“Two decades discourse about globalizing social sciences – concepts, strategies, achievements” International Conference Tehran, Iran 26/27 April 2017 Kharazami University

Conference Announcement

Contact: Seyed Javad: [email protected] Michael Kuhn: [email protected]

Rationale

Towards the end of 20th century the social sciences discovered a new phenomenon, they coined as globalization. Responding to this “global turn” the social sciences across the world since then discuss for about two decades that and how the social sciences also need to be “globalized”.

What have we learned from the two decades discourse about the globalization of the social sciences? What has been discussed about what the globalization of the social sciences means and what globalized social thought aims at?

Reflecting on the achievements of a discourse provides shared views on what globalizing social sciences aims at and the two decades discourse shows anything else but such shares views about what globalizing social sciences are and what they are aiming at. Reflecting on a narrative of the achievements of globalizing social sciences, might therefore rather be a critical discourse revisiting this discourse and arguing about the theoretical assumptions of this debate, its challenges and the future direction into which the discourses about globalizing social sciences should be further on developed.

Let aside what ‘globalization’ is, the discourses about the globalizing social sciences, already often distinguished from an internationalization of the social sciences, are already odd enough, if one considers that it is the social sciences in the since these very discourses so called “Western” science world, in which this debate has been initiated. It is indeed odd if those social sciences raise the question to globalize social thought, those very social sciences from that part of the world, that have not only spread their way of theorizing about the social and their theories across the world in the last two centuries; what does it mean, if social sciences detect the need to globalize social thought, those very social sciences, which made together with the global export of their entire education system also their entire science system, the ways to conceptualize and to structure science and with this also the global export of their social sciences across the world, the one and only way to practice social science? What does it mean if social sciences advocate the need of a globalization of social thought, those very social sciences which forced the rest of the globe with their colonial power to take their very social sciences as the one and only way to theorize about the world? What is the shift they are proclaiming, shifting the exiting global reign of social sciences established through colonialism towards globalising social sciences?

At least for national science policies around the world, and this is not at all the case only for science policies in the “West”, for national science policies across the world it is very clear that globalizing social sciences means aiming at promoting national science communities to hold a strong position in a competition about which national sciences have the say in the global production of knowledge. Therefore they establish all sorts of incentives supporting their national sciences in a global battle about … about what? About knowledge? What is a competition about knowledge? About the role they play in a global knowledge market, populated with such scientific creatures such as “flagships”? What is the scientific substance of such competing flagships and what is their role in globalizing social science theorizing about the world? If globalizing social sciences from this science policy view means the competition about the role national science communities play on a global knowledge market, a sort of battle among such academic flagships, how does the creation of globalising knowledge go together with the competition about knowledge? What is globalising social thought, national bodies of knowledge that beat other bodies of knowledge of the same kind - with what?

Despite the scientifically most questionable conceptualization of a nationally constructed bodies of knowledge as globalized knowledge that theorizes about a globalized social world, the main scientific subject, national science communities, populate the discourses about globalizing social sciences, but they do this not at all only in the discourses among national sciences policies and are only from their point of view the key player in globalising social sciences; national science communities are also the main global actors in the discourses among social sciences themselves when they argue about globalizing social thought. National science communities and national or other politically constructed bodies of knowledge populate also the discourses among social scientists across the world while arguing about globalizing social sciences. Discussing southern, western knowledge is not the privileged of debates among national science policies, but are categories populating also the debates among academic social science thinkers when they theorize about globalizing social sciences.

How do they create these political knowledge bodies? How does a theory become part of such politically constructed bodies of knowledge? And: What are national science communities, a creature of the discourse about globalizing social sciences? Do they only exist in this discourse looking a global social thought from a national science policy view? Are national science communities, an entity that only exists in the minds and policy agendas of national sciences or in scientific discourses, which discuss globalizing social science from a view sharing the view of national science policies?

Arguing about how to respond to a global social by globalizing the way of thinking about the world , indeed not at all not only national science policies seem to be concerned, not about the knowledge social science have and create about a globalized social, but about a position national knowledge bodies have. Discourses among social sciences indeed also heavily argue but about the status of national science communities compared to the same scientific subjects elsewhere.

What is a national science community from a scientific point of view? How could national science communities be scientific subjects, key actors in discourses about globalizing social sciences, creating social thought about the global social reality, how could scientific subjects which do not anywhere have any organizational existence as a national scientific body, which are no really existing as any scientific entity anywhere else but in the statistics about globalizing social sciences, how could these scientific entities though mainly populate debates when social sciences reflect about globalising social sciences? How come that national science communities, scientific entities seemingly made or, better, made up as really existing scientific entities, born as the indicators measuring the success of globalising social sciences, how come that these made up scientific entities are also the key subject in the most controversial discourses among social sciences themselves when they are arguing about globalising social science theorizing?

