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In this paper I analyze the work on exchange rates and external imbalances by University of Chicago faculty members during the university’s first 100 years, 1892 to 1992. Many people associate Chicago’s views with Milton Friedman’s advocacy for flexible exchange rates. But, of course, there was much more than that, including the work of J. Laurence Laughlin on bimetallism, Jacob Viner on the balance of payments, Lloyd Metzler on transfers, Harry Johnson on trade and currencies, Lloyd Mints on exchange rate regimes, Robert Mundell on optimal currency areas, and Arnold Harberger on shadow exchange rates, among others. The analysis shows that, although different scholars emphasized different issues, there was a common thread in this research, anchored on the role of relative prices’ changes during the adjustment process.

The article provides an overview of two books, "At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century" and "The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History," which explore the role of ideas in shaping American culture and society during the mid-twentieth century. The authors examine the influence of ideas on practical power and the relationship between ideas and culture. The books offer insights into the movement of ideas across cultures and their impact on intellectual history. The article also discusses the transdisciplinary perspective of "At the Center" and its relevance to the social sciences, including economics. It highlights the search for core principles and consensus in midcentury thought and culture, as well as efforts to broaden Americans' intellectual horizons after World War II. The text delves into the intellectual and cultural shifts in America from 1948 to 1963, focusing on centering and decentering tendencies. It explores various aspects of American culture during this period, such as attempts to define a distinct American culture, the influence of economics on thought, the rise of postmodernism and identity politics, and the impact of globalization. The authors argue that while there were efforts to establish a unified American culture, there were also movements towards decentering and fragmentation. The text suggests that understanding the changes in American economics during this time is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of American thought and culture. [Extracted from the article]

The article provides a comprehensive analytical reconstruction of the formation and evolution of the civilizational approach in the context of the intellectual and institutional history of sociology. Three waves of civilizational analysis are highlighted, coinciding with three stages of sociology’s disciplinary development: pre-disciplinary, disciplinary and post-disciplinary. The first wave includes the development of the unitary-linear concept of civilization in the middle of the 18th century, its reception in early sociology, and its total marginalization in the late 19th century with sociology’s entry into the classical period. The second wave began in the first two decades of the 20th century, marked by the development of pluralistic theory and comparative history of civilizations in the works of M. Weber and E. Durkheim with M. Moss. It continues in the interwar period, when — with the general decline of sociology’s interest in macro-historical topics — N. Elias and P.A. Sorokin created their theories of civilizational dynamics, and culminates in the critical reception of the meta-historical theories of local civilizations during the two and a half decades following the war. The third wave, which continues to the present day, was driven by the civilizational turn in the mid 1970’s, initiated by B. Nelson and S.N. Eisenstadt. It combines the tendency for civilizational analysis to embed itself in the sociological tradition with the intention to renew and consolidate its research program, represented by four main models: processual, configurational, interactive, and relational. J. Arnason carried out the most ambitious project of theoretical integration in the field of civilizational analysis on the basis of the concept of mutual constitution of culture and power. The internal division of the pluralist approach into meta-historical and sociological directions is just as important as its opposition to the unitary approach. The first formulations of both versions of the pluralist approach were made independently of each other during the decade-long period between 1869 and 1879 in Russia by N.Y. Danilevsky and N.I. Khlebnikov.

This document provides an overview of a virtual issue of the journal Social Science History that focuses on race in the United States. The issue features a collection of articles that explore different perspectives and approaches to understanding race. The articles cover a range of topics, including the role of enslaved labor, the experiences of Black strikebreakers, the formation of interracial working-class identity, the racialization of domestic work, and the relationship between health and race. The authors emphasize the need for more research on racial dynamics outside of the US context and the importance of addressing health as a factor in racial inequality. Overall, this collection of essays aims to deepen our understanding of race and its impact on historical analysis and contemporary society. [Extracted from the article]

This document is a response to comments on the book "Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the 20th Century." The author, Bradford DeLong, addresses both praise and criticism received and engages with specific points made by commenters. The author discusses the balance of the book, the absence of demographic history, the lack of discussion on oil and global warming, and the role of labor and capital in the 20th century. DeLong defends their grand narrative of human progress and wealth, while acknowledging the ongoing challenges of equitable distribution and technological progress. The document provides information about DeLong's background as an economics professor and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. It is published online by Cambridge University Press. [Extracted from the article]

The article provides a response to J. Bradford DeLong's book, "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century," emphasizing its significance in examining the economic developments and challenges throughout the twentieth century. The author acknowledges the importance of grand narratives in understanding historical events but also emphasizes the need for humility and openness to alternatives. The text discusses the conflict between Hayek and Polanyi, portraying it as a conflict between capital and labor over the meaning of democracy. The neoliberal turn of the 1970s is described as an offensive by capital against labor, leading to the persistence of neoliberalism due to the crisis and defeat of postwar social democracy. [Extracted from the article]

"Slouching towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century" by J. Bradford DeLong is a comprehensive analysis of the global economy from 1870 to 2010. The book examines this period through an economic lens and identifies three key factors that contributed to unprecedented economic growth. However, it acknowledges that humanity never achieved utopia due to the unresolved political question of how to distribute the abundance of production. While the book has received praise for its grand narrative, some scholars have called for more attention to be given to other continents, the history of economic ideas, environmental damage, and demographic factors. Overall, the book provides a thought-provoking account of history during this period, but there is room for improvement in terms of organization and inclusion of additional topics. [Extracted from the article]

This article investigates the media lives of a particular class taxonomy in the Swedish press from 1945 to 1976. Invented by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1911, the 'social group division' system was abandoned in the early post-war period. Around the same time, however, it gained popularity in Swedish culture and political debate. While earlier research has noted that such bureaucratic class taxonomies – as in several other Western countries – conditioned how actors understood and created new knowledge about the population, this process of wider circulation remains understudied. Using insights from literature on 'the social life of methods' and the history of knowledge, which underline that knowledge is transformed by and transforms the contexts it circulates in, I show that print media was an arena for circulating and producing new meaning around class taxonomies. Although editorials shunned the social group division for incorrectly representing Swedish society and creating artificial class boundaries, journalists used the taxonomy to explain social structures. Furthermore, by interviewing 'typical' members of the different social groups, journalists made the system relatable and personal for their readers. In this context, the social groups were imagined as cultural communities, sharing cultural behaviours and preferences. Lastly, I analyse usages of the social group division in letters to the editor, which reveal that people felt they were being classified and wanted to offer their views of society, using the taxonomy in ways the experts had not intended. This study thereby contributes to the history of social taxonomies and class languages in the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of science in European integration, highlighting the concept of ‘EUropeanisation in and through science' as both a cause and effect of European development within the European Union (EU). Topics discussed include the evolution of EU science policy, the impact of scientific research on European integration, and the role of science diplomacy in fostering interconnectedness within the EU.

Abstract: After the Black Death, serfdom disappeared in Western Europe while making a resurgence in Eastern Europe. What explains this difference? I argue that serfdom was against the interests of the sovereign and was only imposed when the nobility, who needed serfdom to maintain their economic and political standing, had leverage to impose their will. The nobility gained this power through financing the state. Using data from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries, I show that serfdom was imposed and strengthened in areas where sovereigns had few other resources to finance the state.

In the first half of the twentieth century, deaths from infectious disease, especially among the very young, fell dramatically in American cities. However, as infant mortality fell and life expectancy rose, racial inequality in urban infectious disease mortality grew. In this paper, we show that the fall in mortality and the rise in racial inequality in mortality reflected two countervailing processes. The dramatic decline in infant mortality from waterborne diseases drastically reduced the total urban infectious disease mortality rate of both Black and white Americans while having a comparatively small effect on the total racial disparity in urban infectious disease mortality. In contrast, the unequal fall in tuberculosis mortality, particularly in the prime of life, widened racial inequality in infectious disease mortality in US cities.

The demographic and epidemiological transitions of the past 200 years are well documented at an aggregate level. Understanding differences in individual and group risks for mortality during these transitions requires linkage between demographic data and detailed individual cause of death information. This paper describes the digitization of almost 185,000 causes of death for Ohio to supplement demographic information in the Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-database (LIFE-M). To extract causes of death, our methodology combines handwriting recognition, extensive data cleaning algorithms, and the semi-automated classification of causes of death into International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. Our procedures are adaptable to other collections of handwritten data, which require both handwriting recognition and semi-automated coding of the information extracted.

Abdul Rahman Ibn Khaldun is one of the most significant figures in the history of social sciences. He is also an outstanding thinker in the history. This article deals with the contribution of Ibn Khaldun to communication science and his pioneering works in the field of international and intercultural communication studies of the Islamic world. He is considered by many as the founder of sociology. His typology on cyclical pattern of history and his theories on political economy, demography, and environmental sciences have earned him a prominent place among the major intellectuals in the history of social thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides information about various contributors in the field of history and social sciences. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds and have expertise in areas such as African and African American studies, Puerto Rican and Caribbean history, Brazilian history, global development, and the history of slavery. Their research interests include topics like rurality, creolization, postcolonialism, decoloniality, race, and capitalism. The document also mentions their published works and ongoing projects, highlighting their contributions to their respective fields. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the book "The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought" by Steinmetz, which explores the relationship between colonialism and the development of sociology as an academic discipline. The book argues that colonialism played a significant role in shaping sociological knowledge and influenced the work of prominent sociologists. It also examines the historical context of colonial sociology, tracing its evolution from a shared field of knowledge to an institutionalized subfield after World War II. The article highlights the importance of interdisciplinary research in understanding colonial sociological knowledge production and suggests further studies in different national contexts. [Extracted from the article]

Modern colonialism from the eighteenth century onward encompassed most of the world's surface. Today, the world is different. In theory at least, nation-states rather than empires and colonies are the global norm. The sorts of colonial conquests that mark earlier centuries appear to have ended. But does this mean colonialism in the past is not relevant for the present? Scholarly and popular discussions allude to the idea that past colonialism impacts the present, using a variety of terms like "legacies," "imprints," "vestiges," "ruins," or "afterlives." Yet existing scholarship has yet to fully clarify and catalog the specific processes and mechanisms that connect colonial history with its putative legacies. This essay, based upon the 2022 Presidential Address to the Social Science History Association, identifies and discusses four such processes and mechanisms or "modes of reverberation": (1) continued colonialism through simple reproduction, (2) the persistence of power through formal and informal institutionalization, (3) path dependent historical trajectories (or "colonial institutionalism"), and (4) colonialism's archive of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World" by Katherine Johnston challenges the belief that enslaved Africans were better suited to the hot climate of the British Greater Caribbean compared to white laborers. The book provides a nuanced analysis of the complex factors that shaped the labor force in the Atlantic Plantation Complex and debunks long-standing assumptions about the role of climate in the institution of slavery. It also discusses the relationship between climate, race, and slavery in the Americas, as well as the impact of diseases on enslaved people. While the book is ambitious, it misses opportunities to explore certain subjects, such as the role of Indigenous peoples in climatic justifications for enslavement. Readers are encouraged to critically examine the sources they use and consider potential biases and inaccuracies. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Harvey J. Graff: A Tribute" in the journal "Across the Disciplines" pays homage to the prolific social historian Harvey J. Graff, highlighting his extensive contributions to literacy studies and interdisciplinary research. Graff's work challenges the literacy myth and emphasizes the historical dimensions of literacy development, practice, and pedagogy. The article also reflects on Graff's personal qualities, such as generosity, kindness, and mentorship, which have had a profound impact on his colleagues and students. The tribute acknowledges Graff's enduring influence on the field of literacy studies and underscores the ongoing importance of critical research and teaching in this area. [Extracted from the article]

In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, several sociological monographic campaigns were carried out in a few villages in Romania. It was for the first time that a large research group from Romania investigated rural social life using an integrated theoretical system and interdisciplinary methods and instruments. In the second half of the 1930s, a different kind of rural-oriented endeavour started to be undertaken: the “royal voluntary student teams”, whose work in Romanian villages was more oriented towards social action than social research. In October 1938, the Law of the Social Service was issued, providing that all of Romania’s university graduates were compelled to participate in organized cultural work in villages. In most of the activities undertaken by the Bucharest Sociological School and coordinated by Professor Dimitrie Gusti, women participated in large numbers – yet another new feature in Romanian scientific practice. In this paper, I explore how gender, conceptualized as a social, political, and material category, configures power relations within a research group, and I provide tentative and inherently partial answers to such questions as: What combination of social, economic, and political factors led to women’s massive involvement in the sociological monographic campaigns? How did women’s participation contribute to the research endeavours? What are the disciplinary and institutional mechanisms and personal strategies that produced women’s inclusion in, and later exclusion from, the research group?

This text, marking the 60th anniversary of gisics, revisits certain facets of an institutional history bearing upon the emergence of modernity in Portuguese social sciences. Focusing on the analytical contributions of Adérito Sedas Nunes - the main protagonist behind gis' foundation - the article elaborates on the transition from corporatism to sociology, a path that reflects the gradual maturation of a certain approach to the obstacles that hindered the development of Portuguese society and the ways to overcome them. The 60th anniversary of gis-ics constitute, therefore, a fitting occasion to recognize its historical importance and its consensual status as an institution of reference in Portuguese social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cobden-Chevalier treaty of 1860 eliminated French import prohibitions and lowered tariffs between France and Great Britain. The policy change was largely unexpected and unusually free from direct lobbying. A series of commercial treaties with other nations followed. Post-1860, we find a significant rise in French intra-industry trade. Sectors that liberalized more experienced higher two-way trade. Our findings are consistent with the idea that trade liberalization led to smooth adjustment that avoided costly inter-sectoral re-allocations of factors.

