How does social science change? In its complex history some see immanent trajectories, others see internal competition. I shall here set forth yet another theoretical account of changes both in social science in general and in sociology in particular. The mechanism proposed is a very general one, applying equally well to other kinds of interacting cultural systems–the plastic arts, music, perhaps even language. But it is best seen in a particular case, and so I shall analyze this very familiar example.

I write about sociology partly because it is my own discipline. But it is also the most general of the social sciences, or, to put it less politely, the least defined. So it provides within a single disciplinary compass examples of many of the processes I am discussing at the level of social science in general. [As anthropologists we may feel our hackles rise. But please do continue.]

As the reader will see, the idea that a subset of a larger unit can contain scaled -down versions of structures and processes in that larger unit—the idea of microcosm—is central to my argument. [The mention of scale is what first alerted me to the relevance of Abbot's theorizing to our reading of Tsing.] The immediate result here is that in this chapter I shall switch back and forth (or perhaps betteer, up and down) between talking about sociology anhd talking about social science.

The mechanism I propose is in the first instance purely culturual; my account is, in that sense, internalist. By contrast, most curren views of intellectual succession are externalist; knowledge is somehow wed to power and power propels change. But I shall treat both sociology and social science as more or less autonomous bodies of thought under their own reules. I do not challenge the foundational uncertainties of modern epistemology; there is indeed not one sociology but many. But the way those many sociologies interact betrays a common pattern, a universal knowledge upon whose terrain the local knowledges wander. No one can deny the importance of local knowledges and practices–what people call sectarian subsdisciplines or alternative epistemologies depending on their academic politics. But I am more interested in the larger but implicit framework such local knowledges end up making together.

My interest in that larger implicit framework is both theoretical and practical. On the one hand, I feel that an understanding of it will clarify the rleations between various subseets of social science and sociology. Knowing the framework simplifies–perhaps even explains–those relations. But on the other hand, I also feel that a focus on the larger framework is not merely intellectually useful as an idea, but also normatively proper as a commitment. That is, we should become explicit about what is implicit in our practices. For [Here comes another bit that people may find controversial] our debates within the social sciences about ” universalism” and “local knowledge” have obscured the fact that the vast majority of social scientists share the moral project of knowing society in a way that everyone else in society thinks of as universalist. We can try to add “the voice of the unheard” to our work, but the unheard know very well that social science is something other than their world, that it is addressed to someone other than them. The project of social science as a definable enterprise is, in reality, the production of sharable, “universal” knowledge of society. We ought to stop kidding ourselves that it is not.

But the larger, universal frameowrk for social science is by no means the standard, often-parodied axiomatic structure. Rather it resembles what the Romans called the law of peoples (ius gentium), a law that they applied to diverse groups at the edges of the empire and that they distinguished from the formalized civil law (ius civile) that applied specifically to Roman citizens. There is only universal knowledge of the former kind, a universal knowledge emerging from accomodation and conflict rather than from axioms, a universal knowledge that provides tentative bridges between local knowledges rather than systematic maps that deny them, a universal knowledge that aims, like the ius genium, at allowing interchange abmong people who differ fundamentally.

There’s a lot to think about here, Enjoy.

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First, to me the “nature loving” points further back than the Hippies. I see a clear connection here with the John Muir stance (the one I label “Worship”) back in Chapter 3. The problematic relationship between the nature-loving university students and the peasants who also inhabit their mountains exemplifies precisely the split between the worshipper and the exploiter described in that chapter.

Second, concerning “Dark Rays”: Ahmad belongs to a type of local intellectual whose thoughts have long fallen between the cracks of anthropological research focused either on “the traditional” or the applications of this or that “modern” theory. Their numbers were legion in Taiwan when I was doing research there and are, I suspect, equally so anywhere we find largely self-taught people, who are intellectually curious but whose thinking has not been shaped by higher education.

To me their thinking will forever be exemplified by the advice one such local pundit gave my wife and I when we were suffering from what our Taiwanese neighbors called the “Canadian flu.” We should, he said, use his grandmother’s recipe to prepare a tea composed of seven medicinal herbs, then drink the tea along with a bottle of a softdrink called “American Apple Sidra” and take two tetracycline capsules (readily available over the counter at our local drug store).

I remember grinning to myself when I first heard this prescription. But one, I am sure that the neighbor in question was making a sincere effort to help us get over the flu; and, two, it is fascinating to ponder the streams of information that combined to form this mixture of traditional herbal medicine, a “healthy sounding” carbonated drink that would, in fact, help settle our stomachs, and a potent modern antibiotic being used in a case that its developers probably never imagined.

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