Word: american
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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RESEARCH on the techniques of counter-insurgency warfare could be viewed as neutral so long as there were a general consensus on the framework of American foreign policy. Once a radical perspective became established and challenged this consensus, however, the value assumptions and political effects of the counter-insurgency research became clearer...
Optimistically, Americans have contrived a new notion- that of political development- which assumes that in the realm of economics there is a clear direction, and a set of norms, measurements, and strategies for moving in that direction. This notion rests on the shallowest reading of history and corresponds to a belief that the curses honors of advancing societies must be that of the United States; the criteria adopted by political scientists are all a transfer of American standards...
...American political scientists have considered stability to be an important feature of social and political systems, or at least one important enough to be studied extensively. It seems possible, though, that with a different notion of "political development," different types of research would be conducted...
...example, social scientists who believe that "social justice" is a significant feature of "developing" societies might be interested in finding what social and cultural factors lead peasants to join a social revolution. Given the commonly accepted American notion of political development, however. studies like Project Cambridge- which seeks to find what factors make a peasant patriotic- appear to be neutral or objective...
...reference explicit in order to understand their own assumptions. It should also become clear that academic freedom consists of assuring that all political viewpoints are represented in the world of scholarship. To safeguard academic freedom, the University should recruit and support social scientists who can transcend the common American framework by producing admittedly "political" research...