Knowledge Divides
The report offers a first comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art of the social sciences in over a decade. The search for solutions to complex problems – environmental, societal, intercultural and economic – means that the demand for more and better social science is likely to become acute.
The World Social Science Report 2010 is a co-publication of UNESCO and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). In preparing the report, the ISSC mobilized the global social science community; hundreds of professional social scientists contributed as authors, editorial board members, or reviewers. The authors were selected so as to ensure that researchers from all parts of the world, and across different disciplines, would have a voice.
The report draws out the inequalities and asymmetries in social science knowledge production and so contains important messages for governments on the imperative to build capacity in the social sciences. The Director-General, in her Foreword, comments, “Social scientists produce work of outstanding quality and tremendous practical value, but, as this report illustrates, social scientific knowledge is often the least-developed in those parts of the world where it is most keenly needed".