We study the link between fiscal austerity and Nazi electoral success. Voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 show that areas more affected by austerity (spending cuts and tax increases) had relatively higher vote shares for the Nazi Party. We also find that the localities with relatively high austerity experienced relatively high suffering (measured by mortality rates) and these areas' electorates were more likely to vote for the Nazi Party. Our findings are robust to a range of specifications including an instrumental variable strategy and a border-pair policy discontinuity design.

How might COVID-19 affect human capital and wellbeing in the long run? The COVID-19 pandemic has already imposed a heavy human cost-taken together, this public health crisis and its attendant economic downturn appear poised to dwarf the scope, scale, and disruptiveness of most modern pandemics. What evidence we do have about other modern pandemics is largely limited to short-run impacts. Consequently, recent experience can do little to help us anticipate and respond to COVID-19's potential long-run impact on individuals over decades and even generations. History, however, offers a solution. Historical crises offer closer analogues to COVID-19 in each of its key dimensions-as a global pandemic, as a global recession-and offer the runway necessary to study the life-course and intergenerational outcomes. In this paper, we review the evidence on the long-run effects on health, labor, and human capital of both historical pandemics (with a focus on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic) and historical recessions (with a focus on the Great Depression). We conclude by discussing how past crises can inform our approach to COVID-19-helping tell us what to look for, what to prepare for, and what data we ought to collect now.

Reviews the book ‘A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890-1937, William G. Ross.

New large-scale linked data are revolutionizing quantitative history and demography. This paper proposes two complementary strategies for improving inference with linked historical data: the use of validation variables to identify higher quality links and a simple, regression-based weighting procedure to increase the representativeness of custom research samples. We demonstrate the potential value of these strategies using the 1850-1930 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Linked Representative Samples (IPUMS-LRS)-a high quality, publicly available linked historical dataset. We show that, while incorrect linking rates appear low in the IPUMS-LRS, researchers can reduce error rates further using validation variables. We also show how researchers can reweight linked samples to balance observed characteristics in the linked sample with those in a reference population using a simple regression-based procedure.

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt’s articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt’s invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ’s return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition.

Through a detailed analysis of Alexander Szalai's career as a major transsystemic academic entrepreneur in the Kádár era, this paper has been written to discern and assess how such activities impacted the ways in which science and scholarship worked at both sides of the systemic divide (the "Iron Curtain"). The single most important finding is the emergence of transsystemic spaces (fields), the undoing of national and systemic boundaries. These transsystemic configurations tended to provide social (formal and informal) frameworks within which reputations are generated and distributed, reputational hierarchies are established and reproduced. For scholars in the East such transsystemic spaces brought with them a great deal of good news: they could mean increased freedom and/or an unbiased assessment and genuine acknowledgement for what one has accomplished. Transsystemic fields brought with them a whole array of new (kinds of) opportunities. Acting as a nod of networks that generated transsystemic spaces could yield increased reputation and power at home. As all structures in the social world, however, transsystemic spaces could enable as well as constrain, they could propel you to the skies and might also crush you. As any other resources constituting social capital in academia, the space spanning along transsystemic networks of scholars and scientists could also be weaponized for the wrong purposes: they could enable impostors to acquire a status and reputation way over and above the person's actual accomplishments, due to imperfect information available in foreign environments. Time would, of course, always show who they really are – but before that happens, they could bring havoc upon their field back home by distorted reputational hierarchies, by skewed distribution of competitive power between rivaling intellectual tendencies or "schools" and, eventually, by "paradigmatic" streamlining and contra-selection. This is, in a nutshell, what the story of A. Szalai shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the cumulative production of knowledge about the development of Latin America, in general, and Argentina, in particular, from the case of Economic Development, in the period 1958-1975. The author proposes, through a conceptual theoretical analysis, that the accumulation of knowledge is evidenced by gradually posing new analysis variables and questions. Between 1958 and 1959, a central problem was the transformation of an agrarian productive structure into an industrial one. Between 1961 and 1969, the above is assumed, and includes social and political aspects of Latin American underdevelopment. Between 1970 and 1975, the magazine publishes discussions on dependency and on some specific experiences of underdevelopment, condensing problematizations and findings from the two previous periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the development of historical databases reconstructing the lives of large populations accelerated. These considerable investments of time and money have greatly expanded possibilities for new research in history, demography, sociology, economics, and other disciplines. This special issue describes the content and design of 23 important historical databases. Authors were given the freedom to discuss a range of practical and technical decisions from evaluating archival sources to crowdsourcing data entry. The most common issue is nominative record linkage, but we find different choices between semi-automatic and fully automatic linkage techniques and various approaches for connecting diverse sources. Some databases describe special problems, like linking Chinese names, handwritten text recognition or the construction of a release in IDS-format. Other databases offer detailed descriptions of sources or discuss prospects for including new datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 60 years several major historical databases with reconstructed life courses of large populations spanning decades have been launched. The development of these databases is indicative of considerable investments that have greatly expanded the possibilities for new research within the fields of history, demography, sociology, as well as other disciplines. In this volume spanning seven articles, eight databases are included that have had a wide impact on research in various disciplines. Each database had its own unique genesis that is well described in the articles assembled in this volume. They inform readers about how these databases have changed the course of research in historical demography and related disciplines, how settled findings were challenged or confirmed, and how innovative investigations were launched and implemented. In the end we explore how research with this kind of databases will develop in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue de Synthèse is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Historians’ engagement with the social sciences, which was promising and multi-dimensional into the 1970s, shriveled soon thereafter. The factors that seemed to justify this turning away appear today to be much less compelling. Times have changed, and both historians and social scientists may now be ready to re-engage with an interrupted project to intensify interdisciplinary dialogue, improve the methods of historical explanation, and construct a more historical body of social theory.

