44th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association (Web)

Venue: Phoenix, Arizona
Time: November 8-11, 2018
Absracts due February 16, 2018

The drivers and distribution of disadvantage remain as enduring concerns for social scientists. The unfairly disadvantaged has operated as a contested category, leading to schisms within and between groups, across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic divides, sometimes by virtue of gender, sexuality, faith, or flag. In recognition of these concerns, we seek panel proposals and papers that examine how history, politics, culture, institutions, and organizational practices shape (and are shaped by) these disadvantages. We also welcome papers that generate historically-informed theory and that thickly describe disadvantaged and disadvantaging life-worlds. We construe the topic of disadvantage broadly, including its causes and consequences as well as the shared understandings held by both the disadvantaged and those facilitating such conditions.

Although the work of social science historians and historically-informed social scientists has no limits in time or period, contemporary debates remind us of past important events that have affected disadvantage around the globe, including the Taiping Rebellion, the 1871 Brazilian Law of Free Birth, the 1874 failure of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, the 1911 Mines and Works Act No 12 in South Africa, the 1935 Social Security Act … read more (PDF).