Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

604 Pierre de Bie
result of a constant effort to overcome the weakness traditionally inherent in
this field of re~earch.4~
This observation is interesting, providing as it does a further example of the
fact of the professional status available to those who do theoretical research
compared with those who engage in problem-focused or applied research,
specialists in family studies wishing to acquire the higher status of those who
devote themselves to pure research. But this question of status plays only a
partial role in explaining the multidisciplinary character of family research;
multidisciplinary research is necessitated by the very nature and the complexity
of family problems.
This list of examples of multidisciplinary problem-focused research could be
substantially longer. When it comes to study man in society - and is he not the
problem ? - various types of disciplinary association are always inevitable. Any
attempt to give an account of man as a human being necessarily involves collab-
oration between different disciplines, since each disciplinary sector stems from
an abstraction and a separation. ‘Pure’ economic analysis is an outstanding
example, but in a whole number of sectors of economic analysis social factors
are introduced as additional and even essential explanatory factors; the study
of patterns of expenditure and saving and the theory of economic growth and
development spring to mind. In his study of economic growth, Rostow brings
out the interaction between economic variables and the socio-cultural context.43
Just as it was impossible at one stage to advance until the myth of homo
oeconomicus had been disposed of, so, too, the simple image of the ‘citizen’ has
had to be jettisoned in political science and acknowledgment made of the
artificial character of the ‘laboratory specimen’, entirely cut off from all social
contacts, studied by experimental psychology.
The American school of cultural anthropology has brought into focus the
insights of psychoanalysis, social psychology and anthropology in its work on
the theme of ‘personality and culture.’ The standard work by Linton on the
cultural basis of the personality was primarily interesting because it was one of
the first conscious attempts at a pragmatic statement of the problems involved
in integrating the sciences of man. In the arguments in favour of giving an
institutional framework to what are known in the United States as the ‘behav-
ioral sciences’, the range of disciplines envisaged is even wider: to the disciplines
at the centre of this constellation, namely, the American versions of psychology,
anthropology and sociology, are added elements of political science, psychiatry,
human geography, political economy and history.
In problem-focused research the object is man in situ - man as a social being
who must be helped, healed and protected, and included in plans and forecasts
for the future. It is man in situ who introduces the multidisciplinary dimension.
Factors of the disciplinary associations
A study of the fields of problem-focused research brings out a number of fac-
tors which determine the disciplinary associations :