220 The Nature of Political Theoryaltogether more nuanced, messy, and confused. In fact, it is a somewhat nightmarish
mixture of normative, critical, and empirical claims.
First, during the twentieth century, a number of sociological and anthropological
theories have, wittingly or not, articulated the theme of social and cultural difference.
Despite the fact that this was part of the staple diet of such disciplines, by the end of the
1970s and 1980s, the acknowledgement of difference had mutated into a much more
reflexive debate. Two points arose here in this debate: first, the empirical data of, par-
ticularly, cultural anthropology did give rise to a sense of a broad diversity of cultural
meanings. This, in turn, appeared to generate a strong sense of social and cognitive
pluralism, or relativism for some. All the agitated debates concerning rationality and
relativism, during the 1970s, arose largely from reflections on the extensive amounts
of empirical data from anthropology and ethnography. The standard debates circled
around the issue of whether a universal understanding of rationality could be retained
in tandem with the acknowledgement of cultural difference (e.g. see, Lukes and Hollis
(eds.) 1982; Hollis in Joppke and Lukes (eds.) 1999). However, during the 1980s, a
second more invasive question arose, namely, is social science (and anthropology in
particular) itself the expression of a particular culture? Thus, the anthropologist may
well be able to observe other cultures, or ‘primitive’ societies, and study them with the
objective analytical tools of social science. However, what happens when the anthro-
pological investigator, and the disciplinary structure of social science, are themselves
viewed as particular cultural practices? Anthropology, ethnography, and sociology
are, in this perspective, as much in need of serious investigation and explanation as
any other social practices. The central question is therefore: are the social sciences
universal and objective modes of rational discourse, or, alternatively, are they just
surreptitious imposed forms of Western cultural parochialism? In this context, the
purported universalism of the social sciences teeters on the edge of an idiosyncratic
localism, which, in turn, raises the spectre of difference.
In summary, the general point was that classical anthropology (for its difference-
based critics), reinforced the idea of the inferiority and subjugation of the ‘studied
groups’—the colonized or postcolonial peoples. The growth of the discipline itself,
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, corresponded with the expan-
sion of European states and empires. There were also strong implications in such
early anthropology of national and racial difference, and in many cases, superiority.
From the mid-twentieth century this latter aspect diminished. However, the con-
trast between the ‘social scientific researcher’ and the ‘studied society’ retained some
aspects of this subtle hierarchical difference. By the last few decades of the twenti-
eth century, anthropologists had become much more aware of the delicacy of these
questions. The critical movement away from the hierarchical mentality was precip-
itated by poststructural theory, which stressed the fabricated character of academic
discourse.^17 Postcolonial thought, in the language of postmodernism, is therefore
seen as articulating forms of marginalized knowledge. Narratives, such as liberal uni-
versalism, are seen to try to suppress local cultural difference. In consequence, a more
reflexive postpositivist anthropology grew in response to these criticisms (e.g. see,
Clifford and Marcus (eds.) 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986; Clifford 1988; Geertz