The contributors to The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. 

Introduction: Toward a Social Science of the Social Sciences / Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz  1 Part One. Disciplines in the Making 1. Concept-Quake: From the History of Science to the Historical Sociology of Social Science / George Steinmetz  21 2. Spaces of Real Possibilities: Counterfactuals and the Impact of Donors on the Social Sciences / Álvaro Maorcillo Laiz  81 3. The Social Life of Concepts: or, How to Study the Idea of Creativity? / Bregje F. Van Eekelen  107 4. Epistemological Crises in Legal Theory: The (Ir)Rationality of Balancing / Carel Smith  129 5. The Reinvention of Sociology: Into the Trenches of Fieldwork at the Time of the Algerian Liberation War / Amín Pérez  147 Part Two. From the National to the Global 6. How Sociology Shaped Postwar Poland and How Stalinization Shaped Sociology / Agata Zysiak  175 7. The Public Anthropology of Violence in India / Chitralekha  195 8. Challenging Objectivity in Japan’s Long 1968 / Miriam Kingsberg Kadia  218 9. How Political Commitment Delineates Social Scientific Knowledge / Kristoffer Kropp  240 10. Making Sense of Globalizing Social Science / Johan Heilbron  262 Part Three. Exploring Borders and Boundaries 11. Critical Humanities and the Unsettling of the Sociological Field: Is There a French Exception? / Jean-Louis Fabiani  287 12. Recovering Subalternity in the Humanities and Social Sciences / Peter D. Thomas  310 13. Thinking about Cognitive Scientists Thinking about Religion / John Lardas Modern  328 14. Cooperative Primates and Competitive Primatologists: Prosociality and Polemics in a Nonhuman Social Science / Nicolas Langlitz  351 15. The Rise and Rise of Posthumanism: Will It Spell the End of the Human Sciences? / Didier Fassin  368 Contributors  393 Index 397

"In an era in which the social sciences are routinely under attack for being perceived as unproductive and overly critical and deterministic, this “social science of the social sciences” is an important and timely contribution. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty."

“The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass is exactly what its title promises and more: a close, critical, and reflective scrutiny of the past and present of the social sciences. Refreshingly broad in its historical and cross-cultural scope, this collection offers both a panoramic survey and a thoughtful stock-taking of the many traditions of trying to understand what societies are and how they work.”