Western social science mistakenly assumed its principles were universally applicable, a view that is no longer valid as global needs and desires have become less homogenized. The article argues for a shift away from this outdated perspective.

Western social science has made three metaphysical mistakes. The first was to assume that its laws and lessons were, like the physical sciences, universally applicable to all societies. Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt captured the prevailing zeitgeist well when he wrote in 1983: “The world’s needs and desires have been irrevocably homogenised.” That may have been true 40 years ago. It is no longer. One indirect consequence of this assumption – that the whole world was converging towards a...