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Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain explores the rise and nature of historicist thinking about such varied topics as life, race, character, literature, language, economics, empire, and law. The contributors show that the Victorians typically understood life and society as developing historically in a way that made history central to their intellectual inquiries and their public culture. Although their historicist ideas drew on some Enlightenment themes, they drew at least as much on organic ideas and metaphors in ways that lent them a developmental character. This developmental historicism flourished alongside evolutionary motifs and romantic ideas of the self. The human sciences were approached through narratives, and often narratives of reason and progress. Life, individuals, society, government, and literature all unfolded gradually in accord with underlying principles, such as those of rationality, nationhood, and liberty. This book will appeal to those interested in Victorian Britain, historiography, and intellectual history.

This wide-ranging and original study reveals how prevalent modernism has become in the social sciences. With contributions from a number of leading international scholars, Modernism and the Social Sciences explores the rise and nature of modernist tropes and approaches within social sciences such as economics, econometrics, behaviourism, sociology, administrative science, linguistics, history and anthropology. The essays demonstrate how the social sciences turned away from the developmental historicisms of the nineteenth century. Instead, social scientists have become increasingly committed to synchronic and formal explanations that rely on models, correlations and ideal types, and they have increasingly appealed to systems and functions and to institutions and norms. This book will reveal wider trends and parallels to specialists in particular disciplines and it will also appeal to those interested in intellectual history and social science theory. This volume is a companion to Historicism and the Human Sciences in Britain, a product of the Mellon project on Britain's Modernity, published by Cambridge in 2017.

(.)La mayoría de las universidades ofrecen cursos sobre los textos clásicos de teoría política al menos desde Platón a Marx. Los teóricos políticos por lo general justifican esos cursos sobre la base de que estos textos abordan problemas perennes; problemas tales como "¿Por qué debemos obedecer al gobierno?", "¿qué es un Estado justo?", y "¿cuáles son los fundamentos de la moral política?". Recientemente, sin embargo, contextualistas lingüísticos, con Quentin Skinner y J. G. A. Pocock a la cabeza, se han manifestado en contra de la existencia misma de los problemas perennes. Ellos sostienen que textos escritos en diferentes lugares y en diferentes momentos abordan pro¬blemas inconmensurables porque, por ejemplo, los significados lingüísticos, las intenciones de los autores, o la condición humana, dependen por completo de contextos históricos específicos (.)

This article responds to Stephen Turner's discussion of my article, "Historicism and Critique." I emphasize that radical historicism consists of substantive philosophical commitments. One commitment is to a historicized epistemology that presents objective knowledge as a product of a comparison between rival webs of belief. Another commitment is to a historical ontology that presents aggregate concepts in the social sciences as inherently pragmatic. These substantive commitments provide a plausible basis for various forms of critique. They lead to analyses of genealogical and ideological critique that differ from appeals to genealogy as a kind of groundless skepticism toward, and problematization of, all substantive commitments.

This paper argues that historicism can provide substantive philosophical grounds for critical theory and various modes of critique. Unlike the developmental historicism that dominated the nineteenth century, we start from a radical historicism tied to nominalism, contingency, and contestability. This radical historicism is compatible with a commitment to truth claims, including the truth of historicism and the truth of particular genealogies and other accounts of the world. Genealogy can be viewed as radical historicism in its critical guise, denaturalizing the ideas it targets. In addition, however, radical historicism provides possible grounds for both historical ontology and a revised version of ideology critique. Ideology is conceived here in relation to failures in consciousness itself rather than the alleged conflicts of a material base.

"Conforming neither to the hierarchical and bureaucratic organization of the European nation-state nor the anarchical structure of international organizations, The European Union (EU) and its predecessors provide an exemplary site for developing a decentred approach to the study of governance. The book offers an analysis of the formation and transformation of the EU as an example of governance above the nation-state and is framed by the recognition that the construction of the EU has resulted in variegated and decentred forms of governance. The chapters look at distinct aspects of EU governance to bring to light the influence of elite narratives, scientific rationalities, local traditions and meaningful practices in the making and remaking of European governance. As such each chapter offers a unique contribution to the study of the EU. In doing so, the book challenges dominant narratives of European integration and policymaking that appeal to reified rationalities and social structures and uncovers the contingency and conflict endemic to European governance. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics, European politics/studies, governance and more broadly to public management, international organisations, anthropology, and sociology"--

Decentring health policy: traditions, narratives, dilemmas / Mark Bevir and Justin Waring -- Sedimented governance in the English National Health Service / Lorelei Jones -- Governing professionals in a decentred state: case studies from the English National Health Service / Ruth McDonald -- Governing primary care: manipulated emergence, ambiguous rules and shifting incentives / Kath Checkland -- Decentring patient safety governance: case studies of four English Foundation Trust Hospital Boards / Tim Freeman, Russell Mannion, Ross Millar and Huw Davies -- Network contra network: the gap between policy and practice in the organisation of major trauma care / Justin Waring, Simon Bishop and Bridget Roe -- Patient and public involvement in the new NHS: choice, voice, and the pursuit of legitimacy / Graham P. Martin and Pam Carter -- (De)politicising hospital closures in Scottish health policy 2000-2010 / Ellen Stewart -- Congruence and incoherence: public health governance and policy in a devolved UK / Rob Ralston and Katherine Smith -- Welsh health governance, or health governance in Wales / Scott L. Greer -- Transforming a public good into a private bad: political legitimacy, wilful deceit and the reform of the NHS in England / Ewen Speed.

Wittgenstein and Normative Inquiry -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- 1: Introduction: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Normative Inquiry -- 2: Normativity and Ethics in the Tractatus: Method, Self and Value -- 3: Wittgenstein: Values, Normative Inquiry, and the Problem of "Criticizing from Outside" -- 4: Wittgenstein's Blue Book, Linguistic Meaning and Music -- 5: Wittgenstein in Pitkin's Republic -- 6: "The Machine as Symbol": Wittgenstein's Contribution to the Politics of Judgment and Freedom in Contemporary Democratic Theory

Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stake is a conflict between "quantitative" versus "qualitative" methods. By contrast, we begin by suggesting that political scientists are free to use whichever method they find most useful for their research purposes. Instead of methodological reasons for making the interpretive turn, political scientists have ethical reasons for adopting this paradigm. In particular, interpretive approaches give political scientists a better account of the nature and role of values in human life, a sense for how the historical past is ethically relevant, the ability to advance politically engaged sociologies, and a deliberative critique of technocracy. Political scientists should be free to critically engage, scrutinize, and even normatively evaluate human ethical positions.