Human Nexus of Knowing
By Richard Birch
STAS 2127 Research Methods & Data Analysis
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch
“The central assertion of this book is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (Wolf, 1997, p.3)
Social inquiry is problematic. At best, inquiry and the methods we as students of social science engage in at times represent our own personal strengths and requirements for knowing. Because the social scientist is a human being, he or she is thus of humankind. From this positionality it can be difficult for the social scientist to ignore his or her own desire to know their own specific world, even when inquiring about the world of other societies. At times method is based in the unitary frame of reference of the researcher, the subject, or the individual. These snapshots of the problematic provide microlevel understanding of what the social scientist is inquiring about, a broken down understanding of the social as unitary disconnected separate entities. According to a criticism written by Eric Wolf of the social sciences, “sociology continues to divide the world into separate societies.” (Wolf, 1997, p, 4)
Eric Wolf endeavours to understand why the social sciences, even in an age when ‘globalization’ of cultures and societies is apparent and when economic and political forces have linked and continue to link societies to others around the globe, “persist in turning dynamic, interconnected phenomena into static, disconnected things.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 4) For Wolf, the method of social inquiry should not be based in simply examining the cultural entities and their contained social realities, but rather inquiry is meant for the processes that link these cultural entities to each other and thus the inter-societal processes that in turn help shape social realities. Examining the mise-en scène of splintered, regionalist social milieux provides a fundamental failing of inquiry according to this criticism. Method that is based on the microlevel frame of reference can only serve to develop a fractured understanding of the human experience the social scientist may endeavour to appreciate. However, method based on that, which guides interconnectivity between what is socially constructed as “independent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations” (Wolf, 1997, p. 5) might reveal knowledge outside this construction not just within it. In this critical analysis of what is portrayed as mainly Western methodological convention, the notion of mutual exclusivity is challenged in light of the master global process of capitalism.
As Eric Wolf points out, “the social sciences constitute one long dialogue with the ghost of Marx” (Wolf, 1997, p. 20). But it seems for the social sciences to fully understand the messages within this dialogue it must return to questions asked by Marx of the nature of class, production and power. Capitalism is not a system nor is it type of society. It is a process, the master process from which all material and social production is developed and achieved. To inquire of social realities is to examine the historical development of the modes of production that transformed the world. There are no borders on our globe, only constructions. There are no nations, or states, or provinces or regions. These are all mere constructions as indicated by the master process. However since the social sciences, along with economics, political science and anthropology have splintered off from a master discipline of political economics they have lost sight of this process as an extension of material conditions.
To embark further into this, it can be argued that processes that connected interrelated societies is about how we help to permeate production into the everyday mise-en-scène. If all that is societal is mere construction our actions as actors is not based on creating societies, but based on how we feed ourselves, how we drive to work, how we wait at the coffee-shop drive-thru window, how we work at our computers, how we pick up our children at the daycare everyday after work, how we micromanage decisions regarding what to feed our children for dinner, how to decide what car to drive, what book to purchase, what course to enrol in, what film to see, what government to vote for, and what set of corporations to be ruled by.
Yet conventional and current methods of inquiry in the social sciences fall short of recognizing this interconnectivity for it’s ability in directing attention to what is valuable knowledge about societies. Looking at the master process of capitalism asks a more important question, ‘how have these societies came to be as they are now’, rather than ‘what are these societies and how do they function?’ In simply examining the microlevel unit of analysis, society, this naming and thus “turning names into things we create a false model of reality.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 6) When failing to reassemble and reinstate interconnectiveness into method, we think we are learning of social reality when we could be knowing of the organization of social labour as it relates to the production of wealth.
Wolf sets up the parameters for engaging in his macrolevel method of social inquiry. It is a four-step process: 1) understand the development of global market and capitalism, 2) devise a theory on how global markets and capitalism develops, 3) connect theory to how this development has affected humankind systemically and as a process, and 4) this theory of global market and capitalist development must be joined with the historical knowledge of humankind to help form accounts relevant to the experiences of the societies affected by this phenomena (Wolf, 1997, p. 21) not created by this process, but in actuality absorbed, transformed, and sometimes destroyed by it. Through solely engaging in the sociological study of societies we run the risk of discounting the unique and integral histories that are specialized and sensitive to the unique cultures and peoples permanently changed by macrolevel processes.
History is written by those societies who have embraced modernization theory as an “instrument for bestowing praise on societies deemed to be modern and casting a critical eye on those that had yet to attain that achievement.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 12) Static traditionalism has consistently been equated with the lack of development in Western modernity. “Above all, by dividing the world into modern, transitional, and traditional societies, [the social sciences] blocked effective understanding of relationships among them.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) Through constructing societal relations as autonomously arranged entities we negate any inter-societal exchange and discourse relating to imperialism, colonialism, and societal dependency (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) The accounts of those who are organized as social labour are lost without the potential study of the processes that have lead them to play important roles in the capitalist process they serve.
If the social history of people constitutes a manifold of processes of homeomorphic exchange of production, then how can social inquiry set itself up for understanding the formation of processes that connect societal relations? Wolf asks of the social sciences to always first expand its thinking outside it’s own narrowed habitat. In the social sciences “the compass of observation and thought has narrowed, while outside the inhabitants of the world are increasingly caught up in continent-wide and global exchange.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 18) By understanding capitalist macrolevel processes and how this process effects change globally is in Wolf’s opinion the only way in which the social sciences will ever understand the true relevance of not what capitalist production of wealth and cultural entities are, but how they have come be as they exist today as interdependent forces.
Reference
Wolf, E. (1997). Europe and the People Without History. Los Angelas, CA: University of California Press.
