I still want my degrees in economics and law, for practical reasons, but I am now joining the view that the social sciences are superficial — and I am including certain branches of Linguistics in the social sciences.
I would never be in English, French or German, since in Spanish or Arabic you get to know twice as much. I would never be in Ethnic Studies, as it is so American, or Women’s Studies, as so much of it is parochial or outright patriarchal. But today I am just glad to be in Humanities. Despite the presence of those who would just like to emote with literary texts, people to whom I do not relate, we still assume one should really study.
These are the conclusions I have reached so far. This does not mean I am pleased with those Latin Americanists utterly bent on tracing our relationship to Greece and Rome, or that I have become dogmatically anti-anything. I am just glad to be in a set of fields that allows for depth.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Indeed. I am constantly shocked by the intellectual shallowness of some social scientist, when the KU news service sends me an email about someone in my university who has studied the seven flirting styles women use, though of course I know some with a more humanities-like depth.
There is certainly a lot of work to be done at the juncture of law and economics. Social scientists have an acute sense of staying away from contentious issues that might forestall their careers and leave such items to right wing social pundits like Charles Murray. I’ll bet that you’ve never heard about the current Detroit situation where thirteen million dollars a year of scarce property tax money meant as an educational levy for DPS (mostly Afro American students) is going to be diverted to paying bondholders of debt being created to build a hockey arena of primary benefit to the billionaire owner of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team (they already have two arenas in Detroit so why not another one.)
“(Governor) Snyder said today that the arena would be “a huge momentum shift” for economic activity in the corridor between Detroit’s downtown and the Midtown district, which has experienced an influx of businesses and residents…
Almost 60 percent of the funds to pay for the arena would come from taxpayers. Bonds would be backed by a combination of about $15 million in annual payments from Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority and $11.5 million from Olympia. Wayne County may also provide support, according to a July 24 memo.
In December, Michigan’s legislature revived the ability of the development authority to take a portion of school-tax revenue generated by property on 615 downtown acres.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-03/detroit-billionaires-get-hockey-arena-as-bankrupt-city-suffers.html
This is the kind of thing that needs work, definitely.
That’s part of the social science problem, yes…