History of Social Psychology at Mid-20th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Pettigrew
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social

The discipline of psychology has an extremely broad range—from the life sciences to the social sciences, from neuroscience to social psychology. These distinctly different components have varying histories of their own. Social psychology is psychology’s social science wing. The major social sciences—anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science—all had their origins in the 19th century or even earlier. But social psychology is much younger; it developed both in Europe and North America in the 20th century. The field’s enormous growth over the past century began modestly with a few scant locations, several textbooks, and a single journal in the 1920s. Today’s social psychologists would barely recognize their discipline in the years prior to World War II. But trends forming in the 1920s and 1930s would become important years later. With steady growth, especially starting in the 1960s, the discipline gained thousands of new doctorates and multiple journals scattered throughout the world. Social psychology has become a recognized, influential, and often-cited social science. It is the basis, for example, of behavioral economics as well as such key theories as authoritarianism in political science. Central to this extraordinary expansion were the principal events of mid-20th century. World War II, the growth of universities and the social sciences in general, rising prosperity, statistical advances, and other global changes set the stage for the discipline’s rapid development. Together with this growth, social psychology has expanded its topics in both the affective and cognitive domains. Indeed, new theories are so numerous that theoretical integration has become a prime need for the discipline.

World War II

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Office Of Strategic Services ◽  
Wartime Experience

This chapter discusses the role of social science in the war effort. As the Second World War demonstrated, sophisticated social science methods are certainly sometimes applicable to policy. In particular, economists demonstrated that they could employ these tools yet remain directly relevant in some realms. However, the failure of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to employ them successfully on noneconomic issues constitutes a cautionary tale for those who think that discipline ought to serve as a model for the rest of the social sciences. Strikingly, even social scientists themselves who served in government came to realize that disciplinary dynamics worked against policy relevance. Nevertheless, the social sciences' wartime experience had a positive impact on them. This wartime experience had effects across the social sciences, but it was particularly evident in the areas relevant to national security.

Integrating the Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Academic Departments ◽  
World War ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Applied Social Science ◽  
Oriented Research

Distinctions among social science disciplines are historically forged and to some extent intellectually arbitrary. Connecting them is therefore crucial to fully addressing many important intellectual and practical concerns. This chapter analyzes three of the most important movements to shape interdisciplinary social science since World War II: area studies, quantitative methods, and problem-oriented research. All three were influenced by funding, by social change, and by desires to make knowledge practically useful. All three influenced basic as well as applied social science. And all three remained approaches that crosscut the disciplinary structure of social science rather than becoming the bases for new disciplines or academic departments. They remain important in themselves and as exemplars of interdisciplinary intellectual work and influence.

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.

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.

Political Science as a Discipline: A Statement by the Committee on Standards of Instruction of the American Political Science Association

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond ◽  
Eric C. Bellquist ◽  
Joseph M. Ray ◽  
John P. Roche ◽  
Irvin Stewart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Conceptual Schemes ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Factual Data ◽  
Science Association

Political science is a basic discipline in the social sciences. Although it must necessarily maintain close scholarly association with the disciplines of history, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, and social psychology, political science cannot be considered a part of any of these other social sciences. Political science has its own area of human experience to analyze, its own body of descriptive and factual data to gather, its own conceptual schemes to formulate and test for truth.

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.

The Emergence of Political Science in Communist Countries

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 572-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Powell ◽  
Paul Shoup
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
Free Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Independent Inquiry

The scientific study of politics requires an environment which accepts free inquiry and discussion. Scholars must be permitted to ask questions of their own choosing, gather data without hindrance, and communicate freely with one another about their findings. To be sure, freedom to investigate sensitive policy matters is limited by all governments. Moreover, political scientists themselves inevitably introduce some measure of their own values or ideological predispositions into their works. But it is obvious that without the guarantee of certain minimum freedoms, political science as we know it in the West could never exist.Communist regimes traditionally have made independent inquiry or objective discussion of political phenomena impossible. In the Stalinist period, scholarly analyses of politics—or, for that matter, of aesthetic, literary, moral or economic questions—amounted to little more than doctrinal exegesis or the elaboration of practical measures to implement the Party's demands. An autonomous social science in Stalin's Russia or Eastern Europe was simply unthinkable.Since the dictator's death, however, Communist governments have modified their hostility toward the social sciences in general, and toward political science in particular. A decade of de-Stalinization has been accompanied by steps to encourage the scientific study of politics. In several East European countries, political science now enjoys recognition as a discipline in its own right.This does not mean that political science in Communist countries has freed itself of political controls, or that what is presented as political science is always of scholarly merit.

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.

Les débuts de la science politique dans les milieux chrétiens

Res Publica ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-520
Author(s):  
Rudolf Rezsohazy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Nineteen Eighties ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Learned Societies

The social problem incites the Belgian catholics to study scientifically the human collectivity. As early as the nineteen-eighties learned societies are ouded, seminars, congresses, lectures are organized, a review is launched. At the Catholic University of Louvain the School of Political and Social Sciences is inaugurated in 1892. The sociological approach of the problems becomes wide-spread.All this movement is prepared by the work of a pioneer : Edouard Ducpétiaux (1804-1868) . He opens the way by his numerous publications and realizations in as various fields as the social inquiries, statistics, sociography, social economics, political science, criminology... The article analyses his methodology and shows place of E. Ducpétiaux among the main intellectual currents of the past century.

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