ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a closer look at the different social science disciplines and their role in the social studies curriculum. The modern social sciences started to develop as areas of study during the 17th- and 18th-century European scientific revolution and Age of Enlightenment, when scientific approaches were applied to understanding the ways that societies were organized and people made decisions. The social sciences – political science, sociology, economics, geography, anthropology, and psychology – emerged as individual disciplines during the 19th century, coinciding with efforts to explain mass social upheavals, the development of industrial society, and the need of growing European nation-states to gather and organize statistical information and manage complex economic, political, and social systems. Twentieth-century movements for expanded government intervention in economies and regulation of society, whether called progressivism, bureaucratization, technocracy, fascism, or socialism, increased the importance of the social sciences.
