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The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass

Studies in the Production of Knowledge

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Book

Pages: 416

Published: March 2023

Editors: Didier Fassin, George Steinmetz

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

Praise

“The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass is exactly what its title promises and more: a close, critical, and reflective scrutiny of the past and present of the social sciences. Refreshingly broad in its historical and cross-cultural scope, this collection offers both a panoramic survey and a thoughtful stock-taking of the many traditions of trying to understand what societies are and how they work.” - Lorraine Daston, author of Rules: A Short History of What We Live By

“The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass is outstanding. It provides a wealth of insights into social science disciplines across time and regions. Its focus is sharp, its awareness of contexts acute. It marks a relocation of the discourse on globalization. Its section on liminality and borders is an inquiry into antinomies, transgressions, and exceptions in scholarly research. It is an incisive and inviting analysis that stands out as deeply original.” - Björn Wittrock, Permanent Fellow, Founding Director, and Former Principal, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study

"In an era in which the social sciences are routinely under attack for being perceived as unproductive and overly critical and deterministic, this “social science of the social sciences” is an important and timely contribution. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - J. R. Mitrano, Choice

"The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass assembles 15 insightful chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars that cover a lot of ground." - Tobias Werron, American Journal of Sociology

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Didier Fassin is Professor at the Collège de France in Paris and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Director of study at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he is the author of numerous books, including Life: A Critical User’s Manual.

George Steinmetz is Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of various books, including The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire.

Table Of Contents

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Introduction: Toward a Social Science of the Social Sciences / Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz  1
Part One. Disciplines in the Making
1. Concept-Quake: From the History of Science to the Historical Sociology of Social Science / George Steinmetz  21
2. Spaces of Real Possibilities: Counterfactuals and the Impact of Donors on the Social Sciences / Álvaro Maorcillo Laiz  81
3. The Social Life of Concepts: or, How to Study the Idea of Creativity? / Bregje F. Van Eekelen  107
4. Epistemological Crises in Legal Theory: The (Ir)Rationality of Balancing / Carel Smith  129
5. The Reinvention of Sociology: Into the Trenches of Fieldwork at the Time of the Algerian Liberation War / Amín Pérez  147
Part Two. From the National to the Global
6. How Sociology Shaped Postwar Poland and How Stalinization Shaped Sociology / Agata Zysiak  175
7. The Public Anthropology of Violence in India / Chitralekha  195
8. Challenging Objectivity in Japan’s Long 1968 / Miriam Kingsberg Kadia  218
9. How Political Commitment Delineates Social Scientific Knowledge / Kristoffer Kropp  240
10. Making Sense of Globalizing Social Science / Johan Heilbron  262
Part Three. Exploring Borders and Boundaries
11. Critical Humanities and the Unsettling of the Sociological Field: Is There a French Exception? / Jean-Louis Fabiani  287
12. Recovering Subalternity in the Humanities and Social Sciences / Peter D. Thomas  310
13. Thinking about Cognitive Scientists Thinking about Religion / John Lardas Modern  328
14. Cooperative Primates and Competitive Primatologists: Prosociality and Polemics in a Nonhuman Social Science / Nicolas Langlitz  351
15. The Rise and Rise of Posthumanism: Will It Spell the End of the Human Sciences? / Didier Fassin  368
Contributors  393
Index 397

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1945-9 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-1682-3 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2409-5 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478024095