Journal of Iranian Social Studies
Year:2009 | Volume:3 | Issue:1 (5)|Papers Count:7

The Iranian academics and intellectuals, by token of common problems and contexts, should be acquainted with ideas of leading Asian social scientists. Such understanding expands their cognitive horizons and provides the exchange of experiences and thoughts. Sayed Hussein Alatas has been an influential and renowned thinker in Asia. During decades he wrote conceptually innovative articles and books about intellectual, academic and social issues. Sayed Parid Alatas, his son, has continued this line of theorization and has developed some aspects of his father's intellectual projects. This article discusses their ideas regarding the situation of social sciences in the Third World and also the related strategies for purposes of enhancing the current situation. In so doilJg the article develops the concept of autonomous/alternative social science. It thus studies the relation between alternative social science and reverse orientalism and nativism. Nativism is seen as an unwanted aspect of indigenization. Another section of the article deals with Sayed F. Alatas attempts towards an adequate conceptualization of relevance and irrelevance in social sciences. According to Sayed F. Alatas, to avoid nativism, autonomous social science has to meet some criteria requirement. These will be discussed in the article the final section of which concerns relations between the two thinkers' findings and thoughts regarding the ongoing discussions in the Iranian social and intellectual space.

Scientific development is a vital pillar of comprehensive development plajing a significant role in the promotion of economic, political, social and cultural aspects of a society. Accordingly and generally, the companionship of scientific research is a critical requirement for various development schemes to obtain. Iran is no exception in this regard; it needs scientific development as a way to a comprehensive one. Nonetheless, the relevant literature points to the fact that there are different factors hindering such development. This article, via the use of meta-analysis technique, attempts at exploring and classifying Iranian scientists' views on the existing obstacles and proposed solutions to the scientific development in their written works. The findings of the research indicate that while 10% of the written works considered in this research see obstacles as related to internal sphere, and 20% attribute the obstacles to external social factors within the domain of science, the rest, that is some 70 percent of these works, holds both kinds of obstacles as relevant. Therefore, it seems necessary to take measures aimed at removing both kinds of obstacles. Among the ten works considered only few maintain indigenous science and nativism in science as feasible options capable of influencing scientific development considerably. These few studies hold that nativism and indigenization of sciences are two prominent elements which would affect the cultivation and improvement of science in Iran.

This paper challenges the possibility of a 'single sociology for a world' through the study of a dual problem. The question about the universality of sociology has two different answers. First position defends a single sociology for a world, and second position derives from the critique of the first by proposing a dual problem, namely, political and epistemological one. This article, upon a glance through the history of the subject, defends the necessity of a multi-lingual sociology, because a mono-lingual and mono- cultural sociology not only induces uniformity and stagnation of the discipline but causes ineffective and nonproductive sociology in other historical and cultural contexts.

This article is a discourse analysis about different conception of indigenization of social sciences in contemporary Iran. The main goal of the paper is to describe and criticize different schools and tendencies of indigenization of social sciences and to propose a different outlook for understanding indigenization based on conceptual distinctions. The specific approach of the article is that of cultural studies and explanationof the topic is made in terms of different linkages between power and culture. I attempt to distinguish different concepts in the indigenization discourse for explaining manifest and latent power dimensions in the discourse and show a possible meaning of indigenization. This article does not pretend to be exhaustive on the comprehensiveness of the scope and examination of total related ideas.

The positivist approach and the development of science fostered by it faced eclectic, dispersed, anti-positivist or post positivist approaches in Iran. Thus as an approach it could not establish its tightly held scientific, research and academic niches in Iran as it did in Europe in its time in which an effective syntheses of reflective thinking on it was developed. Beginning in the 1970s, there were vague discourses of nativism in science and in the academia, cloaked by criticism of both positivist/quantitative approaches and criticism of ideology of scientism. These discourses led to Islamization of ideologies and projects at the end of the 1970s. There occurred some socio-political results on the opposite direction of the original intent of the earlier authors of vague discourses of nativism which were referred to above. Then, the expensive experience of 'ideological science' gave rise to a discussion on the relation between science and the local, that is, the socio-cultural realities. This has become a taboo or quasi-positivist phobia. The causes of this phenomenon were on the one hand the theoretical poverty, and vulnerability of contexts and structures of our society, on the other.

Historically one can hardly consider Iran as an emigrant source, nevertheless during twentieth century the country experienced two tlows of emigration after the Constitutional Revolution (1906) and after the Islamic Revolution (1979): the later may be seen as the largest emigrant movement ever known by Iran in its history. Although this movement has begun more than three decades ago, there are no credible scientific figures concerning the number and the exact composition of the tlow. Nevertheless thanks to some Iranian and non Iranian studies we know that 1800 full time faculty members are enrolled in US universities (the country which has the most concentration of Iranian emigrants) from which some 500 are active in important US Academies mostly in Middle East and North African or Iranian Studies Dttpartments. The paper aims to discuss this situation in comparison with the conditions of Iranian academies in which more than 4 million students are enrolled (with one half of them in humanities). The point for the author is to avoid the "exotic" for not saying "colonial" situation which the country has experienced during the first period of social science creation in Iran, this time with the Iranian of non Iranian academies. This in no way that an "indigenous social science" (even if we accept this term at all) means that only the "insiders" have the right to study on Iran; but this means we need a much moire knowledge about Iranian Diaspora in general and Iranian scientific Diaspora in particular to be able to trace a plan for efficient; durable and positive collaboration between "outsiders" and "insiders" of Iranian social sciences.

In the emerging knowledge base economies and societies the status of skilled manpower in the production, processing and creation of the new value-added has increased. This is why all kinds of knowledge have become important; hence the indigenous knowledge is gaining special priority. The question is how this kind of knowledge can be obtained and how should it be adjusted with the global economy. This research is an attempt at answering such questions using descriptive-analytic method and the institutional approach. My findings show that it is only with serious reforms in the following systems that the development process becomes sustainable in terms of continuance: formal education, decision-making, resource allocation, and econofi.lic-social rewarding. Undoubtedly, these reforms require multidimensional and pathologic studies of which some important cases are mentioned in this study.