
useful controversy?
• Robert H Bates, Harvard University
• Argument with a caricature (or more simply
an irony) on the present divide of academic
criteria
• area specialists are multidisciplinary
history, literature, and languages
• critical view on social scientists
Area specialists
-researchers from many disciplines,
-devoted their scholarly life to work on the region or nation.
BUT
Social scientists
-Rather than seeking a deeper understanding of a particular
area--strive to develop general theories and to identify, and test,
hypotheses derived from them.
-attack with confidence political data extracted from any region
of the world.
-electoral data from South Africa in the same manner as that
from the United States --political regularities are area-bound.
-They do not seek to master the literature on a region but rather
to master the literature of a discipline.
-Even these problematic ideas are favoured in the graduate
studies.
• The shift from area specialization to "social science“
• The balance of power within the academy
• focus turn to seminars, administrative support,
fellowships, research and travel independent of the
department,
• scholars who can apply disciplinary criteria, rather
than area knowledge, in evaluating and rewarding
professional contributions.
• Also changes happened between generations, young
scholars and old scholars due to this point of view.
• government and the cold war
reductions in spending for higher education
and lower priority on area training.
American politics –
-Students of American politics viewed themselves as social scientists;
-devoid of variation in political system on which they concentrated,
-More sophisticated increasingly realized that their hard won, cumulative,
scientific knowledge about politics in the United States was itself areabound.
-Therefore the demand for comparative political research
Students of comparative politics, they have come
increasingly to share intellectual orientations
• synthesis -----wasn't only between area studies and
disciplines
but between context-specific knowledge
and formal theory.
• area studies culture distinctioninstitutions (tradition)
game theory help investigate institutions.
• history and beliefs ---shape one's decision----political
behaviors.
• both observations of comparing facts and the local
knowledge of others.
• area studies and comparative politics are slightly fused,
subfield studies are also important.
<Area studies and social science>
Introduction: the Area studies
controversy
Introduction: the Area studies controversy
• <Area studies and social science. >
-regional specialists and discipline-oriented social scientists
international, comparative, and area studies.
-Political science clash over value of Area studies.
-area specialist are hostile to social science theory
• Critique about area studies
-lack of rigor
-favours description over explanation
-no concentration to real world situation
-consider behaviour determined by cultural influence, and they place
the people they study outside of science.
Area studies----product of cold war
-process of global integration is taking place
- trend-dominant languages and cultures will eventually eliminate.
- western scholars no longer acquire detailed information about
history, culture or languages of most developing countries-reason
• history, culture or languages these ---foundation of Area
studies.
• Claims---area specialists focus only on detailed descriptions of
individual nations and regions / ignores the scientific factors.
• area studies is still the essential for development of social
science.
-culture rational choice theory.
• culture is the master concept of all social science.
• Research both on the cultural and the governmental aspects
are more helpful for further studies.
AREA STUDIES versus DISCIPLINES
TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY, SYSTEMIC
COUNTRY APPROACH
BY Hans KUIJPER
The Problem
Area experts have to deal with so many
problems of/in the country of their choice,
inasmuch as a through grasp of all these issues
is impossible.
The Solution
 Scientific Cooperation
• If one can not reasonably assume somebody to be so grounded in the
sciences as to be able to make sound assertions about any subject
regarding his/her home country, it is downright absurd to suppose that
person to be scientifically qualified to deliver a lecture on whatever
subject matter concerning a foreign country.
• In order to get a big and articulate country-picture (see the wood and
trees, that is), bridges between faculties and departments have to be
build, a requirement the chancellor of no university is in the position
disregard.
Scientific Cooperation
 The Meaning of Cooperation
• Interdisciplinary is a noun describing the interaction among two
or more different disciplines. This interaction may range from
simple communication of ideas to mutual integration of
organizing concepts, methodology, procedures, terminology,
data and organization of research and education in a fairly large
field. An interdisciplinary group consist of persons differently
trained, and organized into a common effort on a common
problem with continuous communication among the
participants.
• Scientific collaboration is not achieved until the individual
involved develop a new way of thinking.
