International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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Area Studies: Unidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary

C.A.O. Van Nieuwenhuijze
International Journal of Comparative Sociology 1964; 5; 182
DOI: 10.1177/002071526400500205

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 Area Studies:
Unidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary,
Interdisciplinary
C. A. O. VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Holland

THE forces against isolation of disciplines in the social sciences work

from two sides. They are not always strong enough to counteract, let alone
to overcome, the segregative forces, but they are strong enough to warrant special
consideration. Their fundamental importance is another factor prompting the
choice of this subject.
On the one hand, there is the ineffectiveness and the non-definitive character
of existing segregation or isolation of the various disciplines. Most, if not all,
disciplines of the social sciences exist on the basis of hidden or overt references
and cross-references to other disciplines. Given the present stage of the social
sciences, many disciplines are visibly the outgrowths of more or less accidental
selective specialization, both in terms of object and of theoretical apparatus,
often more than in terms of fundamental method. Their status as such is as yet
unachieved and what is more, progress towards well-established autarchy is
slower than would seem to fellow from the hopes and intentions of those who
establish or maintain such separate disciplines.
On the other hand, the needs of practice per se as well as the needs of the
active pursuance of each of the disciplines concerned tend to conspire in forcing
the isolated branches of the social sciences together. Whether on an ad hoc
basis or on the basis of more fundamental considerations is usually left undecided.
One of the underlying problems is, no doubt, that the ways in which some
disciplines stake their objects are not entirely adequate to purposes of separate
distinctness. Too often, the obj ect turns out to be a segment of a larger underlying
object that remains necessary as the ultimate frame of reference. So that various
separate disciplines get ultimately mixed up, or at least thrown together, in the
very dealings that each has with its chosen object: this object being ultimately
larger than what it was ad hoc assumed to be.
Seen in this light, the existing trend towards multidisciplinary co-operation
and also towards interdisciplinary integration, is more than a response to the
need for practical answers to practical problems. Over and above this, it is
inherent both in the modalities of the separateness of our several disciplines
as well as in those of the mode of
operation of each separate discipline. Conse-
quently interdisciplinary effort is as much a means towards a practical goal

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© 1964 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
 183

as a goal by itself, the goal in the latter case being the solution of some vital

problems inherent in present conditions of specialization.

No doubt, this double-sided character means a complication for anyone
who wishes to understand the matter. Certain phenomena, that deserve to be
studied in the connection, are bound to appear simultaneously as goals by
themselves and as means towards these same goals. This circumstance must
certainly be taken as a warning. It need, however, not be a deterrent, preventing
discussion of what, in fact, is the subject matter of the present paper: area
studies as procedures for concerted action of scholars belonging to the several
social sciences. Certainly, it will tend to focus the discussion on the question
what the nature of such concerted action is.

To say that area studies are a procedure for concerted action of social
scientists belonging to various social sciences and, through them, of these several
social sciences is, in fact, overstating the case. It would be, if a number of
questions would have found the proper answers. For the time being, the focus of
interest is in these questions and in the manner in which people grapple with them.
There has been a time when everybody concerned knew what area studies
were. This is more than one can say about many of the technical notions we
are constantly passing around, like well-worn currency, in the social sciences.
The time occurred during World War II, when area studies were carried on in
the United States as a kind of intellectual intelligence. Knowledge of the
adversary, knowledge of any areas that were or could become theatres of war,
knowledge virtually of any area in the world was necessarily as much in demand
as any kind of material war supplies. The realization as to this necessity was

mainly made, this side of what is now the Iron Curtain, by the USA. The
Americans, who claim to be even more provincial than Europeans (but then,
their provincialism prevents them from knowing the Europeans), have turned
the awareness as to their innate provincialism into almost frantic activity to
eliminate any adverse consequences it could have for their war effort. They
were more effectively able to do so inasmuch as (1) the interest in this kind of
studies seems to have flared up and died down at previous occasions of inter-
national tension to which US public opinion found occasion to respond, (2) the
period before World War II has seen some spontaneous growth of this kind of
interest, and (3) American universities tend to respond more or less immediately
to increases and decreases in public demand for certain types of knowledge:
a trait that, compared to European conditions, is an asset and a liability at
once. During World War II, the main sponsors of area studies were &dquo;such
devices as the Army Specialized Training Programs and the Civil Affairs
Training Schools in area and language&dquo; (Hall 1947 17). &dquo;Many university
professors in their war service had their first experience in the area approach
and were converted to it&dquo; (ibid.).1
1 A mimeographed report on A.S.T.P. programmes that has not been accessible to the
present writer is N. Fenton ed., Reports on Area Studies in American Universities, Washington,
Ethnogeographic Board, 1945.

