Changing Social Science to Change the World: A Discusssion Paper

Benson, Lee

doi:10.2307/1171157

Cited by 6 publications

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“…When Benson gave his presidential address at the 1977 SSHA conference in Ann Arbor, he pushed the association to lead the way in building a genuine social scientific community in the United States by overcoming the “hardened boundaries” among fields. Collaborating across disciplines and retreating from sterile battles over turf would permit the development of “credible empirical theories about human behavior” useful for producing a better world (Benson 1978: 430). In his remarks, Benson invoked a European intellectual tradition of social thought and investigation exemplified by Francis Bacon, the Marquis de Condorcet, and Karl Marx, rather than the ideas of social historians such as Edward Thompson or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie whose work currently excited scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.…”

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

Lees¹

2016

Social Science History

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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.

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

Lees¹

2016

Social Science History

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“…Lee Benson, a founding editor of the journal and SSHA president in 1977, used that platform to offer a clarion call for social change. His exhortation was titled “Changing Social Science to Change the World: A Discussion Paper.” His goal was for history to contribute to “the development of social science to improve the human condition” (Benson 1978: 430). His proposed plan to actually execute that goal went like this: Suppose we engaged in ruthless self-criticism and conducted systematic, intensive, and responsible empirical research.…”

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“…This is still very much the goal of SSH , and I hope this special issue moves us yet further in that direction. As with Lee Benson's early call to change the world—success will require “hard thought, hard work, and good luck” (Benson 1978: 440). I would add to this that success will also require of us to be of goodwill.…”

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Editor's Introduction to 40th Anniversary Issue: History and the Social Sciences: Past Imperfect; Future Promising

McCants¹

2016

Social Science History

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It has been almost 40 years since Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie published an English translation of his (at the time) deeply unsettling essay, “Motionless History,” in the second issue of Social Science History (SSH, Winter 1977). For many historians, whose livelihoods depended on narrating the “march of history,” his claim that long periods of history were characterized by a distinct absence of change—his example was Europe from late antiquity up to the early eighteenth century—was nothing short of heretical. The newly established SSH was, however, an entirely logical place from which to launch this fusillade against the disciplinary norms of the Anglo-American historical profession, as the journal was the product of a contra-establishment project, the Social Science History Association (SSHA). Founded in 1974 and hosting its first annual conference in Philadelphia in the fall of 1976, the SSHA emerged out of the more general social and political ferment of that period. Its organizers had the specific intention to disrupt (to use our word and not theirs) what they thought were the rigid practices and limited vision of the then American Historical Association. In so doing they hoped to make space for a new kind of historical enquiry that had much to learn from the social sciences, and hoped to teach them something in return. They were joined in that enthusiastic moment by historically minded rebels from the American Sociological Association, as well as small numbers of anthropologists, demographers, economists, geographers, and political scientists who were all eager to incorporate both historical context and a theoretical appreciation of contingency into their work. In the intervening years since that hopeful beginning, many have argued that the anticipated interdisciplinary exchange failed in one way or another. But let me not get ahead of myself.

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