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Full-Text Articles in Education

A Khaldunian Perspective On The Dynamics Of Asiatic Societies, Syed Farid Alatas Jan 1993

A Khaldunian Perspective On The Dynamics Of Asiatic Societies, Syed Farid Alatas

farid alatas

During the last twenty years or so, scholars in the Third World began to become critical of what came to be known as the captive mind. The captive mind is uncritical and imitative in its approach to ideas and concepts from the West.' Discussions on the problem of mental captivity coincided with efforts to indigenous the social sciences in the post-war period when most of the Third World gained formal independence.


Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz Jan 1993

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …