#12233. Social science as apologia

July 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Sociology and Political Science;
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Abstract:
The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavors, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs, and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and acquiescence to the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologetic potential, namely that it provides excuses or justifications for people doing bad things, preventing them from being rightfully blamed and punished. This introduction to the special issue sketches the long history of debates about the justificatory consequences of social science and lays the foundations for a theory of social scientific apologia by examining three main aspects: what social and cognitive processes motivate this type of accusation, how social theorists respond to it and whether different contexts of circulation of ideas affect how these controversies unfold.
Keywords:
blame; controversies; excuse; justification; non-epistemic values; normativity

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