Synopses & Reviews
From World War II to the early 1970s, American social science research expanded in dramatic and unprecedented fashion. This volume offers fascinating perspectives on the rise of U.S. practitioners as global leaders in the field, exploring how, why, and with what consequences this rapid and yet contested expansion depended on the entanglement of the social sciences with Cold War politics. Utilizing the controversial but useful concept of 'Cold War social science,' the histories gathered here reveal how scholars from established disciplines and new interdisciplinary fields of study made important contributions to long-standing debates about knowledge production, liberal democracy, and human nature.
Review
"Overall I quite enjoyed this collection. Its chapters were of consistently high quality and all detailed important episodes and movements in the Cold War period." - The Bubble Chamber
"Cold War Social Science assembles some of the most compelling voices in the history of social science today." - The British Journal for the History of Science
"The editors have put the fragmentary approach of the 'collected essays' format to good use, while ensuring systematic cross-referencing and thematic interlinking between the assembled case studies. The arguments put forward in each chapter are not defnitive statements on their respective topics, but they are all invariably very interesting and informative, and the angles of approach chosen by the contributors are both insightful and thought-provoking." - Science as Culture
"Rich and varied...these studies together reveal the broad diversity of social science organization and research under Cold War conditions and exigencies: scholars as servants of power; theorists of imperiled democracy and individuality; and innovators in the management of research data, machines, organizations, and polities." - The Journal of American History
"The book sheds light on a number of contexts that are relevant to study the work, commitments, and ambitions of the post-war American social scientists. It is fair to say that as much as the Second World War marked the consecration of a natural scientific and engineering culture, the Cold War era marked the affirmation of a social scientific culture. That this book helps us see more clearly its defining characteristics is already a significant achievement." - Journal of the History of Economic Thought
"Cold War Social Science is a formidable collection marked by impeccable scholarship, compelling argument, limpid prose, original ideas, and continuing relevance." - Regional Studies
"In connecting issues of knowledge and power to questions of human nature, the essays in this volume often unknowingly suggest possibilities for moving beyond the facile distinctions between repressive and emancipatory social science that have shaped the critique and defense of social science since the era of the cold war." - U.S. Intellectual History
"In this ambitious volume, leading historians assess the shared moves - intellectual, institutional, political - that characterized the social sciences in Cold War America. Engaging examples range from area studies to linguistics, psychology to economics, each grappling with hard questions about military patronage and the tensions between pure and applied research. Authors reveal important continuities to earlier periods even as they hone in on what was special about the bounded historical moment of the Cold War. A must-read for anyone interested in relations between knowledge and power and the changing place of the academy in American life." - David Kaiser, Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
"This exciting collection proves that the history of Cold War social science has come of age. It is at once a collection of fascinating case studies and a volume that probes the big questions about science and politics. To what extent did Cold War imperatives shape knowledge about social relations, cultural difference, individuality, human nature, motivation, and behavior? How was the stunning mid-century expansion of American social science also rooted in institutional developments that predated and outlasted the Cold War? Above all, what were - and are - the consequences for democracy?" - Ellen Herman, professor, Department of History, University of Oregon
Synopsis
From World War II to the early 1970s, social science research expanded in dramatic and unprecedented fashion in the United States. This volume examines how, why, and with what consequences this rapid and yet contested expansion depended on the entanglement of the social sciences with the Cold War.
About the Author
Mark Solovey is Assistant Professor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, Canada, and for 2011-2012 a Charles Warren Fellow at Harvard University, USA. His research focuses on the political, institutional, and intellectual history of the social sciences in the United States since WWII. He has several articles in scholarly journals, including Annals of Science, History of Political Economy, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Radical History Review, and Social Studies of Science. He is the author of Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America (2013).
Hamilton Cravens is Professor Emeritus of History at Iowa State University, USA, and writes about science in American culture and the tensions between expertise and democracy. He has authored or edited a dozen books, including The Triumph of Evolution (1978, 1988), Before Head Start (1993, 2003), The Social Sciences Go To Washington (2005), Race and Science: Scientific Challenges to Racism in America (2010), as well as about sixty articles and chapters in books. His most recent book is Imagining The Good Society: The Social Sciences in the American Past and Present (2012).
Table of Contents
Foreword: Positioning Social Science in Cold War America; T.M.Porter
1. Cold War Social Science: Spectre, Reality, or Useful Concept?; M.Solovey
PART I: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION
2. The Rise and Fall of Wartime Social Science: Harvard's Refugee Interview Project, 1950-54; D.C.Engerman
3. Futures Studies: A New Social Science Rooted in Cold War Strategic Thinking; K.Tolon
4. 'It was All Connected': Computers and Linguistics in Early Cold War America; J.Martin-Nielsen
5. Epistemic Design: Theory and Data in Harvard's Department of Social Relations; J.Isaac
PART II: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
6. Producing Reason; H.Heyck
7. Column Right, March! Nationalism, Scientific Positivism, and the Conservative Turn of the American Social Sciences in the Cold War Era; H.Cravens
8. From Expert Democracy to Beltway Banditry: How the Anti-War Movement Expanded the Military-Academic-Industrial Complex; J.Rohde
9. Neo-Evolutionist Anthropology, the Cold War, and the Beginnings of the World Turn in U.S. Scholarship; H.Brick
PART III: HUMAN NATURE
10. Maintaining Humans; E.Jones-Imhotep
11. Psychology, Psychologists, and the Creativity Movement: The Lives of Method Inside and Outside the Cold War; M.Bycroft
12. An Anthropologist on TV: Ashley Montagu and the Biological Basis of Human Nature, 1945-1960; N.Weidman
13. Cold War Emotions: The War over Human Nature; M.Vicedo