Drug Decriminalization in Maryland Through an African Centered Research Paradigm- Analysis and Recommendations

While it is seductive to chalk these epistemic limitations up to pure human nature, research
shows the history of how these ideas of “scientific objectivity” and “universalism” mirror the
history of western imperial control. Former Hunter College professor Marimba Ani uses the
philosophy of John Stewart Mill to make a more significant point around the very concept of
“social science” as an attempt to bring the scientific method to the social world as inherently an
act of control and an effort to leverage science as a tool of power. Ani writes:
“Formidable minds were committed to the task of imparting “objectivity" and
“universality” to Western social science… For Mill the inability to predict human behavior
has nothing to do with a qualitative difference between the social and the natural or the
physical. His conclusion in this regard is not influenced by a recognition of the human
spirit, but is rather based on what he thinks is a quantitative complexity of causal factors,
but the desire to predict and to control (the uncontrollable European need to order)
compels him to apply the “scientific method“ to social phenomena. And so on the level of
theory, that is, superficially, sociology becomes, at best, a collection of insignificant
descriptive generalizations, which reflect and encourage a dehumanizing concept of
human nature, characteristic of the culture in which the discipline was created. Its
epistemological purpose is to give Europeans a feeling of intellectual control that they do
not have, in an area that they do not understand. Something else is happening here. The
ideology of progress (while on seemingly sound footing when applied to the arena of
technology), when viewed critically, reveals the ineptness of Europeans in the social,
psychological, moral and spiritual spheres. Europeans needed to be able to “prove“ to
themselves and others that they also represented the epitome of moral and social progress.
It is for this reason that the edifice of European social science was constructed. Most
importantly this “social science“ provides a vehicle for the exportation of European
ideology by giving Europeans the “right“ to speak for all people.” (Ani, 1994)
While recognizing the complexity of human beings fighting abstract science, Mills feels compelled
to apply the scientific method to social relations, an act which Ani sees as a diminution of the
human spirit and furthermore a culturally specific desire to acquire the right to speak for other
cultures through the lens of these superior “objective” social sciences. The inability to truly
capture the complexity of human social relationships in social science renders much of social
science, for Ani, “a collection of insignificant generalizations''. While this may seem harsh, one
need only look to the history of addiction studies to see how this theory may help explain what can
only be described as the morass of often contradictory and ineffective explanations for addiction
in the literature. Despite the standard model describing addiction as a disease which is ripe for
scientific management by public health professionals, the social realities of addiction have
continued to frustrate researchers attempting to apply traditional scientific methods to this
“disease”. Bruce Alexander, the Canadian addiction researcher known for his “rat park”
experiments, comments on how the social and spiritual nature of addiction frustrates attempts to
apply traditional scientific methodology to the disease, writing:
4151 Park Heights Avenue, Suite 207, Baltimore, MD 21215 • www.lbsbaltimore.com • (410) 374-7683