The Americanization of Social Science: Intellectuals and Public Responsibility in the Postwar United States / Edition 1

by David Haney

Overview

In this, a unique history of the America's postwar intellectual, David Paul Haney outlines the developoment of sociology as a discipline and why, given its focus of study, it failed to develop into a force in the intellectual currents of the United States.

Arguing that sociologists attempted to develop both a science and an instrument for the spread of humanistic concern about socity, Haney shows how both attempts failed to connect sociology with larger questions of policy and social progress. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592137138
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

David Paul Haney is an Adjunct Professor at Austin Community College and St. Edward's University.

Table of Contents

Preface 
Acknowledgements 
1. Introduction 
2. The Postwar Campaign for Scientific Legitimacy 
3. Quantitative Mathods and the Institutionalization of Exclusivity 
4. Social Theory and the Romance of American Alienation 
5. Theories of Mass Society and the Advent of a New Elitism 
6. Fads, Foibles, and Autopsies: Unwelcome Publicity for Different Sociologists 
7. Pseudoscience and Social Engineering: American Sociology's Public Image in the Fifties 
8. The Perils of Popularity: Public Sociology and Its Antagonists 
9. Conclusion: The Legacy of the Scientific Identity 
Bibliography 
Index

Editorial Reviews

The Americanization of Social Science is written so beautifully, so engagingly, and Haney is so widely read in the sociology and context of the 1950s, that this is both a wonderful social history of the discipline and, at the same time, an astute sociological analysis of the field's consolidation….This [book] is sure to further stimulate the debate about public sociology.”— Michael Burawoy, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher