The Social Scientific Gaze

The Social Question and the Rise of Academic Social Science in Sweden

Per Wisselgren (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

286 Seiten

2015
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-4724-4759-3 (ISBN)

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The social sciences have, ever since they were first established as academic disciplines, played a foundational role in most spheres of modern society - in policy-making, education, the media and public debate - and hence also, indirectly, for our self-understanding as social beings. The Social Scientific Gaze examines the discursive formation of academic social science in the historical context of the 'social question', that is, the protracted and wide-ranging discussions on the social problems of modernity that were being debated with increased intensity during the nineteenth century. Empirically, the study focuses on the Lorén Foundation, a combined private funding agency and early research institute, which was set up in 1885 to promote the rise of Swedish social science and to investigate the social question. Comprising an heuristic case, the close analysis of the Foundation makes it possible not only to reconstruct its basic ideas and practices, but also to situate its activities in broader historical and sociological context. The Social Scientific Gaze argues that the rise of Swedish social science may be seen not only as an 'answer' to the social 'question', but also as one attempt alongside others - including contemporary social literature, the philantropic reform movement, and the introduction of modern social policy - to conceptualize, mobilize and regulate the social sphere. In this process it is furthermore shown how an ambigious yet distinct 'social scientific gaze' was discursively articulated.

Per Wisselgren is Associate Professor of Sociology, with a PhD in History of Science and Ideas, at Umeå University in Sweden. Previous books include Social Science in Context: Historical, Sociological and Global Perspectives (co-edited, 2013), Couples in Science and Politics: Intellectual Marriages in Modernity (co-edited in Swedish, 2011), and History of Participatory Media: Politics and Publics, 1750-2000 (co-edited, 2011).

Introduction: The testament

1. The social question: Arenas, actors, articulations

2. The international context: research and reform in Germany and Britain

3. Viktor Lorén: An unremarked intellectual

4. The board: A network and its thought style

5. Library and lectures: A social geography of knowledge

6. Surveying the social: With letters and numbers

7. The rise of academic social science: Wicksell, Steffen, Cassel

8. The social scientific gaze: Between the social question and the rise of academic social science

9. Appendix: The Lorén Foundation's series of publications, 1890-1899

Erscheinungsdatum	16.02.2016
Reihe/Serie	Public Intellectuals and the Sociology of Knowledge
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	690 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4724-4759-X / 147244759X
ISBN-13	978-1-4724-4759-3 / 9781472447593
Zustand	Neuware