STAS 2127 Research Methods & Data Analysis
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch
“The central assertion of this book is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (Wolf, 1997, p.3)
Social inquiry is problematic. At best, inquiry and the methods we as students of social science engage in at times represent our own personal strengths and requirements for knowing. Because the social scientist is a human being, he or she is thus of humankind. From this positionality it can be difficult for the social scientist to ignore his or her own desire to know their own specific world, even when inquiring about the world of other societies. At times method is based in the unitary frame of reference of the researcher, the subject, or the individual. These snapshots of the problematic provide microlevel understanding of what the social scientist is inquiring about, a broken down understanding of the social as unitary disconnected separate entities. According to a criticism written by Eric Wolf of the social sciences, “sociology continues to divide the world into separate societies.” (Wolf, 1997, p, 4)
Eric Wolf endeavours to understand why the social sciences, even in an age when ‘globalization’ of cultures and societies is apparent and when economic and political forces have linked and continue to link societies to others around the globe, “persist in turning dynamic, interconnected phenomena into static, disconnected things.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 4) For Wolf, the method of social inquiry should not be based in simply examining the cultural entities and their contained social realities, but rather inquiry is meant for the processes that link these cultural entities to each other and thus the inter-societal processes that in turn help shape social realities. Examining the mise-en scène of splintered, regionalist social milieux provides a fundamental failing of inquiry according to this criticism. Method that is based on the microlevel frame of reference can only serve to develop a fractured understanding of the human experience the social scientist may endeavour to appreciate. However, method based on that, which guides interconnectivity between what is socially constructed as “independent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations” (Wolf, 1997, p. 5) might reveal knowledge outside this construction not just within it. In this critical analysis of what is portrayed as mainly Western methodological convention, the notion of mutual exclusivity is challenged in light of the master global process of capitalism.
As Eric Wolf points out, “the social sciences constitute one long dialogue with the ghost of Marx” (Wolf, 1997, p. 20). But it seems for the social sciences to fully understand the messages within this dialogue it must return to questions asked by Marx of the nature of class, production and power. Capitalism is not a system nor is it type of society. It is a process, the master process from which all material and social production is developed and achieved. To inquire of social realities is to examine the historical development of the modes of production that transformed the world. There are no borders on our globe, only constructions. There are no nations, or states, or provinces or regions. These are all mere constructions as indicated by the master process. However since the social sciences, along with economics, political science and anthropology have splintered off from a master discipline of political economics they have lost sight of this process as an extension of material conditions.
To embark further into this, it can be argued that processes that connected interrelated societies is about how we help to permeate production into the everyday mise-en-scène. If all that is societal is mere construction our actions as actors is not based on creating societies, but based on how we feed ourselves, how we drive to work, how we wait at the coffee-shop drive-thru window, how we work at our computers, how we pick up our children at the daycare everyday after work, how we micromanage decisions regarding what to feed our children for dinner, how to decide what car to drive, what book to purchase, what course to enrol in, what film to see, what government to vote for, and what set of corporations to be ruled by.
Yet conventional and current methods of inquiry in the social sciences fall short of recognizing this interconnectivity for it’s ability in directing attention to what is valuable knowledge about societies. Looking at the master process of capitalism asks a more important question, ‘how have these societies came to be as they are now’, rather than ‘what are these societies and how do they function?’ In simply examining the microlevel unit of analysis, society, this naming and thus “turning names into things we create a false model of reality.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 6) When failing to reassemble and reinstate interconnectiveness into method, we think we are learning of social reality when we could be knowing of the organization of social labour as it relates to the production of wealth.
Wolf sets up the parameters for engaging in his macrolevel method of social inquiry. It is a four-step process: 1) understand the development of global market and capitalism, 2) devise a theory on how global markets and capitalism develops, 3) connect theory to how this development has affected humankind systemically and as a process, and 4) this theory of global market and capitalist development must be joined with the historical knowledge of humankind to help form accounts relevant to the experiences of the societies affected by this phenomena (Wolf, 1997, p. 21) not created by this process, but in actuality absorbed, transformed, and sometimes destroyed by it. Through solely engaging in the sociological study of societies we run the risk of discounting the unique and integral histories that are specialized and sensitive to the unique cultures and peoples permanently changed by macrolevel processes.
History is written by those societies who have embraced modernization theory as an “instrument for bestowing praise on societies deemed to be modern and casting a critical eye on those that had yet to attain that achievement.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 12) Static traditionalism has consistently been equated with the lack of development in Western modernity. “Above all, by dividing the world into modern, transitional, and traditional societies, [the social sciences] blocked effective understanding of relationships among them.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) Through constructing societal relations as autonomously arranged entities we negate any inter-societal exchange and discourse relating to imperialism, colonialism, and societal dependency (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) The accounts of those who are organized as social labour are lost without the potential study of the processes that have lead them to play important roles in the capitalist process they serve.
If the social history of people constitutes a manifold of processes of homeomorphic exchange of production, then how can social inquiry set itself up for understanding the formation of processes that connect societal relations? Wolf asks of the social sciences to always first expand its thinking outside it’s own narrowed habitat. In the social sciences “the compass of observation and thought has narrowed, while outside the inhabitants of the world are increasingly caught up in continent-wide and global exchange.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 18) By understanding capitalist macrolevel processes and how this process effects change globally is in Wolf’s opinion the only way in which the social sciences will ever understand the true relevance of not what capitalist production of wealth and cultural entities are, but how they have come be as they exist today as interdependent forces.
Reference
Wolf, E. (1997). Europe and the People Without History. Los Angelas, CA: University of California Press.
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