Discourses on Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. The Politics and Episteme of Discourses on Society

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Analyzing Social Science: On the Possibility of a Sociology of the Social Sciences

      • Peter Wagner, Björn Wittrock

      Pages 3-22

   3. Knowledge for Certainty: Poverty, Welfare Institutions and the Institutionalization of Social Science

      • Helga Nowotny

      Pages 23-41

3. National Profiles In a Long-Term Perspective

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 43-43

      PDF

   2. The Social Science Disciplines: The American Model

      • Peter T. Manicas

      Pages 45-71

   3. The Tripartite Division of French Social Science: A Long-Term Perspective

      • Johan Heilbron

      Pages 73-92

   4. “Science and Politics” as a Political Factor: German and Italian Social Sciences in the Nineteenth Century

      • Pierangelo Schiera

      Pages 93-120

4. The Discourse on Politics Between Philosophy, Science, and Profession

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 121-121

      PDF

   2. In Search of the State: Political Science as an Emerging Discipline in the U.S.

      • John G. Unnell

      Pages 123-161

   3. Oxford and the Emergence of Political Science in England 1945–1960

      • Malcolm Vout

      Pages 163-191

5. The Constitution of A Science of Society

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 193-193

      PDF

   2. How to Make Things Which Hold Together: Social Science, Statistics and the State

      • Alain DesrosiÈres

      Pages 195-218

   3. Science of Society Lost: On the Failure to Establish Sociology in Europe During the “Classical” Period

      • Peter Wagner

      Pages 219-245

   4. Social Science and the “Swedish Model”: Sociology at the Service of the Welfare State

      • Katrin Fridjonsdottir

      Pages 247-270

6. The Instttutionalization of Economics: Educational Practices, State Policies, and Academic Recognition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 271-271

      PDF

   2. Political Economy to Economics Via Commerce: The Evolution of British Academic Economics 1860–1920

      • Keith Tribe

      Pages 273-302

   3. The Teaching of Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century Italy and the Characteristics of its Institutionalization

      • Gabreella Gioli

      Pages 303-328

7. Western Social Sciences in Space and Time

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 329-329

      PDF

   2. States, Institutions, and Discourses: A Comparative Perspective on the Structuration of the Social Sciences

      • Peter Wagner, Björn Wittrock

      Pages 331-357

This book, which represents probably the most comprehensive discussion of the emergence of modem social science yet produced, is of far more than merely historical interest. The contributors set out to rewrite the history of the social sciences and to show the limitations of conventional conceptions of their development. These tasks they accomplish with great success and much distinction. Yet in so doing they contribute in a direct way to our understanding of the relation between social analysis and the nature of human societies today. The brilliant and distinctive perspective of the papers in this collection is to demonstrate, with many specific examples, that social science and modem institutions have helped shape each other in mutual interplay. Modem systems are in some part con­ stituted through the reflexive incorporation of developing social science knowledge; on the other hand, the social sciences organise themselves in terms of a continuing reflection upon the evolution of those systems. Such a perspective, as Wagner and Wittrock in particular make clear, does not in any way either impugn the status of knowledge claims made within social science or destroy the independent reality of social institutions. The book questions the notion that the institutionalising of the social sciences can be understood as a process of their increasing autonomy from extemal social connections. 'Autonomy' forms a mode of legitima­ tion and a basis of power rather than a distinctive phenomenon as such.

• Institution
• Nation
• Political Science
• Politics
• political economy

• Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Germany

  Peter Wagner

• Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala

  Björn Wittrock

• University of Stockholm, Stockholm

  Björn Wittrock

• University of Manchester, Manchester

  Richard Whitley

Policies and ethics