Skip to main content

Towards an Epistemic Approach to Evaluation in SSH

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Evaluation of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract

Controversies about research evaluation in SSH do not depend mainly on technical issues, such as coverage and reliability of indicators, but on deeper epistemic reasons. This chapter argues that entering into the way in which scientific communities produce valid knowledge is a promising avenue to make research evaluation legitimate and productive. The chapters, expanding a work initiated in a book, combine two levels of analysis: a historical reconstruction of the academic institutionalisation of disciplines, and a discussion of epistemic issues, such as the explanatory orientation, the methodology, and the overall position with respect to two epistemological challenges.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    That is why I find most arguments about the possibility of manipulation of bibliometric information, such as the Impact factor, rather pointless. Science itself is manipulable. There are many examples of fake discoveries or misbehaviour of scientists. The truly interesting question is not why these things happen, but why they happen so infrequently and how it happens that they are almost invariably discovered and punished.

References

  • Abbott, A. (2001). The chaos of disciplines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abelhauser, A., Gori, R., & Sauret, M. J. (2011). La folie èvaluation. Paris: Mille et une nuits.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abrams, M. H. (1997). The transformation of English Studies: 1930–1995. In T. Bender & C. E. Schorske (Eds.), American academic culture in transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amit, V. (2000). The university as panopticon. Moral claims and attacks on academic freedom. In M. Strathern (Ed.), Audit cultures. Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, M. J. (1988). The American census. A social history. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, M. J., & Fienberg, S. E. (1999). Who counts? The politics of census-taking in contemporary America. New York: Russel Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appleby, J., Hunt, L., & Jacob, M. (1994). Telling the truth about history. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Apter, D. E. (2001). Structure, contingency, and choice: A comparison of trends and tendencies in political science. In J. W. Scott & D. Keates (Eds.), Schools of thought. Twenty-five years of interpretive social science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bagnoli, C. (2006). Deliberare, confrontare, misurare. Ragion Pratica, 26, 65–80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldi, S. (1998). Normative versus social constructivist processes in the allocation of citations: A network-analytic model. American Sociological Review, 63, 829–846.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baldick, C. (1983). The social mission of English criticism, 1848–1932. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balinski, M., & Laraki, R. (2010). Majority judgment. Measuring, ranking, and electing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnard, A. (2000). History and theory in anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, B., & Edge, D. (Eds.). (1982). Science in context. Readings in the sociology of science. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, B., Bloor, D., & Henry, J. (1996). Scientific knowledge. A sociological analysis. Athlone: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barth, F., Gingrich, A., Parkin, R., & Silverman, S. (2005). One discipline, four ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bastow, S., Dunleavy, P., & Tinkler, J. (2014). The impact of the social sciences. How academics and their research make a difference. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bate, J. (Ed.). (2011). The public value of humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge. The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories. Intellectual inquiry and the cultures of disciplines. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belfiore, E., & Upchurch, A. (2013). Humanities in the twenty-first century. Beyond utility and markets. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, D. (1982). The social sciences since the Second World War. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benton, T., & Craib, I. (2011). Philosophy of social science. The philosophical foundations of social thought (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, R. J. (1976). The restructuring of social and political theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism. Science, hermeneutics and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bérubé, M., & Ruth, J. (2015). The humanities, higher education, and academic freedom. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Blaug, M. (1992). The methodology of economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bloom, H. (1994). The Western canon. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.. (Italian translation Milan, Rizzoli, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bod, R. (2013). A new history of humanities. The search for principles and patterns from antiquity to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Boghossian, P. (2006). Fear of knowledge. Against relativism and constructivism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorsi, A. (2015). La valutazione possibile. Teoria e pratica nel mondo della ricerca. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H. D. (2008). What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior. Journal of Documentation, 64(1), 45–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1984). Homo academicus. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brady, H. E., & Collier, D. (2010). Rethinking social inquiry. Diverse tools, shared standards (2nd ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brewer, J. D. (2013). The public value of the social sciences. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, T. A. (1985). Private acts and public objects: An investigation of citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36(4), 223–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, T. A. (1986). Evidence of complex citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 37(1), 34–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, P. (Ed.). (2014). The humanities and public life. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryant, C. A. G. (1985). Positivism in social theory and research. Macmillan: Houndmills.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bulmer, M., Bales, K., & Kish Sklar, K. (Eds.). (1991). The social survey in historical perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Camic, C., Gross, N., & Lamont, M. (2011). Social knowledge in the making. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Carr, E. H. (1961). What is history? Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. (reprint London, Penguin Books, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  • Chang, R. (Ed.). (1997). Incommensurability, incomparability, and practical reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chang, R. (2002). Making comparisons count. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chartier, R. (2009). Au bord de la falaise. L’historie entre certitudes et inquiétude. Paris: Albin Michel. (first edition, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  • Citton, Y. (2010). L’avenir des Humanités. Èconomie de la connaissance ou cultures de l’interpretation? Paris: La Découverte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, J. (2005). Rearticulating anthropology. In D. A. Segal & S. J. Yanagisako (Eds.), Unwrapping the sacred bundle: Reflections on the disciplining of anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, H. M. (1975). The seven sexes: A study in the sociology of a phenomenon, or the replication of experiment in physics. Sociology, 9, 205–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, H. M. (1985). Changing order. Replication and induction in scientific practice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, H. M. (1999). Tantalus and the aliens: Publications, audiences and the search for gravitational waves. Social Studies of Science, 29, 163–197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Court, F. E. (1992). Institutionalizing English literature. The culture and politics of literary study, 1750–1900. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, B. (1984). The citation process. The role and significance of citations in scientific communication. Oxford: Taylor Graham.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, B. (2005). The hand of science. Academic writing and its rewards. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crosby, A. W. (1997). The measure of reality. Quantification and Western society, 1250–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahler-Larsen, P. (2012). The evaluation society. Stanford: Stanford Business Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Andrade, R. (1995). The development of cognitive anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Darnell, R. (2001). Invisible genealogies. A history of Americanist anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darnell, R. (2008). North American traditions in anthropology: The historiographic baseline. In H. Kuklick (Ed.), A new history of anthropology (pp. 35–51). Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dasgupta, P., & David, P. (1994). Toward a new economics of science. Research Policy, 23, 487–521.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (1990). Governmentality. Power and rule in modern society. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delanty, G. (2005). Social science (2nd ed.). Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delanty, G., & Strydom, P. (2003). Philosophies of social science. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Della Porta, D., & Keating, M. (Eds.). (2008). Approaches and methodologies in the social sciences. A pluralist perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrosières, A. (1993). La politique des grands nombres. Historie de la raison statistique. Paris: La Découverte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrosières, A. (2008a). Pour une sociologie historique de la quantification. L’argument statistique I. Paris: Presses de l’École des Mines.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Desrosières, A. (2008b). Gouverner par les nombres. L’argument statistique II. Paris: Presses de l’École des Mines.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Desrosières, A. (2014). Prouver et gouverner. Une analyse politique des statistiques publiques. Paris: La Découverte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donoghue, F. (2008). The last professors. The corporate university and the fate of the humanities. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dudley Duncan, O. (1984). Notes on social measurement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eagleton, T. (2015). The slow death of the university, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 August, in http://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Death-of-the/228991/. Last access 19 Aug 2015.

