Jefferson Pooley

Marginal to the Revolution: The Curious Relationship between Economics and the Behavioral Sciences Movement in Mid-Twentieth-Century America

American economics largely ignored the behavioral sciences movement in the decade after World War II. The social scientists who adopted the “behavioral sciences” moniker were self-consciously nomothetic, fond of mathematics and statistical analysis, and eager to stand close to the natural sciences. The same was true of leading postwar economists, and yet they alone opted out, with only a few exceptions. We explore this divide as it emerged in the early development of the Ford Foundations Behavioral Sciences Program (BSP). We describe early efforts to incorporate economics into the BSP in a substantial manner, premised on the belief that economic analysis could be greatly strengthened by the behavioral science orientation, with its emphasis on rigorous empirical study of actual human behavior. Yet these efforts failed, in large part because economists, especially those commonly labeled “neoclassical,” were uninterested, skeptical, and even dismissive of what they took to be an immature and faddish initiative. Gaps in postwar prestige and clashing models of social science contributed to the Ford Foundations decision to fund economics on a separate track from the other social sciences. In our account, the adoption of the “behavioral sciences” terminology in tandem with the movements institutional anchoring at the Ford Foundation thus reflected and widened the split between economists and their counterparts in the other social sciences.

“Facebook for Academics”: The Convergence of Self-Branding and Social Media Logic on Academia.edu

Given widespread labor market precarity, contemporary workers—especially those in the media and creative industries—are increasingly called upon to brand themselves. Academics, we contend, are experiencing a parallel pressure to engage in self-promotional practices, particularly as universities become progressively more market-driven. Academia.edu, a paper-sharing social network that has been informally dubbed “Facebook for academics,” has grown rapidly by adopting many of the conventions of popular social media sites. This article argues that the astonishing uptake of Academia.edu both reflects and amplifies the self-branding imperatives that many academics experience. Drawing on Academia.edu’s corporate history, design decisions, and marketing communications, we analyze two overlapping facets of Academia.edu: (1) the site’s business model and (2) its social affordances. We contend that the company, like mainstream social networks, harnesses the content and immaterial labor of users under the guise of “sharing.” In addition, the site’s fixation on analytics reinforces a culture of incessant self-monitoring—one already encouraged by university policies to measure quantifiable impact. We conclude by identifying the stakes for academic life, when entrepreneurial and self-promotional demands brush up against the university’s knowledge-making ideals.

The Four Cultures: Media Studies at the Crossroads

The commentary traces four distinct but overlapping cultures in US media studies: (1) speech and rhetoric, (2) a media research field centered on the mass communication trades, (3) one detached from those trades, and (4) film studies. I point to each culture’s institutional history, typical academic unit, and unique self-understanding. The main claim is that the four-part division has always had an arbitrary character, but is especially incoherent and damaging in an era of media convergence and cross-disciplinary interest in the field’s core questions. The commentary argues that the four-culture divide renders our scholarship invisible not just to outsiders from other disciplines but even to our would-be compatriots in the other three cultures.

The Price of Success: Sociologist Harry Alpert, the NSF's First Social Science Policy Architect

Summary Harry Alpert (1912–1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundations social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alperts views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alperts complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alperts views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods.

Straight by Day, Swingers by Night: Re-reading Daniel Bell on Capitalism and its Culture

Daniel Bells landmark Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) remains, 30 years later, the entry point to the rich literature on Americas twentieth-century culture of self-fulfillment. After reconstructing the books argument with reference to Max Webers account of modernity, this article challenges Bells claim that Modernist culture and certain tendencies in capitalism threaten the social order. Capitalism and its culture are deeply symbiotic, and draw upon the same antinomian logic. Dionysus is welcomed with enthusiasm into the boardroom, mainly because apocalyptic moods and anti-rational modes of behavior sell emphatically well. It is hard to envision the social breakdown Bell fears, or indeed any effective cultural challenge to a market system that systematically incorporates protest.

Faulty Reception: The Institutional Roots of U.S. Communication Research’s Neglect of Public Sphere Scholarship

