Social sciences in the field of power – the case of Danish social science

Abstract

The social science disciplines are strongly differentiated both on an epistemological level and in problem choice. It can be argued that they are characterized by a number of different epistemological ways of position-taking or ways of legitimizing social scientific knowledge production. Furthermore, different scientific problems and social institutions are allocated as research objects to different social science disciplines. This article looks into how these different epistemological styles and choice of scientific problems not only are internal principles of differentiation but also constitute important relations to other powerful social interests and institutions in the field of power. I argue that we can understand the social sciences as a field of force and struggle, where different disciplines compete in producing legitimate representations of the social that also represent specific societal interests. Using the language of Bourdieu, I construct a space of social scientific epistemological position-taking using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). Into this space I project a number of supplementary variables representing social science disciplines, position-taking towards non-academic institutions, interests and research subjects, and thus show how different epistemological position-taking is connected to specific societal interests, problems and institutions. The article draws on data from a survey conducted among Danish social scientists in autumn 2009.