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 184

area studies conducted in war emergency are, for all practical

These
purposes, the crucial moment in the history of what is occasionally called, in a
manner that begs the question, the area approach. Taking their point of

departure from this moment, minds have turned towards the past in an effort
to unearth the history - or should one say, prehistory, of the area approach.
Starting out from this moment again, attempts have been made to draw lines
into the present and towards the future. The former effort comes, at times,
dangerously close to writing history backwards. The latter tends to be loaded
with purpose: to maintain area studies as such, and for this purpose to improve
them in aims, objects and methods. Curiously, the crucial moment just mention-
ed constitutes first and foremost a turn of the tide in regard to the number of
disciplines involved. Such studies in pre-World War II periods as have been
labelled area studies by those engaged in this kind of efFort are usually unidisci-
plinary ; ever since World War II or perhaps since the late ’thirties, they are
mainly multi-disciplinary or - with a distinction applied by some in this con-
nection (comp. Steward 1950 index s.v. discipline) - interdisciplinary.
A curiously debatable statement on the (pre)history of area studies is the
following:
Much of the basic concept of area study is to be found in the very beginnings of American
higher education and scholarly research. The classical programs were area studies. One
has only to recall the courses offered by the professors of Latin and Greek to see how
completely true this is. Included were studies in the history, the philosophy, the fine arts,
’

the geography, the politics, and other aspects of the classical world, in addition of course
to the basic offerings in language and literature. The original aim was to give as complete
an understanding of the Greek and Roman worlds as was possible. (Hall 1947 12)

Already in this sort of &dquo;area study&dquo;, Hall traces the need for and thus the roots
of the multidisciplinary approach that, to him, is typical of area studies:
Too frequently, language competence came to be regarded as the one important end
of classical training and, in consequence, the broader values were not always realized.
The whole knowledge of an area proved too much for a single mind. (ibid.)

The author is careful enough to point out that,

it has been argued with some justification that the modern area program is not the same
thing. (ibid.)
In his elaboration of this point, he seems to consider the preoccupation
with language in the &dquo;area studies&dquo; concerned as the main point of difference :
any spreading out of interests toward other aspects of the sociocultural frame of
the area concerned being subsidiary to language study.
He might also have argued that what really makes for a fundamental
difference between area studies in the World War II sense and these precursors
is the predominance, in the latter, of the philological-historical approach, which
renders the area concerned into a passive object of intellectual interest for the
sake of, allegedly, intellectual interest first and foremost. In the former, the
approach is far less clearly defined, let alone traditional, but the purpose is

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 185

knowledge that is to serve for practical dealings with those who make up the
area concerned: dealings under difficult and often critical circumstances. Given
this difference, the use of the term area studies for those earlier efforts sounds as
an unwarranted extension, back into history, of the use of the term. This
conclusion stands regardless of any truth that may be found in Hall’s statement
that,
it would seem then that other generations than our own have strongly felt the need for a
total knowledge of areas (national, cultural, and other). Several have been the bright
hopes of accomplishing this end. Each attempt has failed of the goal. (p. 15).
To understand the earlier efforts, one has to refer back to the impulses
determining the romantic period in Europe. As regards the USA, what made for
the growth of area studies interest there during the thirties (Hall 1947 17), if
anything else then political world conditions and the anxieties caused thereby,
is not indicated by Hall and is not for the present writer to guess.
Immediately upon the war, there were those who envisaged the continuation,
under conditions of peace (which by then had not yet turned out to be cold war),
of area studies. The purposes these studies were henceforward to serve were
initially thought of in terms which merely meant a first attempt at modification
of the trend of thought that had determined the war effort in area studies.
Conversely, new ideas are abroad. We have just finished our second ghastly war in a
generation. Our current relations with other nations are far from satisfactory and are in
some cases highly dangerous. Our old methods of education and directions of research

proved unequal either to maintaining the peace or most effectively winning the wars.
Were the wars more ghastly than they might have been had we known more of our enemies
and allies? Were these wars inevitable or could wiser national policy and action have
prevented them, if based upon an early and full understanding of the conditions of life
and aspirations of the people with whom we came into conflict? Could we arrive more
quickly at a durable peace and maintain it more securely, if we knew better the nations
and peoples with which we must deal? There are implications of hope as well as responsi-
bilities for American scholarship in these questions. Likewise, there is dissatisfaction with
our older methods and points of view in education and research. There is a demand for
both an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to many of the problems which we
have failed so far to answer.
Area study is at least one approach to the partial solution of these problems. For the
present it would seem to be the most direct approach and as promising as any other.
(Hall 1947 20f).
A year later, most of this passage is quoted by Wagley, who has this of his
own to add:
Furthermore, the role of leadership in world affairs the United States ’has assumed
makes it obligatory that we develop our resources of science and scholarship for the peaceful
conduct of international affairs. (Wagley 1948 8).

But when he proceeds to elaborate upon the concerted effort needed towards
the proper conduct of area studies, he offers an opinion that would seem to
indicate a step forward in the cogitation on nature, aims and modalities of area
studies.

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 186

Because area studies are generally concerned with a foreign part of the world and deal
with cultures very different from our own, they provide basic descriptive data without
which the generalist is unable to work. Area studies bring comparative and concrete data
to bear on generalization and theory, and the study of a limited area gives a concrete focus
for interdisciplinary co-operation. Essentially, however, area research has the same ob-
jectives as all scientific research, and in the social sciences it falls heir not only to a body
of theory and method but also to the difhculties inherent in interdisciplinary co-oper-
ation. (Wagley 1948 9).
The time at which this was written coincides more or less with the consoli-
dation, in a number of centres of American scholarship (mainly universities),
of various and varied programmes of teaching and of research in area studies.
The immediate effect of this shift in the situation is visible in a third publication
that has, like the two others just quoted, been published by the Social Science
Research Council, this one in 1950:
As far as can be determined there is now general agreement on the following four ob-
jectives of area research:
To provide knowledge of practical value about important world areas;
(1)
To give students and scholars an awareness of cultural relativity;
(2)
To provide understanding of social and cultural wholes as they exist in areas;
(3)
(4) To further the development of a universal social science.
All four goals carry the implication that an area can be understood only through the
co-operation of several disciplines. The last three carry the implication that area &dquo;wholes&dquo;
cannot be understood unless relevant knowledge of social science phenomena is integrated,
and consequently they raise the question of the nature of that integration. (Steward 1950 lf ) .

