THE OLD NEW SOCIAL HISTORY - University of Michigan

THE OLD NEW SOCIAL HISTORY AND THE NEW OLD SOCIAL HISTORY

Charles Tilly University of Michigan October 1980

Revised version of a-.keynote address t o the Conference on New D i r e c t i o n s i n H i s t o r y , S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y of New York A t B u f f a l o , 3-4 October 19.80

-1S o c i a l H i s t o r y Renewed?

I n t h e spring of 1968, t h e learned journal Daedalus convened a covey

of h i s t o r i a n s . The group i n c l u d e d some e s t a b l f s h e d s a g e s , such as F e l i x G f l b e r t .

-- It a l s o brought i'n p e o p l e f o r example, Frank Manuel, Eugene Genovese, Lee

Benson, and David Rothman -7 who had been e x p l o r i n g new t e c h n i q u e s and m a t e r i a l s ,

o r attempting t o employ i n h i s t o r i c a l a n a l y s i s i d e a s and procedures which had

grown up i n t h e s o c i a l s c i e n c e s , A number of them were coming t o b e known a s

p r a c t i t i o n e r s of something c a l l e d t h e New S o d a 1 H i s t o r y ,

S e w r a l of t h e p a r t i c i p a n t s p r e p a r e d memoranda i n advance, and some of t h e

memoranda d e a l t w i t h such e s o t e r i c t o p i c s a s ' ' c l i o m e t r i c s " and "prosopography."

The words t r i p p e d the tongue, b u t s t k r r e d t h e imagimation, For i n t h e 19.60s,

many h r s t o r i a n s f e l t t h a t h i s t o r i c a l t h e o r y and p r a c t k c e a l 2 k e were undergoing

g r e a t changes. Some f e l t t h e changes t o t h r e a t e n t h e p r o p e r performance of t h e

h i s t o r i a n ' s function: Jacques Barzun, f o r one, fulminated against "psycho-history"

and "quanto-history1' as pseudo-history. Others f e l t t h a t h i s t o r y f i n a l l y stood on

t h e threshold of Science; Lee Benson, f o r example, spoke of t h e likelihood t h a t

"the conditions w i l l e x i s t i n t h e n o t d r s t a n t f u t u r e f o r American p o l i t i c a l

h i s t o r i a n s t o a c h i e v e t h e s c i e n t i f i c e s t a t e p r e d i c t e d by Buckle, o r , more

. p r e c i s e l y , , , t h a t such c o n d i t i o n s w i l l e x i s t f o r t h o s e i n d i v i d u a l s a b l e and

w i l l i n g t o pay t h e psychological c o s t s required t o break f r e e from old routines"

(Benson 1970 11966]: 292, Most a l e r t h i s t o r r a n s , whether w i t h f e a r o r hope, sensed

t h a t t h e professron faced imminent choices whose consequences could profoundly

transform the h i s t o r y , and t h e historiography, they had learned.

P a r t i c i p a n t s kn t h a t 1968 meeting d i s a g r e e d about t h e f u t u r e of t h e p a s t .

Yet t h e y a g r e e d a b o u t t h e d e s i r a b i l i t y of d i s c u s s i o n . So Daedalus f l e w on t o

a n o t h e r conclave, t h i s one i n Rome. Then came a p a i r of j o u r n a l i s s u e s , and f i n a l l y

a whole book. The book, p u b l i s h e d i n 1972, appeared under t h e t i t l e H i s t o r i c a l

Studies Today,

Its t o p i c s covered a wide r a n g e : q u a n t i t a t i v e h i s t o r y , t h e New

- -._-

., ,

.- --I

-

-2-

I

Urban History, oral history, an epitaph for the old poli,ti.calhistory, a

mixed assessment of recent applications of psychology to historical analysis, and

-- as promised -- a thoughtful treatment of prosopography,

Convened today, how would a similar set of historians pronounce on the

future of history? What has come of the 1960s' promises? What changes in

historical practice have occurred since then? Idhat lessons have we learned?

Concentrating on social history, broadly defined, let us wander among these

questions, without making too strenuous an effort to lock their answers in place,

Let us pay particular attention to the historical endeavors which in the 1960s

4

began to display the stigmata of social science: self-conscious explicat2on of

concepts and models; deliberate comparison of individuals, groups, places or

events (often many of them) placed within a common framework; fixation oii

reliable forms of measurement, frequently involving numerical treatment of

evidence. Economic history, archeology, demographic history, urban history,

plus some kinds of political, labor, agricultural and family history qualify.

Diplomatic history, intellectual history, the history of science, art history,

and other branches of

, agricultural, labor and political history, in

contrast, generally remained alo6f from the New Social History and its

entanglements in the social sciences, Important changes were and are occurring

in those fields as well, but I shall neglect them here, in favor of the fields

I know best: the various enteiprises known loosely as, social history,

- -

Lawrence

~

t

o

n

e~,S

-c2

opog

r

a/ p- h

e

r~ jand Proph- et \- - - ---

--

r

In those fields, prosopography became more than a catchword. It became

a crucial practice. Through all Daedalian discussions, -the chief

prosopographer present was Lawrence Stone, the distinguished historian of

England. Stone had published a massive collective biography of the English

aristocracy, and was then engaged in a vast analysis of the changing

character of England's landed classes. The centerpiece of. ghaf analysis

was, in Fact, an anbitious venture in prosopography: a large catalog of four "samples" of country houses and their owners down thkough the centuries. Lat~rence and Jeanne C. FaQtier Stone once described that study as

designed to apply statistical methods of analysis to data of varying quality, in order to test some subjective impressions and traditional assumptions about English social structure and social mobility in the Early Modern and Modern periods. [A footnote at this point credits grants from the Yathematical Social Science Board and the National Science Foundation.] It is generally agreed that England was historically the first of the modernizing societies of the world, and in particular that she was the ficst to industrialize and the first to evolve a stable and broad based constitutional structure. For over a century it has been part of conventional wisdom that these phenomena can be partly explained in terms firstly of the slow growth of the middle class of business and professional men, and secondly of the ease with which this middle class could move upward through the social and political systems. So far, however, there is no reliable body of statistical information with which to check and evaluate the truth of this bold and far-reaching hypothesis. This particular study is narrowly focused on a single aspect, namely the degree of interpenetration of the landed and n?erchant/professional classes as tested by the changing compositidnof the local rural elites (Stone and

. Stone 1972: 56)

In this study, then, prosopography would begin to verify previously hypothetical arguments concerning social mobility in England from 1540 to 1879. A "reliable body of statistical evidence" would supplant the "subjective impressions and traditional assumptions" which had so far prevailed.

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download