Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:51:20.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Philippe Fontaine
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Philippe Fontaine
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
Get access

Summary

The literature on historiography is large and diverse. From characterizing the main stages in historical research to picking out “great men,” from identifying leading schools and main ideas to clarifying the differences between professional and lay historians, from describing what historians write about to explaining their methods, from noting the significance of history for the social sciences to pointing out the usefulness of the social sciences to historians, from writing about what historians actually do to deliberating about what they should do, historiographers carry out an impressive range of activities.

Within a field spanning several millennia and covering numerous geographical areas, it is not unusual to distinguish various forms of historiography according to “temporal and spatial characteristics” (Lorenz 2011, p. 14). As it concerns Western societies since the Second World War, this book remains within that tradition. It offers an illustration of what historians regard as more “particular and concrete” forms of historiography. At the same time, it flirts with more “general and abstract” forms of historiography (Lorenz 1999) in arguing that, because of the commonality of problems facing social scientists after the Second World War, it makes sense to go beyond disciplinary boundaries to contemplate a history of the social sciences as a whole. It also argues that something can be learned about the way the history of history is written from considering the historiographies of the different social sciences within a comparative interdisciplinary framework. The chapters that follow represent the first steps in that direction.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Abbott, Andrew, and Sparrow, James T.. 2007. “Hot War, Cold War: The Structures of Sociological Action, 1940–1955.” In Sociology in America: A History, ed. Calhoun, Craig. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Abella, Alex. 2007. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Amadae, Sonja M. 2003. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E., and Bateman, Bradley W. 2011. Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E., and Fontaine, Philippe, eds. 2010a. The History of the Social Sciences since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E., and Fontaine, Philippe, 2010b. The Unsocial Social Science? Economics and Neighboring Disciplines since 1945. Annual supplement to Volume 42 of History of Political Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, Trevor J. 2006. “Geographical Intelligence: American Geographers and Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1941–1945,” Journal of Historical Geography 32.1:149–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barry, Brian. 1970. Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Baxter, James Phinney. 1968. Scientists against Time, 3rd ed. Boston: Little, Brown. Reprinted Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. First published in 1946.Google Scholar
Behrent, Michael C. 2009. “Liberalism without Humanism: Michel Foucault and the Free-Market Creed, 1976–1979,” Modern Intellectual History 6.3:539–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentley, Michael, ed. 1997. Companion to Historiography. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Michael A., 2001. A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Blanckaert, Claude. 1993. “La Société française pour l’histoire des sciences de l’homme. Bilan, enjeux et ‘questions vives,’” Genèses 10:124–35.
Boudon, Raymond, “Comment écrire l’histoire des sciences sociales?” Communications 54:299–317.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “La Cause de la science: Comment l’histoire des sciences sociales peut servir le progrès de ces sciences,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 106–107:3–10.
Brand, Jeanne L. 1970. “The Social Historian and the History of Psychiatry.” In Psychiatry and Its History: Methodological Problems in Research, ed. George Mora and Jeanne L. Brand. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Burgin, Angus. 2012. The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Peter. 1990. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929–1989. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter 2005. History and Social Theory, 2nd ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. First published in 1993.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter 2008. What Is Cultural History? 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity. First published in 2004.Google Scholar
Burrow, John. 1966. Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burrow, John 2009. A History of Histories. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bush, Vannevar. 1945. Science – the Endless Frontier: A Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, reprinted in 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capshew, James H. 1999. Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929–1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapoulie, Jean-Michel. 2005. “Un cadre d’analyse pour l’histoire des sciences sociales,” Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines 13:99–126.CrossRef
Clark, Peter. 1985. “What Is Political History?History Today 35.1:17–18.Google Scholar
Cockett, Richard. 1995. Thinking the Unthinkable: Thinks-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983. London: Fontana Press.Google Scholar
Cohen-Cole, Jamie. 2013. The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collini, Stefan. 1985. “What Is Intellectual History?History Today 35.10:46–8.Google Scholar
Collini, Stefan 1988. “‘Discipline History’ and ‘Intellectual History’: Reflections on the Historiography of the Social Sciences in Britain and France,Revue de synthèse 3–4:387–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coutau-Bégarie, Hervé. 1989. Le Phénomène Nouvelle Histoire: Grandeur et décadence de l’école des Annales, 2nd ed. Paris: Economica.Google Scholar
Crowther-Heyck, Hunter. 2006. “Patrons of the Revolution: Ideals and Institutions in the Postwar Behavioral Science,Isis 97.3:420–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Pillis, Mario S. 1967. “Trends in American Social History and the Possibilities of Behavioral Approaches,Journal of Social History 1.1:37–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drouard, Alain. 1982. “Réflexions sur une chronologie: Le développement des sciences sociales en France de 1945 à la fin des années soixante,” Revue française de sociologie 23.1:55–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edgerton, David. 2011. Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Elton, G. R. 1985. “What Is Political History?History Today 35.1:11–12.Google Scholar
Engerman, David C. 2007. “Bernath Lecture: American Knowledge and Global Power,Diplomatic History 31.4:599–622.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engerman, David C. 2009. Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Decline of America’s Soviet Experts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Engerman, David C. 2010. “Social Science in the Cold War,Isis 101.2:393–400Google Scholar
Fleck, Christian. 2011. A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich ad the Invention of Empirical Social Research. London: Bloomsbury Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontaine, Philippe. 2002. “Blood, Politics, and Social Science: Richard Titmuss and the Institute of Economic Affairs, 1957–1973,Isis 93.3:401–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontaine, Philippe 2015. “Introduction: The Social Sciences in a Cross-disciplinary Age,Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, special issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Roy. 1985. “What Is Political History?History Today 35.1:14–15.Google Scholar