This quotation is more or less final in indicating both what has been achieved
and also what has been left unresolved during most of the ’fifties. One could
hardly maintain that the situation has fundamentally changed ever since, as
a more detailed consideration of the position will show.

any effort in terms of area studies is the clarification of the

Preliminary to
concept as this may have seemed for war purposes, it is certainly
area. Clear
capable of causing much confused discussion any time anyone sits back to
consider it. More so since the definition one will propose is likely to be influenced,
whether one knows it or not, by one’s own approach to the matter. In an attempt
to determine scope and essence of the notion, one usually follows the procedure
of listing any number of possible meanings, seeing how far they will stretch,
eliminating the most unlikely ones. This is what Steward has done, setting out
from the following broad classification:
Area research projects that have actually been carried out might be classified in three
groups: special disciplinary studies made within particular world areas; studies of entire
areas of varying magnitudes; and research dealing with particular problems rather than
with areas as such. (Steward 1950 20).

The first kind he eliminates from his discussion since &dquo;they present nothing
new with respect to areas&dquo;. In the light of arguments indicated above one won-
ders whether a better reason would not be that they are not area studies in the
sense in which this term is currently used.

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 187

On community studies he has rather more to say, and not all of it in praise.
Such criticisms as he offers, however, do not detract from his recognition of the
importance of community studies.
The purposes and methods of community studies are extremely varied, but their im-
portance for area research is that they all apply a cultural or ethnographic method to
contemporary society. This method was developed by anthropology in the study of
primitive peoples, and it is being applied to modern societies by anthropologists and by
sociologists who have some knowledge of anthropology. Community studies are still in a
pioneering stage, however, and the potential value of the cultural approach to modern
society is only incompletely explored. Applied to primitive tribes, this approach has three
distinctive methodological aspects. First, it is ethnographic: the culture of a tribe, band,
or village is studied in its totality, all forms of behavior being seen as functionally inter-

dependent parts in the context of the whole. Second, it is historical: the culture of each
society is traced to its sources in ancestral or antecedent groups or among neighboring
peoples. Third, it is comparative: each group is viewed in the perspective of other groups
which have different cultures, and problems and methods are used cross-culturally. Two
general criticisms may be made of the way in which the ethnographic, historical, and
comparative methods are applied to modern communities. First, the methods have not
been adapted to modern communities, which differ qualitatively from primitive ones.
Second, the historical and comparative methods have been used hardly at all. (Steward
1950 21).
An additional and more specific criticism is that,
Most studies, however, have treated the community as if it were a primitive tribe - that
is,as if it were a self-contained structural and functional whole which could be understood
in terms of itself alone. Scholars are quite aware that any modern community is a function-
ally dependent part of a much larger whole; but in general they have not yet taken account
of this larger frame of reference in community study. Individual communities are often
studied as if the larger whole were simply a mosaic of such parts. (ibid. 22).

Besides, there are some unresolved fundamental problems:

In a comparative approach to contemporary communities, the problems which are
studied in one community - or at least the cultural perspectives acquired in any study -
are utilized in the investigation of other communities. Ideally, there is some comparability
of research projects that have common purposes, problems and methods. The widely
differing characteristics of communities naturally dictate some differences in approach;
but individual interests, purposes, and methods have produced even greater differences,
and community studies have little in common beyond the fact that they purport to use
a cultural method.
It would almost seem that an ethnographic approach and an approach focused on
particular problems are irreconcilable. (ibid. 25).
Another interesting publication on community studies, and one that is
concentrated on problems of method, is an article by Conrad M. Arensberg

(1954). This article attempts an altogether rosy picture of community study as

a relatively new method that spreads amongst an increasing number of disci-

plines.
Community study is that method in which a problem (or problems) in the nature,
interconnections, or dynamics of behavior and attitudes is explored against or within the
surround of other behavior and attitudes of the individuals making up the life of a particular

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 188

community. It is a naturalistic, comparative method. It is aimed at studying behavior

and attitudes as objects in vivo through observation rather than in vitro through isolation
and abstraction or in a model through experiment. The fact that community study, like
other naturalistic and comparative methods in science (e.g., those in geology, zoology,
astronomy), is an observational rather than a statistical or an experimental method means,
of course, that its canons of control, verification, and reliability are quite different from
those, say, of attitude study or small-group experiment. (Arensberg 1954 110).
Community studies have been made upon a wide range of problems. That is, a good
many different questions about social and psychological facts and processes have been put
to the test by referring them to their natural setting within a particular community hope-
fully &dquo;typical&dquo;. Community study is thus, like other research methods, a device for coming
to grips with social and psychological facts in the raw. It is a tool of social science, not a
subject matter. (ibid. 111).
The following are listed as special characteristics of the method:
First, to be specific, a social scientist using the community-study method must choose
a community which is a &dquo;whole&dquo;, a &dquo;full round of local life&dquo;. He must try to find a commu-
nity which he can at least hope to take a &dquo;cross-section&dquo; or a &dquo;sample&dquo; of the society and
the culture of the persons showing the social and psychological behavior or problem he
is interested in. A community study is thus necessarily comparative, at least implicitly,
since one such whole of human social and cultural experience must be alike or different
from another. (p. 111 )
Second, and again specifically, a social scientist using community study must choose
many, not just a few, techniques of observation and data collection (...) For it is the
material, not the problem, that requires a manifold and a flexible use of techniques (...)
The reason is simply that a community study is nothing if not &dquo;multifactorial&dquo;. To explore
the natural, living setting of a problem necessarily involves concurrent attacks upon all
the relevant factors at a single time, the moment of observation. (p. 111 ) .
Third among the special and specific characteristics of community study is the need to
reject and rework data already extant describing the community under study or its facets.
(p. 112).
The last characteristic given is as follows:
In community study the empirical fit between an attitude and behavior, a belief and
a culture pattern, an institutional norm and a custom or sanction, is of more interest than
the number of persons who express the attitude or practice the behavior or the average or
other statistically representative quality of these things. (p. 113).

