UNDERSTANDING

CULTURE, SOCIETY,
AND POLITICS
PRESENTED BY: DANDREV J. AUSA

UNIT I
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE
OF THE SOCIAL
SCIENCES:
ANTHROPOLOGY,
SOCIOLOGY, AND
POLITICAL SCIENCE

Birds Eye View of the Unit

You have always been fascinated by the lives of great
scientists who contributed to the knowledge of the natural
world. These giants include
GALILEO GALILEI (1564 1642), who invented the
telescope;
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473 1543), who popularized
the view that the sun is the center of the solar system;
ISAAC NEWTON (1643 1727), who discovered gravity;
CHARLES DARWIN (1809 1882), who proposed the
controversial theory of evolution; and
ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879 1955), who developed the
theory of big bang to account for the beginning of our
universe.

 But you have not yet encountered the eminent

social scientists who immensely contributed to our
knowledge of how society, culture, and politics work.
They were the first to ask fascinating questions such
as: What makes social sciences similar to natural
sciences?, Does society exist or only the individuals
who compose it?", Do societies share the same
culture and pattern of cultural development?, What
is the best form of government?. How do you
distinguish common sense from scientific way of
studying society, culture, and politics?

The Historical
background of the
Growth of Social Science

 In the development and progress of

human knowledge, the SOCIAL SCIENCE
were the last to develop after the natural
sciences. And while the origin of the social
science can be traced back to the ancient
Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, their development as separate
fields of knowledge only begun in the
modern period (Collins 1994, p. 7).

 Before the birth of modern social sciences in the

West, the study of society, culture and politics
were based on social and political philosophy
(Scott 2006, p. 9).
In return, social and political philosophies were
informed by theological reasoning grounded in
Revelation based on the Bible.
This was largely due to the dominance of religious
worldview and authority during this time.

 While pre-modern social thinkers

employed experiences and personal
observation, just like modern
scientists, they fit them within the
overall framework of their philosophy
and the overall religious scheme of
the Church.

Philosophy is distinct from Science.

SCIENCE

PHILOSOPHY

would have not developed if it remained

under the wings of philosophy and
theology.

is based on analytic understanding

of the nature of truth asserted
about specific topics of issues.

are based on empirical data, tested

theories, and carefully contrived
observations.

It asks the questions: What is the

nature of truth?, How do we
know what we know?

It does not ask about the question about

the nature of nature of truth.
Seeks to discover the truth about specific
causes of events and happenings in the
natural world.
It is inductive
It proceeds from observing particular
cases and moves toward generalizing the
properties of common to these cases to

 This definition of Science is very modern

description.
Before the modern period, the growth of
the sciences was slowed down because of
the dominance of religious authority and
tradition.
However, with the breakdown of the
Church and its religious power after the
French revolution, the science grew
steadily and rapidly to become the most
widely accepted way of explaining the
world, nature, and human beings
(Harrington 2006)

 The development of the social sciences during

the modern period was made possible by several
large scale social upheavals and pivotal events.
They can be summarized below.

Science

Humanities

Pure Science

Visual Arts

Applied Science

Performing Arts

Social Science

Religion

Law
Linguistics
History

The Unprecedented
Growth of Science

 The Scientific Revolution, which begun with

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), refers to
historical changes in thought and belief, to
changes in social and institutional organization,
that unfolded in Europe roughly between 1550
and 1700.
It culminated in the works of Sir Isaac Newton
(1643-1727), which proposed universal laws of
motion and a mechanical model of the Universe.
The 17th century saw the rapid development in
the sciences. Along with Sir Francis Bacon, who
established the supremacy of reason over
imagination, Ren Descartes and Sir Isaac
Newton laid the foundation that allowed science
and technology to change the world.

 The discovery of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton, the

mathematization of physics and medicine paved
the way for the dominance of science and
mathematics in describing and explaining the
world and its nature.
With the coming of the Scientific Revolution and
the Age of Reason, in the 16th and 17th centuries,
nature was to be controlled, bound into service
and made a slave (Capra 1982, p. 56).
From the Medieval cosmology or model of the
universe that defines it as divinely ordained,
people shifted to the model of the universe as a
big machine.

