The Benefit of Broad Horizons

Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global Social Science
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-90-04-19284-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 24, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 930 g

Reihe: International Comparative Social Studies

More than perhaps anybody else in the world, the Swedish political scientist and sociologist Björn Wittrock has contributed - both on the intellectual and institutional level - to making a truly global social science possible. This volume contains contributions from twenty-six world-renowned scholars who address different aspects of his ambitious research program as well as current trends in the institutionalization of the social and human sciences. The essays in this volume focus on such topics as: the role of the state; the reintegration of history and the social sciences; the importance of civilizational studies and the comparison of civilizations; the interaction of cultural and social dynamics; the analysis of trends in higher education and the institutionalization of social-scientific research.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lepenies, Wolf

Joas, Hans

Klein, Barbro

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Geisteswissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction, Hans Joas and Barbro Klein
What are the Benefits of Broad Horizons?, Peter Gärdenfors

PART ONE: THE STATE AND THE POLITICAL

The Reconstitution of the Realm of the Political as the Problematique of Modern Regimes, S.N. Eisenstadt
The Strange Hybrid of the Early American State, Max Edling
Policy Metrics under Scrutiny: The Legacy of New Public Management, Daniel Tarschys

PART TWO: HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

History and the Social Sciences Today, Jürgen Kocka
The Present Position and Prospects of Social and Political Theory, Dietrich Rueschemeyer
The Contingency of Secularization: Reflections on the Problem of Secularization in the Work of Reinhart Koselleck, Hans Joas
The Missing Sentence: The Visual Arts and the Social Sciences in Mid-Nineteenth Century Paris, Wolf Lepenies
Political Economy in A Historical Context: The Case of Malthus and Sweden, Lars Magnusson
Professionalism as Ideology, Rolf Torstendahl

PART THREE: CIVILIZATIONAL STUDIES AND COMPARISONS OF CIVILIZATIONS

Interpreting History and Understanding Civilizations, Johann P. Arnason
Comparison without Hegemony, Sheldon Pollock
Developmental Patterns and Processes in Islamicate Civilization and the Impact of Modernization, Said Arjomand
Towards a World Sociology of Modernity, Peter Wagner

PART FOUR: CULTURAL AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS

“The First Draft of History”: Notes on Events and Cultural Turbulence, Ulf Hannerz
Cultural loss and Cultural Rescue: Lilli Zickerman, Ottilia Adelborg, and the Promises of the Swedish Homecraft Movement, Barbro Klein
Buddhist connections between China and Ancient Cambodia: Srama a Mandra’s visit to Jiankang, Wang Bangwei
Autochtonous Chinese Conceptual History in a Jocular Narrative Key: The Emotional Engagement Qing, Christoph Harbsmeier
On the Contagiousness of Non-Contagious Behavior: The Case of Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion, Peter Hedström and Rebeca Ibarra

PART FIVE: UNIVERSITIES AND THE DILEMMAS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Views from the Acropolis and the Agora: Clark Kerr’s Industrial Society, Sheldon Rothblatt
The Growing Confusion Between ”Private” and ”Public” in American Higher Education, Neil Smelser
The Unintended Consequences of Quantitative Measures in the Management of Science, Peter Weingart
The Compression of Research Time and the Temporalization of the Future, Helga Nowotny

CODA

Better to Be Than Not to Be?, Gustaf Arrhenius and Wlodek Rabinowitz

Tabula Gratulatoria
Index

Leseproben

THE BENEFIT OF BROAD HORIZONS: INTELLECTUAL AND INSTITUTIONAL PRECONDITIONS FOR A GLOBAL SOCIAL SCIENCE: FESTSCHRIFT FOR BJÖRN WITTROCK ON THE OCCASION OF HIS 65TH BIRTHDAY

INTRODUCTION

Hans Joas and Barbro Klein

More than perhaps anybody else in the world, the Swedish political scientist and sociologist Björn Wittrock has contributed, both on intellectual and institutional levels, to making a truly global social science possible. As Principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, as President of the International Institute of Sociology (IIS), and in numerous other capacities he has over the years brought together scholars from the humanities and the social sciences to develop a social science that is not restricted to the present but is deeply historical and at the same time open to the comparative study of civilizations and to the possibility of multiple modernities.

This book contains contributions from twenty-six eminent scholars who address or touch upon different aspects of Björn Wittrock’s ambitious research program as well as current trends in the social and human sciences. The volume begins with an essay in which the cognitive scientist Peter Gärdenfors delineates the benefits of broad horizons. Such horizons, he notes, are a key to a heightened ability to reflect upon one’s own assumptions and to enter into critical thinking. They are a key to the capacity for reflexivity. No metaphor, therefore, is more apt than ”broad horizons” for characterizing not only Björn Wittrock’s numerous achievements, but also his theoretical, reflexive, and critical powers.

Part One of this book is entitled “The State and the Political” and is based on the premise that firm disciplinary roots are essential for the opening up of broad horizons. At the beginning of his intellectual development we find Björn Wittrock interested in fundamental questions of political theory and their relevance for contemporary politics. This section contains three contributions. One is by the leading historical sociologist, Shmuel Eisenstadt, with whom Björn Wittrock has collaborated on numerous occasions. A second is by the young historian Max Edling, one of Björn Wittrock’s former doctoral students, and the third by the prominent Swedish political scientist and former member of the Swedish Parliament, Daniel Tarschys.

Part Two of this book is called “History and the Social Sciences”. This relationship is central to Björn Wittrock who, both in his scholarship and in his work as educator, has consistently sought to strengthen, on a world-wide scale, the historical orientation of the social sciences. Two contributors, Jürgen Kocka and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, discuss broad and fundamental problems in this relationship while other authors select specific areas and exemplary cases. Hans Joas concentrates on religious history and secularization, Wolf Lepenies on art history, Lars Magnusson on economic history, and Rolf Torstendahl on the history of professionalism.

In Part Three, “Civilizational Studies and the Comparison of Civilizations” focus is placed on areas of scholarship to which Björn Wittrock has devoted intense energies during the last few years. These are particularly rewarding but also extremely demanding areas of a truly global science in which a profound understanding of long-term cultural traditions is seen as the necessary prerequisite for comparative studies. We here present contributions on fundamental questions by four renowned scholars: Said Arjomand, Johann P. Arnason, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Wagner.

Culture and its varied role within the social sciences as well as the relationship between cultural, historical and social dynamics are in focus in the Part Four of this anthology. Two essays here link up with Björn Wittrock’s commitment to applying broad perspectives to fields of study that, in his own words, “are crucial to an understanding of the world in its cultural, historical, and

Über Autor(innen)

Hans Joas, Ph.D. (1979) in Sociology, Free University of Berlin. Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt and Professor of Sociology and Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Barbro Klein, Ph.D. (1970) in Folklore Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Professor Emerita of Ethnology, Stockholm University. Director Emerita and now Permanent Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), Uppsala.