ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes some of the major conceptual and institutional dimensions of the history of social science, culture, and demographics in the context of modern Jewish history. He also describes the field of Jewish sociology and demography as it is usually understood more narrowly; the author pays special attention to the institutional dimension of the constitution of the field. He then turn to one key author of Jewish background, Georg Simmel, who was involved in the more general discourse on society and culture and developed constructivist notions of society and culture. The boundaries between European sociological discourses and Jewish sociology are sometimes fluid, scholars widely agree that "Jewish sociology" denotes the study of contemporary Jewry using the tools of modern social science. The works of the Jewish scholars aimed to identify European Jews as a unique nation, using statistics as scientific evidence.
