Reconsidering American Power

Description

Postcolonial studies, postmodern studies, even posthuman studies emerge, and intellectuals demand that social sciences be remade to address fundamentals of the human condition, from human rights to global environmental crises. Since these fields owe so much to American state sponsorship, is it easier to reimagine the human and the modern than to properly measure the pervasive American influence?

Reconsidering American Power offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana and the influence of Pax Americana on the social sciences. With the thematic image for this enterprise as the ‘fiery hunt’ for Ahab’s whale, the contributors pursue realities behind the theories, and reconsider the real origins and motives of their fields with an eye on what will deter or repurpose the ‘fiery hunts’ to come, by offering a critical insider’s view.

About the Editors

John D. Kelly is Christian W. MacKaeuer Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, USA.

Kurt Jacobsen is an associate (formerly research associate and lecturer) in political science at the University of Chicago, USA.

Marston H. Morgan is a member of the United States Foreign Service, USA.

Contributors

Tani Barlow, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Bruce Cumings, Edward Fullbrook, Anne I. Harrington, Michael Hudson, Kurt Jacobsen, John D. Kelly, Matthew A. Light, Marston H. Morgan, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Lloyd I. Rudolph, Marshall Sahlins, James C. Scott, George Steinmetz, and Robert Vitalis

Reviews

A compelling collection of critical essays that sheds important new light on the nexus between the growth and expansion of the American social sciences and the rise of American power.

—Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York

This volume assembles astute essays from scholars across a wide range of social science disciplines. The result is a provocative collection whose profound critique of the development of the social sciences in the shadow of American power offers penetrating insights and hope for renewal.

—John Echeverri-Gent, Department of Politics, University of Virginia.

Table of contents

Introduction

‘Call me Ishmael’: American Epic, American Grotesque, American Sublime, and the American Social Sciences

John D. Kelly, Kurt Jacobsen, and Marston H. Morgan

Part One

Origins: The American Century and Its New Sciences, in War and Peace, at Home and Abroad

1. The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race Development

Robert Vitalis

2. American Power and the New Mandarins Redux: Hegemony, Orthodoxy, and International Relations

Kurt Jacobsen

3. Seeing Like an Area Specialist
   Bruce Cumings

4. The Imperialism of Categories: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph

Part Two

Anomalies: The Use and Abuse of Political Economy 

5. The Misuse of Numbers: Audits, Quantification, and the Obfuscation of Politics

James C. Scott with Matthew A. Light

6. The Use and Abuse of Mathematical Economics

Michael Hudson

7. How to Bring Economics into the 3rd Millennium

Edward Fullbrook

Part Three

Predicaments: Some Consequences of Applied Social Science

8. Power after Nuclear Weapons

Anne I. Harrington

9. American Sociology and Colonialism, 1890s–1960s

George Steinmetz

10. Translating Social Science for China: Qu Qiubai and History’s Coffin

Tani Barlow

11. The Golden Bough at Breton Woods: Anticipating the Decline and Fall of American Anthropology

Marston H. Morgan

12. Beyond National Liberalism: Self-Determination and the World of Pax Americana

John D. Kelly

Part Four

Expeditions: After Reality Capsizes Theory

13. South Asia and American Power

Lloyd I. Rudolph

14. The Ghosts of Anticommunism and Neoliberalism: East Asian Studies in the Twenty-first Century

Michael K. Bourdaghs

15. Counterfeit COIN, and the State of Nature Effect

Marshall Sahlins

Conclusion

16. Starbuck's Dilemma and Academic Expertise

John D. Kelly and Kurt Jacobsen

Index

About the Editors and Contributors