Social Science for What? (Part 1 & 2)
August 17, 2022
By: Munk School staff
The New Books Network has a two-part podcast with the the Centre for the Study of the United States’ Mark Solovey about his recent book Social Science for What? Battles over Public Funding for the “Other Sciences“ at the National Science Foundation.
The podcast examines how the National Science Foundation became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences in the U.S., influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance from the mid-20th century to the present day.
In the first episode, Mark Solovey shared some of the political and legislative history establishing the National Science Foundation; heated controversy over the social sciences that undermined the effort to include them in the initial legislation for the new science agency; how they nevertheless became included on a small and cautious basis grounded in a scientistic strategy; and some of the landmark developments, controversies, and interesting individuals involved from roughly the mid-1940s to the late 1960s. This included Senator Harris’s remarkable legislative proposal in the mid-to-late 1960s to establish a separate national social science foundation.
The second episode opens with the late 1960s’ controversy over Project Camelot and draws on Solovey’s 2001 journal article in the Social Studies of Science, titled “Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution: Rethinking the Politics–Patronage–Social Science Nexus” – which remains the Solovey’s most often cited scholarly article. Discussion moves up through the dark days of the Reagan years, along the way discussing key figures, from David Stockman to Talcott Parsons, Clifford Geertz, Thomas Kuhn, Milton Friedman, and Richard Atkinson, the emergence and impact of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), alternatives to the scientistic strategy and persistent challenges faced by the social sciences at the levels of institutional representation, leadership and funding constraints relative to the natural sciences – all of which continue to the present day.
The podcast ends with Solovey’s call for reviving the idea of a new federal agency for the social sciences, a National Social Science Foundation, as first introduced by Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma, and finally, with some book recommendations.