Social Sciences in the Looking Glass

Didier Fassin is Professor at the CollÈge de France in Paris and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Director of study at the École des hautes Études en sciences sociales, he is the author of numerous books, including Life: A Critical User’s Manual.George Steinmetz is Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of various books, including The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire.

• Introduction: Toward a Social Science of the Social Sciences / Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz  1Part One. Disciplines in the Making1. Concept-Quake: From the History of Science to the Historical Sociology of Social Science / George Steinmetz  212. Spaces of Real Possibilities: Counterfactuals and the Impact of Donors on the Social Sciences / Álvaro Maorcillo Laiz  813. The Social Life of Concepts: or, How to Study the Idea of Creativity? / Bregje F. Van Eekelen  1074. Epistemological Crises in Legal Theory: The (Ir)Rationality of Balancing / Carel Smith  1295. The Reinvention of Sociology: Into the Trenches of Fieldwork at the Time of the Algerian Liberation War / AmÍn PÉrez  147Part Two. From the National to the Global6. How Sociology Shaped Postwar Poland and How Stalinization Shaped Sociology / Agata Zysiak  1757. The Public Anthropology of Violence in India / Chitralekha  1958. Challenging Objectivity in Japan’s Long 1968 / Miriam Kingsberg Kadia  2189. How Political Commitment Delineates Social Scientific Knowledge / Kristoffer Kropp  24010. Making Sense of Globalizing Social Science / Johan Heilbron  262Part Three. Exploring Borders and Boundaries11. Critical Humanities and the Unsettling of the Sociological Field: Is There a French Exception? / Jean-Louis Fabiani  28712. Recovering Subalternity in the Humanities and Social Sciences / Peter D. Thomas  31013. Thinking about Cognitive Scientists Thinking about Religion / John Lardas Modern  32814. Cooperative Primates and Competitive Primatologists: Prosociality and Polemics in a Nonhuman Social Science / Nicolas Langlitz  35115. The Rise and Rise of Posthumanism: Will It Spell the End of the Human Sciences? / Didier Fassin  368Contributors  393Index 397

"In an era in which the social sciences are routinely under attack for being perceived as unproductive and overly critical and deterministic, this “social science of the social sciences” is an important and timely contribution. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - J. R. Mitrano (Choice) "The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass assembles 15 insightful chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars that cover a lot of ground." - Tobias Werron (American Journal of Sociology)