World SSH Net Thinkshop Tokyo,

October 2014,

Seijo University Tokyo

"Global social thought and academic practices in the social sciences"

Table of contents: -

Michael Christie, Australian Indigenous knowledge and the globalising social sciences

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Kazumi Okamoto, Academic Culture: An alternative conceptual and analytical framework for discussions on international collaboration in social sciences

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Michael Kuhn, Notes about the calamitous of spatiological social science theorizing

Paper (Working version) Michael Christie

Australian Indigenous knowledge and the globalising social sciences Summary Abstract: The knowledge practices of Indigenous people may provide valuable insights and strategies in our struggle to understand the processes and effects of globalisation on the social sciences and humanities. This paper begins with a close look at two ceremonial concepts belonging to the Yolŋu Australian Aboriginal people, which have been offered as conceptual devices for understanding a social knowledge practice which is pragmatic and local. Understanding these concepts as metaphysical underpinnings to a particular performative epistemology provides analytical framings whereby alternatives can be discerned to the globalising social sciences and humanities. Using a case study of work about human rights, the paper concludes with a renewed definition of social since in postcolonial knowledge work.

Key words: Australian Indigenous, epistemology, postcolonial

An Induction into an Aboriginal social science Australia’s Aboriginal people have distinctive epistemologies supporting what could be called their ‘social sciences’. Here I begin with a definition of social science as ‘knowledge production about the social’. My induction into the knowledge practices of the Yolŋu Aboriginal people in north east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory began as a teacher in remote Australian Aboriginal schools in the early 1970s, where I soon became a linguist, translator and interpreter of Yolŋu Aboriginal languages. Over the following 40 years my academic life has increasingly involved working with Aboriginal knowledge authorities on collaborative transdisciplinary research which entails taking seriously both academic and Aboriginal epistemologies. I am interested in Aboriginal philosophy, particularly in epistemology, because it is in their epistemological practices that Aboriginal philosophers make a major contribution to alternatives to western modes of knowledge work, including the globalising social sciences and humanities. Garma and Galtha: Indigenous metaphysical commitments In thinking of alternative social science and humanities practices, I focus on two particular concepts derived from a Yolŋu Australian Aboriginal philosophy. The Yolŋu people number about 5000, live on their ancestral lands in the remote east of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, and speak a large number of related languages belonging to the Pama-Nyungan group. The fundamental notions of garma and galtha were originally provided to me and other educators and educational theorists working in collaboration with Aboriginal knowledge authorities in school curriculum development in the 1970s (discussed further below). The garma which as we shall see can be understood as a powerful epistemological frame, is first of all a public ceremonial space. People come together at a garma site to celebrate and perform their very diverse ancestral histories, and to choreograph collectively a statement of who they are, here and now, in all their differences and samenesses, and thus to agree on an honourable and peaceable way of going on together. There are many garma sites all over the land. Sometimes the garma space is used for specialised conflict resolution, but more generally it is used for ceremonial cycles – exchange of morning star totemic objects, for example, and for funerals. To explain the philosophical underpinnings of a garma practice, I need to digress slightly to an anthropological outline. The Yolŋu world is found divided in two mutually dependent halves, or moieties, and everyone and everything belongs to one or the other moiety. The world as we know it came into existence as the creating ancestors of each moiety, walked, flew, swam and danced their way across the country, singing and crying, and leaving in place the land forms, the waters, the species, and the peoples and their languages, songs, sacred designs and ceremonies which we still celebrate today. Marriage is exogamous. One must always marry someone from a different clan group, and one of the opposite moiety. This has traditionally been organised through long standing alliances between particular groups, who call each other ‘mother and child’ and ‘grandmother and grandchild’. One is always the opposite moiety from one’s mother, and, of course, the same moiety (but generally a different clan group) as one’s mother’s mother. It is through one’s mother’s mother that one acquires much of one’s totemic affiliation and with whom one unites in the garma for nuanced performances of sameness and difference. Enough of the anthropology.

Suffice it to say that one is who one is by virtue of long chains and webs of connectedness between people, places and totems, and that all ceremonial and agreement making activity necessarily involves members of a range of different totemic groups in particular relation to each other. (For Yolŋu philosophical discussion on totems, the environment, identity and knowledge work, see for example Buthimang 2010, Garnggulkpuy 2002, 2010, MarikaMununggiritj et al 1990.) Arriving at the garma, everyone is conscious of those complex webs of connections, and how they can be performed in subtle ways to draw out particular emphases, and background others, and to focus upon particular identities or on particular distinctions. The task is to work together, conscious of who and where we are, whose land we are on, whose ceremony we are revitalising (or whose life we are celebrating), to make a collective performance of who we are, while carefully preserving our differences, and making agreed ways forward together. People come from far and wide, and sit in shelters around the edges of the garma space, and prepare themselves in extended family groups by singing their ancestral songs, and painting each other with detailed ancestral designs. All ceremonial activities, like paintings for example, entail owners (who ‘own’ or more correctly who ‘are’ the totem – the cheeky yam, the storm cloud, the spiders web…) as well as ‘managers’ (who call the totem and its human manifestations whether male or female, ‘mother’). The old men are often in a sacred shelter, discussing links between the public garma, its paintings and performances and the secret-sacred work to which it is connected, sharing and concealing stories and coming to agreement over truth claims. The ceremony has a particular starting point. When the general form of the performance and the particular roles of senior people have been agreed upon, a senior custodian of the land and the ceremony ‘throws the galtha’. Something, maybe a spear, or a just a foot stomping in the sand, comes from the air and pierces the land as a sign that agreement has been made, the talking will stop, and the performance will begin. This gesture, instantiating and (re)mobilising an ancestral complexity in the here and now, is the ‘galtha’ (MarikaMununggiritj and Christie, 1995). Groups of people, young men dancing in front, women dancing behind, and old men and women standing at the side calling out directions, beating clap sticks, singing ancestral songs and incantations come into the garma, each group in turn, and work together to choreograph the performance. The galtha is a sign that ancestral reality is at work again in a special way, time bends back upon itself, history is folded back over the present, and we are taking on once again the creative work of the ancestors, redefining who and where we are in terms of our relation to each other and to the unfolding world. Garma-galtha as a Social Science The ancient practice of the garma and its galtha, and the complex philosophies which emerge from it and which support it, first came to the attention of social scientists in the 1980s. The social scientists in question were curriculum theorists and developers (including myself) in a remote corner of Arnhem Land, and the concepts of garma and galtha were in fact pressed upon us by community elders and ceremonial leaders finally reacting against

fifty years of colonial education. It being a particularly liberal period of Australia’s political history, the policies of Aboriginal ‘self-determination’ and ‘reconciliation’ were finding their way into schools (and other institutions), and Aboriginal governance practices and epistemologies were being taken seriously, at least by some. Taking the garma-galtha nexus seriously as a social science requires explicit attention to its underlying metaphysical commitments. In terms of the education of young people, it introduced a focus on embodiment in place as a reaction against the universalised and objectified knowledge and knowers of the colonial classroom. Quite opposed to the ‘episitemic equality’ of all creatures of the enlightenment (Addelson 1994), Yolŋu children (in fact all children according to Yolŋu philosophy), are individually unique and different, depending upon their ancestral connections to people, totems and place. In this knowledge practice, agreeing upon who we are, individually and collectively, and how we should live, given our agreements, our places and our identities, are all key features of any viable and just knowledge practice, whether it be in the classroom, the laboratory, or the ethnographic field. As Indigenous social science worked in collaboration with academic scientists interested in developing transdisciplinary alternatives to the globalising knowledge practice under neoliberalism, Yolŋu knowledge practices have informed and enriched research into fields as diverse as health communication (Christie and Verran 2014) , environmental management (Christie 2007, 2008), resource allocation and planning (Christie 2014), homelessness (Maypilama et al 2004) and housing (Christie 2013), emerging uses of digital technologies in Aboriginal knowledge traditions (Christie & Verran 2013), mathematics education (Verran 2007), and problem gambling (Christie and Young 2011). The references above all provide details of the practice of our transdisciplinary research. (Transdisciplinary research in our definition, engages knowledge practices from outside the academy – as opposed to interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary which remain within the enlightenment tradition.) In the next section I explore some of the analytic framings which provide a contrast between the Indigenous knowledge practice and the increasingly globalising social sciences, not as they appear (as galtha and garma) in Aboriginal philosophical discourse, but in the categories of the western tradition. Some analytic framings of a Yolŋu social science Knowledge traditions, and knowledge practices My first move in framing this alternative social science is to step away from framing knowledge as commodity. Scientists working within the social scientific traditions derived from the European ‘enlightenment’, are prone to dismiss Aboriginal social science as folksy and unscientific because it eschews objective facts in favour of narratives and choreographed performances. So I use the term knowledge traditions deliberately and carefully, taking both the garma and the enlightenment as historically situated knowledge traditions. If we talk simply of knowledge, we may be tempted to think of knowledge as a thing, rather than as a practice. To take knowledge as an object of human endeavour, is already to slip into the enlightenment paradigm, where we find an a priori split between the knower and the known. I argue, at least within the Indigenous knowledge practices with which I am familiar, that the ontological divide between the knower and the known, between

