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2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens
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Biju
P R
Author,
Teacher, Blogger
Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Government
Brennen College
Thalassery
Kerala,
India
My Books
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
In an effort to expose what exactly
political Science and its scientific dimension of enquiry; it is indispensable
to have an idea about three dimensions of politics that have been upheld to
compete for supremacy in the discipline. Aristotle, Harodl Laswell and David
Easton have established some compelling thoughts.
It is largely interpreted that
Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics sees politics as a leveling
process where by the flattening of ‘Polis’ takes place in which human beings
survive to live in the Polis without any barrier to participation in natural
life in the sense that man by nature is a political animal. It means that the
polis (city‐state) subsists by nature, human beings
are by nature political animals and the polis is by nature superior to the individual
life in the nature.
Harold Laswell, the distinguished
American political Scientists says Politics is “who gets what when and how”. Obviously
it means the study of politics is comprised of a reference to the influence and
the influential in the society. Further
to the allegory, Laswell again went to define Political Science as the study of
shaping and sharing of power. To Lasswell it means that politics is all about
the wide dispersal of power a cross a broad specter of variables.
Lasswell, the author of a major study of the
distributive consequences of political activity, offer his book the title Politics--Who
Gets What, When, and How, here Lasswell defined politics as involving questions as to who gets
what, when, and how. So Politics according to Lasswell is concerned with
deciding, by official governmental decision-making and action of (a) who in
political society entertain what rewards, benefits, and advantages and how much
of them they receive; (b) when they receive the benefits, rewards and
advantages and (c) the methods by which they receive them in effect.
This is the good definition of
politics, and its value is in its extensiveness. A necessary but unstated
assumption within it though and that assumption is when there are two or more
people the question who get what becomes problematic. Suppose in an imaginary
state of nature where one is alone, the choice to climb a tree to pick fruit is
not a political decision. But if one more is also nearby and the options that
survive are to labour jointly to decide on the fruit, then settle on how to
divide them or to seek to pick the fruit covertly or to try to apply lone
despotic dominion over the fruit and maintain the other away; then we have
politics.
The definitions used by Laswell
indicate that admittedly political act is a very broad category in social life.
Therefore, the study of politics can also include the social, economic,
cultural, personal power relations between different social actors.
David Easton an
important Political Scientist of modern age has presented a completely new
dimension to the way by which political studies progress towards man and his
political act. David He defines politics as the authoritative allocation of
values. That means values are allocated by political system for the society
that are authoritative and binding on members of the political society. In the
book A Framework for Political Analysis uses the term "political
system" is used to designate the pattern or system of human inter- actions
and relationships in any political society through which authoritative allocations
are made and implemented through demand and support system that ultimately
result in a kind of output function from the political regime.
In A Systems
Analysis of Political Life, Easton once more defines the political system
as consisting of "those interactions through which values are authoritatively
allocated for a society" based on Input function and Output function. He perceive
politics as human activity concerned in the operation or functioning of the
political system, activity concerned with authoritative decision-making and
action by the government, seemingly decision-making and action resulting in an
authoritative allocation of values for the society that are binding on its
members.
By the word value;
Easton observes any sought-after value in life in the society. A value is any
activity, object, goal, idea, principle, or other phenomenon upon which large
numbers of people place appreciable value, something which is measured by many
individuals and groups within the political community to be desirable, good,
useful, rewarding, advantageous, beneficial, or attractive. One set of values
may be physical, or material in form that is in the form of property, money or other
economic goods, conditions and services. One more set of values may be ethereal
that is the values may be ideological, symbolic, cultural, ethical, religious or
moral in character at large. Instances of intangible values in contemporary
politics include the expressed goals of political activists who assert that they
are concerned primarily with social or family issues that they seek mainly to
promote and defend social or family values in society.
“Authoritative” implies “official,” which is not repetitive
always. By any means, politics certainly existed before humans developed
“official” authority, or formal authoritative institutions in time as old as
pre-historic periods. To put it another way, that criticism requires reliance
on a different definition of politics, but put it other way that those
behaviors that we frequently consider political pre-date the invention of
formal authoritative social institutions.
