scholarly journals The Revivalism of Narrative: A Response to Recent Criticisms of Quantitative History

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Morgan Kousser
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Employment Trends ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Historical Profession

In his presidential address to the Social Science History Association Convention in November 1981, Robert William Fogel declared sanguinely that social scientific historians had won their battle for legitimacy within the historical profession in America, and that we should now stop feeling embattled, spend less effort proselytizing, and calmly go on with our substantive work. While his statistics on the occupational advancement of social scientific historians do indicate a degree of acceptance, and while his advice to worry less and pay attention to business will be followed (as that is what nearly all of us were doing anyway), I am less optimistic than Fogel, read the employment trends differently, and see more signs of a reaction against quantitative social scientific history—or what I like to refer to as QUASSH—than he does (Kousser, 1980). Perhaps Professor Fogel and I differ only temperamentally. As a former Marxist, he still retains a bit of faith in the inevitable triumph of progressive forces; as a former Methodist, I am unable to shake off the pessimism that is the psychological residue of the doctrine of original sin. In any case, whereas Fogel seems to think that most recent criticisms of QUASSH are so obviously flawed as to require no answer, I fear that some people, especially those with substantial investments in “history-as-it-used-to-be-done,” may still be susceptible to false messiahs or, perhaps more precisely, false Jeremiahs.

What is Social Science History, Anyway?

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-480
Author(s):  
Paula Baker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Science History ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Methodologies

This group of essays came out of an attempt to address the “usually unasked,” “bound to embarrass” question that Eric Monkkonen raised in his 1994 presidential address to the Social Science History Association. As both the social sciences and history have been reshaped in recent years by intellectual tendencies variously labeled “postmodernism,” “poststructuralism,” or the “linguistic turn,” the never especially clear relationship between the social sciences and history has grown even more muddy. The essays that follow are drawn from two sessions of the 1998 annual program of the Social Science History Association. The sessions brought together scholars from a variety of disciplines and cohorts who held divergent ideas about the links between social science and history and different substantive agendas for explaining historical change. A mix of essays that highlight new methodologies for analyzing the past and pieces that offer explanations or remedies, the articles printed here point to some of the central issues in the debate about what social science history might mean today.

Migration and the Nation

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Leslie Page Moch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
International Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Movements

The theme of this year’s meeting, “International Perspectives on Social Science History,” rises out of two realities. The first is the recognized international character of phenomena under study, such as fertility decline, political contention, family strategies in response to changing conditions, gendered work, migration, labor, and policing. The second is the way in which the Social Science History Association (SSHA) operates across borders and among scholars in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to investigate common scholarly problems. The attention of migration scholars is now focused on global movements of people and international migrations, particularly immigration. The politics and policies of receiving newcomers are very important now–in the Americas and in Europe. The SSHA is giving its attention to the old and new international immigrants to the United States, as in last year’s session on Nancy Foner’s fine book on New York,From Ellis Island to JFK(2000), and the presidential address by Caroline Brettell (2002) on the quantitative and qualitative methods by which we can understand human movement.

The Social Science History Association at 40: A Savory Chop Suey

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-563
Author(s):  
Susan Boslego Carter
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Geographic Regions ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Academic Rewards

Multidisciplinary conversations are tough. Language, habits of thinking, and styles of presentation and criticism differ profoundly across disciplines. Academic rewards to multidisciplinary research are unpredictable. Yet year after year, for 40 years running now, the Social Science History Association (SSHA) has hosted increasingly large, multidisciplinary conferences that attract scholars from a diverse set of academic fields and geographic regions. By fostering debate in an atmosphere of civility, respect, and inclusiveness, the SSHA has become a premiere venue for introducing the latest in social scientific topics, methods, and data. Here I salute the founders and guardians of the culture responsible for this impressive achievement with a multidisciplinary foray into the history of America's chop suey craze of the early twentieth century. Like the remarkable history of the SSHA, the history of chop suey illustrates the importance of civility, respect, and democratic inclusiveness in fostering innovation. It is a story that celebrates the rewards to institutions that promote such virtues.

