Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory,

Biography and Autobiography

Charles Crothers, School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

As they develop, academic disciplines (and their constituent specialties) generate research outputs, theoretical and meth-
odological commentaries, and collective perspectives (particularly disciplinary histories and other collective memories). In
addition, there are backstories of how the research outputs are produced from the underlying infrastructure of the discipline
and the personal efforts of its members. The production of personal documents (e.g., autobiographies/biographies) is an
increasingly important way in which the personal is fruitfully linked up with the collective. But disciplines, while being
relatively self-conscious, still lack in collective direction over their operations and trajectories.

Introduction l Providing sensitizing methodological reection which can

affect the validity and reliability of the elds ndings.
Academic (science, social science, and also humanities)
In addition, since research work and writing share some of
disciplines, and their constituent specialties, reveal a variety of
the commonalities of all social reality, and given the privileged
patterns of change over time. For convenience, the discipline
internal access, it can be argued that they can also provide a site
level is assumed in this article but the same points apply to
for the development of generalized social science knowledge
both lower-level entities (e.g., elds or specialties) and to the
which is just as valid as that obtainable from any other site.
broader (e.g., social sciences as a whole). A common pattern is
for initial discoveries and slow early growth accompanied by
some resistance from other specialties, which then escalates
The BackStories: Infrastructure and Also Personal
into a growth phase in which publications pour out and the
Experiences
intellectual cognitive structure framing these is institutional-
ized. A nal phase can be a slower growth once major inno-
The scaffolding supporting the work of a discipline often
vations in the area have been exhausted, and perhaps
remains in the shadows. The infrastructure of a discipline (its
a continuing after life in which the reigning intellectual para-
institutions, organizations, funding, techniques, etc.) is
digm continues to have some relevance as well as contributing
a necessary, yet seldom foregrounded, aspect of knowledge
to applications as the cognitive basis for (social) engineering
production. The ways in which these structures support or
interventions. However, along this common path there are
hinder research effort is important, but seldom assessed.
many variations (see Abbott, 2001). Alongside the main
Moreover, at a personal level the scholars in a discipline each
theoretical and substantive literature in a discipline there also
have their own experiences of being involved in knowledge
other literature such as that on methodology, which provides
production. And some of these experiences are selectively
guidance about appropriate methods.
documented in informal, and sometimes formal ways (e.g.,
There is also a more subjective side of research and publi-
eld notes, diaries).
cations in which the various disciplines construct socially
Yet, most of these backstories remain hidden. A sharp line
meaningful cultural frameworks which they then espouse to
tends to be drawn between the public and the private. More
themselves, their students, scientists in other areas, and the
intimate details of the social production of scientic knowledge
wider community. These can broadly be referred to as disci-
tend to be suppressed since their exposure might be seen to
pline building. Such cultural accompaniments construct
detract from the ideal of the production of the pure truth that
a possible future and retrieve a plausible past together with
many scientists see as their goal or as relatively uninteresting.
providing a working model, providing a shared understanding
After ndings are obtained the scaffolding is disassembled,
of how the discipline operates in the present. Such visions
and even hidden. Public documents tend to produce only the
indicate what the boundaries of the eld are, and in what ways
nal version of the study and mask the process of attaining this,
the eld differs from any rivals. Such disciplinary cultures also
thus suppressing the .intuitive leaps, false starts, mistakes,
localize a particular version of the overall culture of science
loose ends and happy accidents that actually cluttered up the
and there are also differences in a range of other characteristics,
inquiry (Merton, 1967, p. 4). Michael Polanyis concept of
including e.g., preferences between book and journal article
tacit knowledge is a more positive version of this idea, which
publications.
calls attention to the role of unstated (background) knowledge
There are two quite separate functions of these articulations
in getting experiments to work.
of subjective disciplinary cultures:
Academics are motivated by strongly held scholarly norms
l Assisting in constructing the history or the contemporary to keep the public and private spheres of their activities separate
culture of the discipline for its own sake and as an ideal held and the latter hidden. Moreover, undue attention to the self is
out to motivate adherents and neophytes to the discipline. seen as self-indulgent. However, a contrasting value motivating

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492 Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory, Biography and Autobiography
the revelation of backstories can be that of informing and
educating the public about academic efforts by allowing them
to see the human endeavor required in the production of
scholarly knowledge.
