Social Sciences and Missions / Sciences sociales et missions

LFM. Social Sciences Missions is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of the social and political influence of Christian missions in Africa and other parts of the (former) colonial world. Since 2007 it is published by E.J Brill (Leiden) under the title Social Sciences and Missions / Sciences sociales et mission.

Christian missions represent a unique site of observation for the study of modern societies, in the « north » as well as in the « south ». This is the reason why  missions constitute the « prime material » of the journal Social Sciences & Missions. Our aim is not to study missions for themselves, but rather as « total social phenomena », an idiom, which history, anthropology, sociology or political science can use to analyse reality and give it meaning. This constitutes the originality of our approach – to the best of our knowledge, Social Sciences & Missions is the only social sciences journal dedicated to this object of study.

The origins of Social Sciences & Missions go back to a series of Occasional papers called Le Fait Missionnaire. Histoire et héritages – Approche pluridisciplinaire, launched in 1995 at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Le Fait Missionnaire (LFM) was born at the nexus of missiology, political sociology and history within an interdisciplinary team around the late Professor Klauspeter Blaser. After the publication of some twelve issues, the occasional papers became a peer-review journal entitled LFM. Social Sciences & Missions in 2003 out of which the present journal emerged in 2007.

For the online version of the journal. see: http://brill.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/ssm