The individual and “the general situation”: The tension barometer and the race problem at the University of Chicago, 1947–1954

Abstract

This article explains how social theories that posited white attitudes as the root of racial injustice gained traction in postwar social thought. Examining the production of a "tension barometer," an attitude survey that scholars from the University of Chicago's Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations created to predict interracial violence, I chart vigorous debate over the nature and causes of racial oppression in the critical postwar decades. Available-and unavailable-social scientific frameworks, activists" interests, and emerging anticommunism, the Committee's history shows, created an environment where individualistic conceptions of "the race problem" won out, despite critique.

Internacionalização das ciências sociais: a sociologia paulista e o Projeto Tensões da UNESCO

“…Especialista na questão racial e expoente de uma segunda geração da Escola de Chicago, ele havia sido um dos orientadores de Donald Pierson. Em sintonia com o Projeto Tensões, Wirth atuou como consultor na tentativa de produzir instrumentos de avaliação de comportamentos e atitudes raciais, como o "barômetro das tensões" -uma pesquisa de atitude destinada a elucidar as causas da violência interracial (Gordon, 2010).…”

Introduction: The Social Sciences in a Cross‐Disciplinary Age

“…If some essays published in this journal point to the necessity of writing the history of the social sciences with paying heed to the natural sciences, an even more significant number of them have emphasized the cross-disciplinary nature of social scientific knowledge in the postwar era. Whether authors consider leading social scientists, such as Robert K. Merton (Nichols, 2010), Talcott Parsons (Owens, 2010), and David Easton (Gunnel, 2013); influential works, such as William F. Whyte's sociological classic Street Corner Society (Andersson, 2014); committees, such as the University of Chicago's Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations (Gordon, 2010); think tanks, such as the RAND Corporation and the Cowles Commission (Van Horn & Klaes, 2011) and the Simulmatics Corporation (Rohde, 2011); international organizations, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO; Selcer, 2009); educational models, such as the researchbased model of business education (Bottom, 2009); research movements, such as measurement of decision making (Heukelom, 2010), the projective test movement (Lemov, 2011), the peace research movement (Tomás Rangil, 2012), and behavioralism in political science (Hauptmann, 2012); or disciplines and fields, such as psychoanalysis (Gitre, 2010), linguistics (Martin-Nielsen, 2011, International Relations (Guilhot, 2011), and British sociology (Steinmetz, 2014), their narratives point invariably to the historical significance of cross-disciplinary engagements. 1 Here, too, natural scientists occasionally played a role.…”

Introduction: The human sciences and Cold War America

“…By 2009, the increasingly wide scope of research on the behavioral science nexus was apparent in articles covering animal psychology, the role of behavioral science in foundation‐sponsored business education, and UNESCO's attempts to act as patron and unifying agent in the broad field of the social sciences after World War II (Vicedo, 2009; Bottom, 2009; Selcer, 2009). Last year, JHBS published four articles on aspects of American social science in the Cold War era, and a further two with direct bearing on postwar developments (Gordon, 2010; Nichols, 2010; Owens, 2010; Heukelom, 2010; Gitre, 2010; Stark, 2010).…”