 The necessities of cooperation
• Science have a difficult problem that needs partnership and
pooling of disciplinary knowledge and analytical skills.
 The possibility of cooperation
• The cooperation between disciplines is possible by providing
the readiness to engage in a respectful and learningful
dialogue, provided ‘the willingness to see the other fellow’s
point of view.
• It should be possible to develop and maintain a common
ontology
that permits differently trained scientists to
cooperate.
Contributions
 Contributions of systems theory
• System = whole
• Only by networking many one-sided views the weakness of
specialization could be overcome. Holistic thinking was the device
for connecting narrow professional capacities.
 Contributions of cybernetics
• Cybernetics is the science of steering, which is a ‘struggle for
orders’. Closely related to control -, information -, and
communication theory.
• In order to foster interdisciplinary cooperation, a unifying,
metadisciplinary basis is required.
Contributions
 Contributions of complexity theory
• ‘Complex’ should not be taken to mean ‘complicated’, but
‘independent’ is to be set over against ‘complex’.
• In order to have complex system, you need at least two entities,
entangled, or embracing each other, in such a way that they are
inextricably intertwined.
 Contributions of technology
Blurring the Disciplinary
Boundaries: Area Studies in United
States
RICHARD D. LAMBERT
Recognizing the National Needed for Specialist
 The need to deal successfully with many countries whose names
most Americans had barely heard of, that created a need for a
larger cadre of area specialist with a greater knowledge of the
contemporary societies of the world.
A Basic Organizational Decision
 To place these programs on campuses and to staff them with
civilian professors, even though the people being trained in these
centers at that time were all military personnel.
Rapid Growth
 The rapid expansion of area specialist was happened after WWII.
Area Studies As A Highly Differentiated Enterprise
 The current pattern of area studies is the result of an essentially
laissez-faire process of growth.
 The growth of area studies has been the result of many separate
institutional and individual decisions unrelated to government
support.
Elements Within Area Studies
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Degree of specialization
Broad factual knowledge
In-country experience
Language competency
“Ologizing” area studies: Country or region
Area studies tribes
Discipline
Area Studies as a Transdisciplinary Enterprise
 Just because set of scholars concern with a particular part of the
world and spans many disciplines, it does not mean that scholar
from these discipline are engaged in intellectual collaboration
across disciplinary borders.
 Each scholar perspective bound by their own disciplines.
Area Studies as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise
 Two types of activities that blending the disciplinary perspectives:
1. Conferences, symposia, and thematic sessions at professional
association meeting
2. Research of individual area specialist
Area Studies as a Nondisciplinary Enterprise
 The better term to explaining area studies in nondisciplinary,
because the topics often fall in domains where the conceptual and
methodological apparatus of particular disciplines is least relevant.
Area Studies as a Subdisciplinary Endeavor
 Area studies is not typically a blend of all aspects of its constituent
disciplines, rather within each discipline there are particular
subdisciplinary domains within which area specialist in the United
States tend to work.
Policy Application
 American area studies is not an applied enterprise.
 In many other countries, area studies is tied much more directly to
the practical needs of policymakers.
The Confrontation between
Discipline and Area Studies
by Lucian W. Pye
Main Idea
• Social science in this article seemed to be
reaching a dead end.
• The emergence of area specialization has
changed perspectives and raised questions
which go to the foundations of social sciences.
• The conflict in this field was first between
theory builders and data collectors.
• The article also mentioned the two streams of
social science were divided into before WWII
and post WWII.
• As the emphasis of social science went up,
academic studies also turned their main focus
from the only language skills and cultural
related trainings to subfield studies
Our Opinion
• It needs more than one disciplines to understand
an area
• Cooperation between the disciplines will be
appropriate
• Its impossible to one person to mastering all the
disciplines to solve the problem in one certain
area
• Each disciplines should blurring their boundaries
and started to working together in order to solve
the problem in one certain area
• Combine the methodology of area studies and
social science when investigating complicated
case
• As social scientist, our opinion on other
discipline should be objective
• Question- is decision making related to one’s
cultural background?