Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only by the scope of its failures. Patrick Schmidt's new volume Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022) documents the history of SocRel, as it was called, in intimate detail. It paints a colourful and carefully researched picture of the personalities and events that are central to the department's story, ranging from the austere theoretician Talcott Parsons to the hallucinogen-ingesting Ram Dass.
In this episode, Patrick talks to host Alex Golub about SocRel as well as the wider context of the Cold War academy in which it was situated.
Alex Golub is associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
View all episodes
By New Books Network
4.2
4747 ratings
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only by the scope of its failures. Patrick Schmidt's new volume Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022) documents the history of SocRel, as it was called, in intimate detail. It paints a colourful and carefully researched picture of the personalities and events that are central to the department's story, ranging from the austere theoretician Talcott Parsons to the hallucinogen-ingesting Ram Dass.
In this episode, Patrick talks to host Alex Golub about SocRel as well as the wider context of the Cold War academy in which it was situated.
Alex Golub is associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
More shows like New Books in Anthropology
View all
Democracy Now! Audio
5,698 Listeners
New Books in History
209 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
193 Listeners
New Books in Military History
162 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
161 Listeners
New Books in Environmental Studies
18 Listeners
New Books in African Studies
42 Listeners
New Books in Medicine
17 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
110 Listeners
New Books in World Affairs
25 Listeners
The LRB Podcast
292 Listeners
New Books in Critical Theory
143 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
Philosophize This!
15,088 Listeners
Jacobin Radio
1,424 Listeners
The Dig
1,540 Listeners
Chapo Trap House
8,813 Listeners
Philosophy For Our Times
304 Listeners
Tech Won't Save Us
535 Listeners
Acid Horizon
175 Listeners
What's Left of Philosophy
261 Listeners
The Ezra Klein Show
15,237 Listeners
Ones and Tooze
346 Listeners
Lever Time
531 Listeners
Past Present Future
321 Listeners