 The triumph of this model of the universe

was facilitated by Newtons Physics.
Descartes separation of the physical from
the spiritual, the body from the mind, also
led to the triumph of valuing the physical
over the spiritual.
Once the physical universe is considered
as a machine, it soon became apparent
that human beings can explore it
according to science in order to reveal its
secrets (Merchant 1986).

Ren Descartes (1596-1650) was a French

philosopher, mathematician, and writer who is
considered the father of modern philosophy.
Descartes advocated the use of rigorous
philosophical analysis to arrive at truths rather
than basing them on dogmas.

The Secularization of
Learning and Education

 The modern period marked the growing triumph

of scientific method over religious dogma and
theological thinking.
The triumph of Reason (specifically Western
Reason) and science over dogma and religious
authority began with the Reformation.
The Protestant movement led by Martin Luther
eroded the power of the Roman Catholic Church.
It challenged the infallibility of the Pope and
democratized the interpretation of the Bible.
Then, there was the Enlightenment.
This was largely a cultural movement,
emphasizing rationalism as well as political and
economic theories, and was clearly built on the
Scientific Revolution (Streams 2003, p. 70).

 In the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers

led by Immanuel Kant challenged the use
of metaphysics or absolute truth derived
mainly from unjustified tradition and
authority such as the existence of God.
Kant advocated the use of reason in order
to know the nature of the world and human
beings.
In 1784, Immanuel Kant wrote his famous
essay, What is Enlightenment? Kant
heralded the beginning of the Modern
Period when he defined Enlightenment as
the courage to know.

Enlightenment is mans release from his selfincurred tutelage. Tutelage is mans ability to
make use of his understanding without direction
from another. Self incurred is this tutelage when
its case lies not in lack of reason but in lack of
resolution but in lack of resolution and courage to
use it without direction from another.
Sapereuade! Have courage to use your own
reason! that is the motto of enlightenment.
(http://www.allmenderberlin.de/What-is-Enlightenment.pdf, retrieved August 7, 2014)

 Whereas in the Medieval Period, universities

relied mainly on religious tradition and the
Bible to explain the nature of the universe
and the place of human being in the grand
scheme of things, the modern universities
started to rely on science and its method to
interpret the world.
Max Weber, on of the leading figures in
modern sociology, described this process as
rationalization.

 Rationalization means that social life is more and

more subjected to calculation and prediction.
Calculation and prediction can only be achieved if
human beings and society rely on regularities
established by modern science.
Earlier people explained diseases through divine
intervention. With the discoveries of germ theory
and the development of vaccination by Louis
Pasteur, people relied more and more on medical
knowledge to deal with diseases.
As French sociologist Francois Lyotard (1984)
points out, Science triumphed because it
provided reliable results.

 Another element of rationalization is the

separation between different social
spheres especially between the Church
and the universities.
The collapse of religious authority and
gradual erosion of religious domination
over social life of the people led to the use
of classical humanistic resources such as
ancient philosophy and humanities to
advance human knowledge independent
of Revelation (Zeitlin 1968, pp. 3ff)

The Rise of Universities

Education is the single most important factor in the

rise of social sciences.
The growth of universities also contributed to the
triumph of science.
Secular subjects or subjects dealing with natural world
proliferated in the universities.
Merchants and capitalists supported universities and
institutions of secular leaning because them became
the hub of training future scientists, technocrats, and
technological innovators.
Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of
sociology, for instance, lectured on the need of
secularize education and base the curriculum on the
need of nation-state to develop citizens necessary
for the modern world (Collins 1994, p. 11)

The Dissolution of Feudal

Social Relations
With the intensification of commerce and trade in
17th century, many medieval guilds or workers
cooperatives were dissolved and absorbed into
the emerging factory system.
The factory system and the unprecedented
growth in the urban centers due to trade and
commerce, attracted a lot of agricultural workers
and mass of rural population to migrate to urban
centers.
This created the modern cities.

 This development forced many social scientists

during this time to study the effects of the
dissolution to feudal relations on the social life of
the people.
Ferdinand Tnnies (1885-1936), a German
sociologist, and contemporary of Max Weber,
lamented the passing away of gemeinschaft or
community because of urbanization.
Tnnies classic book Community and Society
(1957) showed how the modern way of life had
drastically changed the way people relate to one
another. Whereas in traditional communities
people had warm relationships with the members
of the community, in modern cities or,
gessellschaft, individualism gave way to cold and
calculated social relationship.

