Unthinking Social Science
Arguments aplenty about specific forms of biases; in "Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms" (1991) Immanuel Wallerstein suggests the problem runs much deeper. The paradigms / worldviews, and assumptions that uphold them, prevent us from truly understanding the world. Drawing upon Marxist thought and critique. Wallerstein offers the beginnings of arguments that would later be developed (in different forms) by Samir Amin and Mbembe, amongst others. A few notes:
"Suppose, however , that the problem with our analyses is not the accuracy of our data , nor the diligence of our research, nor even the sophistication of either our methods or our theorizing, but simply (simply?) the metahistory we have used to organize our data and formulate our generalizations . Suppose that all , or much , of what we have been collectively saying has not been true, not because the data were false, but because the mirrors in which we have been reflecting these data have been distorting more than was necessary." (p. 56)
"Whence racism and underdevelopment? Both racism and underdevelopment are phenomena of the modern world. Racism is not xenophobia, which has of course existed throughout history, and underdevelopment is not poverty and/or a low level of technology, which have also existed throughout history. Rather, racism and underdevelopment, as we know them, are specific manifestations of a basic process by which our own historical system has been organized: a process of keeping people out while keeping people in." (p. 83)
"… everyone (or virtually everyone) denounces racism and underdevelopment, and considers them illegitimate, unfortunate, and eliminable. That is, almost all people, almost all ideological schools of thought have for some time been proclaiming the universalist ideal of a world without racism and without poverty; but all have nonetheless continued to support and maintain institutions which have directly and indirectly perpetuated, indeed increased, these presumably unwanted realities. How has this been possible? Let me develop my seemingly paradoxical formulation in which I suggested that one of the basic formulae on which our own historical system, the capitalist world-economy, has been organized is that of keeping people out while keeping people in. It is less paradoxical than it sounds, and it is in fact the key to our understanding how the system functions." (p. 84)
"Racism and underdevelopment, I fear, are more than dilemmas. They are, in my view, constitutive of the capitalist world-economy as a historical system. They are the primary conditions and essential manifestations of the unequal distribution of surplus-value. They make possible the ceaseless accumulation of capital, the raison d'etre of historical capitalism. They organize the process occupationally and legitimize it politically. It is impossible to conceptualize a capitalist world-economy which did not have them." (p. 92)
