Theories in social science research

Genie is the name given to a feral child who tragically spent 13 years locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty training chair. The child was a victim of one of the worst cases of child abuse and social isolation ever documented. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities in November 1970 and was moved to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. For several years she moved between the homes of people who were researching her condition in the hopes of helping her socialize, foster homes, and then when funding for her case dried up, to a sheltered home for adults with disabilities where she regressed to her previous state. Even though a book was written about her case in 1992, the authorities at the National Mental Health Institute were concerned that the research data was poorly documented and inconclusive and decided to discontinue support (Rymer, 1992).

Part 3 -- In a discussion on economics and current affairs with a colleague, the remark is made that Marx is irrelevant in the 21st century. This is an interesting conundrum, since one of the most famous books in modern history, one that literally changed the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, was The Communist Manifesto. In thinking about Marx, we first look at his basic ideas. For Marx, history was defined as nothing more than a continuous class struggle. In Ancient times, slavery changed into feudalism, then capitalism replaced feudal society, especially after the Industrial Revolution. Eventually, this class struggle would allow the workers of the world to revolt and overthrow the owners of production anf form a society with no class called communism. The conflict then, in modern society was between communism and capitalism, or between the interests of the owners of production and the laboring class. Capitalism is a system in which people (or groups of people, e.g. corporations) own the means of production and benefit from labor by keeping workers poor and uneducated. This is called exploitation, and is particularly evident when factory owners amass huge profits while workers live on subsistence wages. Because this system requires raw materials and workers continually, owners are forced to move from place to find both -- which is called imperialism -- taking from other countries and controlling the means of production while leaving the populations poor (Marx, 1888).

All this forms the basis of Marxism, and led the core philosophies of the Russian and Chinese revolutions and several offshoots. Studying Marx is actually quite relevant today, perhaps even more so now that China and Russia no longer operate on their older, stricter interpretation of his writings:

Just as it is important to study the writings of the Founding Fathers, Locke and Hobbes, and the Ancient philosophers, it is important to study and understand Marx. If we wish to understand history and how nations and political units evolved, how decisions were made and foreign policy and warfare waged, then we need to study the past in order to understand the future -- and perhaps not make some of the same decisions or errors we did.

Marx criticized capitalism, and although his critiques were of the capitalism of his century, globalism is still largely based on a capitalistic paradigm, and one in which some of Marx's criticisms (e.g. exploitation, wage slavery, and predictions of rampant consumerism) are valid. Capitalism moved its means of finding labor and workers to a more global outlet, which means that class issues may not be identical, but the critique may be useful in several disciplines to rethink and revalue a better system.