How come that also critical views on the debate about globalising social sciences, mainly articulated by social sciences from the “developing world”, also preferably argue about the status of national science communities and critique “inequalities”, “scientific imperialism”, or – borrowing a category from the military jargon - oppose a “scientific asymmetry”? Is it a shared view across the world, shared also among social scientists as between academics and science policies that globalising social sciences is, rather than about shifting social thought towards thinking about the world, is globalizing social sciences about creating social thought as the material for representing nation states positions in global political-scientific rivalries?

What is the discourse about globalisation of social sciences about and aiming at if these discourse argue about “Northern” versus “Southern” theories, if they create and argue about such political distinctions between political entities as “Western” theories, categories that replace the older notion of “European” social sciences, once critically coining an approach to social sciences, now replaced by categories that are constructing global social thought as a matter of political knowledge entities? What is a discourse about in which the major theoretical activities thinking about globalising social sciences means measuring a scientific kind of “input” or argues about “indicators” allowing to identify the who is who in the global “knowledge flows”? Is this idea of globalizing thinking aiming at knowledge about the social world? Or are these discourses engaged in how measuring global social thought aiming less at knowledge about the world, but at the concern which national knowledge bodies have the say in interpreting the social world?

There are, though finally, also discourse strands in these scientific debates about global social sciences, which indeed are concerned with globalized social science theories, the social science knowledge, social sciences have about the globalizing world. No doubt, international activities, at least of many more scholars than some decades ago, are engaged in creating theories in which they go beyond the national social entities to which they belong. Worldwide the social science knowledge productions have become certainly much more globalized. Yes,

academics travel around the world, publish in many languages and create theories together with scholars from elsewhere. But what are these globalized theories about? As much as it is the case, that the world beyond the secluded nation social entities has gained the attention of social science theorizing, there is also no doubt, that the main body of these globalized theories consist of comparing phenomena, which are inter-nationally defined topics, but which still confine their theorizing towards nationally confined contexts. Typically, comparative country studies are certainly the major shift representing the new globalizing social science – and thus also show that globalized social sciences still stay within the same national scope of theorizing, the same reflexive framework in which social sciences ever since worked, just as they did ever since before any globalizing social science was discussed. In globalising social sciences nationally constructed theories, once limited to a single country are now further developed towards a multiplicity of national studies and towards their inter- national comparison – often struggling with the tertium comparationis against which they could be compared. Reflecting about any phenomenon from an explicit national “perspective”, in globalizing social sciences this is not rejected as an explicit biased theory, but this, theorizing not only about any phenomena in a country, but from a country perspective, is the standard way of contributing social thought to a globalized knowledge production. Is this then, the agglomeration of nationally constructed knowledge what globalizing social science knowledge is about? Moreover, do these nationally constructed theories really understand what is going on in any individual country if they theories about countries theories through such national perspectives? Do social sciences understand the world if they now in globalized social sciences theorize about what is going on in more than the country they come from, all created through such explicitly biased theories?

The more critically presented view in the discourse about how to create global social thought, argues against the applicability of “Western” theories – and insists on alternative categories, the “indigenization” of local theorizing, thus claiming to create alternative theories. However, more than the above comparative studies, the trend to contribute to globalising social sciences by indigenizing theorizing, even insist on the creation of very nationally/locally constructed theories. Is globalising social sciences then after all creating a multiplicity of locally provincialised theories? Globalising social sciences is knowledge that consists of a gathering of the many local knowledges?

To sum it up: Reflecting on two decades of globalising social science, their concepts, their strategies and achievements might then turn out to require reflections that rather try to have some controversial debates about what globalising social sciences after all are about and what they are aiming at. Rather than taking their concepts and strategies for granted and to eagerly measure their achievements, may this be via counting publications or - the same methodologically - via arguing about indicators for measuring, to think about two decades of globalising social sciences the conference in Tehran invites social science thinkers from all over the world and from all disciplines to critically re-visit the mainstream debates as well as the opposing critical

views about globalising social sciences and to think about what social thought, theorizing about the social world as theorizing about the world’s social, might rather aim at. Or is it the case, that re-visiting the issue of what globalising social sciences are, might also require to also re-visit the issue what globalization is?

The conference in Tehran invites papers which discuss the above questions – or which critique these set of questions and advocate to raise others.

Scientific Committee Members Farid Alatas, Singapore Kwang Yeong Shin, South Korea Seyed Javad, Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran Michael Kuhn, WorldSSHNet Shujiro Yazawa, Japan Nestor Castro, Phillippines Hebe Vessuri, Mexico Laurence Roulleau Berger, France Parviz Ejlali, Iranian Sociological Association Rasoul Rasoulipour, Kharazmi University, Iran

Sujata Patel, India

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