Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T19:26:03.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Big Social Science History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Abstract

Social science historians engage in relatively few large, collaborative projects, yet many of their activities, especially data collection and several aspects of analysis, benefit from what economists call economies of scale. Here I briefly review the historical background of big projects, place research by social science historians in perspective relative to other disciplines, and ponder possible explanations for the dearth of collaborative efforts. Large projects are not to everyone’s taste, and they demand vision, logistical skills, and fund-raising. In conclusion, I suggest 15 large projects that are interesting and feasible.

Type
Presidential Address
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2007 

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

Anagnostopoulou, Christina, and Westermann, Gert (1997) “Classification in music: A computational model for paradigmatic analysis.” Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/people/gert/publications/icmc97.pdf.Google Scholar
Anderson, Margo (forthcoming) “Quantitative history,” in Turner, Stephen and Outhwaite, William (eds.) Handbook of Social Science Methodology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bengtsson, Tommy, Campbell, Cameron, and Lee, James Z. (2004) Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Blalock, Hubert, Bogue, Alan G., Holt, Robert T., Rowe, Judith S., and Sprague, John (1989) “Report of the ICPSR review committee.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Bradley, Raymond S. (1999) Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary. San Diego, CA: Academic.Google Scholar
Brooke, John (2006) Personal e-mail correspondence, June 14.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean (1955) Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Carter, Susan B., Gartner, Scott Sigmund, Haines, Michael R., Olmstead, Alan L., Sutch, Richard, and Wright, Gavin (2006) Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chaisson, Eric (1994) The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle over the Hubble Space Telescope. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Christian, David (2004) Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Coale, Ansley J., and Watkins, Susan Cotts (1986) The Decline of Fertility in Europe: The Revised Proceedings of a Conference on the Princeton European Fertility Project. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Coatsworth, John H. (1996) “Welfare.” American Historical Review 101: 112.Google Scholar
Crawford, Stephen (1988) Quantified Memory: A Study of the WPA and Fisk University Slave Narrative Collections. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Keay (1999) Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
DeVorkin, David H. (2000) “Who speaks for astronomy? How astronomers responded to government funding after World War II.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 31: 5592.Google Scholar
Eckberg, Douglas (2006) “Crime, law enforcement, and justice,” in Carter, Susan B., Gartner, Scott Sigmund, Haines, Michael R., Olmstead, Alan L., Sutch, Richard, and Wright, Gavin (eds.) Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press: 209310.Google Scholar
Einav, Liran, and Yariv, Leeat (2006) “What’s in a surname? The effects of surname initials on academic success.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20: 175–88.Google Scholar
Eltis, David, Behrendt, Stephen D., Richardson, David, and Klein, Herbert S. (1999) The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William (1964) Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William (1989) Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter Louis, and Hevly, Bruce William (1992) Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hershberg, Theodore (1981) Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century: Essays toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) (1929). Uniform Crime Reporting: A Complete Manual for Police. New York: Committee on Uniform Crime Records, International Association of Chiefs of Police.Google Scholar
Jablonski, Nina G. (2004) “The evolution of human skin and skin coloration.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 585623.Google Scholar
Jones, Alice Hanson (1980) Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kiple, Kenneth F. (1993) The Cambridge World History of Human Disease. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kiple, Kenneth F., and Ornelas, Kriemhild Conee (2000) The Cambridge World History of Food. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Knowles, Anne Kelly (forthcoming) “How GIS is changing the practice of history,” in Knowles, A. K. (ed.) Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship, with digital content edited by Amy Hillier. Redlands, CA: ESRI.Google Scholar
Kraus, John Daniel (1986) Radio Astronomy. Powell, OH: Cygnus-Quasar Books.Google Scholar
Main, Gloria L. (2000) “Inequality in early America: The evidence from probate records of Massachusetts and Maryland,” in Rotberg, Robert I. (ed.) Social Mobility and Modernization: A Journal of Interdisciplinary History Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 239–62.Google Scholar
Main, Jackson Turner (1965) The Social Structure of Revolutionary America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mamede, Nuno, Trancoso, Isabel, Araújo, Paulo, and Viana, Céu (n.d.) “Poetry assistant,” http://tahoe.inesc-id.pt/pt/indicadores/Ficheiros/2147.pdf (accessed October 13, 2006).Google Scholar
Martino, Joseph Paul (1992) Science Funding: Politics and Porkbarrel. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
McCray, Patrick (2004) Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley Clair, King, Willford Isbell, Macaulay, Frederick Robertson, and Knauth, Oswald Whitman (1921) Income in the United States: Its Amount and Distribution, 1909-1919. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
National Center for Health Statistics (2005) “Classifications of diseases and functioning and disability,” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd9.htm (accessed September 22, 2006).Google Scholar
O’Hara, Robert J. (1993) “Trees of history in systematics, historical linguistics, and stemmatics: A working interdisciplinary bibliography,” http://rjohara.net/darwin/files/tree-thinking (accessed October 13, 2006).Google Scholar
Rawick, George P. (1972) The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Robinson, Edgar Eugene (1934) The Presidential Vote, 1896-1932. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rostow, Walt W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Sobek, Matthew, Alexander, Trent, Fitch, Catherine A., Goeken, Ronald, Hall, Patricia K., King, Miriam, and Ronnander, Chad (2004) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0. Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center.Google Scholar
Science (2005) July 1.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce D. (1995) The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar
Spier, Fred (1996) The Structure of Big History from the Big Bang until Today. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H. (1994) “Census manuscript schedules matched with property tax lists.” Historical Methods 27: 7185.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H. (1998) “Migration and political conflict: Precincts in the Midwest on the eve of the Civil War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28: 583603.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H., and Rose, Jerome Carl (2002) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Studenski, Paul (1958) The Income of Nations: Theory, Measurement, and Analysis, Past and Present; A Study in Applied Economics and Statistics. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Tatarkiewicz, W. (2003) “Classification of the arts,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-56.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan (1964) Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson (1914) “Geographical influences in American political history.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 46: 591–95.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice (2004) Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook: UCR. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A., and Schofield, R. S. (1981) The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar