Social Scientific Gaze

Per Wisselgren is Associate Professor of Sociology, with a PhD in History of Science and Ideas, at Umeå University in Sweden. Previous books include Social Science in Context: Historical, Sociological and Global Perspectives (co-edited, 2013), Couples in Science and Politics: Intellectual Marriages in Modernity (co-edited in Swedish, 2011), and History of Participatory Media: Politics and Publics, 1750-2000 (co-edited, 2011).

'Per Wisselgren has written a remarkable account of an extraordinary series of events in the period of pre-academic reformist social science.' – Serendipity: Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences'Abroad, Sweden's welfare state system is as famous as the four letter furniture store. Fewer people are familiar with the socio-historical background of the first. Per Wisselgren's book offers a detailed portrait of the debates on the 19th century social question and the rise of the social sciences which lead to the model welfare system.' – Christian Fleck, University of Graz, Austria‘As a study in the sociology of knowledge, this is an exemplary book. It is deeply theoretical, richly empirical, and engagingly written.’ – Annulla Linders, Contemporary Sociology

• Introduction: The testament1. The social question: Arenas, actors, articulations2. The international context: research and reform in Germany and Britain3. Viktor Lorén: An unremarked intellectual4. The board: A network and its thought style5. Library and lectures: A social geography of knowledge6. Surveying the social: With letters and numbers7. The rise of academic social science: Wicksell, Steffen, Cassel8. The social scientific gaze: Between the social question and the rise of academic social science9. Appendix: The Lorén Foundation's series of publications, 1890-1899