the subject and the object, is always provisional, always emergent, always negotiated and in fact always the effect of collective action, as in the garma process. We are constantly working together to create new possible worlds, including new selves and others, and ways of going forward together in good faith. Framings and theories To resist the enlightenment figure of the knowable world ‘out there’ (see for example Law 2007), and to embrace knowledge work as a collaborative, productive, world-making process, we reinterpret the traditional intellectual practice of theorising as analytic framing. We are not taking a step backwards to judge an otherly world by formulating a theory to map over and explain that external reality, but we bring an analytic framing as a tool for use in the here and now, in the hope that our academic work might intervene in the contestations around the problems of the moment (including globalisation and its alternatives). Analytic framings, like the ancestral stories in the garma, participate in knowledge production as players, they do not explain the world. The galtha refuses the role of the judging observer. Knowledge makers are always active participants in collective action, even if they feel and say they have a privileged perspective through which they can see what others can not. We must do theory and practice together. Performances and representations We do not reject or repudiate the knowledge practices of the enlightenment. They are valid and significant and useful. (As the Yolŋu elders reassured the white Australian school teachers in our discussion over curriculum many years ago, Western knowledge practices are useful for Aboriginal people too, in appropriate framing). What distinguishes the knowledge work of the enlightenment from that of the Yolŋu, is the focus on representation: i.e. a subject perceiving and specifying an object. The metaphor of a light shining to reveal a previously unseen but ready-made world ‘out there’ is of course the fundamental metaphor of enlightenment epistemology. When following the Yolŋu, we talk about knowledge as a practice, rather than an object, we can include both the representational knowledge practices of the enlightenment and the performative practices of those who resist representationalism, including Indigenous peoples. Representations of ‘truth’ are performances too. The notion of knowledge practices, provides us a frame through which we can compare and contrast the globalising social sciences of the enlightenment, and the localised knowledge work of other knowledge traditions. It also allows us to see the knowledge practices of the enlightenment and of Aboriginal Australia both in their cultural and historical contexts. Relativism and the local So in any context of knowledge work, enlightenment practices (demography, sociology, anthropology, history, etc) may find their place in our agreement making. But they may not. The Yolŋu knowledge tradition is strongly anti-relativist. Not all contributions are equally useful, honourable or relevant. The different performances are all enacted and interwoven as truth claims, upon which follow the difficult complex, sometimes tense, located, embodied epistemic practices, where truth claims are assessed by the community under the authority of the elders, making clear agreement about the here-and-now-for-us truth of how we should

go on together. This does imply a different notion of truth from that found in representationalism. Narratives and facts The truth claim of a Yolŋu is always a story. If you ask a Yolŋu a question, you will get a story in reply. In my efforts to find a common ground from which to celebrate the contributions of Aboriginal social science, I would argue that the (European enlightenment) fact is in actually a narrative with its cultural, historical and political clothing removed. Facts are historically and politically contingent, and often depend upon a hidden grand narrative’ of, for example, ‘progress’ or ‘cause and effect’. Theory is a narrative of then and there. Practice is narrative of the here and now. Progress and colonisation Aboriginal knowledge authorities are very conscious of the ways in which the refusal of the colonising social sciences to engage face to face in collective action around the problems of the moment, is tied to the colonial project of progress. The garma (with its insistence on the face to face here and now in truth and agreement making) and the galtha (with its insistence that all honourable futures must involve a careful ‘remembering of the future’), keep the progressivism of colonization (and of globalisation) at bay. There is a close connection between the monologic of western social science, and the notion of the colonised people being invited to move from a past of darkness through a difficult present towards a glorious future of salvation, enlightenment and progress (Fabian 2002, Rose 2004). Echoing as it does the monotheistic religions from which it derives, this progressivism denies the viability and plurality of ancient and local life ways and obscures the alternatives to globalising knowledge priorities. Contributions of Aboriginal epistemology to decolonising the social sciences: the example of Human rights. Aboriginal philosophers understand the world itself, including time and space, and all social and political categories, as coming to be in collective action. Since the originary actions of the ancestors who made our time and place, right up to now in the ongoing garma-galtha practices of agreement making, including knowledge production, in this metaphysics, the categories and boundaries are provisional and subtly negotiated in place1. So to use the example of human rights, an understanding and practice of rights must be seen to emerge in collective action. Rights are not ontologically given. They are constructed. But of course different groups (lawyers, activists, policy makers, academics, Aboriginal participants) construct issues of rights quite differently. That is why in doing careful postcolonial practices together, we search for a galtha – a new way of doing rights as well as of understanding them. (We could have used any other example apart from rights – it could be it could be any social or psychological or political problem in context.)

1

The exception to this is the ontological split between the two moieties, Dhuwa and Yirritja, which seem to both precede and enable this metaphysics of emergence.

In working in complex contested political situations, analytical framing work needs to be directed towards ‘success in winning’, particular struggles over particular rights, and not to a more general theory. Joining the battle over human rights requires using the language and tools available for winning in the here-and-now of collective action. In research work on Indigenous rights, we should assume that Aboriginal people and governments should/could both be winners, both ‘end users’ of research. They should all be involved in the garma of social science. And as we work around concrete issues of rights, we see how some particular discourses and practices actually constitute the nation state, while others may unsettle it. As we look at the way human rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups are defined as a public problem by various participants, we start to see the range of solutions that are appropriate for human rights. Seeing all materialities as somehow emergent in collective action allows us to be respectful of both government and Aboriginal community members and the participants in their worlds – even though they can be quite different. It allows us to avoid the metaphysics of western science, and the individualism of western ethics and political philosophy. Methodologically we could for example look together at the changing rhetoric and practices of governments concerned with individual and collective rights, and compare them with the history of Aboriginal thinking and practices of rights, responsibilities, care and concern (with respect to various issues or projects of current concern– eg housing, land tenure, research, education, tourism, arts, health). As pragmatists, we need to do this in the piecemeal tactics that work in producing knowledge and policy and changed practice at the same time. Those like Yolŋu knowledge authorities whose pragmatist philosophy see them engaged more directly in public problems contribute to social movements in different ways from general theorists. They are not looking for rational consistency across various understandings and practices of human rights and responsibilities. It is from the tensions between the different rationalities that we may be able to devise a more generative approach to Human Rights policy, advocacy and practice. So the contributions of Yolŋu social science to globalizing discourse of human rights entails framing and enacting what is happening in the public problem of the moment, producing provisional theories and practices that we should not expect to easily or automatically extend to cover other situations, but through which we devise, celebrate and prosecute just ways of going on together. We point to this located, momentary practice of knowledge and agreement making as informing discussions around alternatives to the globalizing social sciences and humanities.

References Addelson, Katherine Pyne (1994), Moral passages: toward a collectivist moral theory. New York, Routledge Buthimang, Timothy (2010). ‘Garmak Gularriwuy’. Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts(2), 28-47 Christie, Michael, (2014). ‘Decolonising methodology in an Arnhem Land garden’. In B. Neumeier & K. Schaffer (Eds.), Decolonizing the Landscape: Indigenous Cultures in Australia. Amsterdam: Rodopi pp57-70 Christie, Michael, (2013). Talking home and housing: The ethnographer brought back down to earth. Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts, 12, 29-34 Christie, Michael, (2008) ‘Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge Practices and North Australian Biosecurity’. Kritis: Journal of Interdisciplinary Development Studies, and Learning communities; International Journal of Learning in Social contexts, joint edition, July 2008, 64-74 Christie, Michael, (2007) ‘Knowledge Management and Natural Resource Management.’ in Investing in Indigenous Natural Resource Management, edited by M.K. Luckert, B.M. Campbell, J.T Gorman and S.T. Garnett, 86-90. Darwin: Charles Darwin University Press Christie, Michael, & Young, Martin (2011) The public problem of 'Aboriginal gambling': winning the struggle for an urban space, Australian Journal of Social Issues Volume 46 Issue 3 253-272 Christie, Michael, & Verran, Helen (2014) ‘The Touch Pad Body: A Generative Transcultural Digital Device Interrupting Received Ideas and Practices in Aboriginal Health’ Societies: Special Edition: Beyond Techno-Utopia: Critical Approaches to Digital Health Technologies, 4, 256–264 Christie, Michael, & Verran, Helen (2013). Digital Lives in Postcolonial Aboriginal Australia Journal of Material Culture 18(3) 299-317 Fabian, Johannes (2002) Time and the Other: How Anthropology makes it Object New York: Columbia University Press. Garnggulkpuy, Joanne. (2002). ‘Yolngu Balandi Watangumirri’, from http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/Yolŋustudies/docs/garnggulkpuy.pdf Garnggulkpuy, Joanne. (2010). ‘The Yolngu Child's Pathway’. Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts (2), 32-37 Law, John, (2007) Making a mess with method. In: Outhwaite W and Turner S (eds) The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology. London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 595-606 Marika-Mununggiritj, Raymattja, and Christie, Michael (1995) ‘Yolŋu metaphors for learning’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 113, 59-62 Marika-Mununggiritj, Raymattja, Banbapuy Maymuru, Multhara Mununggurr, Badang’thun Munyarryun, Gandalal Ngurruwutthun, Yalmay Yunupingu, (1990) ‘The History of the Yirrkala Community School: Yolngu thinking about education in the Laynha and Yirrkala Area. Ngoonjook September, 32-52 Maypilama, Garnggulkpuy, Christie M, et al. (2004) Yolŋu Long-grassers on Larrakia Land: First Language Research Report for the Community Harmony Project Darwin and Palmerston. Available at: http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/Yolŋustudies/docs/Longgrass_report.pdf.

