Just like other part of the world, “Social science has been shaped by dynamic competition between academic and political power” argued by Prof. Jian-Bang Deng in our second book series (19/3/2021) entitled above. Entitled “Social Science and Transformation of Society: An Observation from Sociology Development in Taiwan”, Prof. Deng – a professor of sociology in Tamkang University and a former visiting professor in the PSSAT/CESASS – identifies three stages in the development of sociology in Taiwan, and covers three main roles of sociology: sociology as a marginal science, sociology as a challenger to the state power, and sociology as a reflective science.
He addressed the difficulties faced by the independent social science discipline to build up in Asia, highlighting the process of academic development in Taiwan from a Southern perspective. “As sociology is the scientific study of society, it’s common that universities use sociological teaching textbooks based on the analysis and interpretation of their own society. However, it is worth noting that, even in the university’s department of sociology, students in Taiwan could not find a textbook that which focused on Taiwanese society’s issues during the first two phases of the sociology development”, he said.
Acting as the discussant was Dr. Falikul Isbah, a sociologist of Universitas Gadjah Mada. In his appreciation and reflection of Prof. Deng’s work, he compared the development of Sociology in Taiwan to Indonesia. Pointing at the preliminary, Indonesia’s Sociology or called Indologie during the colonial Dutch era, sociology was taught as a minor subject in a law school to understand incivility or deviance. Indonesia’s Sociology also experiencing the growth of topic variation such as: democracy-identity politics, economy, and cultural changes including consumerism, life-style, or culture studies, also demography-development and then digital society. He stressed that Indonesia has never fully transformed from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial society, compared to Taiwan. “Indonesia’s sociology needs to step on “in-between approach”, meaning that Indonesia better not totally embraces sociology as a study of urban or industrial society, but underlying the local context in the country, Indonesian sociology should better pay attention to the in betweenness of rural agrarian and urban-industrial.
Please click: [SEA-TALK #38] Discussion #2 on “Social Science in the Age of Transformation and Disruption” – YouTube for detail.
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Domestic order:
https://bit.ly/socialsciencebookCESASS or http://www.tokopedia.com/cesassugm
International order:
http://bit.ly/bookorderforinternational
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About the speakers:
Jian-Bang Deng is a professor of sociology. He currently serves as the director of the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies and Head of preparatory office of the Department of Education and Futures Design, Tamkang University, Taiwan. He has written widely on migration and future mobility issues. His latest publication is Deng, J. B., Wahyuni, H. I., & Yulianto, V. I. (2020). Labor migration from Southeast Asia to Taiwan: issues, public responses and future development. Asian Education and Development Studies. Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 69-81. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-02-2019-0043.
Falikul Isbah is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. He obtained his PhD from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia in 2016, and MA Sociology from Flinders University, Australia in 2011. Over the past four years, Dr Isbah has been expanding his interest in the Sociology of Work, Digital Economy and Welfare Issues.