Task of Article
In constructing disciplinary collective memories and histories,
both objective but also subjective collective and personal
sources are drawn upon. Various activities, including devel-
oping disciplinary histories, put some of the more private
component of knowledge production back out into public
view. But accessing the latter requires effort. This article reviews
how private but also public personal documents are drawn on
in establishing disciplinary histories (of a variety of forms). In
particular, there is an interest in understanding whether
developing collective memory leads to disciplinary self-
consciousness and some ability for its members to guide the
future of their discipline.
Unfortunately, there is little systematic work on this whole
wider discipline-building area of scientic activity so the
references are limited, and mainly found in chapters or journal
articles (an interesting exception is Popkin, 2005 on the auto-
biographies of historians). Much of the literature is reection
(including debate) arising from the publication of particular
biographical materials. Studies of discipline building in other
than social science disciplines are also pertinent (e.g.,
Sderqvist, 1996; Shortland and Yeo, 2008).
Disciplinary Collective Memories in
Discipline Building
A major component of discipline-building processes is to
reect on and construct that disciplines history and this
historical image is usually implicitly built into the disciplines
images of its own trajectory (the present and future as well as
the past). In more recent decades, efforts have been made to
develop contemporary pictures of a discipline, such as by
monitoring research outputs and visualizing citation networks
or collaboration patterns. Other efforts such as the famous
Foresight programs in several countries have endeavored to
extrapolate or project into the future that topics of scientic
knowledge should be focused on. Occasionally, specially
constituted commissions to develop research agendas which
will guide future research funding and research efforts are
appointed. However, largely because many of the necessary
facts lie comfortably at hand, construction of backward-
looking disciplinary histories is a more usual mode of disci-
pline building.
Apart from textbook coverage and occasional historical
tomes, disciplinary historical material can be developed in
a variety of ways and on a variety of occasions including
particularly presidential addresses, commemorations cele-
brating turning points (e.g., anniversaries, centenaries). Corre-
spondence between scholars is of major importance as letters
(and now e-mails) will reveal much about scholars concerns,
motivations, strategies, and experiences. In turn, the extent to
which stock of a scholars correspondence is kept in some form
of archive and then rendered accessible varies enormously.
Some correspondence which has survived sits in well-cata-
loged, well-housed accommodations, whereas others are
merely dumped without any nding mechanisms and in
premises which are not hospitable to the subsequent researcher
who might wish to consult them. And (as Fleck, 2011 points
out) for those who fail to be appointed to an ofcial position
there is usually not the slightest trace since any records of them
are ephemeral.
There is a hierarchy of those who are preferred spokes-
people; mainly the disciplines elders and ofcial leaders. After
all, they are drawing on experience and the authority of their
pronouncements comes from their ofcial or unofcial posi-
tions. As a result, it is likely that disciplinary histories will be at
least partially shaped by the interests of such spokespeople.
For example, to maintain a thoroughly scientic image, some
categories of potential contributors to an emergent discipline
are read out of the picture such as those considered not to
have made proper scientic contributions or possibly those
from less-valued social backgrounds. Resisting this, other
historians may endeavor to counter with alternative histories
which reinstate such excluded gures and which (often vigor-
ously) outline alternative conceptions of the history of the
discipline (e.g., Deegan, 1991). And in turn, more orthodox
historians may defend their original conguration (e.g.,
Hamilton, 2003).
Disciplinary Differences in Disciplinary Histories
The natural sciences are most resistant to revelation of their
construction systems because these are seen as almost entirely
irrelevant in the advance of scientic activity, and at best
tolerated as public relations exercises. At the other pole, the
humanities which are largely concerned with the preserva-
tion, articulation, and development of culture tend to be very
historically orientated disciplines. (However, more recently,
cultural theory across a range of humanities disciplines has
perhaps focused more on structural features without such
a concentration on heritage). The social sciences fall in
between, with disciplinary histories playing a substantial, but
not necessarily major role in their intellectual activities.
