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Social Science History Association

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

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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

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References

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  1. ^ "Social Science History Association – American Historical Association".
  2. ^ American History Association entry for SSHA
  3. ^ "Social Science History – Cambridge University press".
  4. ^ a b Editors' Foreword, 1976. Social Science History, 1(1): i–ii
  5. ^ Library of Congress Catalog Record: Social Science History
  6. ^ Social Science History: Most accessed at JSTOR
  7. ^ Social Science History: Most cited at JSTOR
  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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