Social Networks and Social Science History

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Cotts Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Executive Director ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Program Chair ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The title of this presidential address reflects the happy conjunction of my particular interest in social networks and the network structure of the Social Science History Association. My talk will be brief, because I want to reserve most of this “presidential picnic” for the panel that the program chair, Donna Gabaccia, organized. Last year's president, Eric Monkkonen (1994: 166), in his history of the institution of the SSHA, called our meetings “a venue for scholars from different disciplines to learn to talk to one another.” That we have this annual opportunity for conversations is due to the work of our networks that organize the sessions that attract us to the meetings; to program chairs—this year, Donna—who create a program from these sessions; and to our executive director, Erik Austin, whose ability and diligence keeps the organization going from year to year.

Life Cycles in Social Science History

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-489
Author(s):  
Andrew Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Science History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

When one is asked to speak on the past, present, and future of social science history, one is less overwhelmed by the size of the task than confused by its indexicality. Whose definition of social science history? Which past? Or, put another way, whose past? Indeed, which and whose present? Moreover, should the task be taken as one of description, prescription, or analysis? Many of us might agree on, say, a descriptive analysis of the past of the Social Science History Association. But about the past of social science history as a general rather than purely associational phenomenon, we might differ considerably. The problem of description versus prescription only increases this obscurity.

Autobiography and Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Methodological Considerations

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Jo Maynes
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Historical Social Science

Historical social science—which I understand to be analysis of change over time that is informed by the theories, methods, and questions of the social sciences—has in the past 25 or 30 years established itself as an important area of interdisciplinary study. It emerged at a point in time when, in the United States at least, several of the social science disciplines were dominated by positivist epistemologies and models drawn from the natural sciences. In practice, much of what has been understood as social science history has centered on the recovery and analysis of largely quantifiable sources that allowed the writing of the collective biography of large populations—the ordinary people arguably under-or unrepresented in classic historical accounts of previous eras. Drawing upon social-scientific traditions provided concepts and methodologies for analyzing processes that encompassed everyone, rather than merely the events dominated by an elite, and for studying relatively anonymous collectivities rather than merely the “great men.”

Data Dilemmas: Quantitative Data and the Social Science History Association

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 204-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan G. Bogue
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Machine Readable

At this stage in the development of the Social Science History Association it is appropriate for us to consider some of the general problems concerning the development and use of machine-readable data and the Association’s role in such matters.

Early American Historiography and Social Science History

1982 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Scott Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
American History ◽  
Association Network ◽  
Science History ◽  
Early American History ◽  
Early American ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Despite the emergence of social science history, the profession remains organized around the study of periods in the history of societies. Departments of history still structure their curricula mainly along national and temporal lines, and the same principle of socialization thereby defines most academic positions (Darnton, 1980). To judge by the sessions of the annual meetings of the Social Science History Association (SSHA), those sympathetic with that orientation focus on topics, approaches, and methodologies. Only one association network, that for the study of Asia, mentions a locale in its title, and none specifies a particular time period. This article will examine the findings and implications of social science history for one well-established national/period field, that of early American history.

Bureaucratic Development and Social Science History

1978 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-384
Author(s):  
Don Karl Rowney
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Political Decisions

The following essays originated in a session of the Social Science History Association in October, 1976. Two of the participants, Bernard S. Silberman and Alfred J. Rieber, were asked to prepare studies of bureaucracy in Japan and Russia which also dealt with the problems of political power relationships in developing bureaucracies. A third participant, Cyril E. Black, was asked to compare, criticize, and synthesize the first two papers in a third paper of his own. Briefly, the substantive point of these essays as a group is that they deal with the effect of political decisions in achieving certain changes in economic, technical, and military structures and operations. They focus attention on the effects within a complex apparatus set up to administer those political decisions, the state bureaucracy. The essays themselves reveal, and Black’s synthesis details, that the points of similarity between Japan and Russia as they change across time are as numerous and instructive as are the differences. In this introduction, I will call attention to some aspects of these studies which, although technical, are nevertheless important to the research enterprise they represent.

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