the 'Scientization' and 'Engineering' of Society in Twentieth- Century Britain

Abstract

It is tempting to see the increasing influence of psychological sciences in the twentieth century as an exemplary case in a history of the ‘scientization’ and ‘engineering’ of society. In Britain, just as in the Netherlands and the United States, and indeed across the Western world, the psychological sciences and their technologies, standards, and languages have come to play an evident role in shaping the way modern life is governed, understood, and conducted. This is not in dispute. However, the nature (and thus degree) of this influence, as well as the route to this influence, is complex. As such, rather than offering yet another case study of the inexorable advance towards a psychological and therapeutic society, this chapter highlights reasons for a more critical and probing attitude towards processes of (psychological) scientization and engineering of society. Elsewhere in this volume, Harry Oosterhuis demonstrates the increasing influence, from the mid- nineteenth to the twenty- first century, of ideas and practices of mental health in the Netherlands. In other contributions, we see the advance of theories and applications of psychology in the management of social life in European contexts and in the United States, ranging from a role in the organization and delivery of education, the management of workforces in industry, and in gauging and manipulating public opinion whether in the interests of managing democracy or increasing sales. This is in line with an emerging body of scholarship on the growing importance of psychological science and its applications in these areas of modern life and government. 1 This scholarship also highlights several areas of influence not covered in detail in this volume, perhaps most notably in the organization of the armed forces and the management of fear, but also in the development of penal welfare in reshaping ideas about responsibility and thus challenging existing attitudes towards punishment. 2 What makes the case for the influence of this branch of the social sciences even more compelling, and perhaps even unique, is that such psychological thought and practice was also taken up at a popular level, and thus we find an emerging historiography on how psychological governance overcame the problems of access and resistance that beset other attempts to intervene on individual subjects, and instead became embedded in everyday life and internalized within the individual psyche. In an era in which confidence in the onward march of the state has waned, such an

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