scholarly journals Rethinking Current Social Sciences: The Case of Historical Discourses in the History of Modernity

2000 ◽  
pp. 750-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Social Domain ◽  
Crisis Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Discourses

Since 1968, it has been apparent that the entire “system of branches of knowledge” regarding the social domain, which dated from 1870 to 1968, has entered into a total and irreversible crisis. Established in the last third of the nineteenth century, and having been deployed during the ?rst half of the twentieth century, this particular “episteme” regarding the social domain—which conceived the latter as a sum or aggregate of spaces, segmented, distinct and even autonomous among one another; spaces that in turn corresponded to the different and equally autonomous social sciences or disciplines—was progressively questioned. It ?nally began showing its general epistemological limits, permanently entering into an insurmountable crisis period as a result of the impacts of the 1968 cultural revolution.

The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Statistical Tools ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics

This book explores the history of statistics from the field's origins in the nineteenth century through to the factors that produced the burst of modern statistical innovation in the early twentieth century. The book shows that statistics was not developed by mathematicians and then applied to the sciences and social sciences. Rather, the field came into being through the efforts of social scientists, who saw a need for statistical tools in their examination of society. Pioneering statistical physicists and biologists James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Francis Galton introduced statistical models to the sciences by pointing to analogies between their disciplines and the social sciences. A new preface looks at how the book has remained relevant since its initial publication, and considers the current place of statistics in scientific research.

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

Situating Tribes in History: Lessons from the Archives and the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
Nadav Samin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Official Records

The tribe presents a problem for the historian of the modern Middle East, particularly one interested in personalities, subtleties of culture and society, and other such “useless” things. By and large, tribes did not leave their own written records. The tribal author is a phenomenon of the present or the recent past. There are few twentieth century tribal figures comparable to the urban personalities to whose writings and influence we owe our understanding of the social, intellectual, and political history of the modern Middle East. There is next a larger problem of record keeping to contend with: the almost complete inaccessibility of official records on the postcolonial Middle East. It is no wonder that political scientists and anthropologists are among the best regarded custodians of the region's twentieth century history; they know how to make creative and often eloquent use of drastically limited tools. For many decades, suspicious governments have inhibited historians from carrying out the duties of their vocation. This is one reason why the many rich and original new monographs on Saddam Hussein's Iraq are so important. If tribes are on the margins of the records, and the records themselves are off limits, then one might imagine why modern Middle Eastern tribes are so poorly conceived in the scholarly imagination.

scholarly journals Solidarity: The Social History of an Idea in Nineteenth Century France

1959 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Grand Nombre ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.

The pedagogy of controversy in the field of China Studies: Teaching the Cultural Revolution

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Carrico
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
China Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis

How can we as educators address complex and controversial topics in the social sciences without encouraging simplistic responses and self-reproducing binary oppositions? Drawing upon an ethnographic analysis of a first-year writing seminar on the history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this article proposes novel approaches to overcome instinctive reactions to contentious topics. Arguing that the experience of controversy produces self-reinforcing binary oppositions that become autopoetically abstracted from the actual topic of discussion, I build upon specific seminar experiences to propose two novel and practical concepts for the pedagogy of controversy: (1) deidentification, which refers to a process of disengagement from the binaries and thus identities that structure and reproduce controversy, and (2) humanisation, which refers to a process of moving beyond abstractions to reidentify with the fundamentally human experience of contentious historical moments. The pedagogy of controversy, I argue, must teach against our conventional identificatory responses to controversy to promote a more nuanced understanding of inherently complex issues.

From political economy to sociology: Francis Galton and the social-scientific origins of eugenics

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS RENWICK
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Francis Galton ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractHaving coined the word ‘eugenics’ and inspired leading biologists and statisticians of the early twentieth century, Francis Galton is often studied for his contributions to modern statistical biology. However, whilst documenting this part of his work, historians have frequently neglected crucial aspects of what motivated Galton to establish his eugenics research programme. Arguing that his work was shaped more by social than by biological science, this paper addresses these oversights by tracing the development of Galton's programme, from its roots in a debate about political economy to his appeals for it to be taken up by sociologists. In so doing, the paper not only returns Galton's ideas to their original context but also provides a reason to reflect on the place of the social sciences in history-of-science scholarship.

The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The temperance/prohibition agitation represents a fascinating chapter in the social and political history of India which has been largely ignored. If any notice is taken of this movement, it is generally dismissed (or elevated) as an example of the uniquely Indian process of ‘sanskritization’ or as an equally unique component of ‘Gandhianism’—in spite of the fact that the liquor question has not been without political importance in the history either of England or of the United States. And in spite of the fact that the temperance agitation in India in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century was intimately connected with temperance agitation in England. Indeed the temperance movement in India was organized, patronized, and instructed by English temperance agitators.

scholarly journals The Economic Humanities and the History of Financial Advice

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Crosthwaite ◽  
Peter Knight ◽  
Nicky Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Financial Advice ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Criticism ◽  
Advice Writing

Abstract This article charts the emerging interdisciplinary field of the Economic Humanities, and highlights a recent research project on the history of US financial advice writing as an example of what this field might look like in practice. We begin by arguing that the Economic Humanities distinguishes itself from the New Economic Criticism that flourished in the 1990s by virtue of a broadened methodological scope, made possible by greater interaction with various economically oriented branches of the social sciences. We then discuss our History of Financial Advice project as one example of what the Economic Humanities might do, highlighting three especially significant moments in the development of this genre of US writing: the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, either side of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the era following the emergence of a canonical body of financial theory in the early 1970s. Finally, in a brief conclusion we point to key areas in which the Economic Humanities has potential to do important critical work in the coming years.

A Prehistory of the Social Sciences: Phrenology in France

1981 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angus McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Origin

“Phrenology is of German origin: Vienna was its birthplace, Gall and Spurzheim its progenitors. But it was in France that it acquired its European eclat”, stated George Lewes in 1857. But he went on to declare that it was in America and Britain that the pseudo-science had its widest popularity amongst the “general thinking public”. The writing of the history of phrenology has also broken along national lines. Its impact on America and Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century has attracted the attention of a generation of young social historians, whereas its progress in France has drawn the interest only of historians of medicine.

The rise of legal formalism; or the defences of legal faith

Legal Studies ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Goodrich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Psychology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Law

‘Just as in religion, so long as there is a religion, there must be a dogmatic theology, which cannot be replaced by any religious psychology or sociology, so, as long as there is a law, there must be a normative theory of law.’ H. KelsenIn terms of the history of the social sciences, the latter quarter of the nineteenth century was characterised in no uncertain manner by neo-Kantianism. The revival in question was aimed at rehabilitating the Kantian concept of science as a system, unified essentially by the idea of a system rather than by any more realistic or historical classification of its subject matter. The most notable and far-reaching effects of this revival were to be the constitution of the sciences of linguistics and of law. In both cases the major portion of the nineteenth century had been dominated by attacks upon the received orthodoxies of universal grammar and of exegetical legal studies, respectively, and their displacement by the uncertainties of creationist and historical methodologies.

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