A less
general approach to the same subject, based upon the experience of
one particular project that has played a role in the discussion (which, by the
way, is entirely an anthropologists’ affairs so far as authors thus far mentioned
are concerned) is provided in a paper by Daniel F. Rubin Borbolla and Ralph
L. Beals (1940). Its interest for present purposes lies mainly in the circumstance
that it is necessarily less speculative than the papers just referred to:
Beals expressed the view that area research centers on man, and that the definition of
areas for research is best considered in terms of cultures, if the field is broad; of subcultures,
if the field is to be narrowed (Wagley 1948 13f).
Beals also agreed that area research programs, even when centering on culture, cannot
be rigidly confined to any limited area. Such programs &dquo;focus on a particular area but the
range of investigation will vary, however, from discipline to discipline. The boundaries
in this case are not strict geographic boundaries. Rather they are culturally determined

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 189

boundaries, and what determines where a given specialist should stop is the point where
data no longer have significant bearing on the culture under study&dquo;. (ibid. 14f).

Steward is critical of the Tarascan project:

The Tarascan program, like most studies of contemporary communities, did not clarify
the nature of the larger, extra-community, functional whole; it paid little attention to the
dependency relationships of the communities and the region to the larger Mexico. The
individual communities are fairly tight-knit entities, and all Tarascan Indians evidently
have a sense of being one people, a sense of regionalism. Just what the over-all Tarascan
structure is today, however, remains to be clarified. (Steward 1950 62f).

The Tarascen project is, in the survey of Steward, not placed under com-

munity studies but rather under his second heading, regional studies:
There are three principal ways of conceptualizing regions, under which most current
concepts probably would fall. For some purposes a region is conceived as a limited area
which has uniformity of natural features: it may be a river valley, plains, a mountain chain,
an archipelago, etc. The study of a natural region may include cultural features which are

tangible or visible, but such aspects as religion and social organization, which do not form
part of the &dquo;cultural landscape&dquo;, are generally given little attention. By the second definition
a region is a delimited area which has social and cultural homogeneity; by the third
definition it is some kind of structural and functional unit. It is important to distinguish
these last two concepts, for while a region may have both cultural uniformity and structural
unity, methods of study may differ considerably according to emphasis on one or the other
concept. (Steward 1950 54).

A major problem in these studies, more or less like in community studies,

is that,
Virtually all modern regions, like modern communities, are linked with a larger structural
whole. One of the principal problems of regional studies, therefore, is to examine the nature
of this linkage and to analyze the developmental processes that are involved. (ibid. 57).

Next on Steward’s list showing the range of meanings of area is national

studies. He attempts to bring some order in the wealth of existing &dquo;studies&dquo;, of
some sort or another, concerning nations and national characters. The result
is not very convincing in the context of what he has in mind to do.
An entirely different use of the notion of area, not mentioned by Steward,
is signalled in the title of a paper by Eshref Shevky and Wendell Bell: Social
Area Analysis (1955). This is a study in the structure of urban areas, dealing
with the San Francisco Bay region, and as such a successor to a study on Los
Angeles (1949). Social areas, in this context, are an analytic model which as
such is the outcome of calculations of social rank (economic status), urbanization
(family status) and segregation (ethnic status) (1955 4). The notion of social
area is thus an analytic model for purposes of studying problems of social differ-
entiation and stratification in contemporary large urban aggregations (1955 1 ) .
The former study was pursued
by proceeding on the assumption that the urban phenomena of Los Angeles were regional
manifestations of changes in the total society, and the further assumption that, in urban

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 190

analysis, facts of economic differentiation and of status and power had a significance
transcending in importance the significance of relations occurring within the boundaries
of the local community. (1955 1).

Wagley gives a concise summing up in saying, after having quoted from

Beals what has been reproduced above, that,
Areas therefore cannot be rigidly delimited. The unit of any specific research program
depends upon the problem to be studied, the objectives of the study, and even the compo-
sition of the research team.
Second within any area, no matter how defined, it immediately becomes obvious that
no individual or even team of highly competent specialists can ever learn everything there
is to know about that area (...) It is clear, therefore, that closely defined research problems
and plans are necessary in order to control the range of research and make interdisciplinary
area study feasible. Furthermore, a well-defined and integrated program would make it

possible for individual research workers to participate in the over-all plan. As Beals stated,
&dquo;Congeries of individuals who happen to pursue their individual disciplines within an
area do not thereby create area research... The real distinction (between area and individual

research) is between individual researchers working in isolation without reference to other

workers and individuals working in accordance with a planned and integrated program,
so that the parts will contribute to the solution of larger problems that can be handled by
individuals&dquo;. (1948 15f).