Rose, Deborah, (2004) Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Verran, Helen. (2007) ‘Mathematics of Yolŋu Aboriginal Australians’ Encyclopaedia of the History of Non-Western Science: Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine. Berlin Heidelberg, New York: Springer.

Paper Kazumi Okamoto (Working version)

Academic Culture: An alternative conceptual and analytical framework for discussions on international collaboration in social sciences

Abstract The structure of knowledge generation in social sciences has been described and discussed with contrastive terms such as North/South, centre/periphery, and dominating/dominated, in order to focus on its skewed balance in academic work. Such terms and the structure of academic work, in a certain sense, reflect on the reality of globalized social science world, nonetheless, this type of discussion seems rather stagnated as academic debates, since the discussions so much involve today’s nation states’ view on science, which is that science is a mean to enhance competitiveness of a nation state. That is, world ranking systems and comparison of number of citations between countries, which are central components of the existing discussions on globalized academic activities to indicate skewedness, inequality, and dependence of small (often developing) countries in globalized academic work, strongly exhibit the competitive nature that advocates of such discussions are interested in. Even though academic activities and mobility of scholars have crossed geographical national borders, the ways in which academic activities are discussed are strongly confined within and fixed by nationalities of scholars/institutional affiliations. In order to overcome the lack of academic people’s own perspectives on academic work, particularly focusing on knowledge generation activities in relation to international academic collaborations, a new conceptual and analytical framework that is called “academic culture” is introduced. Academic culture, inspired by the concept of “small cultures” advocated by a British linguist, Adrian Holliday, would be an alternative approach to discussion on academic work in a context of international collaboration. It could emancipate us from ordinary intercultural perspectives in studying on any encounter of people from different global regions, which can only repeat that we/they are different from others/us because of national cultural traits, and enable us to go beyond such stereotypical analyses on people with nonessentialist approach that tries not to classify people simply by their nationalities. By the concept and framework of academic culture, international academic activities such as international collaborations can be discussed and analysed from academic people’s own perspectives on knowledge generation with much less emphasis on competitiveness in academic work, and factors that influence international academic collaboration could be clarified. Consequently, topics of globalized academic work in social sciences would be able to be deployed from more diverse and different angles than the existing discussions which stick to and are confused with nation states’ perspectives on academic activities.

Keywords: International collaboration, social sciences, globalization, culture, non-essentialist approach

Introduction It has already been a couple of decades since globalization gained its popularity as phenomena in almost every fields of our lives, such as economy, trade, communication and technology, politics, and other societal matters. Accordingly, scientists in related disciplinary fields have attempted to explain, and often to solve, matters concerning globalization, and consequently, such studies have formed a research field of globalization studies. Today, globalization is a kind of fashionable word that nation states, funding agencies, and research institutions around the world favour. Thus, there is no doubt that globalization is one of the most discussed issues, and is seen as a relevant research theme in various scientific fields. Despite that academic activities in social sciences (SS), which have been affected by a big wave of globalization, is also not an exception, it seems that studies on academic work and/or academic people that are influenced by phenomena of globalization have been rather scarce. Although the field of such studies is not quantitatively scarce, it is difficult to find diverse discussions on globalization and academic work from different perspectives. Therefore, this article attempts to exhibit a new approach to constructing discussion paths on the above-mentioned matter, especially focusing on academic work. This new approach is necessary in order to overcome repetitive nature of current discussions on this matter, which are often national comparative studies that tend to end up with mere description of one country/region in which international academic activities are implemented. It is rather problematic to put so much emphasis on differences and particularities of each country and/or global region, especially in order to further deploy discussions in relation to international academic activities, since such differences could simply create more distance, and in an extreme case unnecessary hostility, between academic communities in which people work under different academic circumstances. In order to achieve the purpose of this article: First, current mainstream discussions on structures of globalized academic work in SSH would be reviewed. Second, meanings of international collaboration would be explored. Third, analyses of international collaborations exploiting intercultural studies would be revealed, according to my past research. Fourth, a new approach on this issue conceptualized by and based on Adrian Holliday’s “small cultures” (Holliday, 1999) would be introduced and explained. Simultaneously, the framework which is called “academic culture” would also be introduced, and necessity and validity to use this framework to better understand and analyse relationship between academic culture and academic work such as international collaborations would be discussed. Fifth and finally, some concluding remarks from the above discussions would be exhibited. Current discussions: Structures of globalized academic work in SS Although it is very difficult to grasp all discussions which exist in each disciplinary field of SS regarding to the current status of academic work that crosses national border, the World Social Science Report published in 2010 can be a useful source to draw an overview of the

current status and issues in the field of SS2. This report is heavily committed to describing how skewed the work in SS is. In other words, as the title of this report shows3, how the academic work in SS is divided between those who have more privileged working conditions for carrying out conventional academic work such as publishing in academic journals, participating in international conferences, and other activities and those who do not have such conditions. If we observe some chapter headlines4 of the report, we would already come to a conclusion without reading each article closely that the world of SS has two sectors: One is a group of scholars and/or academe that leads the whole world SS not only theoretically but also institutionally, and the other is those who feel un-noticed, left behind, and even dependent on their powerful counterparts in the North America and European global regions. Some similar contrastive terms are frequently seen, such as North versus South, centre and periphery, dependent, power, and hegemony, in order to depict the current situation in SS, concerning skewed balance of human resource, funding, publication, and other academic practices that are seen in the globalized academic work. Whichever term is used, the central message of advocates of these terms is that small and less powerful academe, particularly in developing countries, are not able to join international academic practices such as publishing in prestigious academic journals, making presentations in international conferences, and academic collaborative activities, due to the lack of financial and human resources, English language ability that is necessary to join the mainstream SS academe, and theoretical and conceptual understanding by the Euro-American colleagues who are considered as hegemonic power of SS world. That is, it is an image that the winner oppresses the small participants in the world SS5. It is relevant to discuss such disparity in globalized academic work in SS on one hand, it seems a great drawback to endlessly continue this type of discussion on the other hand. As is already indicated above, this contrastive discussion can only depict and emphasize on different working conditions among SS academics in the world. Drawing an attention to the fact that there is the disparity in academic work seems meaningful as a starting point to discuss the globalized academic work in SS, however, blaming academic people and/or academe of the so-called dominating academic communities in SS would only leave antagonism expressed by those who do not dominate in the world SS. Kuhn criticizes this situation as “a battlefield of national science communities” (2013:40) and questions: Are they seriously thinking an internationally acting academic is a kind of intellectual soldier gathered and organised in national science entity fighting a battle between national science organisations from different countries? (ibid.: 43)

2

However, quite some number of authors in this report seems sociologists and bibliometricians. Therefore, in a strict sense, the discussions do not necessarily represent all social scientific disciplinary fields. 3 The title is “Knowledge Divides” (UNESCO, 2010). 4 For instance, chapter three is titled as “unequal capacities, chapter four as “uneven internationalization” and chapter five as “homogenizing or pluralizing social sciences?”. 5 For more detailed discussion about this, see “Hegemonic Science: Critique Strands, Counterstrategies, and Their Paradigmatic Premises” (Kuhn, 2013).