The major social sciences disciplines began to become
institutionalized from North America and Europe in the 1880s
and 1890s although taking much longer to be properly
established in many countries and only becoming common
across the world over the last half-century at most. When
established they were in the shadow of several centuries of
earlier intellectual developments which they had to come to
some terms with. And so, there was considerable interest in this
prehistory by early writers in each disciplinary area.
Many of the newly forming disciplines developed founding
myths, although this varied in importance. Donald Levine
proclaimed, for example, that Sociology was born with
a ready-made history (1995, p. 13) since one of the founding
fathers Comte included an historical sweep of previous
writers in his dening of the discipline he was helping to create
(also see, e.g., Helm, 1967).
Some common characteristics shared by disciplinary histo-
ries may vary by phase of development, e.g., Merton cites Alfred
 Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory, Biography and Autobiography
N. Whiteheads it is characteristic of a science in its earlier
stages . to be both ambitiously profound in its aims and
trivial in its handling of details (1967, p. 49). Merton argues
that grandiose images of the scientic status of a discipline are
often produced because of perceived public demand for
successful explanatory capabilities. However, the public erro-
neously judges all disciplines (including the social sciences) in
terms of the same standard, ignorant that some disciplines
stand at a different phase in terms of development sequences
and therefore have more limited current explanatory capacities.
Spokespeople for disciplines may need to point out their
disciplines limitations to the public.
A common ordering of phases in disciplinary histories
involves those of forerunners, founding fathers (few founding
mothers tend to be identied), and those responsible for the
further development of the discipline. For example, Merton
suggested that (1967, p. 2) .Sociologists retain a most
parochial, almost Pickwickian conception of the history of
sociological theory as a collection of critical summaries of past
theories spiced with short biographies of major theorists and
arranged in chronological order. Often such disciplinary
histories are couched as heroic tales, which valorize particular
individuals who are thus created as founding fathers or more
generally as classic gures.
Not all disciplinary histories tell a simple story of progress.
Rather, Levine presents a typology of narratives (1995, pp. 96,
97) which points to a far wider range of alternative images:
l Positivist: history .does exhibit a progressive renement
of observational and analytical capabilities and a cumula-
tively developed body of ndings;
l Pluralist: .the universe of viable. approaches consists of
an irreducible multiplicity of perspectives, principles,
methods, denitions of subject matter, and statements of
aims;
l Synthetic: .agreement has been reached and can be
reached on the relevance of certain basic terms, conceptions
and generalizations;
l Humanistic: .that the heritage.contains more than
a body of replicable techniques, substantive ndings and
theoretical analyses;
l Contextualist: that historical contexts have shaped the
character of .concepts and problems in profound, often
subtle, ways.
l Dialogical: .each type arose through critical engagements
with the others and .each continues to occupy a place in
the broader tapestry. And the trajectory takes the shape of
a spiral.
Which trope is used to model the trajectory varies between
historians: Levine advocates the dialogical approach which he
also claims best represents large portions of sociologys history.
For many social science disciplines, there is a tendency for
the systematics of theory and the history of theory to merge and
to be conated when employed in teaching. Theoretical ideas
are portrayed as comprising packages which tend to belong to
a particular era, although several may be seen as coexisting in
the same period. Often such packages are labeled as Schools
although these are constructed after the event rather than
necessarily being social communities linking a group of
colleagues. The history of a discipline is often told as
493
a sequence or series of such Schools. Such idealized disci-
plinary histories are ideal for more or less simultaneously
teaching students the history of the discipline at the same time
as the range of theoretical and methodological options avail-
able within it.
In his fecund (if problematic) model of scientic develop-
ments, Thomas S. Kuhn pointed out the importance of text-
books in indoctrinating new recruits into the mysteries of their
discipline and indeed, the packaged histories often included in
textbooks can be important for inductees. Although they are
not produced to have high standards of historical validity, such
versions of history become authorized versions by being
produced in textbook accounts.