To this, he adds that

interdisciplinary research is not a new form of activity in which each scientist forsakes his
speciality and meets with others on neutral ground. Nor does interdisciplinary research
require any one individual attempt to learn or control all the disciplines. Research in
areas must continue to be done by specialists - by economists, psychologists, sociologists,

historians, students of literature, philosophers, etc. (1948 16).

So that his views can be summed up in the following statement,

the study of an area, its culture, and its society calls for the contribution of many sciences,
and the area provides a concrete focus for the disciplines of the social sciences and related
fields of the humanities and natural sciences. Teamwork is absolutely necessary in area
study, as in medicine. No single person, or even science or discipline, is capable of dealing
with the complexities of the culture and environment of an area. The geographic limits of
an area induce the specialists to pool their knowledge and prevent them from ignoring
the relevance of factors which are outside the domains habitually considered by any one
of them. The area approach induces the participants to cooperate. &dquo;In trying to advance
knowledge within a definable context (area studies) may have a profound effect upon the
development of social science research&dquo;. (1948 5).

The question is what this means. Have the various views constituting the
range of meanings of area resulted in a clear, operationally valid image of what
an area is? Is it clear now that, why and how the area approach is necessarily

multidisciplinary rather than unidisciplinary, and perhaps even interdisciplinary

rather than multidisciplinary, in the sense that the various discipline approaches
become somehow integrated in their dealings with an area project? Frankly no;
one just begins to suspect that this must somehow be the case. But this is still a
far cry from seeing clearly.

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 191

Any area program, whether of training or of research, requires the participation of many
disciplines. It is certainly true in research and presumably true in training that the data of
the different social sciences and of the humanities have to be integrated if an area program
is to consist of more than a miscellany of unrelated facts. The present uncertainty about
integrating concepts may mean that social science is still in a &dquo;natural history&dquo; or pheno-
menological state. Preoccupation with &dquo;facts&dquo; or with description in area research is
evidence of scientific immaturity. (Steward 1950 95).

This is entirely correct. If it be at all true that area studies must necessarily
be interdisciplinary efforts, what remains to be demonstrated is the crucial
element: integration, - regardless whether the locus of integration be in the
area proper, in the dealings of various disciplines with the area, or perhaps in
the interrelationship of both.
In the present author’s opinion, Steward has not entirely succeeded in keeping
the promise implied in the passage just quoted. In fact, he seems to have become
the victim of some sort of terminological confusion, when he continues:
The writer’s concept of integration is only one of many that underlie various area
research projects and it is necessary to examine some of the others. The natural area is not
an integrative concept, for it sets no criteria for inclusion or exclusion of phenomena.

Among the more important and current integrative concepts are the individual, culture
and society. More specialized concepts, such as value system, philosophy, and ideology, are
emphasized in particular studies, but these are parts of culture - they are master patterns
of society, rather than something separable from both society and culture. The individual,
culture, and society are here selected as the principal integrating concepts requiring
comment because, where social science method is concerned, area studies tend to focus
upon one of these. The three concepts are of very different orders. (1950 96).

Similar lack of clarity appears in a passage (p. 84) that at face value holds
more promise, where he distinguishes area research finding its natural context
in the delimitations of the chosen area from area research finding its natural
delimitations in the chosen problem for which the area is a demonstration case.
Here, his trouble is with the elaboration of the meaning of problem.
There is no single area problem, but many area problems. For example, the development
of nationalism may be phrased as a problem for research requiring data from many fields;
but nationalism is only one of many area interests. On the other hand, narrow disciplinary
problems, numerous and varied as they are, are not chosen whimsically and at random.
The predominance of certain current interests has led individual research workers in
different fields to choose their problems with reference to common goals, even though they
may not make this fact explicit and their research may not be directly related to that of
fellow scientists. These general interests or objectives, in preceding pages, have been called
&dquo;basic themes&dquo;. (1950 84).

These themes
are simply foci of interest, which the social scientist, like anyone else, has to consider in

investigating current affairs. Any listing of these themes is quite arbitrary because they
merely represent points of emphasis in a continuum of interacting phenomena and over-
lapping interests. (1950 85).
As a random individual choice, he lists international relations, nationalism,
national structure, value or ideological systems, economic change, demographic
trends, urbanization, race and ethnic relations, regional contrasts (p. 86-94).

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 192

Clearly, these are not set problems in terms of any specific discipline of the
social sciences nor in terms of any recognizably integrative convergence of
various such disciplines. They are topical in a very common sense way, and as
such remain to be cast in terms that are valid as theoretical propositions in terms
of one or more of the social sciences and thus as points of departure for research
or teaching.1
progress in the present argument halts at the point where
Consequently,
one as a condition that is given both in time and place,
recognizes that the area,
would seem to be a natural entirety upon which social sciences effort could be
engaged. What remains questionable is the interrelationship between the area
on the one hand and the intellectual effort on the other; an interrelationship that
would seem to be the determinant, simultaneously, of (1) the geographical and
temporal limits of the area, whether formally and categorically fixed or function-
ally flexible, (2) the predominant aspect or aspects of the area as a sociocultural
entity, in terms of relevance to the intellectual effort concerned, (3) the set
problem as a proposition cast in terms valid for any of the social sciences involved
separately and for all of them integratively and (4) the modalities of integration
as between disciplines involved.
.

