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A controversial explanation for sociology's isolation from American society
The Americanization of Social Science
Intellectuals and Public Responsibility in the Postwar United States
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David Paul Haney
"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. The 1950s may not have been quite the golden age of sociology, but it certainly attracted messianic intellects, the likes of which we have not seen since. This book puts them all in motion, as some struggled to shore up professional boundaries while others exploded into the public arena. This is sure to further stimulate the debate about public sociology."
— Michael Burawoy, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
A highly readable introduction to and overview of the postwar social sciences in the United States, The Americanization of Social Science explores a critical period in the evolution of American sociology's professional identity from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. David Paul Haney contends that during this time leading sociologists encouraged a professional secession from public engagement in the name of establishing the discipline's scientific integrity.
According to Haney, influential practitioners encouraged a willful withdrawal from public sociology by separating their professional work from public life. He argues that this separation diminished sociologists' capacity for conveying their findings to wider publics, especially given their ambivalence towards the mass media, as witnessed by the professional estrangement that scholars like David Riesman and C. Wright Mills experienced as their writing found receptive lay audiences. He argues further that this sense of professional insularity has inhibited sociology's participation in the national discussion about social issues to the present day.
Excerpt
Reviews
"Sociology was far more than an academic discipline in the middle decades of the last century: it exploded into the national consciousness as the preferred mode of enquiry for many of America’s most influential public intellectuals. In his exciting and learned probe, historian David Haney explains why sociological discourse was so important in this era and why its very political and ideological acuteness generated an internal backlash that soon isolated it from many of the great questions defining American society in the 1960s and after. Written in a highly accessible and incisive fashion, Haney’s book is a major achievement."
—Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
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
About the Author(s)
 | David Paul Haney is an Adjunct Professor at Austin Community College and St. Edward's University |