Levine nicely sums up some more general effects of disci-
plinary histories (1995, p. 10) .Collective memories recall
great events of the past, which form a focus for group soli-
darity. They also keep alive the sense of afliation with the
group and its purposes during periods of routine activity
between times when the group assembles to reafrm its
collective existence. They can also be defensive, as in
remembrance of guilt and difculty, hopefully overcome by
subsequent striving. They can give a sense of duration:
extrapolating from past trends or moving forward or backward
to some shared history or future history, so they can valorize
particular historical directions. They can demarcate bound-
aries, celebrate the emergence of a new formation or trace its
connections/disconnections to others (see also Graham et al.,
1983).
Writings from the past of a discipline can also contribute
more directly to its present academic work, rather than only its
history. Merton has commented on the functions that are
served by social science scholars working through earlier
material in their discipline (1967, p. 37). Motivations for
considering earlier writings
.range from the direct pleasure of coming upon an aesthetically
pleasing and more cogent version of ones own ideas, through the
satisfaction of independent conrmation of these ideas by a power-
ful mind, and the educative function of developing high standards of
taste for [.] work, to the interactive effect of developing new ideas
by turning to older writing within the context of contemporary
knowledge.
Merton (1967) has also developed a typology of different
ways in which earlier and later work might be related. However,
disciplinary histories draw more broadly on the stock of past
work than only those elements where there are intellectual
connections over time.
Because of the poor quality of many disciplinary histories,
there have long been calls for more adequate sociological
disciplinary histories in all social science disciplines (e.g., in
Sociology, Cosers, 2003 more sociological treatment of the
history of sociology represents an advance over alternative
histories which convey less about the social contexts of the
writers covered). Mertons sketch of the expertise needed is still
pertinent: .a new breed of specialized historian of science is
drawing widely and deeply upon sociology, psychology and
tools of science for theoretical guides to their interpretations of
494 Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory, Biography and Autobiography
the development of science (Merton, 1967, p. 3). Better
histories
.would take up such matters as the complex liation of sociological
ideas, the ways in which they developed, the connections of theory
with the changing social origins and subsequent social statuses of its
exponents, the interaction of theory with the changing social orga-
nization of sociology, the diffusion of theory from centers of
sociological thought and its modication in the course of diffusion
and the ways in which it was inuenced by changes in the environing
culture and social structure.
Merton, 1967, p. 2
The purpose of these more sophisticated accounts is to
achieve better understanding of how things came to be, which
is more usually censored from Whiggish disciplinary history
accounts which favor a more linear construction of disciplinary
progress. So, in the more extended versions of disciplinary
histories the material to be included covers
.conceptions which made good sense at the time of their formu-
lation but were later shattered by compelling empirical tests or
replaced by conceptions more adequate to the enlarged facts of the
case. It also includes the false starts, the now archaic doctrines and
both the fruitless and fruitful errors of the past.
Merton, 1967, p. 3
In constructing more sound disciplinary histories, it is
necessary to draw on biographical and other personal docu-
ments and experiences.
Personal Documents in Academic Disciplines
This section is organized around asking: who writes what (i.e.,
content) about whom, where, is published where, and with
what effects?
There are several different genres of personal documents:
l Entries in biographical dictionaries
l Obituaries
l Diaries and autobiographical accounts, memoires
l Amateur histories
l Sociological histories
l Professional histories (including those which are theory
based)
l Development of more systematic historical studies (e.g.,
Paul Lazarsfelds research program on the early develop-
ment of social research).
This list is organized in terms of a descending continuum of
increasing interpretation those genres listed earlier contain
only fairly raw material from a subjective standpoint whereas
those listed further down have a higher component of inter-
pretation. Also, validity and reliability of information tends to
increase as one goes down the list. However, it is not that
simple. Each of the genres has different characteristics, and
prescribed lengths of treatment which control the extent of
reportage. A major axis lies in terms of the extent of intellectual
subject matter versus extra-intellectual coverage of more
personal information. Some genres focus almost entirely on
subject matter whereas some barely mention this in favor of
more extensive biographical coverage. Some genres are partic-
ular to some time periods: for example, the biographical
eulogies of scholars common in Medieval times.