The root of the difficulty appears to be that thus far it has not been realized
sufficiently that these four are simultaneously determined, by or in the inter-
relationship which, upon closer inspection, they constitute themselves. Conse-
quently, those would seem to be wrong who believe that any one of the four, on
and by itself, is decisive and must be handled as such, regardless of the three
others. (These tend then to become more or less problematic subsidiary issues).
But also those would be wrong who fail to distinguish with sufficient clarity
between the four, and who on this account try to muddle through with complexes
of ideas that, by not being sorted out, hamper their movements and prevent
them from reaching the results they hope for.
This being so, the question is how one can tackle this complex matter starting
from any one of the four angles with due regard for its essential interrelations
with the other three.
One important simplification can be gained off-hand if one recognizes that
the delimitation of the area in time and space is not, as many believe, a pre-
liminary question, to be settled before one can start discussing plans. It is, in
fact, just one of the four and not necessarily the one that one would wish to set
out from. In the terms of Beals referred to above: no strict geographic boundaries,
and various area definitions for various disciplines. (Wagley 1948 15). More

1 Raphael Patai a summing up of traits of the notion culture area,

(1962 39f.) provides
anthropologically defined. His purpose is to use the notion thus defined, rather than to
appraise it critically. Even so, his statement offers a fair demonstration of the limitations in
the use and methodological validity of the notion. For present purposes, one may thus
refrain from an excursion into the anthropological literature on area in the sense of culture
area, more so since its underlying concern is usually with culture rather than with area.
Culture, no doubt, poses problems as another kind of unit, in terms of studies, per se.

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 193

precisely, the spatio-temporal definition of the area should be allowed to sort

itself out in the interplay between set problem, as rendered in the specific terms
of the various disciplines integratively involved in a given project, and provisional
indication of chosen area, as spatio-temporal demonstration case.
This leaves a three-cornered problem, part of which - the second and third
points listed above - recals distantly the antithesis between the inductive and
deductive approach, as well as the solution in terms of complementarity that
seems to be available for this traditional cause of dispute. A discussion of some

practical experiences will help to clarify this matter.

The third corner of the problem (number four in the list above) is thus
left. It can be broken down into two questions. First, the fundamental question
concerning interdisciplinary correspondences: what are disciplines if the
notion of interdisciplinary relationships is to make sense both fundamentally
and operationally? This question is not in order here. Secondly, and granting
a satisfactory reply to the first question, is it fundamentally conceivable that a

given combination of a spatio-temporal entity (as part or, perhaps better, aspect
of sociocultural reality) and of set problem (in terms of one or more disciplines
of the social sciences) would make for a sure indication as to the locus, focus, and
modus integrationis of the disciplines involved? To answer this latter question in the
affirmative is, to a considerable extent, banking upon the next development
in the social sciences. But enough is visible of this development to do so with
some confidence. Assuming that this be satisfactory, another matter remains
for the time being less satisfactory. One has some difficulty in envisaging and
outlining in detail how all this will operate once it will come to pass. Preparatory
thereto, some rather fundamental redefining of some of the more basic views and
ideas in several disciplines (most of which has, somehow, begun anyway) will
have to be brought to a good end.

To return now to the experiences meant above.

The Institute of Social Studies at The Hague has, during some years now,
conducted a combined research and teaching effort which has become known
amongst insiders as the country seminars. The writer has been privileged to do
some planning in this regard and eventually in writing up some of the more
basic considerations (1962 167ff). The nature and focus of the seminar has
changed somewhat in the course of years, but some of the initial considerations
have kept their validity. It all began when the decision was taken to do a com-
parative study of entire countries considered to have gone or to be going through
a recognizable phase of what was called accelerated overall change. The

comparative element involved necessitated a procedure allowing some degree

of generalization away from the situi et daté character of data found in any par-
ticular chosen area, and also away from problems of too rigid a delimitation of
the area in terms of its own particular geography and history. Furthermore, a
multidisciplinary approach, that was moreover meant to prove effectively
interdisciplinary in its results, was presupposed in the entire venture.
Apart from the calibre of seminar participants in the various case studies,

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 194

mainly two factors have determined the vicissitudes of this project. First, the
realization that somehow a set problem would have to be developed that on the
one hand should prove a valid rationalization in terms of each of the disciplines

expected to contribute (and also in terms of all of them together, integratively,

which is something else) and for which on the other hand the chosen countries
or regions should, each and everyone, be valid demonstration cases (even if for
the latter purpose one might have to apply a mutatis mutandis clause to details
of the set problem and of area limitation when moving from one case to the
next). Secondly, the realization that in the present stage of development of the
social sciences, the establishment of such a set problem is asking too much, so
that one may only try to approximate this thing of the future, thus simultaneously
stimulating necessary developments. In order to cope with any acute difficulties
that might arise out of the second realization an ad hoc methodological device
was introduced, dividing the work in two stages, overlapping in time but

