Year: 1987
Type: report
Abstract: Comparative Study of Social TransformationsSome of the most exciting contemporary research in the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology is converging on a new approach to the study of social transformations.We believe that this convergence makes possible potentially dramatic breakthroughs in theory and research that could significantly reconfi_pre all three disciplines, and perhaps other social science disciplines a s well.We also believe that by properly coordinating, supplementing, and orchestrating existing faculty and intellectual resources at the University of Rlichigan, we could become the pre-eminent center for interdisciplinary work in this new area.Support for our interdisciplinary project on social transformations would. in our opinion, be an uncommonly fruitful use of Presidential Initiatre Fund money.I t would result not just in the publication of a feu? books and articles -a s is the case for most research projects, whether interdisciplinary or not -but in the launching of a continuing enterprise of real intellectual vitality and enormous scholarly significance.We propose establishment of a three-year interdisciplinary project on the comparative study of social transformations.Its participants would include some thirty faculty from the departments of histor?-, anthropology, and socio10~-.The program \ivould center on year-long interdisciplinary faculty seminars.but would also include lectures and seminar presentations by visiting scholars, conferences, publications.development of new team-taught interdisciplinary graduate courses, and research support for promising graduate students working in historical social science.This project u~ould be housed in the Center for Research on Social Organization.By the end of three years, we expect: (1) to have developed a core of faculty capable of moving freely across the disciplinary boundries that now divide scholarship in historj-, anthropology, and sociology, -4th a consequent increase in the power and sophistocation of .$, .. our research; (2j to hare established a unique interdisciplinary graduate program that will make the .. Universit~ of Michigan the prime choice of graduate students interested in comparative historical social science; (3j to have established in the larger academic community, by means of scholarly visits, conferences,-and publications, the well-founded impression that Michigan is a t the epicenter of a major reconfiguration of historical social science; (4) to have launched a variety of new individual and collective
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W392032