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Historical Methods for Social Scientists

Course Dates and Times

Monday 29 February to Friday 4 March 2016
Generally classes are either 09:00-12:30 or 14:00-17:30
15 hours over 5 days

Robert Adcock

adcockrk@gmail.com

American University

This course offers a methodologically pluralist introduction to historical methods for social scientists. Rather than take the side of any specific stance as to what the valued terms “historical” and “method” do/should mean, the course emphasises and examines the perennial cleavages and contentions between methodologically diverse scholars who all understand themselves to be doing “historical” work. While some such social scientists see the critical use of primary sources as the core of their historical method, others make statistical data and analysis, formal models, or macro-comparative case studies central to their study of the past. Ranging across this spectrum, the course will survey four diverse contemporary research programs that self-identify as historical, and together encompass scholars from economists to political scientists and sociologists. For each contemporary research program we examine both cutting edge methodological statements and substantive examples of how its practitioners approach the past.


Instructor Bio

Robert Adcock teaches at the School of International Service at American University in Washington DC.

His interests focus on the politics and sociology of knowledge, the transatlantic history of the social sciences and their relationship to liberalism, and the philosophy and methods of the social sciences.

Robert is the author of Liberalism and the Emergence of American Political Science: A Transatlantic Tale (Oxford University Press, 2014), and was the co-editor of Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880 (Princeton University Press, 2007).

He also edited the newsletter of the Qualitative and Multi-Method Research organised section of the American Political Science Association from 2011 to 2014.

This course offers a methodologically pluralist introduction to historical methods for social scientists.

The goal of the course is to enable students who are (or are interested in) doing social science research that engages the past to:

  • situate their own variant of historical method relative to both classic debates and contemporary research programs
  • articulate and justify key methodological assumptions of their own method 
  • employ their method with greater clarity and confidence as to what they are and should be doing (and, as importantly, are not and need not be doing) in their historical research

Ever since the language of “historical method” first came to be deployed by scholars during the early-to-mid 19th century, it has been used to identify, valorise, discipline, and debate multiple, diverse, and at times directly competing, research practices and traditions. In our first class session we explore the classic roots of cleavages that persistently recur down to the current day, and in doing so, introduce a typology for differentiating varieties of historical method that will serve to structure the course as a whole. The typology distinguishes varieties of historical method that do not centre on the critical use of primary sources from those that do, and then subdivides each side of this initial divide to identify four main traditions of historical methods: economic, sociological, traditional, and interpretive. Each of the following four days then focuses, in turn, on a contemporary research program that exemplifies the current research frontier of one of the classically rooted traditions differentiated on day one. As we examine and move across these research programs we follow inter-disciplinary alliances and contests to survey together work by economists, political scientists, and sociologists. For each program we look at both cutting-edge methodological statements and substantive examples of its practitioners at work.

Day One. “Historical Method”(s): A Typology of Classic Cleavages

On day one we explore the classic roots of persistent cleavages and contentions. We first review the central role played by the “historical method” in crystallsSing positivism as a substantive philosophy of history and a social science methodology. Readings from Comte and JS Mill showcase: 1) how each advocated a “historical method” studying historical changes at the macro-societal level and connecting these to theories of human behaviour, 2) how they diverged over whether the application of this method by “sociology” (Comte’s coinage) should supplant or supplement the established tradition of classical political economy. We next take up selections from historians that exemplify how advocates of history as a science came independently to valorise “historical method,” but in doing so stressed critical work with primary sources. In closing, we examine early twentieth century selections, from Durkheim and others, that show debates both within and between the views of “historical method” that had emerged in the prior century, and in doing so, illuminate contrasts between economic, sociological, traditional, and interpretive traditions of historical research that remain relevant to this day.

Day Two. New Institutional Economic History

The four classically-rooted traditions of historical research have, of course, evolved significantly over time, and with day two we shift our focus to recent decades as we begin our survey of contemporary research programs that exemplify these traditions as preached and practiced today. We begin with the new institutional economic history pioneered by Noble-Prize winning economist Douglass North, and especially prominent recently in the best-selling work of Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Crown, 2013). We also examine how North’s historical research program has been extended within political science by leading rational-choice institutionalists, such as Barry Weingast and Margaret Levi.

Day Three. Comparative Historical Analysis

Where new institutional economic history relies heavily on statistical analysis and/or rational-choice models, on day three we consider the alternative, primarily qualitative, research program today known as “comparative historical analysis.” Stressing macro-societal comparative case studies, this program was earlier most developed in sociology, and identified as a strand of “historical sociology” in Theda Skocpol’s Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge UP, 1984). We will examine both continuities and changes in its methodological statements and practices as it has increasingly found its disciplinary home in political science, with methodological leadership in this research program being handed on generationally from Skocpol to James Mahoney and the other scholars working with him on the edited volumes Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Science (Cambridge UP, 2003), and most recently, Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2015).

Day Four. Traditional History Updated: Process-Tracing in International History

The methodological emphasis on the critical use of primary sources as key to the “scientific” character of the study of the past is today perhaps most evident beyond the field of history, which has lost much of its earlier self-identity as a scientific field. This methodological concern is, however, prominent in contemporary social science in connection with the methods of “process-tracing.” Process-tracing is, moreover, substantively applied especially to the political and diplomatic actors and events that were central to traditional history. On Day Four we will join with the Advanced Process-Tracing Methods course to do an exercise in critically analysing the evidentiary value of sources in international history.

Day Five. Interpretive History in Social Science

While the macro-comparative causal analysis strand of what was known as historical sociology has increasingly gravitated into political science, within sociology itself multiple historical researchers in recent decades have embraced the “cultural” and “linguistic turns” to emerge as avowedly interpretive historical scholars. In this final day we examine the changes in methodological outlook and historical practices involved in this shift as reflected in William H. Sewell’s Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago UP, 2005).

This course presumes no prior detailed familiarity with historical methods or debates around them. All that is assumed is that students in the course have done, or are interested in undertaking social science research that engages the past, whether from positivist or interpretive methodological orientations.

Day Topic Details
1 “Historical Method”(s): A Typology of Classic Cleavages 1st session 9.00-10.30; 2nd session 11.00-12.30
2 New Institutional Economic History 1st session 9.00-10.30; 2nd session 11.00-12.30
3 Comparative Historical Analysis 1st session 9.00-10.30; 2nd session 11.00-12.30
4 Traditional History Updated: Process-Tracing in International History 1st session 9.00-10.30; 2nd session 11.00-12.30
5 Interpretive History in Social Science 1st session 9.00-10.30; 2nd session 11.00-12.30
Day Readings
1 Selections from Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Fustel de Coulanges, Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Emile Durkheim, Carl Becker
2 Selections from Douglass North, Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson, Barry Weingast, Margaret Levi
3 Selections from Theda Skocpol; and from James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen (2015), Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis
4 Selection from Beach and Pedersen (2013) Process-Tracing: An Introduction; Lustick (1996) “History, Historiography and Political Science,” APSR 90 (3): 605-18; course packet on Cuban Missile Crisis
5 Selections from William H. Sewell (2005) Logics of History: Social History and Social Transformation

Software Requirements

None

Hardware Requirements

None

Recommended Courses to Cover Before this One

  • Summer School: Case Study Methods Process-Tracing Methods Philosophy of Science Introduction to Interpretive Research
  • Winter School: Philosophy of Science Introduction to Interpretive Research

Recommended Courses to Cover After this One

  • Summer School: Process-tracing Analysing Discourse Qualitative Data Analysis
  • Winter School: Advanced Process-tracing