methodologically quite distinct: a sequence meant to induce the articulation

of valid set problems in the sense just mentioned.
No doubt, the great temptation in this project has been to sit back and do
just another descriptive country study, using fresh or not so fresh facts from
various sources and in the varying terms of several disciplines. Any time people
have given in to this temptation, the results have tended to show it by losing
most of their interest. However, the work continues and some first results, in
the form of an attempt at model building at a very general level, have been
published by H. Th. Chabot (1962). One of the more crucial points concerning
which no definitive conclusions have been drawn as yet in the context of the
project now under review, is the question of the interrelationship between the
mode of determining the area and the establishment of a set problem in multi-
disciplinary and potentially interdisciplinary terms.
This problem has received much more of the limelight in another research
plan in which the writer has been privileged to co-operate ( 1961 ) . It is of later
date than the project just mentioned, although by chance it has been published
earlier than the other one. In this case, the problem of (1) the indication (first
broad and provisional, subsequently much more delimited and operational)
of the area (or sub-area) as a demonstration case for (2) a set problem valid in
multidisciplinary and eventually interdisciplinary terms of certain social sciences,
has been tackled squarely.
The manner in which this has been done is basically very simple. Two
rough data were available: work was to be undertaken in the Mediterranean
Basin and it should produce valid (and also useful) knowledge concerning that
vast matter which is currently called economic development and social change.
Some sort of refining procedure was thus called for on both sides, and this was
conceived in such a manner that one should try to produce one or more relevant
instances of the one to match an instance of the other. If there is one of the former,
you have a valid interdisciplinary area study, if there are more than one you have
a comparative set of valid interdisciplinary area studies. This construct, whether
in the singular or in the plural variant is of course repeatable in principle, in

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 195

the manner that one may thus develop a number of projects (singular or plural
as they may come) by devising a number of set problems. In the latter case one
may thus hope to end up with a number of instances of what Steward (1950
83-85) calls a problem in the sense of a focus of interest. Their addition could
for many practical purposes feature as an approximation of the initial, rough
problem, broken down into a number of its components. (There remains a
fundamental difference between the addition of a number of instances of X and
a breaking down of X into its components, but this is no matter of concern in

the present connection).

This approach caused some need for new terminology, and one of the terms
coined ad hoc is the name problem cluster to indicate what has just been named
instances of the initial rough problem. In the publication concerned, the entire
prodecure has been clarified schemetically, as follows,

In the same publication five instances of the initial problem have been
submitted to a first stage elaboration, which should allow provisional indication
of sub-areas to serve as demonstration cases. The actual matching of problem
and area is then a matter of subsequent stages; this is also the case in regard to

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 196

rendering the problem as valid propositions in the context of various social

sciences to become involved.
The book is typical as an indicator of the difficulties encountered already in
first-stage elaboration, inasmuch as the five chosen propositions show entirely
uneven developments and have been published, for purposes of discussion, in

notably different stages of maturity. For purposes of methodological clarification,

item D (p. 37ff) is certainly the most interesting one. More so inasmuch as it
provides a foretaste of the specific manner in which the set problem has to be
cast: a manner necessarily different from a good deal of traditional phrasing of
research questions.
Thus, this plan gives an already somewhat clearer view of the manner in
which chosen area and chosen problem can be matched, not to say integrated.
This leaves of course, as the next desideratum, a demonstration of the corre-
spondence between integration of chosen area together with chosen problem
or, to put it more briefly and more clearly, problem in situ, on the one hand, and
integrative operation of several social sciences, in tackling the problem in situ,
on the other hand. Not having any material at his disposal to demonstrate this

point, the writer cannot do more than underscore the necessity to tackling this
matter as the next issue. It may be hoped to prove the concluding one.

So much on the development of interdisciplinary area studies. The question

now is whether, as some maintain, this development, clearly visible though
unachieved as it is, spells the end of unidisciplinary area studies. The answer
depends, of course, again upon one’s definition of area. If an area is a problem
in situ, as seems to be one conclusion that can be drawn from the preceding
argument, the choice between unidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach
seems to be open. (Multidisciplinary approaches, however, are clearly ob-

jectionable). The fact that the choice remains open need, of course, not be taken
as an indication that the same goals could be served by both unidisciplinary and

interdisciplinary approaches.
In regard to unidisciplinary approaches, actually two ways seem to be open,
each responding to one of two different interpretations of the notion area.
Inasmuch as an area is problem in situ, a unidisciplinary approach is very likely
to prove a provisional and preparatory step, that can only turn into a definitive
achievement through integration into an interdisciplinary approach, the multi-
aspect character of which is matched with sufficient adequacy to the necessary
multi-aspect appearance of any, even the simplest, problem in situ.
However, inasmuch as an area is a distinct sociocultural context for specific
phenomena that can be validly studied in terms of particular social sciences,
one faces an altogether different perspective. In some of the publications

discussed (Steward 1950 106, 117; Wagley 1948 6f; Hall 1947 23f), this has
been indicated by the shorthand concept of cultural relativity, or names to the
same effect. The writer will be forgiven for once more drawing upon his own

