Editing Historiography (section)

=====Quantification and new approaches to history=====
{{main|Social history|Political history#United States: The new political history}}

'''[[Social history]]''', sometimes called the "new social history", is a broad branch that studies the experiences of ordinary people in the past.<ref>The "old" social history dealt with institutions like schools and churches, while the "new" dealt with students, teachers and churchgoers.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Veysey |first=Laurence |date=1979 |title=The "New" Social History in the Context of American Historical Writing |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2700953 |journal=Reviews in American History |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=1–12 |doi=10.2307/2700953 |jstor=2700953 |issn=0048-7511 |access-date=2023-04-25 |archive-date=2022-06-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220609164831/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2700953 |url-status=live }}</ref> It had major growth as a field in the 1960s and 1970s, and still is well represented in history departments. However, after 1980 the "cultural turn" directed the next generation to new topics. In the two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in U.S. universities identifying with social history rose from 31 to 41 percent, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40 to 30 percent.<ref name="Kennedy-1997"/>

The growth was enabled by the social sciences, computers, statistics, new data sources such as individual census information, and summer training programs at the [[Newberry Library]] and the [[University of Michigan]]. The New Political History saw the application of social history methods to politics, as the focus shifted from politicians and legislation to voters and elections.<ref>Allan G. Bogue, "The Quest for Numeracy: Data and Methods in American Political History", ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' 21#1 (1990), pp. 89–116 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/204919 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170402183027/http://www.jstor.org/stable/204919 |date=2017-04-02 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=Paula |year=1999 |title=The Midlife Crisis of the New Political History |journal=Journal of American History |volume=86 |issue=1 |pages=158–166 |doi=10.2307/2567411 |jstor=2567411 }}</ref>

The [[Social Science History Association]] was formed in 1976 as an interdisciplinary group with a journal ''[[Social Science History]]'' and an annual convention. The goal was to incorporate in historical studies perspectives from all the social sciences, especially political science, sociology and economics. The pioneers shared a commitment to quantification. However, by the 1980s the first blush of quantification had worn off, as traditional historians counterattacked. [[Harvey J. Graff]] says:

{{blockquote|The case against the new mixed and confused a lengthy list of ingredients, including the following: history's supposed loss of identity and humanity in the stain of social science, the fear of subordinating quality to quantity, conceptual and technical fallacies, violation of the literary character and biographical base of "good" history (rhetorical and aesthetic concern), loss of audiences, derogation of history rooted in "great men" and "great events", trivialization in general, a hodgepodge of ideological objections from all directions, and a fear that new historians were reaping research funds that might otherwise come to their detractors. To defenders of history as they knew it, the discipline was in crisis, and the pursuit of the new was a major cause.<ref>Harvey J. Graff, "The Shock of the 'New' (Histories)': Social Science Histories and Historical Literacies", ''Social Science History'' 25.4 (2001) 483–533, at p. 490; in Project Muse</ref>}}

Meanwhile, "new" economic history became well-established. However, cliometrics has never been considered a historical field by the vast majority of historians so that cliometric articles have not been cited by historians.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Journal of Economic History main page |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Economic History Review main page |doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1468-0289 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14680289}}</ref> Economists mostly employed economic theories and econometric applications similar to typical economic papers. As a result, quantification remained central to demographic studies, but slipped behind in political and social history as traditional narrative approaches made a comeback.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kousser |first1=J. Morgan |year=1984 |title=The revivalism of narrative: A response to recent criticisms of quantitative history |url=https://authors.library.caltech.edu/81855/1/sswp453.pdf |journal=Social Science History |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=133–149 |doi=10.1017/S0145553200020046 |s2cid=143306892 |access-date=2020-08-28 |archive-date=2020-11-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124163125/https://authors.library.caltech.edu/81855/1/sswp453.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Recently, as the newest approach in economic history "new history of capitalism" appeared. In the first article of the related journal, Marc Flandreau defined their purpose as "crossing border" to create a truly interdisciplinary field.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Border Crossing by Marc Flandreau |journal=Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics |date=2019 |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=1–9 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/743528/pdf |last1=Flandreau |first1=Marc |doi=10.1353/cap.2019.0004 |s2cid=242417622 |doi-access=free }}</ref>