Editorial: Presenting the jubilee issue of Social Science Information

Abstract

It was a day many years ago, when – freshly graduated from the University of ParisSorbonne – I met Fernand Braudel and Clemens Heller on Boulevard Raspail at the ‘historic’ location of both the EHESS and the FMSH, and they invited me to join the editorial staff of Social Science Information. On that day I could never have imagined I would still be in charge of the journal in 2011, and that we would be celebrating 50 years of its publication. Indeed, not many scholarly journals succeed in remaining alive for so long! But here we are and it is certainly an event worth celebrating. Social Science Information was founded in 1961 by Clemens Heller, then in charge of the Division des Aires Culturelles (Area Studies’ Division) at the Sixth Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE) – later to become the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales – in collaboration with the Ecole and with the sponsorship of the International Social Science Council (ISSC) of Unesco, who at that time owned the title. Later on, in 1972, when Clemens Heller became Assistant Administrator to Fernand Braudel at the newly created Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, the journal itself was granted the sponsorship of the Foundation. At this time, it was published by Mouton (Paris/The Hague). Then in 1978 SSI was entrusted to SAGE Publications, whose unfailing and generous support over all these years has been the guarantor of the journal’s high standards as well as its unquestionable international renown. In 1987 – to bring this brief historical parenthesis to a close – the ISSC resumed its support for the journal; and ownership of the title passed to Clemens Heller and thereby to the MSH. This Special Anniversary Issue celebrates the journal’s ‘silver jubilee’ of 50 years of continuous publication. The thinking behind its editorial make-up has been to invite key authors and members of the Journal’s committees, those who over the years have become very close collaborators, to submit an original contribution. I deliberately chose not to