Battlefield as a metaphor of the current status of globalized knowledge generation practice is really to the point to reveal competitive nature of academic activities as a whole6. If this nature is taken into consideration in thinking and discussing on the current status of globalized SS, there would be no surprise that the above-mentioned advocates only and always make contrastive remarks such as North/South, centre/periphery, and dominating/dominated to discuss this issue. This, to my mind, is the most problematic point in these discussions, since such comparisons, or complaints, can merely focus on the fact that they/we are different and that we do not have as good working conditions as our powerful counterparts. The main point of their discussion, therefore, is that we would also like to be a winner in this battlefield. It is quite obvious, if you look at what is happening in the global economy, that globalization implies more severe worldwide competitions among participants. There would be no harmonious competition in which everyone is the winner at the same time, due to the fundamental nature of competition (Okamoto, 2012). At this very point, such discussions are really stagnated, and can only be repetitive, since any other interests would not be required to participate in such discussions than being a winner in this battlefield. The advocates of the discussions might insist that realization that there are difficulties, different working conditions, and fixed frameworks for academic work such as publication practices under which certain groups of academic people have more advantages than the others is necessary for future academic collaborations where people with different academic backgrounds and experiences could meet and work together. Albeit most of their claims about their working conditions/circumstances can be the reality, a strong wish that they would also like to be recognized and dominant in the globalized academic arena can be seen behind the terms such as ‘inequality’, ‘dependent’, ‘periphery’, and others. It is not to say that people should not be so ambitious in their work7, but to question the validity of the argument that they are not recognized and therefore are not prestigious because of disadvantageous working conditions and the current structure of globalized academic work. Such an advocacy is very contradictive, because they hate the current system and conditions where their work takes place, but at the same time, they love to be included in the very system of which they fiercely accuse. This means that it would be all fine if they are finally recognized by the world audience, and they would be able to forget about complaints and accusations that they ever made as soon as they shift their position from the weaker side to the stronger one (Okamoto, 2013). Same is the fundamental nature of current discussion on international collaborations as the above-mentioned individual prestige competitions. In the case of international collaborations, more political implications are involved, such as that country A is better than B and C in the region, since science is nowadays considered as a mean to enhance competitiveness of a nation state8. It is certainly necessary to closely observe the current status of the globalized 6

Ranking system for Higher Education Institutions worldwide also indicates this competitive nature in academic activities. 7 Becher and Trowler (2001) point out that majority of academicians are motivated to acquire individual prestige in their academic fields. 8 In the case of Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has just launched a new funding project, namely “Top Global University Project” in autumn 2014. This is “a funding project that aims to enhance the international compatibility

academic work in SS, nevertheless, we should also realize the great discrepancy between collaboration which means working together with others to create something and competition which means, as discussed, deciding the winner and the losers. In the next section, I will discuss what international academic collaboration is in the fields of SS. That is, how globalized academic collaboration is understood among SS scholars. Implication of international collaborations in SS The term “collaboration” may give us an impression that it is peaceful and harmonious joint activities between participants. It might not be wrong in a general sense, however, it is not necessarily the case in discussions on the globalized academic work in SS. Unfortunately, very few studies on international collaborations such as cross-national research projects in SS exist, instead, co-authoring seems to be considered as a synonym to academic collaboration (e.g. Franceschet & Costantini, 2010; Shin & Cummings, 2010; Sonnenwald, 2007; Glänzel & Shubert, 2005; Katz & Martin, 1997). Consequently, extent and/or impact of collaborations tend to be measured by database of citation indices. Again, the implication of measuring any activities has the competitive orientation, because measuring has a clear intention of ranking participants quantitatively. Although a number of scholars not only in SS but also in natural sciences claim that measuring scholars’ quality of work and/or internationality by such database of science citation indices is inappropriate (e.g. Bedeian, Van Fleet, & Hyman, 2009; Lariviere, Gingras, & Archambault 2006; Hicks, 2005; Klein & Chiang, 2004; van Leeuwen et al. 2001; Seglen, 1997), because of various bias in those databases, this approach to evaluate work of scientists is very common and seems the only approach to discuss quality and productivity of scholars in the international context. The consequence of usage of this approach is ranking scholars (or countries) by the number of citations, and it accelerates world competitions among scholars. Scientific outcome is surely a significant aspect of academic work, nevertheless, in respect of academic collaborations, co-authoring is not the exclusive form of collaborative work. Rather, it can be assumed that there should be much more phases of collaborative work until they achieve a form of co-authoring, and even collaborations without any formal publication such as journal articles and books is also possible. In this sense, it seems too reckless to consider that co-authoring is the exclusive and representative form of academic collaborations. Then, an important question is raised: How do we define international academic collaborations? In order to deploy a new discussion path on international academic collaboration, it is not unimportant that we go beyond any competitive aspects of conventional understanding on international collaboration. Otherwise, as is the case in the current discussions on the issue of academic working conditions and structure of knowledge dissemination, SS scholars would only be busy with comparing between me and others/ my country and other countries about their academic prominence. Besides, such discussions incline to focus on more nation states’ perspectives that put great importance on competitiveness of people/organizations in

and competitiveness of higher education in Japan. It provides prioritized support for the world-class and innovative universities that lead the internationalization of Japanese universities.” (MEXT, 2014 Retrieved on 5 December 2014 from the MEXT website: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/26/09/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/10/07/1352218_ 02.pdf)

a country, and as a result, the discussions seem rather political than academic. There might be some exceptions, but practitioners of academic work in SS, particularly of international collaborations, are more interested in joining international research collaboration, due to their intellectual curiosity to know and understand what scholars of the same field in other global regions think about and how they carry out research activities (Kuhn & Okamoto, 2008). Therefore, I attempt to suggest a new framework, which is called “academic culture” to explore academic work in SS, in order to see international collaboration in a different light. Different working (national) cultures? : Irrelevance of total reliance on national cultural characteristics in analyses on academic work Before academic culture is introduced, some points about cultural/intercultural studies regarding to the context of the topic which this article mainly deals with should be mentioned. As soon as the term “culture” is seen, people tend to think of “national culture”, and intercultural study is a very common approach when people would like to analyse behaviour and phenomena occurring between people coming from different global regions. Thus, it has been very conventional to employ this approach when studying on international educational/academic scenes. Particularly, studies on international students, which often means Asian/non-Western origin students, in Western (often English-speaking) higher education institutes employ intercultural study approach, explaining why international students tend to experience difficulties and challenges in their degree courses, how to better handle these students from administrative and/or educational staff perspectives, and other challenges people involved in such settings encounter. Needless to say, intercultural studies are widely adopted to study other social settings such as international corporations (e.g. Hofstede, 1984), local communities where many immigrants live, etc. Therefore, it seems that employing intercultural approach to studying interactions in any groups of people who come from different countries is the right direction, according to existing studies. With this background, I implemented a study on Japanese scholars of social sciences and humanities in international academic activities, focusing on disagreement discourse, some years ago (Okamoto, 2010). My hypothesis was that Japanese scholars would have difficulties when encountering disagreement made by their foreign counterparts in international academic collaborations. It is because Japanese cultural characteristics are often defined as “collectivism”, “uncertainty avoidance” (Hofstede, 1984) and “high-context culture” (Hall, 1976). These definitions provide people particular images about Japanese people that they are so implicit that they would not express their feelings to others directly, and that people respect harmony in a group/ a society rather than individual opinions and/or interests. That is, Japanese people might be generally understood as that they would not reveal what they really think when they witness that other people have different opinions, due to these national cultural traits. However, despite of my hypothesis, it turned out that Japanese scholars participated in my study confirmed totally opposite to my hypothesis. This research outcome simply made me question the sole and total reliance on any intercultural theories, which very roughly classify ways people’s behaviour around the world, for analyses on working life of academics. In other words, there should be other approach than intercultural studies, in order to study on SS scholars as a unit of group that carries out, more or less, similar, if not the same, work regardless the places they are located in the world.

My realization that exploiting national cultural characteristics for the above-mentioned research aim is not workable is, at the same time, a realization of a different approach which is called non-essentialist approach. In the following section, I introduce the fundamental concept of “small cultures” deployed by Adrian Holliday to underlie “academic culture” as the new framework to develop discussions on international academic collaborations in SS from a different direction. Basic framework of conceptualising academic culture: Holliday’s ‘Small Cultures’ Among other linguists who have teaching experiences of English language in non-English speaking countries (e.g. Guest, 2002; Stapleton, 2002; Littlewood, 1999), Adrian Holliday is also a scholar who felt uncomfortable about essentialist approach to investigating on students’ learning attitudes, for using stereotypical national cultural traits only generates “reductive statements” (Holliday, 2000: 40) that is already known before any research activity starts. This means, since the national cultural traits are already defined and fixed, any research findings would only confirm that their research samples/participants do have the very cultural traits that are already known. Additionally, Holliday suggests that frequented cultural trait such as individualism versus collectivism and masculinity versus femininity, which can allude one culture is right and other is wrong, “supports various spheres of political interest” (1999: 243). To avoid bringing political interest into academic research and repeating the same statement about people studied, Holliday took another way to bridge people’s behaviour and culture, which is non-essentialist approach. For Holliday (2000), culture can be “discovered” by non-essentialist approach, because it “can help us to unlock any form of social behaviour by helping us to see how it operates as culture per se.” (Emphasis in original). His intention is not to define culture as “X rather than Y, but to clarify what we mean when we use the word in different ways for different purposes.” (1999: 238) Hence, what Holliday claims is not that non-essentialist approach that is later introduced as “small cultures” is correct and the only one to analyse people’s behaviour, but that he introduces an alternative way to approach to understanding people’s behaviour so that it could be more explorative than looking at pre-defined ethnic/national cultural traits in people. From the aforementioned conceptual standpoint, Holliday distinguishes culture as two forms: One is large cultures and the other is small cultures. The distinction of these is not exclusively Holliday’s own, however, the meaning of small cultures, advocated by him could be different from others. Large cultures mean cultures that are classified by geographical region/country such as Asian and Japanese, which is the foundation of essentialist approach as seen above. On the other hand, however, small cultures are seen differently: Some people might see small cultures as a matter of size, and therefore, might understand them as sub-culture, and simultaneously, sub-culture is considered as a deviant form of large culture. Then, sub-culture, as Holliday points out, is “essentially a large culture concept” (ibid.: 238-9). That is to say, sub-culture is only small due to its size compared to large culture, but it belongs to large culture as its fundamental concept. Holliday calls this structure and relationship between large and sub-cultures as “Russian doll or onion-skin” to visualize it, and what he advocates as small culture is not sub-culture. Rather, The idea of small cultures (…) is non-essentialist in that it does not relate to the essence of ethnic, national, or international entities. Instead it relates to any cohesive social grouping with no necessary subordination to large cultures. (ibid.: 240)

Thus, in his concept, small culture has little to do with size, and is different from so-called “sub-culture” which is a component of large cultures that are categorized under ethnicity/nationality. In the table below, the two paradigms of small and large cultures are briefly explained and characterized. It seems quite obvious that his emphasis on small cultures is based on strong disagreement to observe ‘culture’ as something pre-defined, fixed, and over-simplified stereotypical categorization by mere ethnicity/nationality. Therefore, Holliday’s concept of “small cultures” can be assumed that it is a new concept of cultures that would attempt not to bind people’s behaviour but to understand it by looking at them as a unit of cohesive social groups.

