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"A comparative social science requires a generalized system of concepts which will enable the scientific observer to compare and contrast large bodies of concretely different social phenomena in consistent terms."
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Social scienceScience, as we know it, is not value-free. This is more so with social — Social science
"Science, as we know it, is not value-free. This is more so with social sciences. And certainly, a subject such as ethnic relations, which tends to have an emotional overtone cannot be expected to be presented or analysed with pure objectivity, however one claims, or wants it to be. To an extent, the treatment of the subject depends on the angle that the person is looking at, his theoretical orientation and even political bias, and his short and long-term motives. A social scientist may look at, or even magnify ethnic relations to legitimise his discipline, or even for scholarly recognition. A writer may provide a sensational tint for commercial purposes. A politician may use it to catch votes and wrest power even if he knows it can instill ill-will and suspicion. I am not saying this because I do not believe in the study of ethnic relations. In fact, I believe studies in ethnic relations can be healthy and injustices motivated by discriminative and oppressive tendencies. I do not claim to know which is right in terms of solving ethnic problems, for "right" too is subjective. But I believe ethnic relations, if it is to be positive, must be viewed within a particular historical context, as well as the relevant socio-cultural, economic and political setting. As such, answers to questions pertaining to Malaysian ethnic relations must necessarily be peculiarly Malaysian."
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Social science
Social science
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Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography
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"The idea found embedded in European thought, particularly in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries that Africans were inferior socially and behaviorally has tainted most of what passes for social science in the West, definitionally and conceptually. Few have been able to escape Alexander Popes dictum in the Essay on Man (1733) "some are, and must be, greater than the rest" and its implication for European contact and interpretation of that contact with the rest of the world."
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"In the social science that seeks to explain the world as it is, to show how the world works, power is the keystone of all categories, so that, in spite of (indeed, because of) its proclaimed neutrality, this social science participates actively in the separation of subject and object which is the substance of power. To us, power is of interest only in so far as it helps us to understand the challenge of anti-power: the study of power on its own, in abstraction from the challenge and project of anti-power, can do nothing but actively reproduce power."
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"In natural science, there are relatively many falsifiable propositions and relatively few attractive interpretive frameworks. In the social sciences, there are relatively many attractive interpretive frameworks and relatively few falsifiable propositions."
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Social scienceQuote
"If we see [our lives] from the outside, as the influence and popular dissemination of the social sciences and psychiatry has persuaded more and more people to do, we view ourselves as instances of generalities, and in so doing become profoundly and painfully alienated from our own experience and our humanity."
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"Critical (i.e., separating) methods apply only to the world-as-nature. It would be easier to break up a theme of Beethoven with dissecting knife or acid than to break up the soul by methods of abstract thought. Nature-knowledge and man-knowledge have neither ways nor aims in common."
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Social science