Two epistemological roots are traced for the social sciences, one related to wonderment over how society is possible, the other to their auxiliary role in the political-administrative system. The conflict between these epistemological traditions, it is argued, has had beneficial effects upon the social sciences. In the scholarship about multicultural societies, it is shown that these two epistemological traditions result in very different accounts of immigrant/minority life, designations of deviancy, etc., and also in terms of defining areas of legitimate interventions from the surrounding society. It is argued that present-day changes in the universities, including the specific interpretation of excellence, as well as research funding mechanisms, significantly serve to impoverish the epistemological pluralism in the social sciences, with malevolent results for our understanding of multicultural challenges. The article builds mainly on some case material from Norway, but the arguments are meant to have wide external validity.
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