In the early stages of my PhD research, I’ve had to tackle some fundamental questions about the nature of my field – political science – and the way in which the study of politics ought to be conducted.
There are internal debates within political science that are themselves political, and which have a wider bearing on how ideas are produced and promoted beyond academia. These debates are not “academic” in the narrow sense. They affect political discourse more generally, and so concern us all.
The prevailing view within the discipline is that scholars should set aside moral values and political concerns in favour of detached enquiry into the mechanics of how the political world functions. This often involves borrowing the trappings of the natural sciences in attempts to establish generalisable theories of causation through the testing of hypotheses.
To the extent that this activity has a purpose beyond the establishment of knowledge for its own sake, it is to place that knowledge at the hands of policymakers who, in the light of the political scientist’s advice, may then make political and moral judgements as they see fit.
Learning from the disciplines of “hard science”, where appropriate, can certainly yield benefits. But I have yet to be convinced by the idea that the study of politics can be apolitical and value-neutral.
Our choice of research topics will inevitably reflect our own political and moral priorities, and the way in which that research is framed and conducted is bound to reflect assumptions which – whether held consciously, semiconsciously or unconsciously – remain of a moral and political nature. Additionally, striving for “policy relevance” can result in the production of research that conforms to the priorities of power.
The Research paper on Social media impact on political campaigns
I would like to convey my deep affection to few persons and would love to acknowledge their appreciative help in our research project. The persons include my instructor Sir Sajjad Naseer and Ms. Maheen Haroon . Contents Abstract: Research on this topic would show on overall support or refute of social media playing a significant role in political campaigns. Given the support for social media‘s ...
Examples are not hard to come by. The field of terrorism studies focuses almost exclusively on the terrorism of non-state actors, as opposed to the greater problem of www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/political-science-moral-ethical
How scientific is political science? | David Wearing | Comment is free | theguardian.com
state terrorism. Those academic studies of the developing world that are produced in the UK and the US tend to present the global south purely as a problem for, or a threat to, the global north. Some topics are simply passed over altogether.
In the 1990s, the UK helped maintain a sanctions regime on Iraq that, as documented by Unicef, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, around half of them children under the age of five. Yet of the scores of articles produced in British international relations journals during that time, only three discussed the sanctions regime and its appalling effects.
It is difficult to see why choosing to investigate state terrorism would be “political”, while choosing not to would be non-political, or why discussing the effect of sanctions on Iraqi society constitutes any more of a moral choice than choosing not to do so.
The suspicion must arise that, when some scholarship is described as too political or too polemical, what is really meant is that it is insufficiently consistent with, or too critical of, mainstream priorities and assumptions.
If it is inevitable that our politics and values will have an effect on our research, then it is surely in the interests of scholarly integrity that this is openly acknowledged. The intellectual rigour of our work is bound to be enhanced by our explicitly accounting for how it is shaped by our own politics and moral values.
The Term Paper on Moral Education
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and ...
I certainly don’t suggest that every view is hopelessly subjective, and each opinion of equal value. There is a difference between truth and falsehood, between rigorous and faulty reasoning. What is important is to acknowledge that our attempts to discern what is true or false, and to engage in rational analysis, occur within an ideological framework. Ideology is not the same as dogma: deterministic, inflexible and impervious to new information and arguments.
Ideology – the place where theory and morality meet – is, at its best, a dynamic rational tool, vital to the task of building knowledge. It is when our personal ideologies are taken for granted, or left unexamined, that they lapse into dogma, and it is therefore important that this is not allowed to happen.
Excusing research that adheres to conventional wisdom from the task of accounting for its politics and values, while delegitimising less conservative work on the basis of its being “political” or “ideological” (as though this distinguished it in some way from the rest of the field) cannot be a productive way to proceed.
In fact, the Enlightenment philosophical tradition, which so many mainstream scholars aspire to uphold, is full of prominent examples of intellectuals criticising power from an explicitly moral standpoint.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s challenge to patriarchy, or Thomas Paine’s calls for “democratic republicanism”, redistribution of property and an end to slavery, are merely the most obvious examples. Consider Adam Smith’s “very violent attack” (as he himself described it) on the way in which influential economic elites had been able to distort public policy to suit their own ends at the expense of the public www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/political-science-moral-ethical interest.
The Wealth of Nations constituted an explicitly moral and class-conscious critique of political economy (one that ought to make Smith’s modern day, rightwing disciples feel decidedly uncomfortable).
Few would argue that the socio-political analysis provided by such thinkers as Wollstonecraft, Paine and Smith suffered, rather than benefited from, their freely acknowledged moral and political priorities.
The Term Paper on Adam Smith 5
Adam Smith After two centuries, Adam Smith remains a towering figure in the history of economic thought. Known primarily for a single work, An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), the first comprehensive system of political economy, Smith is more properly regarded as a social philosopher whose economic writings constitute only the capstone to an overarching view of ...
The good news is that this tradition has not been abandoned. The University of Bradford’s peace studies department has done much important work to re-frame discussion of security issues. Doug Stokes and Ruth Blakeley at the University of Kent have helped redress the balance in terrorism studies by examining acts of terrorism committed by states.
Eric Herring at Bristol University has articulated a way forward for activist scholarship in international relations. This scholarship belongs in the mainstream, not on the margins.
The willingness to critique is vital to intellectual activity, and the contribution to wider political discourse of scholarship that challenges power is crucial in a functioning democracy.
Given the particular responsibilities that come with the ability to inform and participate in political debate, it is to be hoped that we can start to rethink what it means to be a “political scientist”.
www.WebMindful.org © 2 0 1 3 Gu a r dia n New s a n d Media Lim it ed or it s a ffilia t ed com pa n ies. A ll r ig h t s r eser v ed.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/political-science-moral-ethical
