ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Book Reviewing in Interdisciplinary History and Psychology, 1970–2000

• In Event: Book Reviewing and (Inter)disciplinarity in Postwar Science

English Abstract

This paper examines the extensive book review sections of two deliberately broadly focused journals from the second half of the twentieth century: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JIH, established in 1970), which spent hundreds of pages on book reviews each year, and Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews (CP, 1956–2004), which consisted entirely of book reviews and was published by the American Psychological Association. During the postwar period, the editors of both journals explicitly sought to stimulate knowledge exchange across disciplinary boundaries. The paper aims to highlight how book reviews contributed to this aim. By analyzing samples of the regular review sections of CP and JIH, as well as the recurring formats in these journals that encouraged open dialogue between reviewers and reviewees, it traces how scientists from various (sub)disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., climate and economic history, or cognitive and organizational psychology) clashed over, and sometimes reconciled, their assumptions and expertise during the review process. Through a comparison of these cross-disciplinary book reviewing practices from the 1970s to the 1990s, the paper aims to demonstrate how the scientific genre of the book review has historically contributed to articulating and contesting disciplinary norms, as well as creating interdisciplinary knowledge.

Author

• Sjang ten Hagen, Utrecht University