The Benefit of Broad Horizons: Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global Social Science

by Wolf Lepenies (Contribution by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004192843
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/25/2010
Series:	International Comparative Social Studies , #24
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Preface

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 linguistic varieties”. In one of these essays the Chinese sanskritist Wang Bangwei delineates Buddhist connections between China and Ancient Cambodia, while the historian of Chinese language and thought, Christoph Harbsmeier, brings us close to the conceptual interests of a Chinese seventeenth century scholar. In two preceding essays cultural dynamics is investigated by the social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz, and the folklorist Barbro Klein who in very different ways examine long range and short term cultural events present a methodologically exciting study of macro-level dynamics of social behavior.

In the fifth and final part, “Universities and the Dilemmas of Higher Education”, this anthology highlights a field to which Björn Wittrock has made crucial contributions, namely the social-scientific analysis of higher education, also here in broad historical and global perspectives. In this section, we find articles by the eminent University of California scholars, Sheldon Rothblatt and Neil Smelser, who focus on higher education in the United States. Also included is a study by Peter Weingart who examines recent attempts to institutionalize performance measures in universities and research institutions and highlights the detrimental consequences that these attempts may have. Finally, in this section Helga Nowotny, President of the European Research Council, addresses the compression of research time in scholarship today and touches on the world-wide importance of Institutes for Advanced Study. In a coda entitled “Better to Be Than Not to Be?”, Gustaf Arrhenius and Wlodek Rabinowicz address an old and challenging question which has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy.

Much more than we have hinted at so far could be said about Björn Wittrock’s scholarly interests and career achievements. Let us briefly mention a few more aspects. As holder of the prestigious Lars Hierta Professorship of Government at Stockholm University, he taught and encouraged young political scientists with broad historical and comparative interests. At the same time he increasingly involved himself in scholarly issues and developments in Europe and the United States. Not least important was his interest in the Institutes of Advanced Study that by this time could be found in Princeton, Stanford, Wassenaar, Berlin, and a few other places. In 1985, he became a co-founder, with the historian Rolf Torstendahl and the late economic historian Bo Gustafsson, of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences.

Since 1985, Björn Wittrock has tirelessly contributed to the scholarly quality and renown that SCAS now enjoys all over the world, not least in East Asia. All along, he has held prestigious visiting positions at different universities and institutes. In 1999 he received the Torgny Segerstedt Medal and in 2003 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Tartu (Estonia). He has also been appointed to many editorial boards, research councils, academic advisory boards and panels in many countries, most recently at the European Research Council. Particularly important is Björn Wittrock’s work as member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin and in similar capacities at other German institutions. Indeed, Björn Wittrock has deep knowledge of German thought and has long played a central role in helping to increase the awareness in Sweden of scholarly advances in Germany. It is no accident that several contributors to this volume are from German-speaking countries. In 2008, Björn Wittrock could add to his other honors the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz, 1. Kl), which he was awarded by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

A few more of Björn Wittrock’s numerous concerns and commitments should be mentioned. These include deep interests in philosophy (early in his career he taught the subject), psychology, mathematics, literature, music and the arts. He is a master at composing scholarly programs and events in which he not only brings together scholars from different disciplines and faculties but also makes sure that they focus their conversation on essential or foundational questions. His own comments and summaries are often remarkably apposite and well formulated. These occasions tend to be of particular benefit to the many young Swedish scholars Björn Wittrock has brought into the world of Institutes for Advanced Study. One of his many successful ideas is the Pro Futura Scientia Program designed for especially promising young scholars, a program which, through the years, has been generously funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. As fellows at SCAS these young scholars – along with other fellows, colleagues and friends -- have the privilege to share with Björn Wittrock the joy of witty scholarly conversation, many laughs, and excellent commensality.

At the same time as it pays homage to an inspiring scholar and intellectual leader, this book constitutes a unique collection of contributions by authors who have long played central roles in the development of the social and human sciences as well as by authors who are now emerging as scholarly leaders. Readers will find that the contributions speak to one another and that the papers are engaged in conversation on many important issues. It is our hope that The Benefit of Broad Horizons will become important reading for all who are concerned with the present challenges and future potential in the shaping of a truly global social science. And we do hope that this book will please our admired colleague and friend Björn Wittrock himself.