In January 2006, we initiated a seminar series, held at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), at the London School of Economics and Political Science, on the history of postwar social science. This was an experiment to create an audience for reflection on the history of the social sciences in general. To start the series, we decided to have papers on the six core social sciences, providing general perspectives against which further work could be placed. In subsequent years, after obtaining the support of the Leverhulme Trust, we explored interdisciplinary figures in social science and a series of social problems.

These papers made us realize the importance of this interdisciplinary approach to the history of the social sciences. There is already work on this, but only as part of histories that have a much longer time frame: historical research on the postwar social sciences remains overwhelmingly discipline based. So we approached Cambridge University Press with a proposal for a short volume based on chapters by four of the participants in the seminar and outsiders. This book is the result.

We do not claim to offer a comprehensive or unified history of the social sciences since the Second World War. Contributors were provided with a common list of themes and were asked to address the ones they considered relevant to the discipline they were discussing, but no attempt has been made to homogenise the chapters, which reflect the different disciplinary backgrounds and concerns of their authors, as well as the peculiarities of the social sciences under consideration.