experience as a sociologist. He will also be forgiven for underscoring, at the

outset, that entirely similar experiences can be heard reported from other

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 197

disciplines of the social sciences: including, n’en déplaise certain economists,

economics. There is a standing joke about a sociologist at some American
university who, for reasons that are irrelevant here, wanted to undertake research
in a Latin American country reputed to be very underdeveloped (whatever that
may mean). Said one of his colleagues: you better think this over once again;
why should you go for some narrow area specialism rather than continuing in
general sociology and do research in your own country?
The morale of the story is clear. Such a thing as general sociology may be
possible; but if this is so, it certainly remains to be made. Whether we know it or
not and, if we know, whether we like it or not, most and perhaps all (we have
no way of assessing) of our general theory in sociology - that is, of the theory
that comes natural to us - is culture conditioned. It refers back, tacitly, to the
frame of reference of the civilization as part of whose operational processes it
has been, and continues to be, produced.
How fundamental and yet how deceptive at the same time is this inherent
lack of generality cannot be underscored enough. Too often do people assume
that theory is at root general enough and that basically all you have to do, in
order to account for culture differences, is change some coefficient: in more
sociological terms, account for difference in underlying values. The trouble is
that no one has indicated how to do this. The reference to different coefficients
and different underlying values is in fact nothing but a smoke screen meant to
hide from sight the basic fact that, under different culture conditions, there is
also a basic difference in frame of reference for primary notions and categories,
upon which social sciences (and philosophies for once, they are together again)
are built.

Thus, given the working conditions of the sociologist qua human being,
general theory is not what he can hope to achieve as an immediate result. The
general theory he can hope to produce is culture conditioned general theory,
and the level of generality is a matter of the width with which he is able to grasp,
to unconsciously and tacitly circumscribe, the civilization of which he is part and
parcel. Much as we have been searching, in the previous argument, for inte-
gration of culture context (area) and problem (theoretical conceptualization):
here we have a case of the reverse position, where one would wish to extricate
the two instead of having to match them, and where one cannot do so at first
instance.
Perhaps one may, however, do it at second instance: at least to a certain
extent. Now this occurs when one would effectively achieve plurality in culture
conditioned bodies of sociological theory, which in its turn could be made
serviceable as a starting point for generalization: at what is obviously bound to
be a considerably higher level of abstraction. (This need not mean, as many
fear, a level of very decreased relevance to real things. Is mathematics - to quote
a field entirely irrelevant to the
present point - useless because it is so abstract?).
Now this suggestion is important in two ways. First, it provides a new and
better perspective in which to envisage the interrelationship between theory
and reality (and consequently also in which to envisage the problem, discussed

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 198

above, of the interrelationship between area and problem). Secondly, and in

consequence of the first, it provides a new and more promising way of conceiving
of the several disciplines as so many aspect-wise approaches to a sociocultural
reality that is plural in its ad hoc instances, in its incidental appearances to the
human mind. A further consequence refers to &dquo;general&dquo; theory: this would then
appear as a complex of correspondances between culture conditioned theory,
articulated in terms that should somehow be more &dquo;culture free&dquo;: in pro-
nouncedly abstract operational concepts.
Curiously, this argument leads back to the matter of interdisciplinary
integration. The point is that at root what decides about the issue ofpluricultural
theory that should be consistent notwithstanding the pluralist nature of the
corresponding reality, is the same fundamental consideration, the same philoso-
phic approach to reality as such, that also decides about the integrability of the
several disciplines.

REFERENCES

1954 Conrad M. ARENSBERG, "The Community Study Method". The American Journal of
Sociology. XI/2 p. 109-124.
1958 Wendell BELL, "The Utility of the Shevky Typology for the Design of Urban Sub-Area
Field Studies" ( Journal of Social Psychology XLVII 71-83).
1962 H. Th. CHABOT, "Governing Systems as an Aspect of Revitalization Movements" in
E. de Vries, ed., Essays on Unbalanced Growth: A Century of Disparity and Convergence.
’s-Gravenhage, Mouton.
1947 Robert B. HALL, Area Studies: With Special Reference to Their Implications for Research in
the Social Sciences (Social Science Research Council Pamphlet 3), New York.
1946 Paul HATT, "The Concept of Natural Area" ( American Sociological Review XI 423-427).
1961 C. A. O. VAN NIBUWENHUIJZE, Research for Development in the Mediterranean Basin: A
Proposal/Recherches pour le Développement dans le Basin Méditerranéen: Une Proposition.
’s-Gravenhage, Mouton.
1962/1 C. A. O. VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE, Society as Process: Essays in Social Sciences Method. ’s-Gra-
venhage, Mouton.
1962/2 -, "The Next Phase in Islamic Studies: Sociology?" Colloque sur la Sociologie Musulmane
11-14 Septembre 19) 1: Actes; Bruxelles, Centre pour l’Etude des Problèmes du
Monde Musulman Contemporain. (Série Correspondence d’Orient, 5).
1962 Raphael PATAI, Golden River to Golden Road; Society, Culture, and Change in the Middle East.
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
1940 Daniel F. RUBIN DE LA BORBOLLA and Ralph L. BEALS, "The Tarascan Project: A
Cooperative Enterprise of the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexican Bureau -
Indian Affairs, and the University of California". ( American Anthropologist 42
(4/I) p. 708-712).
1955 Eshref SHEVKY and Wendell BELL, Social Area Analysis: Theory, Illustrative Application
and Computational Procedures. Stanford, Calif., Stanford U.P. (Stanford Sociological
Series number one).
1949 Eshref SHEVKY and Marilyn WILLIAMS, The Social Areas of Los Angeles: Analysis and
Typology. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.
1950 Julian H. STEWARD, Area Research: Theory and Practice (Social Science Research Council
Bulletin 63), New York.
1948 Charles WAGLEY, Area Research and Training : A Conference Report on the Study of World Areas
(Social Science Research Council Pamphlet 6), New York.

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