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Conference : National traditions in the social sciences

Call for papers

National Traditions in the Social Sciences

While it is commonly recognized that the social sciences are still mainly organized along national lines and that this national closure may impair their progress, the issue of national traditions in the social sciences has rarely been thoroughly analyzed. Usually discussed in passing, in essays or comments, the question has yet to be addressed directly. On the basis of existing scholarship on the emergence of the social sciences, it is nonetheless - obvious that the social sciences have been strongly embedded in specific national contexts since their beginnings. A significant part of the social sciences initially appeared as “sciences of government,” that is, as political or administrative knowledge placed at the service of emerging national states. According to the differences in state structures, the early social sciences have taken various forms: “political arithmetic” in England, “statistics” and Polizei- or Kameralwissenschaften in the German countries, “moral and political sciences” in France. The same relation to national states determined the creation and the functioning of academies and learned institutions. In France, the Académie des sciences morales et politiques (1832-) has championed a semi-official social science strongly related to the political regime after the Restoration?. The same observation holds for similar institutions in other countries, whether the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1857) in Great Britain, the American Social Science Association (1867), or the Verein für Sozialpolitik (1873) of the unified German empire. The constitution of the social sciences as academic disciplines, at the turn of the 19th century, took place in a context characterized by rising national rivalries and nationalist movements. In the countries undergoing these transformations (Germany, England, France, United States, Italy) national specificities have often been summoned in order to justify some conceptions of the social sciences and to discredit others. Emile Durkheim, for instance, had conceived sociology as a contribution to the moral and civic foundations of the Third Republic. At the same time, as Dorothy Ross has shown, the social sciences in North America were founded upon the premises of “American exceptionalism” – a perfect example of a national ideology. Many other examples could be mentioned, such as the “Austrian school of economics” or Dutch “sociography.”

If this brief reminder may suffice to emphasize the weight of national contexts in the evolution of the social sciences, the purpose of this international workshop is to discuss current research, whether in progress or almost completed, on the constitutive role of national contexts in the development of the social sciences. Among the relevant questions which might be addressed by the participants, the following are of particular interest:

- the emergence of sociology in different countries (actors and main schools, rivalries between the disciplines, relation to the state, successful strategies, profile of the “founding fathers”, etc.)

- canonical themes or authors in different national traditions

- structure of the field of the social sciences in various national contexts (hierarchy of the disciplines, relative position of sociology and anthropology, etc.)

- “local” schools which have become “national traditions” (the Durkheimian school in France, the Stockholm school in economics, the Prague school in linguistics)

- cognitive and classificatory categories according to which social science research is organized (such as the notions of “policy sciences” or “behavioral sciences” in the US, opposition between the German “Kultur” and the French “civilisation,” concept of “Staatswissenschaften,” etc.)

- impact of financial opportunities on scientific production (role of the philanthropic foundations in the US, “tenders” in France, etc.)

- the national reception of classic authors in the social sciences (Weber, Durkheim, etc.) or specific intellectual movements (rational actor theory, postmodernism, social capital, etc.)

- professional trajectories and recruitment patterns which contribute to produce and reproduce national specificities in social science research

- scholarly practices that may explain the resilience of some national intellectual styles (the dissertation in France, the essay in England) - relationship between academic social science and social demand (management of social issues, economic planning, etc.)

- structure and dynamics of the current field of sociology (journals, international exchanges, networks, etc.)

- national visibility of the discipline of sociology (publishing companies, visibility of the social sciences in the main media, etc.)

We stress that this list is by no means exhaustive. The conference will be convened in the framework of an international research program aiming toward the constitution of a European Research Space in the Social Sciences (ESSE). Financed by the European Community, the ESSE is a network made up of more than a hundred researchers coming from different disciplines and traditions. Those taking part in this emerging international platform are working on the theoretical and practical conditions for an interdisciplinary dialogue of unrivalled breadth and scope.

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Participants are requested to send an abstract of their paper (approximately 300 words) to the coordinators before December 15, 2004.

Languages : English and French

Coordinators : Johan Heilbron and Bowen Paulle

Contacts : johan.heilbron 'at' wxs.nl or B.Paulle 'at' uva.nl

Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR) Kloveniersburgwal 48 1012 CX Amsterdam Pays-Bas

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