Character

Relations

Research orientation

Small cultures Non-essentialist, non-culturist Relating to cohesive behaviour in activities within any social grouping No necessary subordination to or containment within large cultures, therefore no onionskin Interpretive, process Interpreting, emergent behaviour within any social grouping Heuristic model to aid the process of researching the cohesive process of any social grouping

Large cultures Essentialist, culturist ‘culture’ as essential features of ethnic national or international group Small (sub)cultures are contained within and subordinate to large cultures through onion-skin relationship Prescriptive, normative Beginning with the idea that specific ethnic, national and international groups have different ‘cultures’ and then searching for the details (e.g. what is polite in Japanese culture)

Source: Holliday, 1999: 241 In the following sections, relevance to exploit the concept of small cultures described above to generate “academic culture” and expectation from the application of small cultures to discussion on academic work in SS would be examined and discussed. Academic culture: application of small cultures to discussion on academic work in SS It is neither easy nor straightforward to discuss people’s behaviour by using the term “culture”, since this term almost always implies and put much emphasis on differences between ‘we’ and ‘others/foreign’, and consequently, our mind is caught by the categorization of ‘we’ and ‘others’ as if ‘we’ and ‘others’ were always different when people have different ethnicity/nationality. It is simply because most of us take for granted that the term ‘culture’ means large cultures, as Holliday (1999) notes, which is conceptualized based on geographical regions/countries where people come from. Although there could be such regional/national cultural traits in people’s behaviour and mind, there certainly is a risk of over-generalization on people under study when the concept of large cultures is the only one that is available as a conceptual framework to study diverse people’s behaviour. It is,

therefore, apparent that my previous study on Japanese scholars failed to confirm9 that socalled Japanese cultural traits existed in and underlay academic activities of Japanese scholars when they encountered discourses with their foreign counterparts. Then, a different framework has to be sought for beyond this popular essentialist framework to study on academic work in SS. A great attention was paid to the concept of small cultures advocated by Holliday, for I noticed that SS scholars around the world carried out similar, if not the same, contents and aspects of academic work. In terms of generating academic knowledge, there is not Japanese, American, or African academic work, but fundamental academic work which can be shared its concept and practices around the world such as acquiring existing knowledge, planning and carrying out a research project, and publishing his/her research findings. Then, SS scholars around the world can be assumed that they form a certain culture around academic work, regardless of their individual nationalities. Borrowing Holliday’s notions, SS scholars around the world could be a unit of “social group” and academic work could be “cohesive process of any social grouping” (ibid.: 241). Thus, the concept of small cultures perfectly matches to establish a concept of academic culture which has no subordination of national/regional culture. By setting up the framework of academic culture, not only could we closely observe academic work in a confined setting10 but also we could exploit the observation for future similar studies to clarify and confirm elements and factors which could influence on international academic activities. An ultimate aim of establishing academic culture is to achieve mutual discussions among scholars on academic work in SS without the aforementioned “battlefield” nature of discussion by understanding what aspects and practices effect on activities of generating academic knowledge. I expect that this new type of discussion could be deployed with more qualitative nature of research that would look into details of academic work rather than conventional quantitative analyses of academic work. It is not to reject quantitative analysis on this issue, but to suggest introducing an alternative way to analyse and discuss it, so that SS scholars could see their own work from various angles11, especially when their work is located in a global setting. Construct of academic culture Academic culture can contain any aspects of academic work/life, dependent on a researcher’s own interest. As long as the principal of its conceptual framework that is non9

Confirming that it is how they are because of their national cultural trait is a typical analytical style of intercultural studies. It is the essentialist/culturist approach exploiting the concept of large cultures. 10 In this research project, the setting is the Japanese SSH scholars/academe. It often tends to be interpreted that the study seeks ‘Japanese’ particularities in academic work if one has an image of conventional cultural/intercultural studies. This study has, however, little intention to find ‘Japaneseness’ in academic work, but to exploit the Japanese SS scholars and academe as a case in order to obtain broader views that are applicable to other similar settings, which, in the context of this study, would be other countries’ scholars and academe. 11 Currently, academic work can be only evaluated quantitatively by number of citations, as discussed earlier in this article.

essentialist approach and is based on small culture’s concept is kept, academic culture can be exploited for a number of studies as an alternative to studies which would normally have intercultural study orientation. In my current study, academic culture is constructed in order to investigate and analyse aspects of academic work that could be related to and therefore influence on activities of international collaborations, which is, in this research context, considered as collaborative activities of academic knowledge generation. In other words, academic work is defined in this research as generating academic knowledge. Therefore, even though most of SS scholars are based in university institutes and are committed to teaching and supervising students as well as their own research activities, teaching work is much less counted as academic work in this study. Moreover, any aspects which are specific to a particular country, discipline, and university would not be explored, because collaboration in this study presuppose that it can be international, inter/cross-disciplinary, and/or across diverse universities. If any specific aspects are taken into account, the research outcome would put more emphasis on differences rather than shared aspects of academic work. It is true that individual country, discipline, and university may have its uniqueness, however, the uniqueness is out of this research context12. Academic culture in this research is divided by three levels 13: Macro, micro, and social relations. The following is the details of respective level: 1. Macro level Macro level is largely an environment where academic work is located. Although it is important to investigate on academic work itself, it is not ignorable backgrounds, settings, and locations of academic work, since they could also influence on ways academic work is structured and carried out. In order to investigate such background aspects, certain factors are identified:  National science policy Such as funding system/programmes and nationally prioritized research topics/fields could directly influence ways in which academic work –in other words, research activity- is structured. Additionally, national science policy has also certain impacts on funding programmes/topics of private funding agencies to some extent. In this sense, academic work is largely framed by

12

Needless to say, in other research contexts/settings, it would be possible to include the specific aspects that are mentioned in this article. For instance, researching a particular discipline’s academic culture would be possible. What I emphasize here about the specific aspects is to clarify the construct of academic culture for this particular study on academic work with regard to international academic collaborations. 13 The three levels and individual factors are identified and set up, according to a variety of literature on structure of Higher Education (HE) system, roles of HE institutes, and other numerous studies on HE in general. Strictly speaking, they are too broad to identify and define academic work at more individual and practical level, since interests of above literature do not necessarily match the interest of this study. However, since there is few study which has similar orientations to this study, and consequently, no clear identity and definition of academic work in this context could be found in existing literature, these levels and factors had to be newly identified and devised by the author.

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14

national science policy, and is influenced by research stakeholders’ interests. Of course, it might not be always the case, but it is apparent that there always are research trends, buzzwords for research topic/theme, and societal/national demands for academic research, which are largely defined and decided by national science policies. Institutional infrastructure: Roles of Higher Education For many, universities are the place for their academic work. Universities have diverse roles, which are not necessarily related to academic knowledge generation, in different countries14. Even though universities are considered as places where various forms and process of knowledge generation take place in this research context, it might not be the main and/or only role of university institutions in reality. Such diverse roles of universities are likely to be easily overlooked, since universities are considered as institutions which obtain universally shared concepts, roles, and systems across the world. It might be true to a certain extent, nevertheless, roles of universities might not be totally identical throughout the world, as ways how universities should be can be influenced by policies, demands from society, and other elements that come from outside of universities. It is not diversity of the role of universities but understanding on working environment of SS scholars in which they try to carry out academic work that interests us in the context of this research. The working environment could impact on their academic working life, since the working environment could also be an important element that defines what work they are expected to do in universities. Mission of academics in the society Connected to the above roles of universities, mission of academics in the society is explored. That is: How are academics are seen/understood in the society? What do the public expect academics to do/be in the society? These questions are raised to unfold how academics are perceived by the public. When academics are defined as people who generate academic knowledge, these questions ask what position academics are placed in the society. It might seem less relevant, at a glance, to investigate on such aspects, but, considering that academic work and scholars do not exist only in academic environments such as universities and other academic societies/institutions, they are certainly connected to the public world, which is non-academic society. Investigating on the position and perception of academic people in the public society would clarify relationship between the academics, who are people generate academic knowledge, and the society. It could also reveal what kind of society15 in which they generate academic knowledge they live.

