Theory, Method, and Social Reproduction in Social Science History: A Short Jeremiad

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-499
Author(s):  
Charles Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Collective Enterprise

Let me begin with a simple theme, repentance, and a simple message: repent from complacency in the practice and defense of social science history (SSH). I say this because I do not see social science historians meeting three major challenges that must be overcome if the larger, collective enterprise is to survive with the same vitality it had a decade ago. Those challenges are, first, to bring social theory forcefully back into historical research; second, to take formal methods to a new, higher level; and, third, to seek to train the next generation of social science historians in the theory and methods they will need in the next century.

The Automated Archivist: Interdisciplinarity and the Process of Historical Research

1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Chad Gaffield ◽  
Peter Baskerville
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Science History ◽  
Systematic Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Relevant Evidence ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Rigorous Study ◽  
Social Scientific

The basis of most historical research including social science history is quite unsystematic. This characteristic results from the ways in which researchers find and choose historical sources for examination. Despite claims to be systematic, historians still tend to identify relevant evidence in impressionistic ways. Many social science histories involve the rigorous study of a source happily discovered by chance. Of course, access to the past has never been easy. Researchers have always lamented a presumed lack of “essential” records. Nonetheless, the actual ways we discover existing evidence have received little attention despite the fact that this process is fraught with difficulties and hidden dangers especially for researchers of a social scientific bent. Do not the presuppositions of social science history extend to the identification of sources? How do we know when we have all the “relevant data” for a particular project? Can systematic data analysis be justifiably built upon unsystematic identification of sources?

Introduction: History and the Other Social Sciences, Part 1

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-200
Author(s):  
Eric Monkkonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Science History ◽  
Introduction History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Impact

In this issue of Social Science History we begin a special series of articles surveying the impact and use of historical research and reasoning in the other social sciences—anthropology, economics, geography, political science, and sociology. The authors of the essays have been asked to analyze their disciplines so that readers will get a sense both of major issues and research directions and of influences. In addition, they have been asked to include in their references older important works as well as more recent ones, so that those in other disciplines may use the essays as bibliographic sources. After the series is completed, we expect to publish an expanded version of it as a separate book.

A Second Look

1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-364
Author(s):  
William W. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Second Look

Three years ago in this journal, J. Morgan Kousser( 1977) offered a stunning challenge to historians—a program for significantly improving the quantitative competence of historians and for expanding the number and range of quantitative studies. Faithful readers of Social Science History, however, will have noted that no response has been made to Professor Kousser's “Agenda for ‘Social Science History'“; indeed, not so much as passing notice of Kousser's argument has appeared in this medium. Were it not for the often spectacular, informal debates that have surrounded Kousser's agenda and similar proposals, the absence of response in these pages might well be taken for consensus on what once was the tenderest of issues among historians, quantitative analysis. Nevertheless, the debate is very much alive, and the issue, though less tender now than even a few years ago, continues to possess great importance to historians actively engaged in many areas of historical research.

Reflections on Local Population Studies and Social Science History

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Osamu Saito
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Population Studies ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Local Source ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Source Materials

This personal reflection of more than 40 years' work on the supply of labour in a household context discusses the relationship between social science history (the application to historical phenomena of the tools developed by social scientists) and local population studies. The paper concludes that historians working on local source materials can give something new back to social scientists and social science historians, urging them to remake their tools.

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.

Is There a Place for Anthropology in Social Science History?

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-559
Author(s):  
Alice Bee Kasakoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Secure Place

Imagine a fourfold table in which one dimension is “present versus past” and the other “exotic versus home.” Traditionally, social and cultural anthropology’s domain has been the exotic’s present and history’s domain the home’s past. A third box, the home’s present, has been occupied by sociology, while the fourth, the exotic’s past, has usually been the province of anthropologists too because other disciplines—with the exception, perhaps, of ethnohistorians—are usually even less interested in exotic peoples’ past than in their present. These domains are now in flux. I argue, in what follows, that only when the oversimplified ideas about time and space that have created them are seriously questioned will anthropology find a secure “place” in social science history.

Personal Reflections on the 1982 Special Anthropometric Issue of Social Science History

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Engerman
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Human Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Bureau ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Christopher Lasch ◽  
Personal Reflections

Looking back at the more than 20 years that have gone by since the 1982 special issue of Social Science History, it is interesting to observe how important the study of anthropometric data has been in contributing to economic history and related disciplines.While there had been numerous earlier comments by contemporary observers as well as by scholars about heights and their implications as seen in JamesTanner's marvelous study, A History of the Study of Human Growth (1981), the systematic work that was reflected in the 1982 volume was then only about six or seven years old in the United States. It represented the early output of a study directed by Robert Fogel, primarily through the Development of the American Economy (DAE) project of the National Bureau of Economic Research.There had been a few previous publications including my own piece in Local Population Studies (Engerman 1976). My first use of the height-by-age data was in response to a dinnerparty conversation in 1974 with two ofmy colleagues in the Rochester history department:Herbert Gutman and Christopher Lasch.

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