[Tps] TPS/ECPR Policy Network - New Book Announcement - Social Science for What?

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Social Science for What?: Philanthropy and the Social Question in a World
Turned Rightside Up

Alice O'Connor
Publication Date: April 2007
Russell Sage Foundation

http://www.russellsage.org/publications/070104.344733



Much like today, the early twentieth century was a period of rising
economic inequality and political polarization in America. But it was also
an era of progressive reform—a time when the Russell Sage Foundation and
other philanthropic organizations were established to promote social
science as a way to solve the crises of industrial capitalism. In Social
Science for What? Alice O’Connor relates the history of philanthropic
social science, exploring its successes and challenges over the years, and
asking how these foundations might continue to promote progressive social
change in our own politically divided era.

The philanthropic foundations established in the early 1900s focused on
research which, while intended to be objective, was also politically
engaged. In addition to funding social science research, in its early
years the Russell Sage Foundation also supported social work and advocated
reforms on issues from child welfare to predatory lending. This reformist
agenda shaped the foundation’s research priorities and methods. The
Foundation’s landmark Pittsburgh Survey of wage labor, conducted in
1907-1908, involved not only social scientists but leaders of charities,
social workers, and progressive activists, and was designed not simply to
answer empirical questions, but to reframe the public discourse about
industrial labor. After World War II, many philanthropic foundations
disengaged from political struggles and shifted their funding toward more
value-neutral, academic social inquiry, in the belief that disinterested
research would yield more effective public policies. Consequently, these
foundations were caught off guard in the 1970s and 1980s by the emergence
of a network of right-wing foundations, which was successful in promoting
an openly ideological agenda. In order to counter the political in-roads
made by conservative organizations, O’Connor argues that progressive
philanthropic research foundations should look to the example of their
founders. While continuing to support the social science research that has
contributed so much to American society over the past 100 years, they
should be more direct about the values that motivate their research.  In
this way, they will help foster a more democratic dialogue on important
social issues by using empirical knowledge to engage fundamentally ethical
concerns about rising inequality.

O’Connor’s message is timely: public-interest social science faces
unprecedented challenges in this era of cultural warfare, as both
liberalism and science itself have come under assault. Social Science for
What? is a thought-provoking critique of the role of social science in
improving society and an indispensable guide to how progressives can
reassert their voice in the national political debate.



ALICE O’CONNOR is associate professor of history at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.

http://www.russellsage.org/publications/070104.344733