The Return Of Popular Social Science?  

Oleh:

Down, Simon

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Human Relations vol. 54 no. 12 (Dec. 2001), page 1639-1649.
Fulltext: 1639.pdf (79.76KB)

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The purpose of this review essay is to reflect a little about the popularity of intellectual endeavours. Or more specifically on the need for social scientists to be willing to produce popular social science books. The two books considered for this purpose are Richard Rorty’s Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-century America, and Richard Sennett’s The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism, both published in 1998. These books made a great impression on me and can be described as popular in that they are accessible and relevant to a wide range of readers. Both not only carry their message in clear, short books, but there is an implicit popularizing intention in the messages themselves. Rorty’s is an admonishment against scholastic obscurantism masquerading as theory and for a reaffirmation of American pride, and hence, a call for a more engaged and popularly accessible academy. Sennett’s is an emancipatory exposé of the personal disorientation and social misery that are the consequence of an excessively short-term approach to economic organization. His intention, I think, is thus popular in the sense of raking the muck of the everyday world of work.

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