Social history , often called "history from below", is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians.
99-544: Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading from schools of thought in the United Kingdom and France which posited that the Great Man view of history was inaccurate because it did not adequately explain how societies changed. Instead, social historians wanted to show that change arose from within society, complicating the popular belief that powerful leaders were the source of dynamism. While social history came from
198-457: A capital T" and Marxism, Lynd shows that Thompson's departure was actually much more gradual, beginning with the 1956 Hungarian Uprising . The highly influential, but confused, definition used by Thompson was not resolved in part because of the cultural turn and the decline of Marxism on the left in the 1970s and 1980s. Social history is associated in the United Kingdom with the work of E.P. Thompson in particular, and his studies The Making of
297-568: A contemporary of Thompson's and a fellow member of the Historians' Group, Coventry shows that the "new" social history popularly associated with Thompson's "history from below" was in fact a conscious revival of historical materialism by young British Marxist intellectuals under the tutelage of the Cambridge economist Maurice Dobb . As such, the foundational text of social history is Karl Marx 's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), which
396-639: A decisive historical effect. The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle , who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History , in which he states: Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were
495-543: A field placement in Gary, Indiana, Lynd saw an opportunity to continue a campaign he had been working on "targeting the fact that US Steel, which had one of its biggest steel making sites in Indiana, paid almost no taxes... But Alinsky and the organizer Lynd was supervising had different plans. Instead, the trainee 'tried to organize around the existence of a pornographic bookstore in Indiana, just next to Gary.' " In May, 1970 he requested
594-404: A firm basis for higher education and advanced research institutions. It was a story of enlightenment and modernization triumphing over ignorance, cost-cutting, and narrow traditionalism whereby parents tried to block their children's intellectual access to the wider world. Teachers dedicated to the public interest, reformers with a wide vision, and public support from the civic-minded community were
693-563: A hospital in Warren, Ohio , on November 17, 2022, five days before his 93rd birthday. At Yale, Lynd became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War . His protest activities included speaking engagements, protest marches, and a controversial visit to Hanoi along with Herbert Aptheker and Tom Hayden on a fact-finding trip at the height of the war, which made him unwelcome to the Yale administration. As
792-476: A job from Saul Alinsky in 1968 supervising the second phase of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) Saul Alinsky organizer training school "Although he was highly critical of Alinsky's politics, he needed a job at the time... Lynd started teaching courses on US workers' history but also on contemporary forms of collective action to the dozen or so individuals." In the supervision of the trainee in
891-659: A leave of absence to return to his research in oral history, and left the IAF altogether a year later. In a letter announcing his decision he wrote "[Saul and I] come out of quite different political and organizing backgrounds, and it is not surprising that sooner or later our paths would diverge." Meanwhile, he and his wife Alice embarked upon an oral history project dealing with the working class. The conclusions of this work, titled Rank and File , inspired Lynd to study law in order to assist workers victimized by companies and left unprotected by bureaucratic labor unions. In 1973, he enrolled at
990-617: A letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War, and urging other people to also take this stand. In 1968, Lynd published his book Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism . It came under severe criticism by then-Marxist professor Eugene Genovese , writing in the New York Review of Books . Professor David Donald in reviewing the book called it "a major work in American intellectual history". About
1089-456: A limited range of sources to a vast array of records created by modern bureaucracies. Social history flourished. Social history had a "golden age" in Canada in the 1970s, and continues to flourish among scholars. Its strengths include demography, women, labour, and urban studies. Events of Africa's general social history since the 20th century refer to the colonial era for most of the countries with
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#17328849456871188-497: A role or show exceptional qualities, he saw Great Men as inevitable products of productive cultures. He noted for example that if Isaac Newton had not lived, calculus would have still been discovered by Gottfried Leibniz , and suspected that if neither man had lived, it would have been discovered by someone else. Among modern critics of the theory, Sidney Hook is supportive of the idea; he gives credit to those who shape events through their actions, and his book The Hero in History
1287-548: A tradition." Some historians like Joachim Fest responded by arguing that Hitler had a "negative greatness". By contrast, Kershaw rejects the Great Men theory and argues that it is more important to study wider political and social factors to explain the history of Nazi Germany . Kershaw argues that Hitler was an unremarkable person, but his importance came from how people viewed him, an example of Max Weber 's concept of charismatic leadership . Staughton Lynd Staughton Craig Lynd (November 22, 1929 – November 17, 2022)
1386-461: A wider social history. The work of Alun Howkins has been pivotal in the recent historiography, in relation to these three traditions. Howkins, like his precursors, is constrained by an increasingly anachronistic equation of the countryside with agriculture. Geographers and sociologists have developed a concept of a "post-productivist" countryside, dominated by consumption and representation that may have something to offer historians, in conjunction with
1485-559: Is a daily email discussion group that covers the field broadly. Historical demography is the study of population history and demographic processes, usually using census or similar statistical data. It became an important specialty inside social history, with strong connections with the larger field of demography , as in the study of the Demographic Transition . Black history or African-American history studies African Americans and Africans in American history. The Association for
1584-508: Is an important distinction between old social history and new social history that exists in what are now sub-fields of social history that predate the 1960s. E. P. Thompson identified labour history as the central concern of new social historians because of its "Whiggish narritives", such as the term "labour movement" which erroneously suggests the constant progression toward the perfect future. The older social history included numerous topics that were not part of mainstream historiography, which
1683-477: Is devoted to the role of the hero and in history and influence of the outstanding persons . In the introduction to a new edition of Heroes and Hero-Worship , David R. Sorensen notes the modern decline in support for Carlyle's theory in particular but also for "heroic distinction" in general. He cites Robert K. Faulkner as an exception, a proponent of Aristotelian magnanimity who in his book The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics , criticizes
1782-576: Is marked by its society-wide approach and consideration of everyday peoples. It was not until the 1960s, however, that social history gained popularity and scholarship flourished. This was when "social history truly came into being, with historians reflecting on their aristocratic and middle-class preoccupations, their veneration of elites (especially Great Men), their Protestant moralising and misanthropic tendencies". There are many definitions of social history, most of them isolated to national historiographies. The most consequential definition of social history
1881-479: Is quite separate from genealogy , though often drawing on the same primary sources, such as censuses and family records. The influential pioneering study Women, Work, and Family (1978) was done by Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott . It broke new ground with their broad interpretive framework and emphasis on the variable factors shaping women's place in the family and economy in France and England. The study considered
1980-406: Is the one Thompson provided. Thompson saw his "history from below" approach as an attempt to reveal the "social nexus" through which broadscale change occurs. This is reflective of his historical materialism. However, Thompson's 1963 book was disproportionately concerned with the lived experience of forgotten or everyday people. The disparity between a society-wide approach (historical materialism) and
2079-713: The University of Chicago law school, where he earned a degree in 1976. From there, the Lynds relocated to Youngstown, Ohio , in the heart of the Rust Belt . Working first for the union-side labor law firm of Green, Schiavoni, Murphy & Haines, and then for Northeast Ohio Legal Services in Youngstown, he proved to be a vital participant in the late 1970s struggle to keep the Youngstown steel mills open. He served as lead counsel for six local unions, several dozen individual steelworkers, and
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#17328849456872178-505: The end of Communism in Hungary in 1989. Marxist historiography collapsed and social history came into its own, especially the study of the demographic patterns of the early modern period. Research priorities have shifted toward urban history and the conditions of everyday life. When Communism ended in 1991, large parts of the Soviet archives were opened. The historians' data base leapt from
2277-494: The "conditions of the crater of Vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by which I write". James argues that genetic anomalies in the brains of these great men are the decisive factor by introducing an original influence into their environment. They might therefore offer original ideas, discoveries, inventions and perspectives which "would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion ... It flashes out of one brain, and no other, because
2376-424: The "cultural turn" for not incorporating culture in the history of society, for reducing politics to society, and for reducing individuals to structures. Historians of society inverted the traditional positions they criticized (on the model of Marx's inversion of Hegel). As a result, the problems pertaining to the positions criticized were not resolved but only turned on their heads. The traditional focus on individuals
2475-616: The 12th century until the French Revolution in the late 18th century and their influence on the course of historical events. The Great Man approach to history was most fashionable with professional historians in the 19th century; a popular work of this school is the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) which contains lengthy and detailed biographies about the great men of history, but very few general or social histories. For example, all information on
2574-651: The 1920s, thanks to the central role of the Annales School . Its journal Annales focuses attention on the synthesizing of historical patterns identified from social, economic, and cultural history, statistics, medical reports, family studies, and even psychoanalysis. Social history developed within West German historiography during the 1950s-60s as the successor to the national history discredited by National Socialism . The German brand of "history of society" - Gesellschaftsgeschichte - has been known from its beginning in
