Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)

KÖNYVTÁR ÉS KORSZERŰSÉG – LIBRARY AND MODERNITY

Social science research and information needs because the research problem is part of a well-defined and institutionalised research field with more or less standardised theoretical models and methods and techniques of research. Comparative research in social mobility of subsequent generations is a case in point. In other cases, however, the research problem cannot so easily be made explicit; the conceptual framework is not so elaborate and consistent, there is not a body of research from which the problem emerges and views differ as to the most appropriate research instruments. Here, a Vienna Centre's research project concerning the impact of the political, economic and social system on the introduction and development of automation and on the social consequences thereof serves as an example. In preparing international social science cooperative and comparative research in this problem the need will be strongly felt for new information about relevant research findings in other countries, about the available scientific expertise and its organisations which may be mobilized and about the suitabilky of certain countries to be involved in the project (the suitability being determined by the level of automation, the nature of the socio-political system, the reliability of statistical information and its accessibility). In the second phase in which the project is actually designed, other information is required in order to make a good and promising start. Frequently, differences in theoretical approach, in the scientific paradigms of the researchers have to be clarified to prevent the research team from loosing itself in theoretical confiision. The research team would simply not be able to come to grips with the research problem. The members of the team would not be able to reach agreement about variables, indicators and hypotheses and about the appropriate research instruments to concretize the variables and to test the hypotheses. Failure of the project would be immanent. For example, views on the division of political power, property, income and knowledge in society may widely diverge and so would the questions the researchers from opposite views would üke to ask. The perception of society as a system sui generis with self-regulating qualities is, for example, hardly compatible with the view that societal conditions are the provisional outcome of legitimate power conflicts between individuals who continuously align and realign themselves in order to gain material and immaterial advantages over others and to consolidate lucrative pattems of division. Society as a system sui generis would impose its own fiinctional and structural requirements. Division pattems of power, property, income and knowledge, reinforcing the system's existence and guaranteeing its survival, would almost automatically emerge. Individuals would, in principle, be allocated in the system and subsystems according to the system's needs and goals with which they supposedly identify themselves. The promotion of individual interests which are not consonant with societal Gondolatok a könyvtárban " 175