As well as providing useful descriptive contextualizing, some
writing (such as prefaces or introductions) whether written by
the autobiographer/biographer or an editor can be important
in providing a framing for the material: indicating to the reader
what sort of lessons they might gain from reading the material
and more generally, how to read it. Finally, information about
the construction of social science knowledge can contribute to
understandings within the sociology of knowledge, such as
constructing models of the processes of discipline building.
Development of personal documents (and also collective
memories) can include people (social scientists), institutions
and organizations or social science outputs (ideas, research),
although the rst-mentioned predominates. A particular
subgenre is sometimes named research chronicles (e.g.,
Hammond, 1967) or more colloquially tales from the eld
(e.g., Van Maanen, 2011) as they provide a depiction of the
development of a particular research project, which is often
collective and relatively short term in contrast with writing
about more individualistic and life-long intellectual careers.
Paradoxically, many personal documents have little personal
information, certainly about scholars private lives. Personal
documents tend to suppress awkward, too personally revealing,
details. Some are highly formulaic revealing little more than an
orthodox curriculum vitae. For example, Fleck (2011) points
out that whereas the emigration of the academic social scientist
migrants he studied is well documented, their (less renowned)
return home is somewhat shrouded in silence. Published biog-
raphies may admit to occasional shortcomings but major secrets
and deciencies usually remain hidden. The extent of what is
hidden, though, may be disguised by limited revelations of some
safe secrets. There clearly is some temptation to present the story
of a scholarly life as being more coherent that it really has been,
although very often the scholar is represented as being, rather, at
the mercy of the fates. Charles Tilly complained that when
forced to confront their own lives, sociologys practitioners .
tidy them up, mute their passions, avoid vivisection of their
motives, portray themselves as bemused players in a game they
do not run, treat their own careers as a series of breaks, lucky or
otherwise (1993, p. 497).
Some personal documents, though, are written in styles
which reveal more conicts, emotions, and struggles. Such
accounts to some extent are indeed written to pay accounts
and document experienced difculties. Often such accounts are
written by disciplinary outsiders or scholars who came from
unusual backgrounds.
Biographical work tends to focus on particular targets, with
a strong tendency to concentrate on high-status targets.
However, there may be more complex patterns in biographical
work: for example, a rst generation may be subject to much
biographical writing since they are the founders, which may
then leave less central precursors, and perhaps the second
generation of followers, not adequately treated autobiograph-
ically/biographically (see Scarborough and Furumoto, 1989).
Biographies also require motivated others to write about the
targets, e.g., spouses, disciples, and professional historians.
 Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory, Biography and Autobiography
More detailed kinds of source material include (Merton, 1967,
p. 6) scientic notebooks and personal journals and correspon-
dence. The introductions/prefaces in reissued editions of books
are frequently informative as they provide an opportunity for the
author to review the original circumstances of the books
production and also on how the original work ts in with
subsequent developments. Similarly, some authors issue
collected volume(s) of their writings which provide opportunities
to sketch in the personal strategies lying behind their writing.
Rather than only relying on the somewhat accidental
production of public or private documents, more systematic
effort can be important. One stimulus is collective biographical
exercises where entries are canvassed by an organizer. In many
countries, there are state-sponsored national biographies of
important people, which very likely will include some social
scientists. In particular, there is a need to actively solicit oral
histories. Again, systemic programs have occasionally been
launched (especially by professional scholarly associations) to
endeavor to cover a considerable number of oral histories or
indeed more up-market biographical accounts. Surveys of the
views, careers, and material circumstances of contemporary
social scientists are seldom used, but there are some examples.
Methodology of Constructing Personal Documents:
Autobiographies. Coordinated and Collective
Autobiographies, etc.
Autobiographies include objective information:
Like biographers, autobiographers can use personal documents,
public documents, the testimony of relevant others and so forth, to
compare and contrast these different accounts so that advantages of
each is maximized and the disadvantages minimized.
Stanley, 1993, p. 43
Pierre Bourdieu (2008), too, endeavored to avoid his
autobiography being seen as falling into a preexisting genre
and insisted on it being seen as a socio-analysis of his career ical writings.
in which social contexts were particularly emphasized. Meth-
odologically, autobiographers stand in a unique relationship to
their material. Merton lays out the methodology of autobiog-
raphy in more detail (see also Oakley, 2010):
The constructed personal text of the interplay between the active
agent and the social structure, the interplay between ones sequences
of status-sets and role-sets on the one hand and ones intellectual
development on the other, with its succession of theoretical
commitments, foci of scientic attention, planned or serendipitous
choices of problems and choices of strategic research sites for their
investigation. Fully-edged sociological autobiographers relate their
intellectual development both to changing social and cognitive
micro-environments close at hand and to the encompassing macro-
environments provided by the larger society and culture.
Merton, 1988, pp. 19, 20
Popkin (2001) has particularly commented on the features
of coordinated biographies where an array of scholars are
invited to contribute to a collection. Appearing in a collected
volume can reduce the anxieties of self-indulgence that attends
495
separately published autobiographies. To some extent, a degree
of uniformity in style appears, possibly imposed or encouraged
by the editor(s). Certainly, in comparison to autobiographical
accounts which are pursued at much greater length, there is far
less eshed-out detail.
Collective biographies (prosopography) involve secondary
analysis of primary sources of biographical material. The
amount of interpretation which can be extracted depends on
the quantity/quality of the underlying data sources. Collective
biographies allow (once coded) the distillation of patterns
(such as careers) and provide some ways of answering ques-
tions about how social contexts shape disciplinary develop-
ments. Fleck (2011) argues that collective biographies ll
a particular gap in the sociological study of disciplines between
the units of generations and of institutions and their patterns of
changes, i.e., statistics concerning the present versus the long
term.
However collective biographies have difculties, especially,
where insufcient data are available; it is best where the group
studied is from a common occupational or similar group.
Difculties also arise when different information about a target
is yielded from different sources; so rules to adjudicate on
conicting data are needed.
Biographical and other personal document practices in the
social sciences follow (and possibly in some parts lead) more
general societal developments on such matters. The volume of
biographies and the amount of biographical (versus academic)
material in them is also affected by academic ideologies.
Already, science biographies have been hailed by some
commentators as producing particularly powerful studies,
although few social science biographies have yet scaled these
heights of acclaim (see also Sderqvist, 1996).
The extent of biographical writings has followed the general
turn to biography noticeable from the late 1970s (e.g., Stanley,
1993). Postmodernism as an approach has very strongly
emphasized the personal factor, whereas highly positivist
endeavors tend to sweep the personal element from the scene
although this has not prevented (as in natural science) histor-
Particular trends within biographical writing will also affect
content, such as the French genre of lhistoire des intelectuels
which has been continued over the last century.
It claims we should know specically about writers, university
lecturers, scientists, journalists of the past: their social origins, their
educational background, how much they earned, their clubs, their
habits, whom they married (as marriage as a means of social
mobility) how their progeny fared, where they lived (rive droite? rive
gauche?) where they spent their holidays, whether they were believers
or agnostics, monarchists or republicans, pacists or interventionists,
in the resistance or collaborationists and so forth. Their theories
insofar as they formulated any are of minor interest for two reasons.
The rst because they are the subject to other scholars . and
second because these theories reect the context in which they
took shape.
Borlandi, 2014, p. 164
Autoethnography takes reexivity to its ultimate level.
Biography is no longer showing how the researcher obtains
data from their research site but focuses on the researchers
496 Discipline-Building in the Social Sciences: Collective Memory, Biography and Autobiography

personal reactions to the research site the means has become within. This is particularly evident in applied disciplines where
an end. The researcher becomes his/her research subject. The clearly education studies, academics, and classroom teachers
research site being studied either evaporates or is reduced to share common, overlapping interests and biographies. Link-
somewhat unimportant background. ages to social context can go far deeper. For example, in the
This approach links to the old standard psychological process of migrating from Europe to the United States, Fleck
methodology of introspection (cf Lyons, 1986). While argues:
introspection is not a term much valued in contemporary
times the method is still widely used in social science, although
the terminology has changed and the term repressed . the Europeans focus, methods, and frames of scholarly reference
became markedly inuenced by American approaches to the social
introspection now emerges in the forms of self-report surveys, sciences, including adequate external funding, empirical methods,
interviews, etc. scholarly teamwork, a limited time-frame for projects, and he
The particular UK research method of mass observation expansion of the relevant professional disciplines themselves.