Using evidence from both papal and cardinal inventories, as well as from cardinal wills, this essay argues that the papal curia developed a distinctive language for describing liturgical vestments in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that emphasised the peoples and places that made the materials and ornaments of these garments. Examples from inventories of local dioceses and religious houses are offered to illustrate the peculiarity of the curial descriptions, and comparisons are also made to royal and mercantile inventories. While the curial emphasis on the places and peoples producing the materials used in ecclesiastical vestments may simply have been the performance of connoisseurship within an elite institutional culture, the author suggests that it may also express the expansive papal claims to dominion articulated by Boniface VIII (1294–1303) and his immediate successors.

This paper traces the career of Michael Jensen, a Chicago finance PhD turned Harvard Business School professor to reveal the intellectual and social conditions that enabled the emergence and institutionalization of what we call the “neoliberal common sense of capital,” what others have called the “shareholder value” view of the American firm. Jensen’s work was embraced by a generation of corporate raiders aggressively advancing new financial practices and discourses. His contribution, commonly understood as “agency theory,” was intertwined with the transformations in corporate management and governance of the last decades of the twentieth century—from the junk bond market in the 1980s to the exponential growth of CEO pay in the 1990s to the shareholder value management strategies of the 2000s. While debates about the spread of neoliberal ideas and governance tools have largely centered on the transformations of the state and international institutions or the role of actively organized intellectual networks, this essay emphasizes the importance of identifying specific carriers of particular transformations within the space of American “business discourse”.

This article analyzes the US sociologist Donald Pierson’s views on the process of modernization as expressed in research he conducted while residing in Brazil from the 1930s to the 1950s. Looking first at his study on race relations in Bahia and then at his investigations of rural communities in the São Francisco Valley, it shows that Pierson’s exchange with local intellectuals was decisive to his readings of Brazil’s rural, patriarchal past and his understanding of the potential for building a modern social order out of these traditions. His perspective was also evident during the debate on the relation between racism and modernity in the context of the UNESCO Race Relations Project. This examination of Pierson’s work likewise signals how transnational dialogue between the Global North and South contributed to the sociological debate on modernization, and how US scholars ascribed more than one meaning to the modernizing changes underway in peripheral countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent historiography has been more positive about the Wilhelmine German Empire, which long had a poor reputation. This might be partly due to the trend towards transnational history with a specific focus on transfer and exchange. This article argues that from such a perspective the re-evaluation of the German Empire may easily overshoot the mark. Focusing on a comparative study of Hamburg and London, it analyses a classic topic of transnational history—the field of science and social reform. However, by approaching it in the context of a history of security, the article provides a valuable corrective in the debate on the German Empire. It thereby also opens a new path for the history of security. Although security and knowledge are closely interrelated, this relationship has been rather neglected in the historiography. It is argued here that security concerns related to social unrest were a major factor that gave rise to the emergence of the social sciences at the turn of the 20th century. Social reformers and social scientists believed that supposedly neutral scientific knowledge was a prerequisite for resolving social conflicts. However, public acceptance of their expert status in security matters was far from self-evident. While they met fierce opposition in Hamburg, liberal and democratic traditions facilitated its acceptance in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]