In the case of Japan, universities are expected to contribute to education, research, and contribution to/ cooperation with local communities/societies. 15 Such a question is raised because societal demands have influence on academic work, as previously pointed out. Although the societal demands do not directly come to scholars, what the society requires can often be top priorities as today’s research agenda (e.g. poverty, aging population, unemployment, etc.). Under such circumstances, it is not unimportant to understand what the public society think about academics as people generating knowledge.

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Academic knowledge in the society Similar to the previous aspect (academics in the society), roles of academic knowledge and/or relationship between academic knowledge and the society would be examined. 2. Micro level On the contrary to the macro level, more practical academic work would be explored at the micro level. As already mentioned, the factors in this level as scholars’ practical (daily) work focus on activities/aspects concerning about academic knowledge generation. As relevant factors at micro level, the following five factors are identified:  Academic discourse practices  Publication practices  Managing academic activities  Knowledge acquisition practices  Disciplinary practices These factors are all very straightforward. By investigating on these academic practices, a closer look at scholars’ academic working life would be possible. There are inquiries such as: How they communicate with their colleagues, what they discuss with the colleagues, where, how and why they acquire academic knowledge, what, where, and why they publish their academic work, and other aspects in their daily working life. Earlier in this article, I mentioned that fundamental aspects of academic work can be shared around the world, that is to say, there is no nationally confined or specific academic work. I insist on this point, but it has been much ignored to study what academic people actually do in their working life, therefore, it is not irrelevant to look at something that seems normal, usual, and known to confirm that all these conventional activities are surely carried out with certain purposes and in certain ways. 3. Social relations in academic work In this section, the below factors are explored:  Hierarchy/ Status  Gender  Nationality/Ethnicity These factors are often considered as components of national cultural characteristics. Including these has little intension of emphasizing on national culture per se, but has an intension of simply exploring these factors at work. That means whether or not such social relations influence implementation of academic work. Further, even if it turns out that such social relation factors influence academic work by the empirical study, this would not directly relate to influence of national cultural traits, because the same could be true in other countries on these factors16. Then, it 16

At this moment, we cannot know whether or not it is the case, since the article is based on the study on academic culture focusing on the Japanese SSH scholars as a case. Therefore, it would be clearer about this point when the same/similar studies are implemented in other countries. This entire research project does not yet aim at making a grand generalization on academic culture worldwide, but attempts to suggest other approach to discussion on globalized academic work as such.

would be rather considered as a part of shared academic culture across countries/regions. Additionally, there could be more other social relation factors in this level, however, I try to limit the factors which could be related to knowledge generation activities, according to the context of the research. Thus, academic culture is constructed as above. There are many other possibilities to construct academic culture, as suggested earlier. Nevertheless, the construct of aforementioned academic culture is strictly focused on academic work, particularly on academic knowledge generation that is a core of not only individual academic work but also of collaborative work. In the next section, therefore, I will discuss interrelationship between academic culture and international collaboration. Academic culture and international academic collaborations Academic culture to understand international academic collaboration is necessary, because it has almost never been attempted to establish a conceptual and analytical framework for this purpose, especially to go beyond the nationally confined views which can be only used for comparative, country-specific studies. As discussed earlier, international collaborations mean, for academic practitioners, satisfying their intellectual curiosity by working together with others. They are not individually motivated to compete against each other with their national flags. In this light, the existing discussions and analyses would be much less relevant in order to observe academic work from academic scholars’ own viewpoints. In other words, the existing studies have been intensively discussing from rather nation states’ perspectives, and such perspectives are disguised as if they represented scholars’ own perspectives that all scholars also consider academic work as a mean for national competitions. If we think of reasons why we carry out academic work as an occupation, it is certainly not because we would like to beat someone else from other countries. Of course, the reasons for this vary from one person to another, but it can be assumed that SS scholars are interested in knowing and understanding what makes up the world around them. Simultaneously, it is supposed that they are interested in how their foreign counterparts generate knowledge. A possible motivation for academic collaboration can be simple as this. Then, it is better to totally leave the existing framework and discussions on academic competitions, and to consider scholars as those who share aims and motivations for joining academic collaborations, as a unit of social group. Academic culture, based on the concept of small cultures advocated by Holliday, would be more helpful to observe and analyse academic work, even which is carried out within a country, since, after all, such every day’s work is foundations of all work, whether it is carried out nationally or internationally. In my current research project, the Japanese SSH scholars are studied by the framework of academic culture. It does not have an intention to study the “Japanese” academic culture, but to set up the academic culture whose construct would be applicable to academic work in any countries. Japan is a case for the first attempt to apply academic culture. Of course, contents of each factors above described can be diverse from one setting to another, nevertheless, academic culture is not interested in descriptions of each country’s case and differences between countries, rather, is more focused on how those factors would influence academic work in global settings. Having better understanding on academic work through academic culture would lead us to better analyses on academic work carried out in international scenes. Because academic

culture would be able to show ways in which academic work is carried out and broader background in which academic work takes place, and it enables to explain and analyse activities that could impact and influence on international collaborations. Academic culture does not provide any fixed definitions on academic work, instead, it provide a broad framework in which diverse activities and phenomena could be observed to analyse academic work. Since each scholar carries academic culture, this framework would be used to explain and analyse joint academic activities when they meet their counterparts, may they be foreign or the same nationality. Hence, academic culture could provide a different analytical framework to discuss on international academic activities beyond national cultural framework and competitive nature of discussions on the issue. Concluding remarks Academic culture is not exclusive nature of academic work but is an important component of academic work when discussing world /globalised SS. It is not to deny any influence of different working conditions in academic work, nonetheless, focusing on differences we encounter in academic work/working conditions would not promote scientifically fruitful collaborations, and it could rather shed light on more conflictual aspects in academic work. Needless to say, we have to observe the current situations in SS that is increasingly globalized and has become borderless in terms of mobility and interaction between academics from various angles. The existing discussions regarding to international academic activities, however, seem too much interested in differences in opportunities, materials, prestige, human resources, and other aspects that are claimed as unequal in different parts of the globe. Although it is not unimportant to discuss and analyse such conditions, it would be only repetitive if it is the sole point to raise in discussing on the globalised academic activities. Additionally, it seems quite evident that analysing international academic work only from an intercultural study’s viewpoint is rather irrelevant, according to the previous study implemented by the author. Therefore, based on the concept of Holliday’s small cultures, the construct of academic culture is devised in order to build up a totally different approach to analyses of academic work, regardless nationality of practitioners. Suggesting this alternative approach to discussions of international academic work could bridge gaps that we have missed to deal with in relation to this challenging thematic discussion.

Acknowledgement This article is based on my ongoing doctoral thesis project “Investigating Elements in Academic Work for International Knowledge Production in Social Sciences and Humanities: The Case of Japan” (the title is provisional). The project was rewarded the research fund by the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Foundation for the period of October 2012-September 2013.

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Paper (working version)

M. Kuhn

Notes about the calamitous of spatiological social science theorizing17

It is telling: 200 years after founding the social sciences, they discuss if and how social science theorizing should acknowledge that there is a social world beyond the national socials. As if was an irony of the history of social sciences, it is the current internationalisation debate in the social sciences in the era of a globalising social reality that reveals that social thought under the regime of social sciences detects that there is a world beyond the nation state social and, struggling to reflect about the world’s social, social sciences respond to this challenge by reinforcing their efforts to think in spatially divided social entities, mainly in their national comparative studies, the only way that comes to their mind when thinking about the world’s social.

Social science theorize about secluded national social…

Global Social thought under the regime of social sciences cannot think about the social other but theorizing about the individual nation state social as their genuine object of social thought and this the more, the more the social reality inter-nationalises.

While a globalised political and economic reality has meanwhile made social life even within the imperial countries global since more than a half century – an observation the colonised world knows since the emergence of a world of imperial nation states in Europe - for social sciences across the world the prevailing unit of analysis was and is the nationally confined social, responsible for scientific knowledge that divides social thought about the world’s social into secluded global islands of knowledge, an agglomeration of nationally constructed social thought, in the decolonized world completed by alternative state spatial science theories, “Southern theories”, from and about the nation states of the former colonial world. 17

This paper consists in major parts of excerpts from my book “Notes about global social thought under the regime of the social sciences, forthcoming.

As if the world constructed from nation states was not a way to construct the world, a world’ social consisting of nation state socials and of their rationale of nation states that considers territories, the people and the natural resources on these territories as means to combat about using each other across the world for their economic growth and their political power over each other, nation states, striving for subordinating others of the same kind across the world under their political and economic command, social science thinking considers the individual national socials as secluded biotopes, just as if reflecting about any nation state social would allow to understand this secluded social, not to mention, that the agglomeration of nationally constructed social thoughts was the same as theorizing about the global social.

