Social studies is not a field; it is the name of a class in elementary school. I dunno about your other terms, but "social science" is a pretty old term, datin

Social studies is not a field; it is the name of a class in elementary school. I dunno about your other terms, but "social science" is a pretty old term, dating from the 1820s. It (or the "social sciences") has come to be the standard term for the superset of economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and related scientific fields involving the study of Man. This seems like a pretty reasonable term, just as "physical sciences" or "biological sciences" refer to their respective supersets.