This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations of the modern world. From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics.

This book is a detailed and wide-ranging account of the birth of social theory as a distinctive and modern intellectual genre, providing a brilliant account of the "pre-history" of sociology and a vivid portrayal of intellectual culture between the Enlightenment and the age of Romanticism.

Formations of Modernity is a major introductory textbook offering an account of the important historical processes, institutions and ideas that have shaped the development of modern societies. This challenging and innovative book 'maps' the evolution of those distinctive forms of political, economic, social and cultural life which characterize modern societies, from their origins in early modern Europe to the nineteenth century. It examines the roots of modern knowledge and the birth of the social sciences in the Enlightenment, and analyses the impact on the emerging identity of 'the West' of its encounters through exploration, trade, conquest and colonization, with 'other civilizations'. Designed as an introduction to modern societies and modern sociological analyses, this book is of value to students on a wide variety of social science courses in universities and colleges and also to readers with no prior knowledge of sociology. Selected readings from a broad range of classical writers (Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Freud, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) and contemporary thinkers (Michael Mann, E.P. Thompson, Edward Said) are integrated in each chapter, together with student questions and exercises.

A comprehensive and authoritative guide to developments in life and earth sciences since 1800.

This exciting and accessible guide to the discussions of truth in the social sciences can also be read as an account of the collapse of modernity, and the rise of new forms of thought which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the objectifying powers' of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unravelling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida.

A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences exposes parallels and contrasts in the way the histories of the social sciences are written.

French Sociology offers a uniquely comprehensive view of the oldest and still one of the most vibrant national traditions in sociology. Johan Heilbron covers the development of sociology in France from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century through the discipline’s expansion in the late twentieth century, tracing the careers of figures from Auguste Comte to Pierre Bourdieu. Presenting fresh interpretations of how renowned thinkers such as Émile Durkheim and his collaborators defined the contours and content of the discipline and contributed to intellectual renewals in a wide range of other human sciences, Heilbron’s sophisticated book is both an innovative sociological study and a major reference work in the history of the social sciences. Heilbron recounts the halting process by which sociology evolved from a new and improbable science into a legitimate academic discipline. Having entered the academic field at the end of the nineteenth century, sociology developed along two separate tracks: one in the Faculty of Letters, engendering an enduring dependence on philosophy and the humanities, the other in research institutes outside of the university, in which sociology evolved within and across more specialized research areas. Distinguishing different dynamics and various cycles of change, Heilbron portrays the ways in which individuals and groups maneuvered within this changing structure, seizing opportunities as they arose. French Sociology vividly depicts the promises and pitfalls of a discipline that up to this day remains one of the most interdisciplinary endeavors among the human sciences in France.

An account of the history of the social sciences since the late eighteenth century.

The 38th World Congress of IIS addressed some of the most fundamental issues of sociological inquiry in light of global processes and the development of different fields of knowledge: What does it mean to be human? What is the nature of social as opposed to natural processes? How do efforts to map the social and political world interact with that world and with traditional sociological practices? What can we say about relationships between scientific, political and religious beliefs? This volume sets the stage for a sustained look at what social science can say about the twenty-first century and to address the theme of the congress in 2008: Sociology Looks at the 21st Century. From Local Universalism to Global Contextualism. Contributors are: Gustaf Arrhenius, Rajeev Bhargava, Craig Calhoun, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Yehuda Elkana, Raghavendra Gadagkar, Peter Hedström, Hans Joas, Hannes Klöpper, Ivan Krastev, Steven Lukes, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Helga Nowotny, Shalini Randeria, Alan Ryan, Jyotirmaya Sharma, Christina Torén, Michel Wieviorka, Björn Wittrock, Petri Ylikoski.