  • Easton, D., Gunnell, J. G., & Graziano, L. (1990). The development of political science. A comparative survey. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eley, G. (1996). Is all the world a text? From social history to the history of society two decades later. In T. H. McDonald (Ed.), The historic turn in the human sciences. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eriksen, T. H., & Nielsen, F. S. (2001). A history of anthropology. London: Pluto Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Espeland, W. N., & Stevens, M. L. (1998). Commensuration as a social process. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 313–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, R. J. (1997). In defense of history. London: Granta Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, R. J. (2001). Introduction. In E. H. Carr (Ed.), What is history? Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farge, A. (1989). Le goût de l’archive. Paris: Èditions de Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fish, S. (1989). Doing what comes naturally. Change, rhetoric and the practice of theory in literary and legal studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fish, S. (1995). Professional correctness. Literary studies and political change. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter. Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1966). Les mots et les choses. Paris: Editons Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Editions Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1978a). La «gouvernamentalitè» : Cours du Collège de France, Annéè 1977–1978 : Securitè, territoire et population, 4e leçon, 1er février 1978. In M. Foucault, Dits et écrits II. 1976–1988. Paris, Gallimard, 2001, pp. 635–657.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1978b). Introduction by Michel Foucault. In G. Canguilhem, On the normal and the pathological. Boston, D. Reidel, p. ix–xx. In M. Foucault, Dits et écrits II. 1976–1988. Paris, Gallimard, 2001, pp. 429–442.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fowler, D. D. (1975). Notes on inquiries in anthropology: A bibliographic essay. In H. H. Thoresen (Ed.), Toward a science of man. Essays in the history of anthropology. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frickel, S., & Moore, K. (Eds.). (2006). The new political sociology of science. Institutions, networks, and power. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, M. (1952). The methodology of positive economics. In Essays in positive economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, C. (1997). The history of literary criticism. In T. Bender & C. E. Schorske (Eds.), American academic culture in transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallay, A., & Gardin, J. C. (2009). Les méthodes logicistes en archéologie. Perspectives et limites. In B. Walliser (Ed.), La cumulativité du savoir en sciences sociales. Paris: Èditions de l’École des Hautes Ètudes en Sciences Sociales.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge. Hammersmith: Fontana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1985). Relativism and the social sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1992). Postmodernism, reason and religion. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48, 781–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, T. F. (1995). Boundaries of science. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Petersen, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science. Credibility on the line. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginzburg, C. (1986). Miti emblemi spie. Morfologia e storia. Turin: Einaudi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goertz, G. (2006). Social science concepts. A user’s guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goertz, G., & Mahoney, J. (2012). A tale of two cultures. Qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gori, R. (2011). La dignité de penser. Paris: Les Liens qui Libèrent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gori, R. (2013). La societè des imposteurs. Paris: Les Liens qui Libèrent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graff, G. (1987). Professing literature. An institutional history. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafton, A. (1991). Defenders of the text. In The traditions of scholarship in an age of science, 1450–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafton, A. (1999). The footnote. A curious history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (ed. or. Paris, Èditions de Seuil, 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafton, A. (2009). Worlds made by words. In Scholarship and community in the Modern West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guala, F. (2006). Filosofia dell’economia. Modelli, causalità, previsione. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guillory, J. (1993). Cultural capital. The problem of literary canon formation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gumbrecht, H. U. (2003). The powers of philology. Dynamics of textual scholarship. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunnell, J. G. (1990). The historiography of American political science. In D. Easton, J. G. Gunnell, & L. Graziano (Eds.), The development of political science. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halbwachs, M. (1925). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel. (new edition, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Halbwachs, M. (1950). La mémoire collective. Paris: Albin Michel. (new edition, 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  • von Hallberg, R. (1983). Canons. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haskell, T. L. (2000). The emergence of professional social science. The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century crisis of authority. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. (ed. or. University of Illinois Press, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hausman, D. (1992). The inexact and separate science of economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Herrnstein-Smith, H. (1988). Contingencies of value. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hilgard, E. R. (1987). Psychology in America. A historical survey. San Fiego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hollinger, D. A. (1997). The disciplines and the identity debates, 1970–1995. In T. Bender & C. E. Schorske (Eds.), American academic culture in transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hollinger, D. A. (Ed.). (2006). The humanities and the dynamics of inclusion since World War II. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyland, K. (2012). Disciplinary identities. Individuality and community in academic discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iggers, G. G. (1997). Historiography in the twentieth century. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iser, W. (2012). L’appel du texte. Paris: Èditions Allia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jauss, H. R. (1978). Pour une esthétique de la réception. Paris: Èditions Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, K. (2003). Re-thinking history. London: Routledge. (ed. or. 1991).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kernan, A. (Ed.). (1997). What’s happened to the humanities? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • King, G., Keohane, R. O., & Verba, S. (1994). Designing social inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures. How the science makes knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuklick, H. (Ed.). (2008). A new history of anthropology. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, M. (1987). How to become a dominant French philosopher: The case of Jacques Derrida. American Journal of Sociology, 93(3), 584–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, M. (2009). How professors thinkInside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). La vie de laboratoire. La production des faits scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenoir, T. (1997). Instituting science. The cultural production of scientific disciplines. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lerner, D., & Lasswell, H. D. (1951). The policy sciences. Recent developments in scope and method. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberson, S. (1985). Making it count. The improvement of social research and theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindblom, C. E. (1997). Political science in the 1940s and 1950s. In T. Bender & C. E. Schorske (Eds.), American academic culture in transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindsay, D. (1978). The scientific publication system in social science. A study of the operation of leading professional journals in Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • List, C., & Pettit, P. (2011). Group agency. The possibility, design, and status of corporate agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mansfield, E. (2002). Art history and its institutions. Foundations of a discipline. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMurtry, J. (1985). English language, English literature. The creation of an academic discipline. Hamden: Archon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Megill, A., & McCloskey, D. N. (1987). The rhetoric of history. In J. S. Nelson, A. Megill, & D. N. McCloskey (Eds.), The rhetoric of the human sciences. Language and argument in scholarship and public affairs. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Momigliano, A. (1984). The rhetoric of history and the history of rhetoric: On Hayden White’s Tropes. In Settimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici del mondo antico (pp. 49–59). Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moses, J. W., & Knutsen, T. L. (2007). Ways of knowing. Competing methodologies in social and political research. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mulkay, M. (1991). Sociology of science. A sociological pilgrimage. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, J. S., Megill, A., & McCloskey, D. N. (Eds.). (1987). The rhetoric of the human sciences. Language and argument in scholarship and public affairs. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Novick, P. (1988). That noble dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American historical profession. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ochsner, M., Hug, S. E., & Daniel, H. D. (Eds.). (2016). Research assessment in the humanities. Towards criteria and procedures. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parrinder, P. (1991). Authors and authority. English and American criticism, 1750–1990. Houndmills: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Patriarca, S. (1996). Numbers and nationhood. Writing statistics in nineteenth-century Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Platt, J. (1996). A history of sociological research methods in America, 1920–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, T. M. (1995). Trust in numbers. The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Potin, Y. (2013). L’historien en “ses” archives. In C. Granger (Ed.), À quoi pensent les historiens? Faire de l’historie au XXI e siècle. Paris: Èditions Autrement.

