The History of the Social Sciences since 1945

Roger E. Backhouse was a lecturer at University College London and at the University of Keele, before moving to the University of Birmingham in 1980, where he has been Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics since 1996. In 2009 he took a part-time position at Erasmus University Rotterdam. After writing two textbooks on macroeconomics, he moved into the history of economics and methodology, on which he has published many articles in the leading journals, including History of Political Economy, Journal of the History of Economic Thought and European Journal of the History of Economic Thought. His books include A History of Modern Economic Analysis (1985), Economists and the Economy (1994), Truth and Progress in Economic Knowledge (1997) and The Penguin History of Economics (2002) (published in North America as The Ordinary Business of Life [2002]). Books he has edited include The Cambridge Companion to Keynes (with Bradley W. Bateman). He has been review editor of the Economic Journal, editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology and associate editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. Philippe Fontaine is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan and a Senior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2003–4, he was Ludwig Lachmann Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the co-editor of The Unsocial Social Science? Economics and Neighboring Disciplines Since 1945 (Duke University Press, 2010). He has written for a number of journals including Economics and Philosophy, History of Political Economy, Isis and the British Journal of Sociology. He is Associate Editor of the Revue de Philosophie Économique. In 2005, he received the Best Article Award of the Forum for the History of Human Science. In 2008, he was the recipient of the prix d'excellence en sciences sociales (Foundation Mattei Dogan/CNRS).

• 1. Introduction Roger E. Backhouse and Philippe Fontaine; 2. Psychology Mitchell G. Ash; 3. Economics Roger E. Backhouse; 4. Political science Robert Adcock and Mark Bevir; 5. Sociology Jennifer Platt; 6. Social anthropology Adam Kuper; 7. Human geography Ron Johnston; 8. Towards a history of the social sciences Roger E. Backhouse and Philippe Fontaine.

'The History of the Social Sciences since 1945 maps the conceptual, social, and institutional contexts of economics, political science, sociology, social anthropology, psychology, and human geography. These important fields have shaped contemporary discourse about the human self, in both individual and collective registers, and deeply influenced policy and practice in the modern world. Individual chapters on separate disciplines, written by respected scholars, take us through the intricacies and the editors' conclusion teases out subtle connections between different fields, sketching a big-picture perspective. The volume is a welcome contribution to the scant historiography, and provides fascinating reading for academic specialists, disciplinary practitioners, or the interested layperson.' James H. Capshew, Indiana University, and Editor (2006–09) of History of Psychology