A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences

A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences shows how the histories of psychology, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology and history have been written since the Second World War. It argues that a comparative interdisciplinary approach to the historiography of the different social sciences reveals much about how history is written.

A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences includes essays on the ways in which the histories of psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, history and political science have been written since the Second World War. Bringing together chapters written by the leading historians of each discipline, the book establishes significant parallels and contrasts and makes the case for a comparative interdisciplinary historiography. This comparative approach helps explain historiographical developments on the basis of factors specific to individual disciplines and the social, political, and intellectual developments that go beyond individual disciplines. All historians, including historians of the different social sciences, encounter literatures with which they are not familiar. This book will provide a broader understanding of the different ways in which the history of the social sciences, and by extension intellectual history, is written.