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1. If social sciences are to inform technological research to provide context, a strong social
science base is needed – yet the social sciences of Southeast Asia in general are not seen
to be as strong as one would expect for a region intent on ‘development’. For example,
King
22
notes the overwhelmingly conservatism of South East Asia as a result of its
antecedents in US academia from the 1960s, with modernization perspectives being
adopted from the same model more than indigenous experience. Where traditional
societies are acknowledged, they are assumed to be parallel economies in this
foreign-oriented social science research used to support national development plans.
According to King this leads to a social matrix based on ethnicity and class. The usual
consideration of a ‘process of adaptation of a socio-economic system to externally
induced influences’, which is a definition of ‘agricultural involution’ has been essentially
a follow-on of colonial analyses and has been used to encourage smallholders to be
exposed to international markets without market power.
In recent times, a new breed of social scientists has emerged in the wider region that is
‘sensitive to the need to combine Western-derived concepts such as ‘class’ with the particularities
of Oriental social forms, values, culture and ideologies’. However, in making this concession in
his critique of Southeast Asian social science, King avoids comment on the continuing unspoken
drawback, which is a Western-style education of local social scientists (the problem extends across
all disciplines) causing them to imagine that they understand local conditions when they are in
fact more part of a globalized culture than of the local culture in which they work. Understanding
a dialect does not necessarily mean one understands that culture. If social scientists are to inform
technologists in order to provide a context for research, all parties need to be attuned to the local
situation. An extension of this reasoning means that studies to ‘discover’ the views of traditional
communities is not research, but rather part of the preparatory education that all researchers un-
dertake in their chosen disciplines and fields – and that is a specific function of graduate research
training. An example from five years research in northern Thailand involving a team of research-
ers reveals such an interdisciplinary base to technical research underpinned by social sciences in
its title, ‘Ruminants in the Highlands of Northern Thailand: An Agro-socio-economic Study’.
23
22
Victor King (1994) The Sociology of South-East Asia: A Critical Review of Some Concepts and Issues.
In Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 150 (1): 171-206
23
Ruminants in the Highlands of Northern Thailand: An Agro-socio-economic Study. L. Falvey (1977)
Tippantre Press, Chiang Mai. pp120.
