Power of Systems

Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is Associate Professor in Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University, London. She is the author of The Will to Predict and coeditor of The Struggle for the Long-Term in Transnational Science and Politics.

The Power of Systems is a first-rate monograph, best suited for graduate students, scholars of Soviet Russia and the Cold War, and scholars of the history and sociology of science.(American Historical Review) Combining a policy analyst's sensitivity to practical politics and a historian's instinct for contingency and context, Rindzevičiūtė has provided a rare glimpse through the lens of boutique institutional history of a time and place.(Slavic Review) The Power of Systems is a masterful study of a complex network of institutions and individuals—many of which were previously unregistered in the Anglo-American historiography—that made the international science of systems analysis possible.(Technology and Culture) Perhaps the most powerful aspect of The Power of Systems is the question it raises about the relationship between the history of ideas and the shape of contemporary politics.(Journal of the History of Ideas) In her new book, The Will to Predict, Rindzevičiūtė examines the history of scientific prediction in the context of late modern governance using the example of Soviet Russia. While the focus on an individual country might seemingly limit general conclusions, she hopes this example serves as an instructive one for broader trends and developments in liberal context as well.(Dějiny – teorie – kritika (History – Theory – Criticism))