Suchergebnisse

This article is a contribution towards an assessment of economic idea in Portugal during the past 30 years. Following its renewal in the post-war period, it was with democracy that a significant academic community was created. It is possible to establish at least two phases that distinguish
epistemological orientations and analytical interests. During the first phase a social science was constructed, the object of which was the economic system and its problems and dynamics. The interdisciplinary nature and substantive vocation of this were notable. In the second phase we witnessed
what could be described as a disciplinary regression, with the domination of formalistic analyses. Empirically, through the analysis of three peer-reviewed journals (two economic and one interdisciplinary) and of the projects approved by Portugal's Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT
– Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), we conclude there are several ways forward from the crossroads at which we now find ourselves. One of these is the insistence that economics is a 'science of the markets', which is legitimising and normative. Another values
it as an open science that is based on pluralism and which has a critical relationship with reality.

The involvement of the social sciences in non- Western studies has been growing in spite of the institutional and intellectual conflicts between area studies and disciplinary studies. The process of institutional adaptation is illustrated by reference to the postwar development of non-Western stud ies. The intellectual conflict springs from the fact that the definitions and classifications of major world areas, including the division between "Western" and "non-Western," do not correspond to the definitions and classifications in any social science discipline. The several disciplines have a differential proneness to area studies, and the problem of integrating them for study of a particular area has no simple, uniform solution. Evidence is presented to show how the study of non-Western societies and civilizations is generating new and fertile hybrid disciplines in anthropology and is giving a comparative and international dimension to the other social sciences.

"Social scientists are often vexed because their work does not satisfy the criteria of "scientific" methodology developed by philosophers of science and logicians who use the natural sciences as their model. In this study, Paul Diesing defines science not by reference to these arbitrary norms delineated by those outside the field but in terms of norms implicit in what social scientists actually do in their everyday work."--Provided by publisher

Pragmatism and critical theory share a practical and pluralist orientation to social inquiry. On this account, social inquiry is practical not simply by being instrumentally useful but by being oriented toward the realisation of normative ideals, most especially those of democracy. Central to such an enterprise is the relationship between social facts and norms, where facts are understood in the Deweyean sense of a `problematic situation' that contains factors that both inhibit and enable the realisation of normative ideals. Social facts in this sense can best be analysed by `multiperspectival theories' that take into account all the dimensions of the problem as well as the perspectives of all relevant actors. When understood as practical social inquiry, a multiperspectival International Relations theory could contribute to the task of realising new democratic possibilities, especially now given the `fact' of uneven globalisation.