Customer Reviews

Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Mestizo Spaces / Espaces Metisses)

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This is a short and easily read book about the social sciences, how they evolved, what basic topical and methodological issues defined them, how they found their place between natural science and the humanities, and how they developed their internal relations. The book is not just descriptive, but also critical in its analysis. It discusses the special kind of narrow view that dominates these sciences, and argues for a new organization of the social sciences. It basic argument is that one cannot meaningfully study a problem in one of the social sciences without regarding perspectives from the other. One could wish some more details of the single social sciences (e.g. psychology and educational research) and about epistemological influences (e.g. behaviorism and cognitivism).

The book should be of interest to science studies and to people concerned with the classification of the sciences and the organization of knowledge. It is one element in what I have christened "domain analysis" in library and information science.