Social Science for What?

Social Science for What?
Author: Mark Solovey
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262358751

How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.

Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America

Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America
Author: Steve J. Heims
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1993
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

Focusing on the Macy Foundation conferences, a series of encounters that captured a moment of transformation in the human sciences.

Social Science in America

Social Science in America
Author: Charles M. Bonjean
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-07-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292772629

This outstanding symposium concerns the development of the social sciences in the United States over its first two hundred years and was brought together by the editors of Social Science Quarterly as the journal's contribution to the nation's Bicentennial celebration. Six prominent scholars representing history, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and geography were invited to write essays about the general topic of the progress of the social sciences, and to pursue original lines of thought as well. Each was asked to address three key questions regarding their own discipline: (1) the distinctive contributions made to each discipline by American scholars; (2) the impact of these contributions upon American society; and (3) the relationship of these contributions to the character or nature of life in the United States. The result is a coherent collection of considerable breadth and exceptional quality. The essays include "Time's American Adventures: American History and Historical Writing since 1776" by William Goetzmann; "Economics: Its Direct and Indirect Impact in America, 1776-1976" by Joseph J. Spengler; "Sociology in America: The Experience of Two Centuries" by Robin M. Williams; "Understanding Political Life in America: The Contribution of Political Science" by Heinz Eulau; "Anthropology in America" by Walter Goldschmidt; and "Geography As a Social Science: Recent American Experience" by Kevin Cox.

Poverty Knowledge

Poverty Knowledge
Author: Alice O'Connor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780691102559

Alice O'Connor here chronicles the transformation in the study of poverty from a reform-minded inquiry into the political economy of industrial capitalism to the detached, highly technical 1990s analysis of the demographic and behavioural characteristics of the poor. "Poverty Knowledge" is a comprehensive historical account of the thinking behind these very different views of "the poverty problem". It is a century-spanning inquiry into the politics, institutions, ideologies, and social science that shaped poverty research and policy.

Sociology in America

Sociology in America
Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 929
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226090965

Though the word “sociology” was coined in Europe, the field of sociology grew most dramatically in America. Despite that disproportionate influence, American sociology has never been the subject of an extended historical examination. To remedy that situation—and to celebrate the centennial of the American Sociological Association—Craig Calhoun assembled a team of leading sociologists to produce Sociology in America. Rather than a story of great sociologists or departments, Sociology in America is a true history of an often disparate field—and a deeply considered look at the ways sociology developed intellectually and institutionally. It explores the growth of American sociology as it addressed changes and challenges throughout the twentieth century, covering topics ranging from the discipline’s intellectual roots to understandings (and misunderstandings) of race and gender to the impact of the Depression and the 1960s. Sociology in America will stand as the definitive treatment of the contribution of twentieth-century American sociology and will be required reading for all sociologists. Contributors: Andrew Abbott, Daniel Breslau, Craig Calhoun, Charles Camic, Miguel A. Centeno, Patricia Hill Collins, Marjorie L. DeVault, Myra Marx Ferree, Neil Gross, Lorine A. Hughes, Michael D. Kennedy, Shamus Khan, Barbara Laslett, Patricia Lengermann, Doug McAdam, Shauna A. Morimoto, Aldon Morris, Gillian Niebrugge, Alton Phillips, James F. Short Jr., Alan Sica, James T. Sparrow, George Steinmetz, Stephen Turner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Immanuel Wallerstein, Pamela Barnhouse Walters, Howard Winant

The Cybernetics Group

The Cybernetics Group
Author: Steve J. Heims
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1991
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances.

Shaky Foundations

Shaky Foundations
Author: Mark Solovey
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2013-02-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0813554667

Numerous popular and scholarly accounts have exposed the deep impact of patrons on the production of scientific knowledge and its applications. Shaky Foundations provides the first extensive examination of a new patronage system for the social sciences that emerged in the early Cold War years and took more definite shape during the 1950s and early 1960s, a period of enormous expansion in American social science. By focusing on the military, the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, Mark Solovey shows how this patronage system presented social scientists and other interested parties, including natural scientists and politicians, with new opportunities to work out the scientific identity, social implications, and public policy uses of academic social research. Solovey also examines significant criticisms of the new patronage system, which contributed to widespread efforts to rethink and reshape the politics-patronage-social science nexus starting in the mid-1960s. Based on extensive archival research, Shaky Foundations addresses fundamental questions about the intellectual foundations of the social sciences, their relationships with the natural sciences and the humanities, and the political and ideological import of academic social inquiry.

Cold War Social Science

Cold War Social Science
Author: Mark Solovey
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030702464

This book explores how the social sciences became entangled with the global Cold War. While duly recognizing the realities of nation states, national power, and national aspirations, the studies gathered here open up new lines of transnational investigation. Considering developments in a wide array of fields – anthropology, development studies, economics, education, political science, psychology, science studies, and sociology – that involved the movement of people, projects, funding, and ideas across diverse national contexts, this volume pushes scholars to rethink certain fundamental points about how we should understand – and thus how we should study – Cold War social science itself.