IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/w59f3.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Introduction: Whose Social Problems?

Author

Listed:
  • Fontaine, Philippe
  • Pooley, Jefferson

    (Muhlenberg College)

Abstract

The social sciences underwent rapid development in postwar America. Problems once framed in social terms gradually became redefined as individual with regards to scope and remedy, with economics and psychology winning influence over the other social sciences. By the 1970s, both economics and psychology had spread their intellectual remits wide: psychology's concepts suffused everyday language, while economists entered a myriad of policy debates. Psychology and economics contributed to, and benefited from, a conception of society that was increasingly skeptical of social explanations and interventions. Sociology, in particular, lost intellectual and policy ground to its peers, even regarding 'social problems' that the discipline long considered its settled domain. This introduction frames the book's ten chapters, each of which explore this shift refracted through a single 'problem': the family, crime, urban concerns, education, discrimination, poverty, addiction, war, and mental health, examining the effects an increasingly individualized lens has had on the way we see these problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Fontaine, Philippe & Pooley, Jefferson, 2020. "Introduction: Whose Social Problems?," SocArXiv w59f3, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:w59f3
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/w59f3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5fd0d59d08ec9e0087b8d216/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/w59f3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:cup:apsrev:v:39:y:1945:i:03:p:555-574_05 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jefferson Pooley & Mark Solovey, 2010. "Marginal to the Revolution: The Curious Relationship between Economics and the Behavioral Sciences Movement in Mid-Twentieth-Century America," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 42(5), pages 199-233, Supplemen.
    3. Backhouse,Roger E. & Fontaine,Philippe, 2010. "The History of the Social Sciences since 1945," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521889063.
    4. Hayek, F. A., 2012. "Hayek on Hayek," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226321202 edited by Kresge, Stephen & Wenar, Leif.
    5. Guglielmo, Mark, 2008. "The Contribution of Economists to Military Intelligence During World War II," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 109-150, March.
    6. Jean-Baptiste Fleury, 2012. "Wandering through the Borderlands of the Social Sciences: Gary Becker's Economics of Discrimination," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 1-40, Spring.
    7. Easton, David, 1969. "The New Revolution in Political Science," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(4), pages 1051-1061, December.
    8. Daniel Stedman Jones, 2012. "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9827.
    9. repec:hop:hopeec:12-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Dahl, Robert A., 1961. "The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 763-772, December.
    11. Barber,William J., 1989. "From New Era to New Deal," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521367370, October.
    12. Burgin, Angus, 2012. "The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression," Economics Books, Harvard University Press, number 9780674058132, Spring.
    13. Herring, Pendleton, 1945. "Political Science in the Next Decade," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 757-766, August.
    14. Jean-Baptiste Fleury, 2012. "Wandering from the Borderlands of Social Sciences: Gary Becker's "The Economics of Discrimination," Post-Print hal-01410538, HAL.
    15. Roger E. Backhouse & Philippe Fontaine, 2018. "Economics and Other Social Sciences: A Historical Perspective," Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino (Italy), vol. 52(2), pages 7-44, December.
    16. Cole, Arthur H., 1968. "Economic History in the United States: Formative Years of a Discipline," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(4), pages 556-589, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephan Schulmeister, 2018. "From Prosperity into the Crisis and Back. On the Role of Economic Theories in the Long Cycle," WIFO Working Papers 571, WIFO.
    2. Andrew Farrant, 2019. "What Should (Knightian) Economists Do? James M. Buchanan's 1980 Visit to Chile," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(3), pages 691-714, January.
    3. Mathieu Segers, 2019. "Eclipsing Atlantis: Trans‐Atlantic Multilateralism in Trade and Monetary Affairs as a Pre‐History to the Genesis of Social Market Europe (1942–1950)," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 60-76, January.
    4. Vlad Tarko, 2017. "Neoliberalism and Regulatory Capitalism: Understanding the "Freer Markets More Rules" Puzzle," Working Paper Series 2017-02, Dickinson College, Department of Economics.
    5. Innset, Ola, 2023. "Dual Argument, Double Truth: On the continued importance of the state in neoliberal thought," SocArXiv kyvdm, Center for Open Science.
    6. Guler Aras & Paul F. Williams, 2022. "Integrated Reporting and Integrated Thinking: Proposing a Reporting Model That Induces More Responsible Use of Corporate Power," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Bruce Caldwell, 2020. "The Road to Serfdom after 75 Years," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(3), pages 720-748, September.
    8. Jean-Michel Servet & Bruno Tinel, 2020. "The behavioral and neoliberal foundations of randomizations," Post-Print halshs-02562758, HAL.
    9. Styhre Alexander, 2018. "The Making of the Shareholder Primacy Governance Model: Price Theory, the Law and Economics School, and Corporate Law Retrenchment Advocacy," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 1-31, December.
    10. Pühringer, Stephan & Griesser, Markus, 2017. "From the "planning euphoria" to the "bitter economic truth": The transmission of economic ideas into German labour market policies in the 1960s and 2000s," Working Paper Series Ök-30, Cusanus Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung, Institut für Ökonomie.
    11. C. J. Polychroniou, 2013. "Toward a Post-Keynesian Political Economy for the 21st Century: General Reflections and Considerations on an Era Ripe for Change," Economics Policy Note Archive 13-02, Levy Economics Institute.
    12. João Márcio Mendes Pereira, 2020. "The World Bank's ‘Assault on Poverty’ as a Political Question (1968–81)," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 51(6), pages 1401-1428, November.
    13. Ötsch, Walter & Pühringer, Stephan, 2019. "The anti-democratic logic of right-wing populism and neoliberal market-fundamentalism," Working Paper Series Ök-48, Cusanus Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung, Institut für Ökonomie.
    14. Vlad Tarko & Ryan Safner, 2022. "International regulatory diversity over 50 years: political entrepreneurship within fiscal constraints," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 193(1), pages 79-108, October.
    15. Béatrice CHERRIER & Jean-Baptiste FLEURY, 2014. "Whose values? The Rise, Fragmentation and Marginalization of Collective Choice in Postwar Economics, 1940-1981," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2014-05-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    16. Phillip W. Magness & Art Carden & Vincent Geloso, 2019. "James M. Buchanan and the Political Economy of Desegregation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(3), pages 715-741, January.
    17. Williams, Paul F., 2017. "Jumping on the wrong bus: Reflections on a long, strange journey," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 76-85.
    18. Stephan Puehringer & Georg Wolfmayr & Carina Altreiter & Claudius Graebner & Ana Rogojanu, 2020. "Theorizing Competition. An interdisciplinary approach to the genesis of a contested concept," ICAE Working Papers 117, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    19. Franck Bailly, 2022. "When mainstream economics does human resource management: a critique of personnel economics’ prescriptive ambition," Post-Print hal-03711945, HAL.
    20. Jean-Michel Servet & Bruno Tinel, 2020. "The behavioral and neoliberal foundations of randomizations," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-02562758, HAL.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:w59f3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.