History of the social sciences

Course description

The focus in this course is on the institutional history of social science, both in academia and in relation to the power apparatus of the nation state and corporations, that is to changing forms of governmentality and population control linked to statistics, archival technology or ethnographic techniques. Participants will learn to study the history of the social sciences and history notably using the methods of historical sociology and STS.

• Course leader: Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen, professor of intellectual history Nord university.
• Main Lecturer: Johan Heilbron, Professor emeritus at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique (CESSP-CNRS-EHESS) in Paris, visiting professor at Liège Université, Belgium.

Costs

No fees for internal candidates. Fee of NOK 1000 for external candidates.

Program

Monday 02.02.2026

09:00 – 10:30 Opening session: presentation of faculty and participants
10:30 – 10:45 coffee break
10:45 – 12:15 Lecture: Johan Heilbron: Why do we need a historical sociology of the social and human sciences?”
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:30 Lecture: Kjetil Jakobsen: The Social Sciences and “the Nordic model”
14:30 – 14:45 coffee break
15:00 – 16:30 Lecture: Astri Dankertsen. Indigenous studies as a cross disciplinary field of research.

Tuesday 03.02.2025

09:00 – 10:30 Lecture: Johan Heilbron: Are there national traditions in the social and human sciences?
10:30 – 10:45 coffee break
10.45 – 12:15 Lecture: Kjetil Jakobsen. A short history of French sociology and “French Theory”.
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:45 Student presentations.
15:15 – 16:30 Frank Jacob: Global history as a cross disciplinary field of research.
20:00 Course dinner for participants and staff in the city center.

Wednesday 04.02.2026

09:00 – 10:30 Lecture J. Heilbron: J. Heilbron. International circulation & transnationalizing social science.
10:45 – 12:15 Lecture. Kjetil Jakobsen: Max Weber, historical sociology and “the German mandarins”
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:30 Student presentations.
14:45 – 16:15 Lecture. Christian Lo: Clifford Geertz, the interpretive turn and its consequences for social science.

Thursday 05.02. 2026

09:00 – 10:30 Lecture: Kjetil Jakobsen History as a social science? Historicism and the rise and fall of narrative history
10:45 – 12:15 Lecture Johan Heilbron: Dissecting Pierre Bourdieu's practice of scientific invention.
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:15 Student presentations:
14:30 – 16:00 Summary and evaluation.

About Johan Heilbron

Johan Heilbron is the author of many books on the development of the social and human sciences, economic organizations and institutions, and transnational exchange and cultural globalization. They include: The Rise of Social Theory (1995, also in French, Dutch, Portuguese), The Rise of the Social Sciences and the
Formation of Modernity (co-edited, 2001), Pour une histoire des sciences sociales (co-edited, 2004), Transnational Cultural Exchange and Globalization (2010), French Sociology (2015, also in French), New Directions in Elite Studies (co-edited, 2018), The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations (co-edited 2018), Dictionnaire International Bourdieu (co-edited, 2020), and Pierre Bourdieu et l’art de l’invention scientifique (co-authored,2022).