Berghahn Series

Explanations in the Social Sciences

Series Editors

John Terrell, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
Mark L. Golitko, University of Notre Dame
Luis A. Muro Ynoñán, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Editorial Board

Stephen Acabado, University of California, Los Angeles
Foreman Bandama, Field Museum
Elena Burgos Martinez, Leiden University
Helen Dawson, University of Bologna and Freie Universität, Berlin
Agustín Fuentes, Princeton University
Jonathan Marks, University of Arizona
Susan Guise Sheridan, Notre Dame University

Explanations in the Social Sciences are short, authoritative books written by global scholars for students and the general public. Each volume explores a single question often asked about the demands and challenges of being human from an historical, as well as contemporary perspective. This series is designed to demonstrate how S.T.E.M. education must include the social sciences if we are to deal successfully with the risks and uncertainties of life today and in the future.

• Each volume in this series showcases how the social sciences can play a critical role in modern S.T.E.M. education in undergraduate teaching, and beyond.
• These books document how new research and discoveries in the social sciences can help all of us better understand and deal with a broad range of current and everyday questions, worries, and concerns about ourselves and about the past, present, and future of our species.
• Each volume — unlike the entries, say, at Wikipedia.com — is written by recognized global scholars in an easily readable style. Each book has been peer reviewed.
• These books, therefore, are authoritative, reliable, and informative.

Aims of this book series

1. To show the reader how there can be more than one possible answer to good questions about why things are the way they are, and what it means to be human.
2. To provide students and the interested public with short and accessible overviews of major issues in the social sciences and how they interface with the modern world and its concerns.
3. To provide a platform for a diverse set of scholars from around the world to present up-to-date insights into the “state of play” on these major issues, and present cutting edge case studies.
4. To help readers understand and engage with the scientific process.
    

Submissions
We are encouraging authors to consider writing these books with their global partners.

Please submit your initial proposal to Series Editors John Terrell, Mark L. Golitko, and Luis A. Muro Ynoñán. Initial proposals for books in this series do not need to be lengthy (just an abstract of 250 to 500 words and a brief sketch of the five chapters using the following required chapter outline). It is important, however, to tell us what you see as the relevance of your book, and how widely the question you will discuss is being asked in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and S.T.E.M. Please also include a copy of your CV or resume.

Since we want readers to see the books in this series not only as authoritative but also as dependable sources of information, we ask authors to use the following guidelines when they are preparing their proposal. Please note that we are not looking for comprehensive reviews of a topic that read like encyclopedia articles (or a Wikipedia entries), but instead concise and targeted manuscripts offering readers a plausible solution (or solutions) to the question being explored.

General guidelines
These short books are not comprehensive reviews of the topics discussed. Authors are cautioned not to write them as if they were writing an extended encyclopedia article.

Each book instead should give the reader a well-reasoned answer (or answers) to the issue posed in its title.

By doing so, this book series showcases how the social sciences can help all of us resolve critical issues today, and why students and others should consider pursuing careers in one of these sciences.

We seek authors and co-authors from around the world who not only have important things to say, but who also have perspectives on scholarship and global issues that all of us need to learn about.

Required chapter organization
Although there are countless ways to write about a topic and do it well, we are asking authors to use the same general outline so that students, teachers, and others will know what each volume in this series has to offer them. Phrased simply, here is the broad outline to be used when writing for Explanations in the Social Sciences:

Introduction. Problem statement and overview (serving in effect as an executive summary of the book).
Chapter 1. Brief historical survey of the most prominent answers.
Chapter 2. More in-depth discussion of the 2-3 currently most widely used theories.
Chapter 3. How the author(s) studies this question (how they analyze, model, and study the problem discussed).
Conclusion. Review of what has been said in the previous chapters, and discussion of evidence for and against the analysis being offered.