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Social Scientization and the Schooling State in UK Parliamentary Discourse, 1803–1909

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Daniel Scott Smith Open the ORCID record for Daniel Scott Smith [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Scott Smith*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
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Email: danielscottsmith@stanford.edu
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Abstract

Traditional accounts of state expansion and of the rise of state schooling in the nineteenth century emphasize economic, political, and social development as well as conflict and domination. These accounts explain the introduction of new state structures, like ministries of education, rules of compulsion, and the general elaboration of bureaucracies. This article contributes to the historical sociological study of state expansion with specific regard to schooling by refocusing on the role that macrocultural processes of social scientization played in shaping the discursive construction and expansion of the state. Designed to analyze the 1.3 million speeches given in the UK parliament during the nineteenth century, the research reported here supports the argument that the development, professionalization, and institutionalization of the social sciences—social scientization—was a powerful force of cultural construction across the West and was positively associated with expanded notions of the state, as evidenced with the case of the United Kingdom. This article therefore not only provides an important alternative view to those who emphasize economic and social transformation but it also advances the empirical study of the powerful role that social science, as generative institution of cultural construction, played in shaping official discourses of the state—in this instance, the schooling state.

Keywords

social sciencestate expansionstate schoolingculturelong nineteenth century
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 223 - 254
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association

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