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Understanding a Foreign Society: A Sociologist's View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Alex Inkeles
Alex Inkeles
Affiliation:
Research Associate of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University.
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Extract

The scheduling of a joint section meeting of the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Society on “The Understanding of a Foreign Culture” may be taken as evidence that American social scientists feel the study of foreign societies to be a problem of increasing concern. It may perhaps also indicate that they are not fully satisfied with the progress made to date. Since this is a period given to radical innovations in social science, however, it seems appropriate to offer the caution that our problem cannot properly be defined as one of developing a new science of foreign societies. There cannot be one social science for the study of one's own country and a different one for the study of other nations. The primary task is not that of making our research methods more adequate for the study of foreign societies, but of improving our conceptual tools and methodological equipment to make us more effective in the study of any society.

Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , January 1951 , pp. 269 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 This is a slightly revised version of a paper read at the joint session in New York on December 29, 1949. It is addressed, however, predominantly to the problem of understanding the social system rather than the culture of foreign societies.

2 The following section of this paper represents a highly condensed and schematic statement of the problem treated more fully and systematically in Inkeles, Alex, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The regime, of course, seeks vigorously to direct the aggression of the population against internal “enemies” —the so-called wreckers, deviationists, Trotskyites, etc. —and external “enemies” personified by “Wall Street bankers,” American foreign affairs officials and military leaders, etc. Hostility toward such figures, however, is defined by the regime as positive political expression. It may well be that in these instances Soviet leaders are at least in part motivated by a conscious intention to drain off hostile energies which might otherwise be directed against the regime.

4 For definition and discussion of the terms “latent” and “manifest” function, see Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Illinois, Free Press, 1950, p. 51.Google Scholar

5 For an extensive treatment of that broader process of change, particularly as it affected certain major political and economic institutions, see Moore, Barrington Jr, Soviet Politics: The Dilemma of Power, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1950.Google Scholar