Social science thinking not coincidentally named once “Staatswissenschaft”, presupposes an image of the world of nation states, in which their humans inhabit secluded islands that are not affected by what is going on beyond them. Thinking about the “beyond” is no topic for social sciences; if at all, they are the subject of a sub-department of political science, reflecting on foreign affair policies and of Anthropology, today more and more replaced by “intercultural studies”.

Social science seemingly derives from the fact that caring and thinking about other nation states is the business of the sovereign national politics that human live within these biotopes are not mainly made by the inter-national relations between nation states. Inhabitants of nation states in those parts of the world, in developing countries, that served and serve with the exploitation of the products of their work and with their natural resources for the wealth of the imperial countries do not only know that nation states are no secluded islands and that their live is mainly defined by those who benefit from their work and their resources. And they do not only not share the illusion that the sovereignty of nation states over their people makes people’s life unaffected from other nation states, not only since the social science in the imperial countries, the beneficiaries of the world of nation states, detected that there is a world of nation states beyond the own nation state they since then called an era of “globalisation”.

As if the history of nation states, more precisely the foundation of the imperial nation states, namely those in Europe, and their economic wealth, their genuine economic accumulation capital, was not the result of expropriating the former colonized world, a wealth they use until today to dictate the terms of business and power in a post-colonial world, social science thinking starts to discover since the world of nation states was completed by the former colonised part of the world that there is a world beyond the biotopes of the imperialist nation states, From the point of view of social sciences, especially those in the imperial world there was and, looking at how they detect the world beyond the imperial countries social, there is no need to pay much attention to the world other but theorizing about the individual nation state socials.

Just like the inhabitants of the national social entities do not need to know any much about the world beyond their national social, with the exception of a few specialists dealing with the other biotopes, a few business people and politicians, the professional thinkers of these societies are not seriously interested in thinking about the social beyond their national social islands – not to mention if and how the global interaction of nation states craft the social life within them. To give just one very typical example from a most ordinary social science study: That thinking about the happiness of people for social science theorizing must be considered as related to nation states and, thus, constitutes for social science thinkers the nation state as their unit of analysis to find out in which country they find “differences in happiness” :

“This item response theory methodology is first applied to assess the differences in happiness across selected European states.” Rynko, Maja, On the Measurement of Welfare,Happiness and Inequality, European University Institute, http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/20694

Admittedly, theorizing about the “happiness” of people is certainly also a quite odd topic for any scientific reflections and has the strong taste of the typical EU-propaganda studies, comparing happiness across European nation states, nation states, which day by day boast with their policies to deteriorate the life quality of Europeans with ever creative policy agendas as a major means making Europe an attractive global business location. However, it is not the odd topic and the obvious propaganda mission of this study, but its striking way of thinking, may this be about the happiness of European humans. It is in fact very typical for social science thinking that the “happiness across selected European states” must be a matter of comparing nationally constructed humans and the differences of their happiness a matter of nationally constructed data, “indicating” how they feel as nationals, as citizens of each country. Thinking about national socials by off-thinking any other national socials while theorizing about a group of national social strongly politically and economically bound to each other, is a masterpiece of social science thinking, a masterpiece of ignorance as a method of theorizing. Especially within a group of countries, where social life of its citizens is so much a product of the all kind of carefully administrated interactions of the nation state socials ruled by a joint currency and a supra national governing body, only a view that does not know any other access to thinking about the social than the presupposition of the social sciences, that any social must be understand as a national social, can present the happiness of citizens as nationally constructed features of human, off-thinking that the social reality of EU-citizens is more than in many other national socials a product of the interaction of the nation state socials in the European Union. Even in a case, where the social reality is so obviously made by the interactions of nation states and an inter-national economies, social science theorizing manages to think about the social as carefully secluded national social biotopes.

Ignorance, excotism and demonization are no bad attitudes of social scientists, namely “Western” social scientists, but apparently an epistemological pre-supposition of social science thinking, that considers the secluded nation state social as their topic of reflections and the outside world as an irrelevant matter for social science thinking. As a result after 200 years of social science theorizing about the world’s social still consists of thinking about secluded island of national socials, pre-supposing that the social within these national social islands could be understood by confining social thought to reflecting on nation state socials. Social sciences have more or less no clue about any social beyond the borders of their nation states. Accusing them that they are ignorant about other state social is not only downplaying that social science thinking does not care about socials beyond any nation states, it misunderstands that thinking about national social is the natural unit of analysis in which social sciences think, thanks to their illusion about nation state socials as a secluded entity, in which their national social could be understood. Despite of the fact that the very whole post world war II world shares the same society system, the capitalist economy and nation states all using the individual state social for their global business and policy affairs, global social thought under the regime of social science thinking is still the reign of parochial thought created in secluded islands of knowledge. And: The fact that they are ignorant about each other‘s knowledge islands does not do any harm to their secluded theories, at least as long as they all share the same state science thinking approach on their nation state social, all creating their islandish theories, passionately arguing about the status their nationally constructed theories have in the rivalries among of state science views.

…. through the perspective of an – idealizednation state rationale

But even this, stating that it is the social sciences which detect that there is a social world beyond their biotopish nation state social, is an euphemism. It is rather the national science policies, forcing social sciences with the “incentives” of their funding programmes, to think beyond their biotopes and to detect the world’s social. Challenged, if not forced by national science policies to think about the world beyond the confined national socials, discussing about local, glocal, global, northern, southern theories and alike social sciences disclose that the world’s social is not only beyond their approach to theorize, that they not only confine thinking to secluded national socials, but that they think about their individual national socials through a peculiar nation state theoretical perspective, the view of an – idealized - nation state rationale on the social.

Social science thinking compliments the secluding social thought about national knowledge islands by a way of thinking about the national biotopes that reflects on the national biotopes

through categories that take an idealized image about the nation state as the theoretical perspective to reflect on the nation state socials Thinking as reproducing the “concrete reality” (Weber) is an approach to social thought, that not only creates the national biotopes as - to phrase it in the language of social science thinking – a their “unit of analysis” , but as the “analytical perspective” through which social sciences theorize about the national biotopes. Social science thinking thinks about all humans living within these secluded biotopes through perspective the constructs of a state social have attributed to their lives as if it was their nature. Social science thinking about the national social biotopes is thinking about subjects, cognitively reproducing the practical views these nation state social constructs define as who these humans are and how to reflect on these subjects: Children, students, pensionists, employees, tax payers, employers, politicians, families all these creatures of nation state definitions, social thinking does not want to scrutinize but takes these nation state subjects as the perspective through which they create social thought about the national biotopes.

To give just one most ordinary example, here from educational theories:

“If skill requirements increase, low skilled workers will be under increasing pressure, in the industrial sector and in some service sector. Demographic evolutions could reinforce this tendency. “Mehault, P. Knowledge Economy, Learning Society and LifelongLearning – A Review of the French Literature, in: Kuhn, M., New Society Models for a New Millennium 2007, Lang New York, p 80)

As for any social sciences theories the subject in this little scenario is a typical nation state creatures, a “low skilled worker”, a most typical human as they appear in social science theorizing: Their actions are coping with the live definitions they have been attached as nation state figures crafting the social thought of the social scientist caring about these state creatures: Skills for these creatures are not an ability a subject owns, but a foreign request subjects must obey, increasing skills are not increasing the means of these subjects to increasingly better know how to do something better, but a pressure to subordinate the subject under demands coming from any elsewhere, developments which appear like a natural request, subjectless requests, this subject, the low skilled worker, has no influence on, he only can obey to avoid anything worse. Age is not the a natural aspect of humans life but reveals a concept of time that presents the live ahead, time is not for humans to use this time to do what they feel like, but social sciences think the future of these creatures as additional threat, reinforcing the coercions the human must obey.

In short: The image of a typical nation state human, a citizen, a self-domesticated creature striving for his live aims by crafting his live as an adjustment to foreign requests, live and time as threats requiring obedience, presented by social sciences as necessities inherent in

the nature of the social world, a world of threats presented as the nature of the social established by unknown subjects which never appear. This is the human, the construct of nation state creatures, citizens, social science not only reproduce in their way of theorizing about the social, but it is the view these nation state creatures have on a life of threads, social science theorizing shares as the perspective of social science theorizing on the social, just as if the nation state view on its citizens was the same as the view of the citizens. Off-thinking all the conflicting interest between the nation state and the citizens and presenting the nation state views as serving the citizens is the way social sciences reflect on the nation state socials. However, social sciences are not thinking nationalistically along any real nation state rationale, their reflexive imprisonment in the nation state constructs is much more fundamental and subtle. Their perspective is not the political agenda of a particular nation state, but of an idealized version of nation state and the nation state’s humans constructs, a view on humans only they construct and through which they reflect on these nation state constructs, which only exist in the imaginations of social scientists. And this ideal is as simple as crosscutting through all social science theories, it is the ideal that it must be the nation state’s mission, preferable presented with such euphemisms as a “community”, to serve the citizens, they govern with their political power. To give only one example from anthropological theories: Just like all other social science disciplines, the thinkers thinking about facts, do of course not just ennoble nation states or any particular nation state. Like all other social sciences, Anthropological thinking does not live in this world, but in the world of the most fundamental ideas, dreams, imaginations about “man” and rather celebrate not any profane nation state as their dream of man, but more the thick ideas behind any organising “mechanism”.

