Social Science in the 21st Century Issues Now Emerging Will Shape Fields: Globalization, Environment, Changing Values, More. SERIES WRAP-UP Series: INSIDE THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. Part 9 of a 9-Part Series

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IT'S not quite true to say that social scientists are born and not made. But the eight individuals interviewed for this series have one thing in common: Their youthful experiences significantly shaped their choice of careers.

- Daniel Bell's upbringing in New York's Lower East Side and Joyce Ladner's education among Mississippi's rural poor impelled them into sociology.

- For economist Alice Rivlin, a driving force was family dinner-table talk about public policy; for anthropologist Eric Wolf, it was a rich menu of cultural differences in his own family.

- Demographer Samuel Preston did his first survey in 8th grade - a few years before political …