Motivations of a Practical Orientation

The basic social sciences did not develop independently and later seek application; the practical motivations that animate scholarly chronologies are inescapable. Historical investigations also show plenty of distasteful origins, including the consistent role of American social science in eugenics. That matters not just for how we interpret the past, but also how we address the motivations driving us today. It is easier to see how the racist impulses of the past drove misinterpretations of evidence and poor design—but that epiphany enables a review of how our own motivations (new and perennial) continue to bias research. From finance to information technology, the rising industries of today are built on social science but tempted by triumphalism. Scholars are driven by proving our studies useful—in ways that can both uphold existing institutions and transform them. An acknowledgment of our evolving social, economic, and political goals can help address scholarly biases.

Rikollisuus ja sosiaalisen disorganisaation teoria Chicagon sosiologisen koulukunnan tutkimuksissa 1918-1948

Artikkeli tarkastelee sosiaalisen disorganisaation käsitteen ja teorian alkuperää ja kehitystä aatehistoriallisesta näkökulmasta. Lähdeaineistona ovat keskeiset Chicagon sosiologisen koulukunnan julkaisut vuosien 1918 ja 1948 välillä. Kirjoittajien erityishuomio on kohdistunut ensinnäkin sosiaalisen disorganisaation käsitteen esille tuloon ja varhaiseen soveltamiseen William I. Thomasin, Robert E. Parkin ja muiden Chicagon sosiologien kirjoituksissa, ja toiseksi käsitteen ja teorian hyödyntämiseen Clifford R. Shaw’n ja Henry D. McKayn merkittävässä kriminologisessa tutkimuksessa Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1942). Artikkelissa esitetään, että sosiaalisen disorganisaation teorialla oli keskeinen osa Chicagon sosiologien tutkimuksissa, joissa yhteiskunnallista muutosta ja sosiaalista kontrollia käsitteellistettiin nopeasti kasvavan Chicagon kaupunkielämään keskittyvän empiirisen havainnoinnin pohjalta. Teoria oli laajassa käytössä yhdysvaltalaisessa kriminologiassa ja muissa yhteiskuntatieteissä siksi, että sen avulla kyettiin antamaan uskottavia sosiologisia selityksiä (suur)kaupunkien kasvun ja muutoksen tuomista ongelmista. Teoria joutui suurelta osin marginaaliin 1960-luvulla, mutta 1980-luvulla kriminologinen kiinnostus sosiaaliseen disorganisaatioon alkoi jälleen kasvaa, ja nykyisin teoriaa käytetään kriminologian lisäksi aluetutkimuksessa, kaupunkisosiologiassa ja psykiatriassa. Vilma Niskanen and Petteri Pietikäinen: Crime and the theory of social disorganization in the studies of the Chicago School of Sociology between 1918 and 1948. This article examines the origin and development of the concept and theory of social disorganization from the methodological perspective of intellectual history. Based on the study of publications of the main representatives of the Chicago School of Sociology between the years 1918 and 1948, the article analyses the ways in which social disorganization was first discussed by William I. Thomas, Robert E. Park and other Chicago sociologists, and how the concept and theory was later used in Shaw’s and McKay’s influential criminological study Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1942). At the outset, the notion of social disorganization was central to the Chicago sociologists’ conceptualization of social change and social control that they observed first-hand in the streets of the rapidly growing City of Chicago. The authors argue that theory was widely used in American social science, including criminology, between the 1920s and 1950s, because it had strong explanatory force in the study of social problems in urban areas undergoing changes and re-organization. After becoming marginalized as a theory in the 1960s, a criminological interest in social disorganization increased through the 1980s, and at present it is used not only in criminology but also in area studies, urban sociology and psychiatry. Keywords: social disorganisation – Chicago school of sociology – history of sociology and criminology – urban sociology

The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World: Reading Walt in Beirut, Wendt in Doha, and Abul-Fadl in Cairo

Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the classroom into the Global/Post-Western debate by showing how IR can be taught differently in different places with a focus on a region under-represented in IR debates: the Arab world. The essays, exhibiting diversity in pedagogical strategies and theoretical perspectives, provide a window into how the “international” is perceived and taught locally by teachers and students in various Arab contexts. While the influence from the American “core” of the discipline is obvious, the forum documents how the theoretical and conceptual foundations of IR based on Western perspectives and history do not travel intact. The essays collectively provide evidence of different kinds of IRs not just across but also within regions and show that studying pedagogy can become a way to study how disciplinary IR varies contextually.

Canadian International Relations, American social science? Evidence from academic journals and comprehensive reading lists

The last two decades have witnessed growing attention to the “Canadianization” of the field of International Relations. In this article, we forward a novel approach to testing the influence of domestic factors in Canadian International Relations. By analyzing the reading lists of comprehensive examinations from Canadian doctoral programs in International Relations, we can understand the ways in which Canadian institutions’ reading lists construct the hierarchy of the field’s journals. Among these journals, those based in the United States are most frequently assigned, with others hosted in the UK and around Europe. Canadian journals are rarely assigned to reading lists. French-language journals are also rarely assigned to reading lists, even in francophone institutions, and when they are, the journals are much more likely to be hosted in France than in Canada. We offer a series of guiding questions for future consideration of the “Canadianization” of International Relations education in Canada.

Seeing Like an Area Specialist

In this chapter, the author argues that the ubiquitous and often polemical distinction between ‘area studies’ and history as idiographic disciplines and ‘social science’ as a nomothetic discipline is false, and that the best scholarship has now moved towards an integration of history and the ‘areas’ into a theoretically-informed American intellectual agenda that is considerably more advanced than the modal type of inquiry in American social science, which remains wedded to an obsolescent model of how people do their work in the so-called ‘hard’ sciences.

Clark Kerr

Chapter 2 explores the work of Clark Kerr as a thinker and university leader. It examines the Inter-University Study of Labor Problems in Economic Development directed by Kerr, one of the largest organized research projects in American social science during the postwar years. This study proposed a new theory of industrialism that informed Kerr’s thinking about universities. The Inter-University Study provides a window into its most important institutional contexts: the Institute of Industrial Relations (IIR) at UC Berkeley and the Ford Foundation’s Program in Economic Development and Administration. The chapter describes Kerr’s promotion of ORUs—first at the IIR, which he directed for seven years, and then across the Berkeley campus once he became chancellor. It also shows how his immersion in the administrative science movement shaped his view of the university’s mission. The chapter uncovers the sources of key ideas Kerr set forth in The Uses of the University.