Social Science in Context

Overview

One of the very first books to explore the role of the social sciences in historical, sociological, and global perspectives, it does so by analyzing the practical making and discursive aspects of social scientific disciplines, including sociology, economics, psychology, business and administration studies, social gerontology, gender studies, educational science, geography, and political science. It looks at them not only in their academic setting but also in extra-academic contexts and in a broader global setting. The volume includes 15 chapters written by an international and multidisciplinary group of scholars. The overall aim of the book is to encourage a contextual and reflexive understanding of the complex and dynamic relationship between the social sciences and society of the past and in today’s globalized world. It is concerned with the bonds between the social sciences and society at large, including themes such as gender and power, science and politics, academic boundaries and global power relations, and postcolonial perspectives.

Author Biography

Rickard Danell is associate professor of sociology at Umeå University in Sweden. He has published extensively within the fields of sociology of science and scholarly communication, and is currently conducting studies on how different types of sciences are affected by research policy programs. Anna Larsson is associate professor of history of science and ideas at Umeå University. Her research interests include history of education and history of social science. Per Wisselgren is associate professor of sociology at Umeå University. His main research interests revolve around the history and sociology of the social sciences in a broad sense, including issues related to gender, social welfare, research funding, extra-academic knowledge production, media and the public, and globalization.