The suicide of the social sciences: Causes and effects

Abstract

The social sciences have undergone profound changes. The causes of these changes are many, and in this article we discuss the most important ones. First, we discuss the shift to a situation where the American tradition is the norm and European and national traditions are vanishing. Secondly, we discuss the shift from a focus on the empirical context to a pure internal research focus. These and other changes cause dramatic effects for the social sciences. In our article we analyze these effects on the topics, results, methods and values of the social sciences. We especially focus on the career system and the PhD education. Our conclusion is that changes implemented to gain higher quality have instead caused decreasing quality to a point where the social sciences as a whole are at risk. © 2010 Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences and ICCR Foundation.