About “man” they found

“We are in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture. … Beavers build dams, birds build nest, bees locate food, baboons organize social groups, …. But men build dams or shelter, locate food, organize their social groups….under the guidance of instructions encoded in flow chards and blueprints, hunting lore, moral systems and aesthetic judgments. Conceptual structures molding formless talents.” (Geertz, Clifford, The interpretation of cultures, New York 1973, p 50)

Needless to say, that the same thinker knows that “conceptual structures” are “manufactured”, made by the “formless talents”. However, perfect in form thinkers, looking behind man, prefer to stick to their contraction of a formless talent that is molded by “cultural artefacts”, leaving the question who manufactured them in the darkness of a mysterious fairy tales about “man”, that allows to present their admiration for the godlike artefacts as the heaven for the “unfished animals”.

Thinking through this idealized national perspective in social science thinking rather most critically measures the political practices against this ideal they have about the nation states and detects all kind of violations of their idealized nation state missions in the political practices of nation policies. What social science thinkers and nation states share through their idealistic social thoughts are their ideals of national policies, policy practitioners only use for the political propaganda, not to set up their policy agendas, for which social sciences provide with their criticism the ideological interpretations of these political practices and are therefore never rewarded by the political elite, which rather sees social science knowledge most critically, especially if social sciences insist on their nation state ideals against the nation state practices.

….off-thinking scientificy for competing about exclusive, mystic world views

Finally, thinking about the secluded national social through the idealized perspective of nation states constructed though a multiplicity of nationally constructed categories and theories and, thus, arriving at a multiplicity of spatial/national social science theories is not yet the complete story about global social thought under the regime of social sciences.

Armed with the epistemological equipment the discriminated “Western” social science gurus created, saying that knowledge must ever be contextualized and thus argue to dissolve any distinction between the object of thinking and thinking as an activity of the thinking subject and suggest to establish the object of thinking as the cognitive agency that creates thought through the thinking subject, global social thought under the regime of social sciences knows a radicalisation of interpreting global social thought as nationally constructed theories and develop local thought – for the price to sacrifice the only merit the social sciences gained through their critique of the classical philosophies, that is, that scientific thinking is aiming a knowledge, deliberated from teleological thinking through any obscure ex ante preassumptions.

Local, global, national and international, southern, northern, western knowledge; space in this variation of social science thinking is not any incommensurable feature of thinking, a contradictio in adjecto, such as a yellow distance, but considered as an epistemological new necessity in social science theorizing for the international science arena, constituting a cognitive perspective through politically motivated and culturally obscured pre-assumptions, through which the objects of thought must be approached, transforming space from an object of thinking into a theoretical “paradigm” for theorizing, in order to create spatially unique knowledge as a contribution to global social thought:

“In social sciences Zahra Al Zeera critically reviews the conventional positivist paradigms in the west. She finds that emergent paradigms of post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism have provided some space for alternative ways of thinking and understanding. She suggests that they are nevertheless connected by an ‘invisible string’ to Aristotelian principle of ‘either/or’, which holds that every proposition must be either true or false. This principle fails to integrate the material, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of life…This is where Chinese traditions of unity, harmony and oneness can play a role. Potentially Chinese efforts to indigenise its social research can make important contributions to a re-balancing of Western and Eastern patterns of knowledge …In social research indigenisation means to integrate one’s reflections on the local culture and/ or society and/or history. …Chinese researchers need to develop their unique perspectives and values based on their rich local experience, an awareness of their local society and culture…. Chinese social researchers need to respond to the momentous challenge, rather than taking the rationality and progressiveness of science as an obvious fact. ” (Yang, Ruy, Indigenised while Internationalised?, Tensions and Dilemmas in China’s Modern Transformation of Social Sciences in an Age of Globalisation, in: Kuhn, M., Okamoto, K., Spatial Social Thought, Local Knowledge in Global Science Encounters, Stuttgart 2013, p 55/57)

Spatialized theorizing detects in the first place science as its major obstacle to create thought that do not serve the need for knowledge, but knowledge that represents the uniqueness of the a national society in global social thought and discovers that the progress the epistemological departments of discriminated “Western” social science provide the justification for the paradox of an anti-scientific knowledge serving the knowledge needs of internationlized national theorizing. It does indeed: Supported by to the epistemological affirmatism of the “paradigms in the west”, that thinking must be ever contextualised thinking - of course except this context free global dogma - spatial or indigenous thought compliments the preoccupied thinking of social thought constructed through the view of nation states on their objects a variation of social sciences thinking that introduces intentionally preoccupied social thought, clandestine unique thought that can only be created and perceived by those who share their preassumptions. Spatial thought thus radicalizes to dissolving the world’s social thought into pretentiously exclusive theories and thus radicalize the disaggregation of nation state knowledge islands with the disaggregation of local theories, in which any where counts as a spatial particularism that claims this particularism as cognitive perspective through which it constructs its contextualised presuppositions, prejudiced, pretentiously obscure and exclusive theories created as a component to global social thought.

As if opposing views and theories, wherever created about whatever phenomenon encountered at which ever location, was not the point of departure for theorizing, for digging into what things really are, what they have in common and what not, the spatilization of social thought introduces the creation of a diversity of views about the same object of thinking as the final aim of thinking and justifies to never arrive at shared knowledge as

necessity to match social thought with the uniqueness of their object of thinking. In other words: According to spatial theorizing true knowledge that matches with the unique nature of the object of thinking must be therefore – the absurdity - of exclusive, never sharable, knowledge. Spatial theorizing argues that phenomena must consist of any spatially unique identities, requiring the need for a spatial relativism of social thought, justified with the spatial peculiarities of the object of thinking, this dogma apparently not only knows as peculiarities distinguished from other spatial peculiarities, but even knows them before knowing the object of thinking as an approach for thinking about them. Concluding form the mere fact, that there are certainly many things that only exist at a certain place, that knowledge and sharing this knowledge about them must be bound to a being in this location is the final end of a debate the social sciences began with the odd idea of a scientific universalism, an idea, only social science thinking can create. Only an approach to social thought that decides if knowledge is knowledge or not, not depends on the coherence of its reasoning but depends on the extent to which it is shared by others, an approach that considers knowledge as a reflex of the object of thinking voiced through the thinkers, can create the idea that if knowledge is a matter of its spatial spread, to arrive at claiming that true knowledge is the same as universal knowledge –and consequently provokes the false critique, that essentially founds the false opposition against – consequently – spatially constructed theories: The opposition against the “Western” theories, the prevailing criticism in contemporary global social thought is the concept of local or indigenized theories. Only this – false - critique of the concept of a scientific universalism that shares this equalisation that true knowledge is universally shared knowledge, opposes the claim of universal knowledge, creates alternative knowledge and does not critique the faults of the theories it opposes, thus not disclosing why it opposes these theories. Only an opposition against social thought that shares the view that knowledge depends on the extent to which it is shared can be trapped by the idea of universal knowledge and opposes the spatial claim of universal knowledge with spatially confined knowledge, instead of proving that it is false knowledge. Hence, it opposes this knowledge and accepts it and compliments it with other knowledge of the same kind, insisting that both are spatially confined, because they are bound to space, no matter what this knowledge is about, no matter what the knowledge is saying and no matter where this knowledge is perceived. Global social thought under the regime of social science in fact finally shifts the concept of parochial theorizing about the world’s social one step further and radicalises social thought from constructing it through national perspectives towards the concept of spatial social thought, introducing the space where knowledge is produced by its own exclusive cognitive resource. Heavily supported by some philosophical Gurus from the imperial world, it was the privilege of the critical followers of social science thinking especially in the developing world, to further develop social thought as a politically motivated opinion, finally thus burying the mere achievements social science thinking had gained from its – false - critique of classical philosophies against their mysticism, arguing against teleological thinking that not only

develops social thought from ideas, but interprets the social reality as substantiations of these ideas. In the modernised version of global social science thinking the mysticism of teleological thinking, social sciences in fact had overcome, re-appears as spatial theorizing, the finally version of globalised social science thinking, in which politically constructed spaces, the many unique locals, are considered as the “context” through which the global social must be interpreted as a multiplicity of parochial thought, born by an exclusive mystic inclination of a local thinkers with his local object of thinking, only this obscure unit can create.

References Geertz, Clifford, The interpretation of cultures, New York 1973, Mehault, P. Knowledge Economy, Learning Society and LifelongLearning – A Review of the French Literature, in: Kuhn, M., New Society Models for a New Millennium 2007, Lang New York, p 80) Rynko, Maja, On the Measurement of Welfare,Happiness and Inequality, European University Institute, http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/20694 Yang, Ruy, Indigenised while Internationalised?, Tensions and Dilemmas in China’s Modern Transformation of Social Sciences in an Age of Globalisation, in: Kuhn, M., Okamoto, K., Spatial Social Thought, Local Knowledge in Global Science Encounters, Stuttgart 2013, p 55/57