Understanding a Foreign Society: A Sociologist's View

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Abstract
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.

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