Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:07:06.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

34 - Social Science and Social Planning During the Twentieth Century

from PART IV - SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Peter Wagner
Edited by
Theodore M. Porter  and
Dorothy Ross
Theodore M. Porter
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Dorothy Ross
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Get access

Summary

The social sciences, in broadly their contemporary shapes, emerged after the American and French Revolutions. They offered a variety of ways of dealing with the new postrevolutionary political situation, which enabled, and indeed obliged, human beings to create their own rules for social action and political order. It has been a part of the intellectual tradition of the social sciences from their beginnings to contribute to making the social world predictable in the face of modern uncertainties, or, in the stronger version, to reshape it according to a master plan for improvement.

The general idea of providing and using social knowledge for government and policy purposes was certainly not new. The cameral and policy sciences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were designed for use by an absolute ruler; the very name “statistics” reflects the fact that it was considered science for governmental purposes. The postrevolutionary situation, however, was crucially different in two respects. On the one hand, a much more radical uncertainty had been created by the commitment, even if often a reluctant one, to self-determination of the people, which appeared to limit the possibility of predictive knowledge. On the other hand, this radical openness had been accompanied by a hope for the self-organization of society and its rational individuals, so that the search for laws governing society and human actions emerged beyond – and to some extent instead of – the desire for the increase of factual knowledge of the social world.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 591 - 607
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aaron, Henry J.The Great Society in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1978)Google Scholar
Alchon, GuyThe Invisible Hand of Planning: Capitalism, Social Science, and the State in the 1920s (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, Janik and Toulmin, Stephen, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973)Google Scholar
Bauman, ZygmuntLegislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).Google Scholar
Burgess, Ernest W. “Social Planning and the Mores,” in Human Side of Social Planning: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the American Sociological Society 1935, ed. Burgess, Ernest W. and Blumer, Herbert (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1935).Google Scholar
Davies, GarethFrom Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996)Google Scholar
de Balzac, HonoréLe curé de village (1841)Google Scholar
de Man, HendrikZur Psychologie des Sozialismus (Jena: E. Diedrichs, 1926).Google Scholar
deHaven-Smith, LancePhilosophical Critiques of Policy Analysis: Lindblom, Habermas and the Great Society (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988)Google Scholar
Desrosières, Alain “Histoire de formes: statistiques et sciences sociales avant 1940,” Revue française de sociologie, 26 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desrosières, AlainLa politique des grands nombres: Histoire de la raison statistique (Paris: La Découverte, 1993)Google Scholar
Donzelot, Jacques “The Mobilization of Society,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Dryzek, John S. and Torgerson, Douglas, eds., Democracy and the Policy Sciences (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993).Google Scholar
Firmin, OulèsEconomic Planning and Democracy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966).Google Scholar
Fischer, FrankTechnocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990)Google Scholar
Fraisse, Robert “Les sciences sociales: utilisation, dépendance, autonomie,” Sociologie du Travail, 23 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furner, Mary O. and Supple, Barry, eds., The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences (New York: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, GerdSwijtink, Zeno, Porter, Theodore, Daston, Lorraine, Beatty, John, and Krüger, Lorenz, The Empire of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruber, HelmutRed Vienna (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Harp, Gillis J.Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1920 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Heilbron, JohanMagnusson, Lars, and Wittrock, Björn, eds., The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 20) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997).Google Scholar
Kettler, David and , Volker Meja, Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Secret of These New Times (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995).Google Scholar
Kloppenberg, James T.Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Lacey, Michael J. and Furner, Mary O., eds., The State and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States (Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar
Loader, ColinThe Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim: Culture, Politics, and Planning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-FrançoisLe tombeau de l’intellectuel, et autres papiers (Paris: Galilée, 1984)Google Scholar
Manicas, Peter T.A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).Google Scholar
Mannheim, KarlDiagnosis of Our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist (London: Routledge, 1943)Google Scholar
Mannheim, KarlFreedom, Power and Democratic Planning (London: Routledge, 1951)Google Scholar
Mannheim, KarlMan and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 1940)Google Scholar
Nemeth, ElisabethOtto Neurath und der Wiener Kreis: Revolutionäre Wissenschaftlichkeit als Anspruch (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1981).Google Scholar
Österberg, DagMetasociology: An Inquiry into the Origins and Validity of Social Thought (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1988)Google Scholar
Pierre, MasséAutocritique des années soixante par un Commissaire au Plan (Bulletin de l’Institut d’histoire du temps présent, Supplément no. 1, série “Politique économique,” no. 1) (Paris: l’Institut d’histoire du temps présent, 1981).Google Scholar
Pierre, MasséLe Plan ou l’Anti-Hasard (Paris: Gallimard, 1965)Google Scholar
Pollak, MichaelVienne 1900: Une identité blessée (Paris: Gallimard, 1992)Google Scholar
Pollak, Michael “La planification des sciences sociales,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, no. 2/3 (1976).Google Scholar
Pollak, Michael “Paul F. Lazarsfeld – fondateur d’une multinationale scientifique,” Acts de la recherche en sciences sociales, no. 25 (1979).Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R.The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945).Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M.The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Ross, DorothyThe Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 3.Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Social Knowledge and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press; New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996).Google Scholar
Schorske, CarlFin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980)Google Scholar
Seidman, StevenLiberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. “Artisans, Factory Workers, and the Formation of the French Working Class, 1789–1848,” in Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Europe and the United States, ed. Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide R. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar
Shklar, Judith N. “Alexander Hamilton and the Language of Political Science,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Pagden, Anthony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Smith, Laurence D.Behaviorism and Logical Positivism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Torrance, John “The Emergence of Sociology in Austria, 1885–1935,” Archives européennes de sociologie, 17 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Gunsteren, HermanThe Quest of Control: A Critique of the Rational-Central-Rule Approach in Public Affairs (London: Wiley, 1976).Google Scholar
von Bergen, MatthiasVor dem Keynesianismus: Die Planwirtschaftsdebatte der frühen dreissiger Jahre im Kontext der “organisierten Moderne” (Berlin: WZB, 1995)Google Scholar
Wagner, PeterWittrock, Björn, and Wollmann, Hellmut, “Social Sciences and Modern States,” in Social Sciences and Modern States: National Experiences and Theoretical Crossroads, ed. Wagner, Peter, Weiss, Carol H., Wittrock, Björn, and Wollmann, Hellmut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Peter “Sociology and Contingency: Historicizing Epistemology,” Social Science Information, 34 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, PeterA Sociology of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1994), chap. 4.Google Scholar
Wagner, PeterSozialwissenschaften und Staat: Frankreich, Italien, Deutschland, 1870–1980 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1990), chap. 9.Google Scholar
Wright, Terence R.The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×