The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass : Studies in the Production of Knowledge

In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, and religious studies, the volume’s contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak CONTENTS 5 Introduction: Toward a Social Science of the Social Sciences 7 Part one. Disciplines in the making 27 1 Concept-Quake: From the History of Science to the Historical Sociology of Social Science 27 2 Spaces of Real Possibilities: Counterfactuals and the Impact of Donors on the Social Sciences 87 3 The Social Life of Concepts: or, How to Study the Idea of Creativity? 113 4 Epistemological Crises in Legal Theory: The (Ir)Rationality of Balancing 135 5 The Reinvention of Sociology: Into the Trenches of Fieldwork at the Time of the Algerian Liberation War 153 Part two. From the national to the global 181 6 How Sociology Shaped Postwar Poland and How Stalinization Shaped Sociology 181 7 The Public Anthropology of Violence in India 201 8 Challenging Objectivity in Japan’s Long 1968 224 9 How Political Commitment Delineates Social Scientific Knowledge 246 10 Making Sense of Globalizing Social Science 268 Part three. Exploring borders and boundaries 293 11 Critical Humanities and the Unsettling of the Sociological Field: Is There a French Exception? 293 12 Recovering Subalternity in the Humanities and Social Sciences 316 13 Thinking about Cognitive Scientists Thinking about Religion 334 14 Cooperative Primates and Competitive Primatologists: Prosociality and Polemics in a Nonhuman Social Science 357 15 The Rise and Rise of Posthumanism: Will It Spell the End of the Human Sciences? 374 Contributors 399 Index 403 "In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, and religious studies, the volume's contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze, and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak"-- Provided by publisher The contributors to The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences.