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

Cross-cultural, cross-societal and cross-national research 677
hand they have felt impelled to concentrate their efforts at data gathering and
analysis in the many neglected fields of inquiry within their own nations; on
the other hand they have felt increasingly convinced of the methodological
rationale and the theoretical advantages of cross-community, cross-national
and cross-cultural research. Market conditions for decisions in one direction
or in the other vary enormously from region to region. In the United States
resources in funds and personnel have been large enough to allow a small but
expanding phalanx of comparativists to concentrate their work on crossnational
and cross-cultural studies. In Latin America national resources have
been meagre and the decisive thrust toward the establishment of regular research
services has frequently come from abroad, through the organization of crossnational
studies.*h In Europe there has been a continuous increase in the flow of
funds for social science research but a marked concentration on distinctly
national tasks. Europe offers a remarkable range of opportunities for detailed
cross-national research: there is a wealth of data still to be tapped, there are
broad bodies of national experts to draw on for advice, there is increasing interest
among policy-makes in studies cutting across the national and regional
units.85 Curiously, little has as yet been done to exploit these opportunities.
Significantly, some of the first initiatives came from American scholars and were
backed by American funds. Europe-initiated and Europe-financed studies have
so far been few and far between. An early example of joint European research
was the two sets of parallel group experiments and sample surveys carried out in
1953 under the auspices of the Oslo-based Organization for Comparative Social
Research.86 Perhaps the happiest example of a jointly financed and cooperatively
planned international study was the twelve-country survey of achievement
in mathematics,87 planned at the UNESCO Institute of Education in Hamburg,
and financed by the us Office of Education (for the international costs of
the project) and by national funding agencies in the twelve countries (for field
operations). This project constitutes a model of international academic cooperation,
and shows that it is possible to achieve solid results through the sharing
of responsibilities among many national teams. It further illustrates how UNESCO
and other international bodies can perform an important brokerage function
in linking up American and European initiatives.
The Research Committees set up by the International Sociological Association
have prepared the ground for a similar linking of initiatives but so far the
plans for concerted action can be counted on one hand. The Committee on
Social Stratification and Social Mobility pioneered the organization of a series
of cross-national replications and offered a fruitful forum for methodological
and substantive discussions. The current three-country project Metropolit is a
direct outcome of discussions within the Committee!8 Europe is clearly ripe for
a variety of cross-national initiatives. What has been lacking has been an
organizational focus, a concrete institutional basis for concerted action. Alexander
Szalai’s spectacular success in inducing research workers in a dozen countries
to join the cross-national time budget study must be understood against this
backgro~nd.~g The UNESCO decision to set up a European Co-ordination Centre
for Documentation and Research in the Social Sciences at Vienna came just