The Ethnocentrism of the Social Science Implications for Research and Policy

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Abstract
The proposition advanced here is that the vast bulk of our social science findings, models, and literature, which purport to be universal, are in fact biased, ethnocentric, and not universal at all. They are based on the narrow and rather particular experiences of Western Europe (actually a much smaller nucleus of countries in central and northwest Europe) and the United States, and they may have little or no relevance to the rest of the world. A growing number of scholars, particularly those who have had long research experience in the so-called developing nations, have now come to recognize this fact; and among others new efforts are being made to reexamine the very “Western” experience on which so many of our social science “truths” and models have been based. Because these verities are still widely believed, however, by many scholars and policymakers alike, the ethnocentric biases and assumptions undergirding them need to be examined and their implications for research and policy explored.

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