 As capitalism replace agricultural

economy, people began to see their
relationships with other people as mere
economic transactions rather than as a
form of personal relationships.

Trade and Commerce

Livres des merveilles du monde recorded the
travels of Marco Polo, an Italian merchant from
Venice. This book introduced the Europeans to
Asia and China, and inspired Columbus five
journeys to America (1942-1506).
From Marco Polos travels (1276-1291) to
Magellans circumnavigation of the world (15191522), the travels of this period fed the
imaginations of the Europeans with vivid
descriptions of places whose very existence they
had so far been unaware of.

 These travelogues had not only inspired European

merchants and governments to explore the nonWestern world but also provided the social
scientists the raw data to create a universal
model of social development.
Later in the 18th century, trade and commerce
greatly accelerated.
Charles Tilly, a historian, believed that this was
one of the major factors in the large-scale change
in European history that also determined largely
the direction of the social sciences.

 Both domestically and around the world,

European merchants played a growing role in
trade and commerce.
Anthropologists also began to compare the
differences between rural life and city life,
between the civilized life and the supposed
savage life of non-Western people.
As many travel accounts reached the Western
world, especially in the accounts of Harriet
Martineau, a British political economist and
sociologist, social scientists shifted their attention
to non-Western world as a model of the early
stage of Western civilization.

The Rise of Individualism

The intensification of commerce and trade
gradually replaced barter with the introduction of
money and banking system.
Soon banking system provided merchants and
capitalists the leverage to extend credit and
transactions.
The introduction of money enabled people to deal
with people in an impersonal manner.
Money made possible the reduction of the human
interaction to mere business-like transactions
devoid of any warmth and personal touch.

 This is led George Simmel (1858-1918), a German

sociologist in the early 20th century, to decry the
growing depersonalization of life due to the
introduction of money.
Money economy transformed individuals to
autonomous consumers who were released from
attachment to local contexts and traditions.
Hence, the dominance of money in social life
paved the way for individualization of lifestyle
and the birth of plural relationships.
This condition became an important focus of
social scientists.

 It compelled them to explain how the new

economy, which as industrial capitalism, that
replaced the traditional feudal relations, had
drastically shaped human character and traits.
The transition from feudal economy to industrial
capitalism heralded the creation of people who no
longer relied on traditional norms and prevailing
culture.
Modern individuals asserted their freedom to
choose. Through education and the spread of
scientific worldview, people saw their lives as no
longer at the mercy of fate or destiny.
Individualism is simply the recognition of the
power of the individual to assert ones freedom
against the given norms and structures of society.

 The vast intensive and extensive growth of our

technology which is much more than just material
technology entangles us in a web of means, and
means towards means, more and more
intermediate state, causing us to lost sight of our
real ultimate ends. This is the extreme inner
danger which threatens all highly developed
cultures, that is to say, all eras in which the whole
of life is overlaid with a maximum of multistratified means. To treat some means as ends
may make this situation psychologically tolerable,
but it actually makes life increasingly futile.

(source: Frisby, David and Mike Featherstone, eds, 1997. Simmel on

Culture: Selected Writings, p. 97. London: Sage.)

The Birth of Social

Sciences as a Response to
the Social Turmoil of the
Modern Period

 SOCIOLOGY is a branch of the social

sciences that deals with scientific study of
human interactions, social groups and
institution, whole socialites, and the
human world as such.
Of course, sociology also addresses the
problem of the constitution of the self and
the individual, but it only does so in
relation to larger social structures and
processes.

 SOCIOLOGY, therefore, is a science that

studies the relationship between the
individual and the society as they develop
and change in history.
Sociology does not only study the existing
social forms of interactions but also
pursues the investigation of the
emergence of stable structures that
sustain such interactions.

Auguste Comte
(1798 1857)
a French philosopher and mathematician, is the founding father of
sociology. He coined the term sociology but he originally used
social physics as a term for sociology. Its aim was to discover the
social laws that govern the development of societies.
Comte suggested that there were three stages in the development
of societies, namely, the theological stage, the metaphysical stage,
and the positive stage.
Comtes sociology has always been associated with positivism or
the school of thought that says that science and its method is the
only valid way of knowing things.

