Social_Science_History_Association

Social Science History Association

Social Science History Association

Learned society devoted to social history

Social Science History Association was formed in 1972 and brings together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history.[1] The Social Science History Association's core purpose is: "To bring together members of various disciplines (including economics, sociology, demography, anthropology, and history) who work with historical materials."[2]

The association's official journal is Social Science History, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic publication. Its essays handle historical evidence analytically, theoretically, and frequently quantitatively.[3] The journal's founders intended to "improve the quality of historical explanation" with "theories and methods from the social science disciplines", and to make generalizations across historical cases.[4] The first issue came out in the fall of 1976.[4][5] The journal's articles that are most-accessed and cited through JSTOR are about social and political movements and associated narratives.[6][7]

History

The association was formed in 1976 as an interdisciplinary group with a journal Social Science History and an annual convention. The goal was to incorporate historical studies' perspectives from all the social sciences, especially political science, sociology and economics. The pioneers shared a commitment to quantification. However, by the 1980s critics complained that quantification undervalued the role of contingency and warned against naive positivism. Meanwhile, quantification became well-established inside economics in the field of cliometrics, as well as in political science. In history, quantification remained central to demographic studies, but slipped behind in political and social history.[8]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "Social Science History Association – American Historical Association".
  2. [2]
    American History Association entry for SSHA
  3. [3]
    "Social Science History – Cambridge University press".
  4. [4]
    Editors' Foreword, 1976. Social Science History, 1(1): i–ii
  5. [5]
    Library of Congress Catalog Record: Social Science History
  6. [6]
    Social Science History: Most accessed at JSTOR
  7. [7]
    Social Science History: Most cited at JSTOR
  8. [8]
    Harvey J. Graff, "The Shock of the 'New’ (Histories)': Social Science Histories and Historical Literacies," Social Science History 25.4 (2001) 483–533 in Project Muse


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