OCR Text |
Show 147 anthropologists cannot or are not equipped to give adequate and effective answers from the point of view of their subjects. This is due, basically, to the backwardness that Sociology and Anthropology show with respect to their theoretical and methodological organization and structuration. Concerning this question and its reflection in the applied professional work of sociologists and anthropologists, emphasis is given to the erroneous confusion and identification between social problems and sociological problems, which has carried these two sciences to a low level of scientific explanation. In this sense, it has been admitted, consciously or unconsciously, that the simple enumeration of social problems preceded or followed by a why? is a sufficient route for the posing of sociological problems of scientific calibre. Applied Anthropology appears to have the greatest difficulty in recognizing these erroneous situations while it demonstrates a selective affinity toward social problems but ignores their potentiality as originators of sociological problems. The result is the inadequacy of its explanations and its incapacity for generalizing them more broadly. And, in addition, due to the fact that the problems of "objectivity" and "evaluative neutrality" inherent in the scientific method make the sociological view and the social view more difficult. The only solution to these facts appears to be in the acceptance of a partial identity between the object and the subject of sociological knowledge. These problems have been referred, by way of illustration, to the work of four authors who, while focusing on other questions, show implicit concern like that set forth in this study. Note is made of the recognition that has been given to the problem within U.S. anthropology, that two well-known Mexican anthropologists had already criticized in warning about the basic conservatism of certain anthropological thinking applied to the betterment of under-developed societies which in emphasizing the purely cultural-ist aspects of the question have ignored the colonial context of the dual societies from which emerge the grave problems of the ethnic minorities. In view of these facts, especially notable are the "style" prevailing in certain empiricist and mathematical sociologies that conceive of the social world as a simple collection of quantitative variables, abandoning the formulation of analytical categories that permit seeing and studying, even axiologically, the passage from one social structure to another, from one social system to another. Finally, attention is called to the necessity existing for developing a theory concerning the change in terms of formulation |