scholarly journals MCCARTHYISM AND THE MATHEMATIZATION OF ECONOMICS

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Roy Weintraub
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Operations Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
World War ◽  
Protective Coloration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mccarthy Period

Historians of the social sciences and historians of economics have come to agree that, in the United States, the 1940s transformation of economics from political economy to economic science was associated with economists’ engagements with other disciplines—e.g., mathematics, statistics, operations research, physics, engineering, cybernetics—during and immediately after World War II. More controversially, some historians have also argued that the transformation was accelerated by economists’ desires to be safe, to seek the protective coloration of mathematics and statistics, during the McCarthy period. This paper argues that that particular claim 1) is generally accepted, but 2) is unsupported by good evidence, and 3) what evidence there is suggests that the claim is false.

Do We Need a Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World?

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Rynkiewich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract There was a time when mission studies benefitted from a symbiotic relationship with the social sciences. However, it appears that relationship has stagnated and now is waning. The argument is made here, in the case of cultural anthropology both in Europe and the United States, that a once mutually beneficial though sometimes strained relationship has suffered a parting of the ways in recent decades. First, the article reviews the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists before World War II when it was possible to be a ‘missionary anthropologist’ with a foot in both disciplines. In that period, the conversation went two ways with missionary anthropologists making important contributions to anthropology. Then, the article reviews some aspects of the development of the two disciplines after World War II when increasing professionalism in both disciplines and a postmodern turn in anthropology took the disciplines in different directions. Finally, the article asks whether or not the conversation, and thus the cross-fertilization, can be restarted, especially since the youngest generation of anthropologists has recognized the reality of local Christianities in their fields of study.

Max Weber in America

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Scaff
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The United States ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
Source Of Information

Max Weber, widely considered a founder of sociology and the modern social sciences, visited the United States in 1904 with his wife Marianne. The trip was a turning point in Weber's life and it played a pivotal role in shaping his ideas, yet until now virtually the only source of information about the trip was Marianne Weber's faithful, but not always reliable, 1926 biography of her husband. The book carefully reconstructs this important episode in Weber's career, and shows how the subsequent critical reception of Weber's work was as American a story as the trip itself. The book provides new details about Weber's visit to the United States—what he did, what he saw, whom he met and why, and how these experiences profoundly influenced Weber's thought on immigration, capitalism, science and culture, Romanticism, race, diversity, Protestantism, and modernity. It traces Weber's impact on the development of the social sciences in the United States following his death in 1920, examining how Weber's ideas were interpreted, translated, and disseminated by American scholars such as Talcott Parsons and Frank Knight, and how the Weberian canon, codified in America, was reintroduced into Europe after World War II.

Stabilizing American Society: Kenneth Boulding and the Integration of the Social Sciences, 1943–1980

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Main Determinant ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.

Introduction

Mahjong ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Changing Roles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The Introduction provides an orientation to the book and its key questions: What did it mean to become “modern” in the early twentieth century? How did American ethnicities take shape in the years leading up to and after World War II? How did middle-class women experience and shape their changing roles in society, before the social revolutions of the late twentieth century? How are these things related? The Introduction also covers an overview of mahjong’s trajectory in the United States. It examines background related to the history of leisure, gender, and consumerism in addition to introducing key sources and methodologies. The introduction sets up the book to tell the story of mahjong’s role in the creation of identifiably ethnic communities, women’s access to respectable leisure, and how Americans used ideas of China to understand themselves.

Witte, Ernest Frederic

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Longres
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social

Ernest Frederic Witte (1904–1986) was an educator and administrator. His work in the social welfare field, particularly during World War II, was influential both in the United States and internationally. He was among the first to deal with survivors of the Nazi death camps.

Comments

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 55-56
Author(s):  
Karl R. Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
Made In

In recent years there has been a deplorable lack of interest in Austria in the historical role of the Jews in Central Europe. Given the general trends towards internationalization of the social sciences and the interdisciplinary method of analysis, this neglect is most distressing. Presumably this lack of scholarly interest is related to the fact that since World War II the Central European Jews no longer constitute a distinct ethnic and religious group. Apart from studies made in university institutes for Jewish studies and in occasional publications which have mainly treated various aspects of “the holocaust,” most studies have approached Jewish history only collaterally by focusing on anti-Semitism.

From Politik als Beruf to Politics as a Vocation

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Borchert
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World War ◽  
Classical Text ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The Social

Max Weber's 1919 lecture Politik als Beruf is still considered a classical text in the social sciences. The reception of the text in the Anglo-Saxon world has been profoundly shaped by the translation provided by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, first appearing in 1946. Their Politics as a Vocation is more than a vivid transposition of Weber's rather peculiar German rhetoric—it is rendered in a way that suggests a certain interpretation and makes others highly improbable. The present article traces the reception of Weber's text back to certain decisions made by the translators after World War II. It argues that the translation emphasized philosophical and ethical parts of the text at the expense of others that were more geared toward a political sociology of modern politics. Moreover, the adoption of Weber's approach in empirical research was hindered if not foreclosed by a distorted presentation of his key typologies and some central concepts.

Local Ecosystems and Social Conditions of Innovative Enterprise

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Antonio Andreoni ◽  
William Lazonick
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Innovative Enterprise

This chapter integrates the theory and history of localized economic development by summarizing the experiences of three iconic industrial districts: a) the Lancashire cotton textile district which in the last half of the nineteenth century enabled Britain to become the ‘workshop of the world’; b) the globally competitive towns and cities specializing in a variety of light industries, especially in the Emilia Romagna regional district, that, as the ‘Third Italy’, brought economic modernity to that nation in the decades after World War II; and 3) the area in California south of San Francisco, centred on Stanford University, that, as ‘Silicon Valley’, made the United States the world leader in the microelectronics and Internet revolutions of the last decades of the twentieth century. Using the ‘social conditions of innovative enterprise’ as a common conceptual approach, the chapter highlights key lessons from history of the nexus between firms and their local ecosystems.

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