Harriet Martineau
(1802 1876)
The founding mother of sociology, an English writer and
reformist. With physical disabilities, Martineau traveled a lot,
especially in the United States, and wrote here travelogues. In her
accounts expressed in How to Observe Morals and Manners
(1838), the deep sociological insights that we now call as
ethnographic narratives are fully expressed. She also wrote on
political economy and was influenced by J.S. Mill, David Ricardo,
and Adam Smith.

Karl Marx
(1818 1883)
the German philosopher and revolutionary. Marx introduced the
materialist analysis of history which discounts religious and
metaphysical (spiritual) explanation for historical development.
Before Marx, scholars explained social change through divine
intervention and the theory of great mean.

Karl Marx
(1818 1883)

Considered as the father of scientific socialism

However, Marx advocated the use of scientific methods

to uncover the deep structural tendencies that underlie
great social transitions, for instance, from agricultural
to modern industrial capitalist society. Marx belonged
to the realist tradition of social sciences that believed in
the power of scientific reason to know the nature of
society and human beings. Unlike any other
sociologists, Marx stands out as the sociologist who
combined revolutionary activity with scholarly
passion.

Emile Durkheim
(1858 1917)

a French sociologist, made possible the professionalization of

sociology by teaching it in the University of Bordeaux.
Durkheim was responsible for defending sociology as an
independent discipline from psychology.
As a social realist, Durkheim argues that society possess a reality
sui generis (that is, its own kind, or a class by itself, unique)
independent of individuals and institutions that compose it.

Emile Durkheim
(1858 1917)

Was the pioneer of functionalism in sociology.

Durkheim famously argued that society pre-existed the

individuals and will continue to exist long after the
individual is dead.
His main contribution are in the field of sociology of
religion, education, and deviance

Max Weber
(1864 1920)

Another founding father of sociology.

Weber stressed the role of rationalization in the development of
society.
For Weber, rationalization refers essentially to the
disenchantment of the world. As science began to replace religion,
people also adopted a scientific or rational attitude to the world.
People refused to believe in myths and superstitious beliefs. In this
way, modern individuals became dependent on science to order
their lives.

Max Weber
(1864 1920)

Was the pioneer of interpretive sociology.

And the greatest application of scientific way of life is in

bureaucracy, which Weber saw as mammoth machine that will
eventually curtail human freedom. Because in bureaucracy
efficiency is considered as the supreme value, other values such as
personal relationships and human intimacies are gradually
discarded.

Anthropology

 Anthropology as a scientific
discipline originated from social
philosophy and travelogues of
Western travelers.
It grew out of the encounter of
social scientist with the nonWestern world.

 According to Allan Barnard (2004),

anthropology emerged as a distinct
branch of scholarship around the middle of
the nineteenth century, when public
interest in human evolution took hold.
Anthropology as an academic discipline
began a bit later, with the first
appointments of professional
anthropologists in universities, museums,
and government offices (p. 15).

 Many pioneers in anthropology built a universal

model of cultural development patterned
according to Darwins evolutionary theory that
locates all societies in the linear evolutionary
process.
Like sociology, anthropology developed during
the years of two World Wars (Barnard 2004, p.
37).
Four great anthropologist helped to formalize and
advance anthropology as a discipline, namely
o
o
o
o

Franz boas (1858 1942),

Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884 1942),
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881 1955), and
Marcel Mauss (1872 1950)

Franz Boas
(1852 1942)
is often considered as the father of modern American
anthropology.
He was the first anthropologist to have rejected the biological
basis of racism or racial discrimination.
He also rejected the popular Western idea of social evolution or
the development of societies from lower to higher forms.
This kind of theory influenced by Darwin was rejected by Boas
in favor of historical particularism.

Franz Boas
(1852 1942)

is considered the father of American anthropology

In this doctrine, each society is considered as having a unique

form of culture that cannot be subsumed under an overall
definition of general culture.
Kwakiutl dancing, for example, in Boas analysis can only be
understood according to the meanings ascribed to it by
participants rather than seeing it as part of general social function.
Consistent with his anti-evolutionary theory, Boas advocated
cultural relativism or the complexity of all culture whether
primitive or not.

Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski

(1884 - 1942)

he was a Polish immigrant who did a comprehensive study of

Trobriand Island. Based on his field study, developed what social
scientists now call as participant observation.
It is a method of social science research that requires the
anthropologists to have the ability to participate and blend with
the way of life of given group of people.

Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski

(1884 - 1942)

Was an anthropologist and

ethnographer.

he is also considered as one of the most influential

ethnographers in the 20th century.
Ethnography is literally the practice of writing about people.
Often, it is taken to mean the anthropologists way of making
sense of other peoples modes of thoughts, since anthropologists
usually study cultures other than their own.

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown

(1881 - 1955)

he did fieldwork in 1906 1908, on the Andaman Islands east of

India, and published his reports in the diffusionist style, but later
shifted his theoretical orientation.
in 1937, he became the Chair in Social Anthropology in Oxford.
He also advocated the study of abstract principles that govern
social change.
He saw individuals as mere products of social structures.

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown

(1881 - 1955)

Was an English social

anthropologist who developed
the theory of structural
functionalism.

This view led to the establishment of structural-functionalist

paradigm in anthropology.
According to this view, the basic unit of analysis for
anthropology and social sciences are the social structures and the
functions they perform to maintain the equilibrium of society.

Political Science

 Political science is part of the social sciences that

deals with the study of politics, power, and
government.
In turn, politics refers to the process of making
collective decisions in a community, society, or
group through the application of influence and
power (Ethridge and Handelman 2010, p. 8).
Political science studies how even the most
private and personal decisions of individuals are
influenced by collective decisions of a community.

 Divorce, for instance, may be very

personal matter among couples, but the
decision and the rules on divorce are
shaped by collective decisions arrived at
through conflict and antagonism of
different interest groups within society,
especially religious groups.
As womens rights advocates often claim,
The personal is political.

 Whereas other social sciences have a quite clear

history, political science has a complex history.
Its earlier can be traced back to the ancient Greek
political philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Later it developed into a religious-oriented tradition
beginning with Augustine, and later secularized by
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
The preoccupation of these modern political
philosophers is to explain the transition of Western
societies from savagery toward democratic
commonwealth.
Their works, highlighting the social contract theory,
became the foundation of modern democratic
theory.

 Some scholars argue that political science is a

unique American invention. Hence, its focus has
always been the narrative of democracy.
The science of political during the 19th century
was organized around the concept of the state as
elaborated by German migr Francis Lieber,
who taught at Columbia University.
In the 20th century, the discipline of social science
shifted from state-centered to pluralism as
evidenced in the works of Lawrence Lowell (Public
Opinion and Popular Government, 1913) and,
later, Walter Lippmann (The Phantom Public,
1925).

 Pluralism led to the emphasis on analyzing

group interests rather than the state.
In this view, society is viewed as being
composed of several competing groups
with different interests that generate
conflicts.

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was

a newspaper commentator and
respected world news columnist.

 Later, political science will be dominated by

behavioral orientation that define the discipline as
empirical science.
This shift was advanced by David Easton in his work
The Political System: An Inquiry in the State of
Political Science (1953).
This was also the beginning of liberal tradition in
political science.
Liberal tradition champions individual freedom as
best embodied in democracy. Like in sociology,
critical tradition in political science was not marginal
to the discipline.
The works of Herbert Marcuse and the members of
the Frankfurt School became a loud critique within
political science itself.

 In the 20th century, political science has moved

from behavioral approach that emphasizes
scientific, method towards doing research on
more pressing social problems. Today, political
science is composed of diverse paradigms and
interpretations.

The Colonial
Origin of the Social
Science

The Clamor for Decolonization

of Social Sciences
Social sciences spread from the center to the peripheries
of the world.
Most of their observations, mainly from anthropology,
were clothed in the cultural and attitudes of the fair
European.
It cannot be denied hat social sciences as they developed
in the West were employed by colonizers in order to
further subjugate the inhabitants of the non-Western
world.
As Simale and Kincheloe (1999) observed, The
denigration of indigenous knowledge cannot be separated
from the oppression of indigenous peoples. Indeed,
modernist science, anthropology in particular, has been
deployed as a weapon again indigenous peoples (p. 29)

 Social Dawnism, which proclaimed the

survival of the fittest, was used to justify
the domination of native people as well as
the exploitation of the underclass in
industrial societies. In fact, most
travelogues and description of the
European travelers were full of factual
errors and had belittling descriptions of
natives.
When European explorers, just like social
scientists, encountered the natives, they
found themselves different from the
natives.
Most Westerners looked at the natives as
savage, illiterate, and incapable of rational

 And these colonial biases were also

echoed in the social sciences during the
time.
For instance, in the development of
societies, European social scientist placed
the non-Western world in the lowest point
in the evolutionary process.
This kind of attitude also led to colonialism
and the destruction of indigenous cultures,
language, and traditions.

 E. San Juan, Jr. (2006) provides a classic example for

American colonialism in the Philippines:
o Complicit with the invading military, US
academics were appointed to implement the
systematic tutelage of the Filipino subject. One
example is Dean Worcester, professor of
anthropology at the University of Michigan, who
wrote one of the first sourcebooks of knowledge
about the Philippines and its people. He
participated in the first Philippine Commission in
1899 on the basis of his expertise on zoological
specimens collected in the archipelago. As
Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, Worcester
became notorious for denouncing the barbaric
practices of slavery and peonage of the Muslims,
thus judging Filipinos unfit for being recognized as
a people or a nation (p. 51).

 Because social sciences were imported from the rich

Western countries, many scholars in former colonies
and developing countries are now clamoring for
decolonization of the social sciences.
As two scholars rightly observed, The story of the
Scientific Revolution in Europe itself is framed in the
ethnocentric West-is-best discourse of colonialism.
Social scientists advocating decolonization or deWesternization of science believed that the methods
and concepts, the epistemology, and the philosophical
worldview that inform Western social sciences are not
as universal as Western scholars claim.
Western medicine, for instances, is a unique product
of Western civilization.
Outside the Western civilization, there are other
existing alternative medical systems that are even
much older than Western medicine.

Indigenization of Social
Sciences in the Philippines
In the Philippines, social sciences after World War II simply
perpetual colonial knowledge production from American
social sciences.
Many Filipino social scientists such as Virgilio Enriquez, a
psychologist; Zeus Salazar, a historian; and Prospero
Covar, an anthropologist advocated for the indigenization
of social sciences.
Moreover Prospero Covar, a former professor at UP
Diliman, recalled that the clamor for indigenization was
done through Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology)
that manifested its beginnings in the 1960s when the UP
Community Development Research Council challenged the
applicability of Western concepts, theories and research
tools, and subsequently embarked upon researches on
Filipino concepts and indigenous cultural forms.

Ngg wa Thiong'o (B. 1938): Kenyan literary

and social activist, currently Distinguished
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at the University of California, Irvine. As an
activist, he was imprisoned in 1977 and released
in 1978.

 Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) is borne out of this

move to indigenize social sciences in the
Philippines.
Two leading exponents of SP, Narcisa Peredes
Canilao and Maria Ana Babaran-Diaz, wrote:
Sikolohiyang Pilipino refers to the psychology
borne out of the experience, thought and
orientation of Filipinos, based on the full use of
the Filipino culture and language (p. 49).
According to these authors, The idea is that the
social sciences, such as Western academic
psychology, are very much a product of the
common sense concepts and lived daily realities
of the white male fathers of psychology, their
respective communities, and local histories.

 Thus, Carolyn Sobritchea (2002) argued

that the strategies for collecting
information as suggested by SP are very
useful for doing feminist ethnography in
the Philippine context such as
pagmamasid (observation), pakikiramdam
(feeling your way through), pakikilahok
(participation), pagtatanong-tanong
(informal interview), pakikipagkuwentuhan
(informal conversation), and sama-samang
talakayan (focus group discussion).
The current direction of SP can also be
applied to decolonization of Filipino social
sciences.

