41institutions and organizations of the social science disciplines such as sociology,
history, and political science (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003 ).
However, comparative historical analysis has been challenged for privileging
Western perspective over others in the studies of other/non-Western societies epito-
mized often by Western bias and lack of intimate knowledge of and respect for those
societies. Calls for insider perspectives are heard increasingly. Indeed, social
researchers have engaged in an extensive debate about the merits of researchers
being “outsiders” or “insiders” to the community they study. Insider-outsider per-
spectives have been theorized across various academic disciplines. The main dis-
juncture between the insider and outsider perspectives is simply a conflict in what
Merton ( 1972 ) calls the “public interpretation of reality” (p.19): The outsider per-
spective primarily draws on the classical philosophical arguments that warn against
“the corrupting influence of group loyalties upon the human understanding” (p.19).
It assumes that objective knowledge relies on the degree to which researchers can
detach themselves from the prejudices of the social groups they study (Agar 1980 ;
Boon 1983 ). The insider perspective, however, essentially questions the ability of
outsider scholars to competently understand the experiences of other groups because
they are not initiated in the cultural values of the people they study.
The insider/outsider distinction lacks acknowledgment that insiders and outsid-
ers, like all social roles and statuses, are frequently situational, depending on the
prevailing social, political, and cultural values of a given social context (Merton
1972 ). Recent research has attempted to move beyond a strict outsider/insider
dichotomy to emphasize the relative nature of researchers’ identities depending on
the specific research context. The central question should not be whether or not one
group or the other has privileged access to social reality but a consideration of their
distinctive and interactive roles in the process of truth seeking. With the politics
between knowledges in the social sciences, it is much more important for research-
ers to reflect upon the identities and Merton’s ( 1972 ) “status sets” that they bring to
a research project, the way in which those identities may affect the development of
partnerships with community members, and how they may affect the research pro-
cess and its outcomes (Mercer 2007 ). What is urgently needed for contemporary
social research is a multiplicity of perspectives and pluralistic epistemologies
(Polkinghorne 1983 ).
In a context of Western dominance in contemporary social inquiry in East Asia,
it is highly likely that a locally based researcher adopts a Western lens to observe
her/his own society. With an increasing number of researchers from East Asia,
including those within the region and those studying and working overseas, con-
ducting research on higher education in East Asia, the politics of representation and
authenticity are placed at the core. In the comparative studies of higher education,
researchers are required to be not only aware of the perspectives adopted by other
researchers but also constantly reflexive upon their own. Calling for the plurality of
system models to render transparent the possible analytical schemas and analyze
each system from more than one vantage point, Marginson ( 2014 ) argues that
phenomena significant from several different vantage points take an added impor-
tance and facilitate generic global analysis. He writes:
3 Foil to the West? Interrogating Perspectives for Observing East Asian Higher...