In short Political science is such
a wide ranging and systematically organised knowledge system that there is some
reservation about what the core of political science is all about, or whether
Political Science even has a founding theme. Many people will have differing
positions about it. A long time ago the discipline was with reference to law
and government in classical writings. For instances; Aristotle was about to
think ‘Polis’ that is city-state. Later Machiavelli was about to think the
Prince that is concerned with the affairs of State and subject. Then it came to embrace the study of social
movements. Later it came to include the study of the effectiveness of policy.
By modern time, it was about voting, democracy, decision-making and rational
choice. Eventually the discipline developed a rich and vibrant vocabulary,
analytical category and variables by which social interaction can be studied
interpreted and understood in systematic way in a given social system. Now it
has come to include the advancing psychology of social interaction.
More obviously the study of all
politics is the study of power relations surfacing between different social
groups. Power is at the centre of all political acts. Power therefore floats up
in all human relation and interaction. Power reflects in between father and
mother, parents and children, family and society, different social classes,
groups, communities, citizen and governments, human beings and other animals,
people and eco-system, environment and consumption, market and individual,
governments of the world, leaders and followers, ideologies and its supporters
and a plethora of human act thereby make sense of politics by some means.
Now it is very
interesting to see that whether these concerns of political studies that are
power endowed can be explored through scientific methods. As has been stated, Political
studies are very much based on all knowledge system that is based on
assumption, perception, measurements and yardsticks. The political studies can
be the subject of methodical and dependable knowledge, according to the
standards of what is usually called “science in modern times (Colomer, 2 0
11).” Political enquiries are very much scientific, systematic and what may be
called “Science”.
The classical thinking based on the
Greek methods, later elaborated through renaissance, enlightenment, scientific
temperament, twentieth century scientific progress and twenty first century
technological sophistication; Political Science is very much a scientific way
of understanding the complex problem of power relations in a given context.
The political studies begin all its
exploration coated with the Platonic or Aristotelian strategy using either
deduction or induction to begin a research. When the research strategy is
decided, the broad frame work for the entire knowledge generation will be
methodically decided in political enquiry. From a strategy as usual the
political enquiry further progress towards an ontology about the human social
world either as Objective or Constructive and it presupposes that all human act
can be either pre-decided by a grand law that is objective in the sense that it
will exist in reality if man know it or not. On the other all human act will be
socially constructed and all human act are due to our constant interaction with
surrounding.
As the ontology of the political
enquiry is decided, the epistemology works for the enquiry; it can be either
positivism or phenomenology. Through an empiricist platform or through an
interpretive paradigm, the scientific study of all political enquiry can work
towards a methodology- Qualitative or Quantitative.
In short, from research strategy to
methodology and methods all political enquiry can progress towards a
predictable knowledge that can be reliable, accumulative, systematic,
replicate, predictable, and admittedly what may be called a “Science of
Politics”.
For instances, just see the ad
column of a real estate builder in their colourful brochure where one might see
the sketch of the Villa we are attracted. But let us attempt to find the car
porch and see what brand is placed in the porch. Probably BMW or Audi or
Mercedes that even if one is struggling to purchase the Villa cannot buy such a
brand. So a theme is born unintentionally in our mind and that a third force is
negotiating with our wisdom which Vance
Packard (1957) views that advertisers trying to manipulate consumer
expectations and induce desire for products and more particularly in the
American postwar era that he seems to observe as a kind of power which even
design our very wants and thoughts. A power is negotiating with us probably
invisible and amorphous but that is too cultural. This can be explored but what
method we use may differ from person to person.
Obviously,
political studies are scientific understanding of human act in a political
context. It largely draws on propositions, concepts, variables, categories,
hypotheses, quantitative measurements, generalizations, empirical tests, models
etc. Obviously, political studies use ‘science’ as one among many of its mode
enquiries.
Reference
David Easton, 1953,The
Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science, New York:
Alfred A.
Knopf.
David Easton, 1965,
A Framework for Political Analysis, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
David Easton, 1965,
A Systems Analysis of Political Life,New York : John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Colomer, Josep
M., 2 0 11, The Science of Politics: An Introduction, New York: Oxford
University Press. Packard, Oakley Vance, 1957, The
Hidden Persuaders, Ig Publishing.
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