 It was a movement that systematically

critiqued the theories and methodologies
of Western psychology, and on a more
constructive plane, it aimed to create a
psychology relevant to and based on
Filipino indigenous ways of knowing, living,
and valuing, in short, a psychology that is
appropriate and significant to Filipinos
(Pe-Pua 2006, p. 111).
Indigenization come after decolonization.
Reconstructing Filipino psychology
tailored-fit to Filipino local experience can
proceed in two levels: from within and
from without (Enriquez 1995).

Social Sciences in
the Era of
Globalization

 While science may be considered as a

universalizing form of knowing, it has to be
sensitive to the local cultures of the people
that adopt it.
Social sciences, in particular, because they
study cultural meanings and social
change, must be able to address the
concerns and problems of the local
communities rather than being merely a
tool to continue the control of Western
worldview on local cultures.

 In the era of globalization, the strongest

weapon against being swallowed in the
vortex of homogenization of culture is to
rely on its traditions and collective
memories of its people.
Such collective memories empower them
against being swallowed by the torrent of
Western Values.

 In the era of globalization, social sciences face the

problem of plurality of paradigms and methods.
According to Gerald Delanty (2006), a British
sociologist, The current situation, of the social
sciences, is characterized by post-disciplinary
developments and a related plurality of
theoretical and methodological approaches (p.
xviii).
These tendencies tend to undermine the venture
of grand theory that was part of the classical
social theory.
Gone are the days when social scientists dreamt
of creating an all-encompassing theory to explain
large-scale historical upheavals and social
change.

 With globalization, social sciences welcomed the

proliferation of different social theories and
ideological orientations.
The critique of Eurocentrism of traditional social
sciences allows indigenous cultures and other
non-Western subjugated knowledges to reclaim
their voices.
Other than decolonizing Western social sciences,
the social sciences are also being transformed by
feminism and postmodern currents.

 Henrietta L. Moore (2010) defines the

feminist reorientation in anthropology:
o Feminist anthropology is considered with
critically examining relations between women
and men, and investigating how gender,
embodiment and sexuality are produced through
complex relays of power involving ideologies
and social institutions. Its focus of analysis has
shifted over time, moving from an initial
emphasis on women to a concern with gender
relations, issues of difference and identity, and
sexuality and heteronormativity [strict
distinction between male and female sexes] (p.
284)

 Feminist approaches in social sciences

question the gender biases inherent in
traditional social sciences.
They do not challenged the exclusion of
women from the male-stream (as
mainstream) disciplines of anthropology,
sociology, and political science, but also
more radically, they questioned the
unacknowledged male-bias (or
androcentric orientation) of many theories
and measurements.

 In particular, classical women sociologists

approached the task of analyzing society
from their distinctive knowledge and
experiences as women, and that this
standpoint gave them particular
advantages as students of society.
One of the most significant contributions
of women in social sciences is the rejection
of the theoretical stance in which the
theorist locates herself or himself outside
and apart from that she or he analyzes,
speaking as a disinterested and
omniscient observer (Lengermann and
Niebrugge-Brantly 2001, p. 131).

 This is reflexivity or the awareness of the

social scientists of the ideological, political,
and social biases of their standpoints when
doing research and publishing their works
for the wider public.
Feminists argue that many male social
scientists, including women, in most
instances, are never aware of the gender
biases of their studies and research.
When social scientists, for instance, study
IQ or intelligence, they usually make
generalizations that do not discriminate
between the experience of women and
men.

Summary

The social science, namely, sociology, and

political science, developed as a result of the
development of modern society.
The rise and rapid growth of the natural sciences
influenced the direction of the social sciences.
The social sciences borrowed mainly from the
natural sciences in developing their own concepts
and method.
However, in the 20th century, the social sciences
have become diverse and pluralistic.
Nevertheless, they have never abandoned the
quest to be relevant to the people of the 20th
century.

 Social sciences today have drastically changed

from being Western-centered to having a more
pluralistic orientation and being multicultural in
nature.
This has to do with the efforts of social scientists
from non-Western countries to indigenize Western
social sciences.
Feminists, postcolonial theories, and postmodern
scholars have also contributed to the questioning
of the assumed universality of Western concepts
and theories of Western social sciences.
In particular, Sikolohiyang Pilipino, in the
Philippines, is spearheading the move to
decolonize psychology.