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The introduction to a written symposium on Soc Sci & Soc Policy. It is noted that (a) the US as a nation has always invested most heavily in technological as opposed to soc change; & (b) US soc sci's are not as clean, precise, predictive, or dependable as its natural & physical sci's. Soc sci'ts rarely hold positions of power in the federal gov & are rarely able to guide the development & implementation of soc policy. There is little indication that in the future soc sci'ts will seek to propose strategies of soc intervention & expect to be taken seriously by those in a position to implement soc policy & soc change. It is one thing to design & plan res & evaluation & another to understand & control the logistical factors that do in fact intervene & determine res & evaluation outcomes. It is this lack of implementation awareness that minimizes the potential value of soc sci in matters of soc policy & sac programming. Soc sci'ts can identify variables, but they cannot demonstrate how one goes about the business of manipulating these same variables in an ongoing soc process. Perhaps in the yrs to pome, soc sci style & methodoolgy will allow for basic res leading to demonstration & exp'tion, with an ongoing evaluation of processes & change, & with a final feed-back into res. Such a model would contribute to the building of soc sci theory, the improvement of soc sci methodology, & place soc sci in a better position to assist in the development of soc policy & in solving soc problems confronting the world. M. Maxfield.

Book Review of: Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens (eds.), Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production,Liberal Democracy, and Human NatureNew York: Palgrave Macmillan 2014First paperback ed., xvii + 270 pp.ISBN 978-1-137-38835-3Price: € 31

Book Review of: Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens (eds.), Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production,Liberal Democracy, and Human NatureNew York: Palgrave Macmillan 2014First paperback ed., xvii + 270 pp.ISBN 978-1-137-38835-3Price: € 31

This volume surveys the resurgence of the social scientific study of ideas in politics. Leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics

ABSTRACT Taking France as its example, the following article examines the relations between the disciplines of social sciences discovered during the arduous task of classifying French social sciences journals according to more specific disciplines (sociology, political science and anthropology, etc.). Based on a study of the journals' own methods of self-labeling and the methods used to classify these journals by a French assessment body (AERES), as well as the forming of journal executive committees, the article highlights the fact that the journals frequently cover a range of disciplines, without this implying the disappearance of disciplinary structures. In fact, the article instead reveals that the connections made by the journals between the various disciplines of social sciences are unlikely and disproportionately represented.

Based on the French translation of a book by Peter Winch, this article reassesses the tendency in political science -- and, more broadly, in the social sciences -- to adopt the naturalistic view that the phenomena those sciences explore exist independently of the viewpoints of members of society involved in their production. In this sense, the contrasting positions taken by Bruno Latour & Pierre Favre, published in issues 58 (4) & (5) of the RFSP, turn out to be similar: both posit that what is & is not political can be determined without reference to specific practices. Adapted from the source document.