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Besonderheiten der Rezeption des Offentlichkeitskonzepts (Public Sphere) von Habermas in der US-amerikanischen Communication Research anhand wissenssoziologischer Faktoren. Dabei heben wir zwei zusammenwirkende Faktoren hervor, die fur die verspatete und insbesondere unvollstandige Rezeption der habermasschen Ideen mitverantwortlich zeichnen: (1) Die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg stattfindende Institutionalisierung der angehenden Wissenschaftsdisziplin „Kommunikation“ aus bis dahin bestehenden Journalism Schools und auf Rhetorik spezialisierten Speech Departments heraus; sowie (2) den spezifischen Verlauf der Ubersetzung und der transnationalen Aneignung des Public-Sphere-Konzepts von Habermas in den 1990er Jahren. Wir argumentieren, dass das institutionelle Fundament der Kommunikationswissenschaft in den USA mit dazu beigetragen hat eine grundstandige Auseinandersetzung mit „public sphere“ durch KommunikationswissenschaftlerInnen zu verhindern oder zumindest zu verzogern. Unsere hier nur teilweise getestete Hypothese lautet, dass das relativ zu den Nachbardisziplinen gesehen niedrige Prestige der Kommunikationswissenschaft innerhalb der amerikanischen Universitatskultur fur die Art und Form, wie Ideen und Konzepte in der Disziplin aufgenommen, dort verarbeitet und aus dieser wieder exportiert werden, mitverantwortlich ist. Im Fall der Public Sphere nehmen wir an, dass Habermas‘ Arbeit zuerst von amerikanischen Geschichtswissenschaftlern und Vertretern der traditionellen Social Sciences aufgenommen worden ist und erst dann, in einem zweiten Schritt aus solchen Disziplinen mit hoherem Prestige an die Kommunikationswissenschaft gewissermasen „weitergereicht“ worden ist. Die Public Sphere ist, so unsere Annahme, in der US-Kommunikationswissenschaft, in Anlehnung an das bekannte Modell von Lazarsfeld und Katz (1955) gesprochen, in einem Two-Step-Flow angekommen. Aufgrund des in der Geschichte ihrer Institutionalisierung wurzelnden anhaltend niedrigen Prestiges der Kommunikationswissenschaft erwarteten wir fur die Rezeption des Public Sphere Konzepts, dass diese charakterisiert sein wurde durch eine insgesamt „leichtere“ Auseinandersetzung, eine verzogerte Ubernahme, ein einseitiges Zitationsmuster (Kommunikationswissenschaftler zitieren, aber werden nicht zitiert) und wenige „Botschafter“ des Konzepts innerhalb des Feldes, denen eine Schlusselrolle fur die Rezeption und kunftige Deutung des Konzepts innerhalb der Disziplin zukommt. Um unsere Annahme zu testen, wurde eine vergleichende Analyse von Journalbeitragen, die Habermas und die Public Sphere (HPS) zitieren, im Zeitverlauf unternommen. Dafur haben wir zehn Communication Journals aus den USA mit zehn (bezuglich Relevanz und Status in der Disziplin) vergleichbaren Journals aus drei anderen US-Disziplinen verglichen: der Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie und Geschichte. Auf Basis von Volltext, Titel/Abstract und Keyword-Suchen wurden der Zeitverlauf, die Haufigkeit und die Wechselseitigkeit von HPS-Referenzen untersucht. Die Journal-Analyse bestatigte unsere ursprungliche Annahme, was die Rolle von Botschaftern und Ubersetzungspionieren innerhalb des Feldes betraf: Die entsprechenden kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Beitrage erschienen spater und in geringerer Haufigkeit. Zudem bestatigte sich, dass Zitationen von kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Beitragen wesentlich seltener waren, als das umgekehrte Zitationsmuster, also Zitationen von Historikern, Politikwissenschaftlern und Soziologen durch KommunikationswissenschaftlerInnen. Generell wurden die kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Artikel deutlich weniger zitiert als jene aus den benachbarten Disziplinen. Wir folgern daraus, dass die Legitimationsprobleme der Disziplin in den USA intellektuelle Konsequenzen haben. Im untersuchten Fall zeigt sich dies darin, dass zwar Ideen und Konzepte in die Disziplin einreisen, aber es kaum einen Ruckreiseverkehr und Wiederexport aus der Kommunikationswissenschaft gibt. Das Beispiel von Habermas und der Public Sphere kann, so nehmen wir an, stellvertretend fur eine grundsatzlich bestehende Situation gelesen werden.

The field, fermented: Prestige and the vocational bind in communication research

This commentary argues that communication research’s main problem is reputational. The field’s marginal status—a product of its peculiar institutional history, with roots in vocational training—means that our work is not read by scholars from other disciplines. My claim is that the vocational model exacts a steep reputational price. The gap in prestige between the mainline disciplines and communication means that our scholarship is simply not read. Exiled to the professional-school margins of the university, communication scholars toil away in well-heeled obscurity. In exchange for relinquishing jurisdiction over media and communication, the commentary concludes, we might join a dynamic crossroads—where the vocational underwriting will not loom as large.

The Media and Social Theory

dence of attachment to place on the part of mobile cosmopolitans. Griswold then uses a variety of data sources to examine Italy, a nation that does not produce much in the way of a regional literature, and to compare regions in the United States and Norway that exhibit different degrees of literary regionalism. Her purpose is to identify the various factors that encourage or discourage literary regionalism. Among these factors are overall rates of reading, an orientation to the nation versus an identification with the periphery, the organization of the publishing industry, and the role of the state in financing regional literary activities. Throughout this discussion, Griswold makes the convincing argument that regionalism and regional literatures are not a natural or inevitable outgrowth of people’s membership in a region. Instead, they depend on institutional supports as well as historical, demographic, and geographic factors that help produce a collective regional identity. I found the book at its most interesting in its discussion of a reading class. As Griswold notes, a situation where a majority of the population reads extensively for pleasure was an historical anomaly, existing only for about a century, and even then, only in parts of Europe, North America, and Japan. This era is over, and while literacy will continue to spread, that sector of the population that chooses to make reading an important part of its leisure will shrink, though not disappear altogether. Yet, she argues, this reading class still has disproportionate cultural influence and social capital. One virtue of the book is that Griswold rarely makes grander claims than she can support with evidence, but this also acts as a limit. We do not hear much about expressions of regionalism beyond the literary, and the only dimension of globalization that is discussed is intranational migration. And while Griswold provides an understanding of the social conditions that encourage regionalism among the reading class, she offers only the briefest of explanations for what regionalism actually means to this group. Regionalism brings “roots to the rootless” (p. 173), and a possibility of local wisdom to steady those adrift in a tumultuous world. One might ask why the reading class, who are perhaps more adept than other groups at riding the forces of globalization, are the ones who yearn for a sense of place and the cultural expressions that arise therefrom. While leaving questions such as this unanswered, Griswold’s book does offer helpful direction for thinking about the cultural and social significance of place in the contemporary world.