Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880-1980 - Hardcover

Brückweh, Kerstin; Wetzell, Richard F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0230279074 ISBN 13: 9780230279070

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Synopsis

Since the late nineteenth century the human and the social sciences have had a profound impact on how Western societies have defined and sought to solve social problems. Explaining crime by reference to abnormalities of the brain, using market research techniques to modify political strategies, or employing therapeutic institutions to promote democratic citizenship - these are just three examples of how the human and social sciences have been applied since 1880. Experts from many disciplines have occupied key positions in state and society, guided political decisions, and helped to establish new social institutions and practices. Their expertise has had to compete with other forms of knowledge and has been used by politicians and social actors for their own ends. Providing a trans-disciplinary and comparative perspective, the essays in this volume address the tension between the claims to objectivity and the politicization of expert knowledge, examine the relationship between knowledge and power, and discuss long-term historical developments, transcending the political caesuras of twentieth-century.

About this title

About the Author:

PETER BECKER Professor of History at the University of Vienna, Austria CHRIS DOLS Cultural Historian, who works and junior-researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands THOMAS ETZEMÜLLER Adjunct Professor in Modern History at the University of Oldenburg, Germany SARAH E. IGO Associate Professor of History, Political Science, and Sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, US TILL KÖSSLER Professor for the History of Education, Childhood and Youth at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany ANJA KRUKE Head of Department of the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn, Germany MARTIN LENGWILER Professor of Modern History at the University of Basel, Switzerland ELIZABETH LUNBECK Nelson Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History, and Professor of Psychiatry, at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, US JULIA MOSES Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield, UK HARRY OOSTERHUIS Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University and he is affiliated with the Huizinga Research School for Cultural History, Amsterdam LUTZ RAPHAEL Professor for Contemporary History at the University of Trier, Germany STEFAN SCHWARZKOPF Associate Professor in Business History at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark MATHEW THOMSON Reader in the Department of History at the University of Warwick, UK EMIL WALTER-BUSCH Senior Lecturer Emeritus of Applied Social Research and Social Psychology at the Universities of St.Gall and Zurich, Switzerland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0230279074
• ISBN 13: 9780230279070
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 330
• Editor: Schumann D., Ziemann B.