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.

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.

A Social History of the Social Science History Association during Its Early Years

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-581
Author(s):  
Lynn Hollen Lees
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social History ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Early Years ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Social historians formed an important part of the Social Science History Association from its early days, and they widened its intellectual space beyond initial emphases on political history and quantitative methods. Lee Benson and other faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Charles and Louise Tilly, were particularly influential in attracting a broad mix of scholars to the group. The openness of the association and its interdisciplinarity appealed to younger scholars, and those interested in the “new urban history” were early recruits. A growing number of women, many of whom were social historians, participated in the first conventions and newly organized networks.

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.

Reputed Changes in Social Scientists' Sympathies Regarding the Nature-Nurture Controversy: An Exploratory Comparison

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Behavior ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Evolutionary Genetic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Social Behavior

Probably the most enduring question throughout the history of the social sciences pertains to how much human social behavior is a product of evolutionary, genetic, nonsocial, “natural” sorts of variables as opposed to learned sociocultural, environmental, “nurturing” variables (Hammond, 1983). Regardless of where individual social scientists themselves happen to have settled on this issue, many have offered an opinion about the prevailing position of social scientists generally on this question at various points in social science history. The present study compares these opinions, especially as they pertain to the twentieth century.

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.

Institutional Logics and the Limits of Social Science Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-213
Author(s):  
Jessica Blatt
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science Knowledge ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

As someone whose training is in political science and who writes about the history of my own discipline, I admit to some hesitation in recommending future avenues of research for historians of education. For that reason, the following thoughts are directed toward disciplinary history broadly and social science history specifically. Moreover, the three articles that contributors to this forum were asked to use as inspiration suggest that any future I would recommend has been under way in one form or another for a while. For those reasons, I want to reframe my contribution as a reflection on a particular mode of analysis all three authors employed and how it may be particularly useful for exploring the questions of power, exclusion, and race- and gender-making in the academy that are present in all three articles and that explicitly animate two of them.

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.”

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