    Google Scholar 

  • Power, M. (1997). The audit society. Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Preziosi, D. (1989). Rethinking art history. Meditations on a coy science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew, C., & Bahn, P. (2008). Archaeology: Theories, methods and practice (5th ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renker, E. (2007). The origins of American literature studies. An institutional history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenau, P. M. (1992). Post-modernism and the social sciences. Insights, inroads, and intrusions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, D. (1991). The origins of American social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarup, M. (1993). An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sayer, A. (1992). Method in social science. A realist approach (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and social science. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Scholes, R. (1985). Textual power. Literary theory and the teaching of English. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scholes, R. (1998). The rise and fall of English. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. W., & Keates, D. (Eds.). (2001). Schools of thought. Twenty-five years of interpretive social science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shumway, D. R. (1994). Creating American civilization. A genealogy of American literature as an academic discipline. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Small, H. (2013). The value of the humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, R. M. (1997). Still blowing in the wind: The American quest for a democratic, scientific political science. In T. Bender & C. E. Schorske (Eds.), American academic culture in transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steele, D., & Guala, F. (2011). The philosophy of social science reader. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steinmetz, G. (Ed.). (2005). The politics of method in the human sciences. Positivism and its epistemological others. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stigler, S. M. (1999). Statistics on the table. In The history of statistical concepts and methods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strathern, M. (Ed.). (2000). Audit cultures. Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szenberg, M., & Ramrattan, L. (2014). Secrets of economics editors. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, C. A. (1996). Defining science. A rhetoric of demarcation. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thoresen, T. H. H. (Ed.). (1975). Toward a science of man. Essays in the history of anthropology. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tosh, J. (2010). The pursuit of history. Aims, methods and new directions in the study of modern history (5th ed.). London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, J. (2014). Philology. The forgotten origins of the modern humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walliser, B. (2009a). Les trois sources de la cumulativité en économie. In B. Walliser (Ed.), La cumulativité du savoir en sciences sociales. Paris: Èditions de l’École des Hautes Ètudes en Sciences Sociales.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walliser, B. (Ed.). (2009b). La cumulativité du savoir en sciences sociales. Paris: Èditions de l’Ècole des hautes études en sciences sociales.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, H. (1973). Metahistory. The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, H. (1978). Tropics of discourse. Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, H. (1987). The content of the form. Narrative discourse and historical representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Windschuttle, K. (1996). The killing of history. How literary critics and social theorists are murdering our past. New York: Encounter Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yearley, S. (2005). Making sense of science. Understanding the social studies of science. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziman, J. (1978). Reliable knowledge. An exploration of the grounds for belief in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziman, J. (2000). Real science. What it is, and what it means. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Bonaccorsi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bonaccorsi, A. (2018). Towards an Epistemic Approach to Evaluation in SSH. In: Bonaccorsi, A. (eds) The Evaluation of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68554-0_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68554-0_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68553-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68554-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics