... as a global community of scholars, we see the world from our historical, social, cultural and mythological assumptions and positioning without us always realizing this. I do not agree with the notion of a value-free social science; some sort of chaste, ideologically sanitized science, free of the foibles, prejudices and social conditioning of time. I cannot buy into the notion of academic objectivity in circumstances and about matters on which we can at best only profess informed opinion. I think our biases can or may be mitigated, but not eliminated. It is therefore methodologically better to work from the understanding that one carries historical and cultural baggage in social analysis than to assume that one’s view stands outside the constraints and markings of historical equipage and conditioning. ...