Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Positivism and Its Others in the Social Sciences / George Steinmetz 1 Part One. Positivism and Nonpositivism in Twentieth-Century Social Science Anthropology Estrangement, Intimacy, and the Objects of Anthropology / Webb Keane 59 Area Studies/Asian Studies The Trick of Words: Asian Studies, Translation, and the Problems of Knowledge / Michael Dutton 89 Economics Economists and the Economy in the Twentieth Century / Timothy Mitchell 126 Economics/Philosophy of Science How Positivism Made a Pact with the Postwar Social Sciences in the United States / Philip Mirowski 142 History The Political Unconscious of Social and Cultural History, or, Confessions of a Former Quantitative Historian / William H. Sewell Jr. 173 Political Science/Political Theory Defining “Theory” in Postwar Political Science / Emily Hauptmann 207 Sociology and Economics Beware Trojan Horses Bearing Social Capital: How Privatization Turned Solidarity into a Bowling Team / Margaret R. Somers 233 Sociology Scientific Authority and the Transition to Post-Fordism: The Plausibility of Positivism in U. S. Sociology since 1945 / George Steinmetz 275 Part Two. Alternatives to Positivism in the Human Sciences Philosophy and Critical Realism Critical Realism / Andrew Collier 327 Philosophy and Standpoint Theory Negotiating with a Positivist Legacy: New Social Justice Movements and a Standpoint Politics of Method / Sandra Harding 346 Economics and Critical Realism A Perspective on Modern Economics / Tony Lawson 366 Process and Temporality in Sociology The Idea of Outcome in U. S. Sociology / Andrew Abbott 393 Psychoanalysis as Critique Psychoanalysis and the Theory of the Subject / Anthony Elliott 427 Sociology of Science The Real and the Imaginary in Economic Methodology / Daniel Breslau 451 Making Sense In and Of Political Science Facts, Values, and “Real” Numbers / Sophia Mihic, Stephen G. Engelmann, and Elizabeth Rose Wingrove 470 Being Undisciplined On Your Marx: From Cultural History to the History of Society / Geoff Eley 496 Conclusion: Provincializing the Social Sciences / Michael Burawoy 508 References 527 Contributors 583 Index 587 Citation Index 607

“By contrasting the diverse trajectories and strategies of positivist method within each discipline, The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences develops a comparative perspective which has been lacking in virtually all prior treatments of positivism in social science. The contrasts in the form and prestige that positivist method assumed in each discipline are striking.”—Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council