Reviews for Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look

The average rating for Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-25 00:00:00 Michael Stanley A fantastic intellectual history that also charts the rise of modern universities and modern professionalism. The American Social Science Association (ASSA), as Haskell shows, was originally a strange hybrid of reform agitation and intellectual inquiry, emerging in 1865 out of the old Transcendentalist Boston milieu that believed in voluntaristic action and common-sensical knowledge. As the century wore on, however, the amateurism of the ASSA caused a number of other more university-oriented professions to break off, from the American Historical Association in 1884, to the American Economic Association in 1885, to the American Political Science Association in 1903, and seeming endless others. Haskell shows that despite its odd structure and gradual disintegration the ASSA was crucial in everything from the campaign for civil service laws to the rise of the charity organization movement. It seems that everyone important in Gilded Age America, from Daniel Coit Gilman (first president of John Hopkins) to Simeon Baldwin (founder of the American Bar Association) was also a president of the ASSA. Its certainly an institution that deserves more press and interest, but I doubt someone will write a better history of it. I think the book also thrilled me because unlike almost every contemporary cultural history book, it does not try to paint every act of professionalization or specialization as a decline in unity or the end of some putative golden era of understanding. On the contrary, Haskell see the decline of the ASSA as largely inevitable, and probably a good thing for contemporary social science, yet he shows how it helped bridge the divide between old Boston idealism and modern Spencerian positivism. It's a great read.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-03 00:00:00 Daniel Sable A very informative book covering a number of topics linked to ethnic conflict. The text emphasized the United States covering Native Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Whites over the time span of the last few centuries. It also used Brazil, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Canada as well as Western Europe as international case studies. Marger crams information into this book and occasionally disrupts the text flow with tables and diagrams. The book could have benefited with some photos interspersed here and there accompanied by case studies. The text generalizes quite a bit so it is easy to lose track of that one is actually studying the lives of human beings. Beyond that caveat the read was quite worthwhile adding new information and perspectives to a multiethnic and global world. Unfortunately, ethnic conflict prevails and is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Marger's book certainly helps a reader to understand and ideally navigate these waters better. It was not very exciting experience to read this text, but certainly worthwhile.