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In recent years the social scienceshave been asked to demonstrate that they are of some practical use. Knowledge for its own sake is a difficult policy to defend in a time of many crises, escalating costs, and shrinking resources for research. The result has been a tilt by the social sciences toward "relevance" and a growing emphasis on "applied" or "policy-oriented" or "action" research. Increasingly, the search for general, theoretical knowledge has become secondary to (or a fortuitous by-product of) more immediately "practical" endeavors.

The substantial literature on mass violence, from ethnic cleansing to civil wars, has paid surprisingly little attention to the largest instance of mass violence in human history: the Holocaust. When political scientists have approached the subject, the trend has been to treat the Holocaust as a single case, comparing it—sometimes controversially—with other instances of genocide such as Rwanda or Cambodia. But historically grounded work on the destruction of European Jewry can help illuminate the microfoundations of violent politics, unpack the relationship between a ubiquitous violence-inducing ideology (antisemitism) and highly variable murder, and recast old questions about the origins and evolution of the Holocaust itself. After reviewing new trends in history-writing, I highlight opportunities for social-scientifically oriented research centered on the interaction of state power, local communities, and violent mobilization in five areas: military occupation, repertoires of violence, alliance politics, genocidal policymaking, and resistance. My conclusion addresses thorny issues of comparison, morality, and memory.

The article deals with the initial period of the organizational and institutional development of science in North Ossetia in the 1920s. A characteristic feature of the development of science was its close relationship with local lore, which, during the period under study, turned into the most important tool for organizing research, scientific and educational, cultural and educational work. By the end of the 1920s a wide interaction between local lore and science led to a qualitative change in the organization of scientific research, and provided a solid basis for the development of Ossetian studies as the multidisciplinary research area.

How should we tell the histories of academic disciplines? All too often, the political and institutional dimensions of knowledge production are lost beneath the intellectual debates. This book redresses the balance. Written in a narrative style and drawing on archival sources and oral histories, it depicts the complex pattern of personal and administrative relationships that shape scholarly worlds.

Focusing on the field of social anthropology in twentieth-century Britain, this book describes individual, departmental and institutional rivalries over funding and influence. It examines the efforts of scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Edward Evans-Pritchard and Max Gluckman to further their own visions for social anthropology. Did the future lie with the humanities or the social sciences, with addressing social problems or developing scholarly autonomy? This new history situates the discipline's rise within the post-war expansion of British universities and the challenges created by

On purpose to analyse a certain part of social world it is useful to apply a concept of field introduced in the field theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Field is a structure of relations between the objective positions occupied by its agents. The positions of the agents, their success, recognition and distinction in the field depend on special resources they own, called capital. According to Bourdieu, capital determines the habitus of the field agents. Habitus might be understood as a set of dispositions, perceptions and beliefs inherent to an individual. It is the result of the internalization of external economic, social, cultural conditions and practices, contrary to popular belief that it depends only on subjective individual experience.Two types of cultural capital – academic and scientific capital – are authentic to scientific field. Although the activity of the agents of scientific field might look disinterested and based only on intellectual principles, in reality this field is a subject to competition for better positions like all other fields. Beyond the normative and philosophical disputes on perceptions of science may be hidden interests to impose such principles which could bring the highest benefit to the field agents.Normative discussions about the perceptions of science are common in a field of political science as well. Mostly they are related to the question of the purpose of political science (whether it should be "pure" science or to focus on real political problems), methodological orientations (positivist vs. anti-positivist approach), attitude towards internationality of political science (local or cosmopolitan) and its relation to other disciplines (autonomy of political science). In the article these perceptions of political science are considered as dispositions of political scientists composing a part of their habitus. Since habitus is structured by capital, a research hypothesis that the perceptions are related to certain types of capital was proposed.Lithuanian political science field was chosen as the object of the research. The main problem analysed in the article is the "origin" of different perceptions of political science If only individual experience affects these perceptions, how could we explain the fact that some beliefs are more typical to certain groups of scientists and are not inherent to other groups?The investigation using semi-structuralized survey method was executed. Eighty-eight Lithuanian political scientists took part in the research. Received data was analysed by multiple correspondence analysis technique and other methods of statistical analysis. It was identified that those political scientists who own the highest academic and scientific capital tend to support a vision of political science not oriented towards practical politics. They also give priority to the national, local political science and to the positivist approach. Sociology and partly philosophy disciplines are privileged among them. On the other hand, those scientists who have higher economic and political capital (extraneous capital to scientific field) are more liable to support practical and cosmopolitan orientations, disciplines of economics, administration and management. Also a relation between the education of political scientists and their perceptions was established.These results might be interpreted as demonstrating the above mentioned interests to impose such perceptions of political science which could be the most useful to the scientists and as confirming the hypothesis of the research. ; Straipsnyje analizuojamas Lietuvos politikos mokslų laukas, ieškant atsakymo į klausimą, kaip jo veikėjai suvokia savo discipliną, ir bandoma aiškinti jų politikos mokslų sampratas. Kaip alternatyva požiūriui, kad politikos mokslų suvokimą formuojančios nuostatos yra subjektyvios ir individualios, remiantis Pierre'o Bourdieu teoriniu modeliu, siekiama parodyti objektyvių struktūrų (užimamų pozicijų, disponuojamo kapitalo) įtaką šioms nuostatoms. Straipsnyje išskiriamos politikos mokslininkų bendruomenę dalijančios skirtys, atspindinčios mokslininkų požiūrį į politikos mokslų paskirtį, jų moksliškumo sampratas, santykį su kitomis disciplinomis ir tarptautiškumo reikšmės vertinimą. Straipsnio pagrindas – empirinis Lietuvos politikos mokslininkų bendruomenės tyrimas.