Fourcade, Marion. 2009. Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geary, Daniel. 2008. “Every Social Scientist Her Own Historian,Modern Intellectual History 5.2:399–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geary, Daniel 2013. “Children of The Lonely Crowd: David Riesman, the Young Radicals, and the Splitting of Liberalism in the 1960s,Modern Intellectual History 10.3:603–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geiger, Roger L. 1993. Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gillispie, Charles C. 1988. “History of the Social Sciences,” Revue de synthèse 3–4:379–85.CrossRef
Gilman, Nils. 2003. Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Guglielmo, Mark. 2008. “The Contribution of Economists to Military Intelligence during World War II,Journal of Economic History 68.1:109–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haney, David P. 2008. The Americanization of Social Science: Intellectuals and Public Responsibility in the Postwar United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Heilbron, Johan, Guilhot, Nicolas, and Jeanpierre, Laurent. 2008. “Toward a Transnational History of the Social Sciences,Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 44.2:146–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heilbron, Johan, Remi Lenoir, and Gisèle Sapiro (with the collaboration of Pascale Pargamin). 2004. Pour une histoire des sciences sociales: Hommage à Pierre Bourdieu. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Herman, Ellen. 1995. The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Iggers, Georg G. 2005. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to Postmodern Challenge. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University. First published in 1997.Google Scholar
Igo, Sarah E. 2007. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Joel. 2007. “The Human Sciences in Cold War America,Historical Journal 50.3:725–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Joel 2009. “Tangled Loops: Theory, History, and the Human Sciences in Modern America,Modern Intellectual History 6.2:397–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Joel 2011. “Introduction: The Human Sciences and Cold War America,Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47.3 (special issue on The Human Sciences and Cold War America):225–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Joel 2012. Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons To Kuhn. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, Jerome. 2009. The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, David, and Heyck, . 2010. “Introduction,Isis 101.2 (New Perspectives on Science and the Cold War):362–6.Google Scholar
Kelley, John L. 1997. Bringing the Market Back In: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klausner, Samuel Z. and Lidz, Victor M., eds. 1986. The Nationalization of the Social Sciences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, Otto N. 1992. Milestones and Millstones: Social Science at the National Science Foundation, 1945–1991. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction.Google Scholar
Latham, Michael E. 2000. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Leibenstein, Harvey. 1979. “A Branch of Economics Is Missing: Micro-Micro Theory,Journal of Economic Literature 17.2:477–502.Google Scholar
Lepetit, Bernard. 1996. “Les Annales: Portrait de groupe avec revue.” In Une école pour les sciences sociales: De la VIe section à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, ed. Revel, J. and Wachtel, N.. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf & EHESS.Google Scholar
Lorenz, Chris. 1999. “Comparative Historiographies: Problems and Perspectives,History and Theory 38.1:25–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorenz, Chris 2011. “History and Theory.” In Schneider, A. and Woolf, D., eds. The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 5: Historical Writing Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. 1951. White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 2002. Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip, and Plehwe, Dieter, eds. 2009. The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Offer, Avner. 2006. The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well Being in the United States and Britain since 1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Wayne. 1990. The Power of the Financial Press: Journalism and Economic Opinion in Britain and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M., and Ross, Dorothy, eds. 2003. The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 7: The Modern Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Price, David H. 2008. Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revel, Jacques. 1979. “Histoire et sciences sociales: Les paradigmes des Annales,Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 34.6:1360–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revel, Jacques 2003. “History and the Social Sciences.” In The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 7: The Modern Social Sciences, ed. Porter, T. M. and Ross, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Riesman, David. 1950. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Robin, Ron. 2001. The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. 2011. Age of Fracture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy 2003. “Changing Contours of the Social Science Disciplines.” In The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 7: The Modern Social Sciences, ed. Porter, T. M. and Ross, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russel, Conrad. 1985. “What Is Political History?History Today 35.1:12–13.Google Scholar
Sackley, Nicole. 2012. “Cosmopolitanism and the Uses of Tradition: Robert Redfield and Alternative Visions of Modernization during the Cold War,Modern Intellectual History 9.3:565–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulten, Susan. 2001. The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880–1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Selcer, Perrin. 2009. “The View from Everywhere: Disciplining Diversity in Post-World War II International Social Science,Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 45.4:309–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Roger. 1997. The Fontana History of the Human Sciences. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Specter, Matthew. 2009. “Habermas’s Political Thought, 1984–1996: A Historical Interpretation,Modern Intellectual History 6.1:91–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solovey, Mark. 2013. Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cod War America. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Solovey, Mark, and Cravens, Hamilton, eds. 2012. Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solovey, Mark, and Pooley, Jefferson D.. 2011. “The Price of Success: Sociologist Harry Alpert, the NSF’s First Social Science Policy Architect,Annals of Science 68.2:229–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Kirk H. 1979. “Geography’s Wartime Service,Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69.1:89–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Peter. 2001. A History and Theory of the Social Sciences. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter, Wittrock, Björn, and Whitley, Richard, eds. 1991. Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×