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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Lessons of Social Science History

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric H. Monkkonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Chinese Restaurant ◽  
The Social

I am pleased to be able to address this, the eighteenth annual meeting of the Social Science History Association. I have many valued memories of presidential addresses, but my favorite was Jerry Clubb’s 1984 talk in the Chinese restaurant in Toronto, where speakers, waiters, and many other patrons all competed in a cacophonic, noisy free-for-all. Jerry did not even try to finish the talk, so we had to wait until it appeared in the journal (Clubb 1986).

scholarly journals Editor's Introduction to Volume 40, Issue 1

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Anne EC McCants
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Science History ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Parent Organization ◽  
The Social ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

With this issue, Social Science History begins its fortieth year of publication. The journal is also in its second year of publication with Cambridge University Press. So this seems an especially propitious moment to take stock of who we are and how we conceive of our mission, to both our parent organization and to the wider world of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry. Since our founding in 1976, the journal remains firmly rooted in the organizational and intellectual apparatus of the Social Science History Association (SSHA). We embrace the cross-disciplinary and grassroots “network” structure of the annual meetings in forming our Editorial Board, with its rotating membership and diverse representation from across the historical and social science disciplines. We actively seek out new scholarship, as well as encourage SSHA members to propose special issues that address a common theme or scholarly question from multiple disciplinary points of view and address different places and time periods. But we also remain fundamentally historical in our purview, dedicated to “improv[ing] the quality of historical explanation in every manner possible, but particularly by encouraging the selective use and adaptation in historical . . . research of relevant theories and methods from related disciplines, particularly the social sciences.”

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.

scholarly journals Editor's Introduction to 40th Anniversary Issue: History and the Social Sciences: Past Imperfect; Future Promising

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne EC McCants
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Interdisciplinary Exchange

It has been almost 40 years since Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie published an English translation of his (at the time) deeply unsettling essay, “Motionless History,” in the second issue of Social Science History (SSH, Winter 1977). For many historians, whose livelihoods depended on narrating the “march of history,” his claim that long periods of history were characterized by a distinct absence of change—his example was Europe from late antiquity up to the early eighteenth century—was nothing short of heretical. The newly established SSH was, however, an entirely logical place from which to launch this fusillade against the disciplinary norms of the Anglo-American historical profession, as the journal was the product of a contra-establishment project, the Social Science History Association (SSHA). Founded in 1974 and hosting its first annual conference in Philadelphia in the fall of 1976, the SSHA emerged out of the more general social and political ferment of that period. Its organizers had the specific intention to disrupt (to use our word and not theirs) what they thought were the rigid practices and limited vision of the then American Historical Association. In so doing they hoped to make space for a new kind of historical enquiry that had much to learn from the social sciences, and hoped to teach them something in return. They were joined in that enthusiastic moment by historically minded rebels from the American Sociological Association, as well as small numbers of anthropologists, demographers, economists, geographers, and political scientists who were all eager to incorporate both historical context and a theoretical appreciation of contingency into their work. In the intervening years since that hopeful beginning, many have argued that the anticipated interdisciplinary exchange failed in one way or another. But let me not get ahead of myself.

Changing Social Science to Change the World: A Discusssion Paper

1978 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Benson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Primary Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Specialization

To begin on a low-key, disarming note, I emphasize that this paper’s title has two clauses. The second is more important than the first. The first clause reads, “Changing Social Science to Change the World.” The second reads, “A Discussion Paper.” The second clause is more important than the first because it indicates the paper’s primary function. It is primarily designed to serve as a springboard for general and more elevated discussion of a set of topics that I hope interests all or most members of the Social Science History Association, despite their professional membership in different academic disciplines and their engagement in widely diverse fields of research specialization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document