Introduction: The human sciences and Cold War America

Abstract

Studies of the history of the human sciences during the Cold War era have proliferated over the past decade--in JHBS and elsewhere. This special issue focuses on the connections between the behavioral sciences and the culture and politics of the Cold War in the United States. In the recent literature, there is a tendency to identify the Cold War human sciences with two main paradigms: that of psychocultural analysis, on the one hand, and of the systems sciences, on the other. The essays in the special issue both extend understanding of each of these interpretive frameworks and help us to grasp their interconnection.

Détente Science? Transformations of Knowledge and Expertise in the 1970s

“…The resulting ‘military‐industrial‐academic complex’ was not confined to the natural sciences whose technical innovations were of immediate interest to the military. Social scientists eagerly took up invitations to do research that could be used in the Cold War, too, for example explaining opponents' or combatants' behavior (Solovey, , ; Isaac, ; Solovey and Cravens, ).…”

The creation of a postcolonial subject: The Chicago and Ateneo de Manila schools and the Peace Corps in the Philippines, 1960–1970

“…This article delineates how the Peace Corps developed as a Cold War institution and how it relied on the social science concept of SIR to obtain its pacifying goals in the decolonizing Philippines. Scholars of the history of social sciences in the post World War II period have convincingly argued that the specific constellation of military and private funding in conjunction with U.S. technocratic bureaucracy produced academic knowledge that was embedded in Cold War ideology and rationality (see, e.g., Amadae, ; Farish, ; Robin, ; Rohde, ; Simpson, ; Solovey, ; for comprehensive review of literature consult: Gilman, ; Isaac, ; Isaac & Bell, ;Solovey, ). The term “Cold War social sciences” has emerged to describe these entanglements (see, e.g., Engerman, ).…”

International construction of area studies in France during the Cold War

“…Area studies and, a fortiori, studies focusing on regions under communist control have, for the most part, been viewed through the lens of Cold War historiography, being criticized for their instrumental role, since they were government-supported fields (Cumings, 1998; Wallerstein, 1998). Within a wider debate on ‘Cold War social science’ (Heyck and Kaiser, 2010; Isaac, 2011; Solovey, 2001; Solovey and Cravens, 2012), some have argued for a more nuanced picture based on the inscription of the US area studies development in a broader historical framework (Engerman, 2010a). This perspective has contributed to a rethinking of the subject’s intellectual and organizational roots that downplays the effects of ‘Cold War determinism’ (Engerman, 2009a: 5; 2010a).…”