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Economic and Social History

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What is Economic and Social History?

Economic and social history aims to understand and explain the historical relationships between economic and social change. It asks how historical societies organized themselves, which social hierarchies and gender relations dominated societal life and why inequalities developed. It deals with the societal generation, distribution, reproduction as well as destruction of material wealth. By including environmental history, it also asks which ecological and socio-economic processes interacted and how humans were connected to the rest of nature.

Such an economic, social and environmental history is not bound to any spaces or specific periods. It rather examines research topics across conventional spatial and temporal boundaries and creates its own topographies (like the regional or global) and time frames (like the Longue Durée or economic cycles).