(e.g., Chaney and Pickering, 1986) could be seen as a collective McClelland (2012, p. 1554)
autoethnography since a wide-ung corpus of observers
reported on themselves and their immediate social surrounds.
Autobiographical/biographical writing has been encour-
Conclusions
aged by publishing enterprises such as Die Wissenschaft der
The reexivity brought about through publishing disciplinary
Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen in the 1930s period (Schmidt,
histories allows disciplines to reect and adjust to their
1922) and A History of Psychology in Autobiography (American
circumstances. Experiences are described and their meanings
Psychological Association, 1930) from 1930 on. More
established, and this allows the discipline to attempt to
recently, various Essais dego-histoire came out in the leading
ameliorate difculties and to take advantage of opportunities.
publisher Gallimards prestigious Bibliothque des histoires
However, disciplinary histories can help to cement in place
series (e.g., Nora, 1987).
ossied bodies of knowledge.
The potential for developing more sophisticated disci-
Behind these concerns about the social context effect on
plinary histories in part relies on vehicles which encourage their
disciplines lies a theory of the sociology of knowledge, which is
publication. One example is the biobibliographical series
that social location (at least partially) together with institu-
sponsored by Greenwood Press (e.g., Deegan, 1991) which
tional arrangements (e.g., funding) affects which research
provides reviews of a scholars oeuvre. Some disciplines
problems are addressed and shapes the theoretical and meth-
have established journal(s) whose focus is the history of that
odological approaches taken.
discipline. Methodologies and Practices.
The organization of the social science disciplines may be
The backstory of some research projects has been told and
consequential for the knowledge produced in them. In the Gul-
this experience can feed into methodology texts and standards/
benkian report, Immanuel Wallerstein et al. (1996) argued that
advice which is toned by the realism of what is possible in the
the ossied structure of disciplines reduced the capacity of the
eld (see, e.g., Meneley and Young, 2005).
social sciences to provide adequate explanations. Social science
How the scientists interrelate with other stakeholders in
needs to achieve an appropriate mix between pure and applied
their research site will also have major implications for the
work and to be assemble a range of disciplinary/knowledge
knowledge which might be drawn, types of access, biases,
expertise that covers the full array of phenomena which need to be
enforced limitations, etc. Field research is an inherently social
described and explained. But, there are few mechanisms to ensure
process.
that this happens optimally. Hopefully, disciplinary histories,
Sociobiographical characteristics can have effects on the
which are in part constructed from personal biographical mate-
scientic process.
rial, may usefully feed into the needed disciplinary identity and
A full-scale social determinism is unwarranted: social
reexivity that might begin to achieve this.
science publications very largely correctly reect what
researchers nd. However, biographical data can be drawn
upon to reveal some patterns between social characteristics of
See also: Autobiographical Memory; Biography and Society;
researchers and their research topics. Biographical material is
Collective Identity; Collective Memory, Social Psychology of;
particularly pertinent in explaining the psychological and
Collective Memory, Sociology of; Discipline Formation in the
social inuences on how problems are selected, theories
Social Sciences; Encyclopedias, Handbooks, and Dictionaries;
chosen, and particular methodologies pursued.
History and the Social Sciences; Life Course in History;
Some of the links are obvious, although there are more
Prosopography (Collective Biography); Scholars, Private Lives
tendencies than determinants: women scholars are more
of; Scientic Disciplines, History of; Specialization and
inclined toward research issues involving women, families, Recombination of Specialties in the Social Sciences.
and the private rather than the public sphere. Scholars with
ethnic or other marked backgrounds are more inclined to
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