2673-452: The 1960s for its application of sociological and political modernization theories to German history. Modernization theory was presented by Hans-Ulrich Wehler (1931–2014) and his Bielefeld School as the way to transform "traditional" German history, that is, national political history, centered on a few "great men," into an integrated and comparative history of German society encompassing societal structures outside politics. Wehler drew upon
2772-434: The 19th century that reflected not only their relationship to England but also significant contemporaneous economic and social change. This article seeks to create a basis for comparative work by identifying research that has treated this period, offering brief analytical commentaries on some key works, discussing developments in educational historiography, and pointing to lacunae in research. Historians have recently looked at
2871-400: The 21st century— that led to the mass migration of youth and skilled workers. Political and economic stability with respect to measures taken by international donor groups such as sanctions and subsequent responses from various nationals to such measures and Pan-Africanism are other dimensions of Africa's social history. In Australia, social history took on a non-Marxist concern for revealing
2970-524: The American case, see Marilyn Coleman and Lawrence Ganong, eds. The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia (4 vol, 2014). The history of childhood is a growing subfield. For much of the 20th century, the dominant American historiography, as exemplified by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley (1868–1941) at Stanford, emphasized the rise of American education as a powerful force for literacy, democracy, and equal opportunity, and
3069-466: The Cambridge University 2009 reprint of the book, Commentary Magazine referred to it as an "established classic". It became clear that Yale would deny Lynd tenure, and he became unemployable in academia. Lynd relocated his family to Chicago. There, he struggled to make a living from community organizing. Sociologist and Professor of American Studies M. Clément Petitjean notes that Lynd accepted
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3168-610: The Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley which sought to reopen the mills under worker-community ownership. Despite the ultimate failure of those efforts, the Lynds continued organizing in the Youngstown-Warren area. Staughton Lynd remained extremely active as an attorney, taking on a broad range of cases, including those concerning chemically disabled auto workers and retired steelworkers. Lynd's book Lucasville
3267-700: The English Working Class (1963). Writing in 1966 in The Times Literary Supplement , Thompson described his approach as "history from below" and explained that it had come from earlier developments within the French Annales School . According to C. J. Coventry , new social history arose in the 1930s at the University of Cambridge with the Communist Party Historians Group . Citing the reflections of Eric Hobsbawm ,
3366-496: The English Working Class and Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act . Emerging after the second world war, it was consciously opposed to traditional history's focus on 'great men', which it counter-posed with 'History from below'. Thus in the UK social history has often had a strong political impetus, and can be contrasted sharply with traditional history's (partial) documentation of
3465-568: The Marxist view of history ( historical materialism ), the cultural turn and linguistic turn saw the number of sub-fields expand as well as the emergence of other approaches to social history, including a social liberal approach and a more ambiguious critical theory approach. In its "golden age" it was a major field in the 1960s and 1970s among young historians, and still is well represented in history departments in Britain, Canada, France, Germany and
3564-593: The Study of African American Life and History was founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1915 and has 2500 members and publishes the Journal of African American History , formerly the Journal of Negro History. Since 1926 it has sponsored Black History Month every February. Ethnic history is especially important in the US and Canada, where major encyclopedias helped define the field. It covers
3663-520: The United States. In the two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history departments of British and Irish universities in 2014, of the 3410 faculty members reporting, 878 (26%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 841 (25%). There
3762-431: The bottom-up" and is closely related to "peoples history", associated in popular consciousness with Howard Zinn and his 1980 book, A People's History of the United States . Charles Tilly argues the tasks of the social historian are 1) "documenting large structural changes; 2) reconstructing the experiences of ordinary people in the course of those changes; and (3) connecting the two". Americanist Paul E. Johnson recalls
3861-412: The crimes of the 'great men.' These optimists forget that the common people too are greedy and envious and when resisted tend to turn to collective violence." Burckhardt predicted that the belittling of great men would lead to a lowering of standards and rise in mediocrity generally. Mark Twain suggests in his essay " The United States of Lyncherdom " that "moral cowardice" is "the commanding feature of
3960-422: The crucible for the selection process of future geniuses. In the words of William James, "If we were to remove these geniuses or alter their idiosyncrasies, what increasing uniformities would the environment exhibit?" James challenges Mr. Spencer or anyone else to provide a reply. According to James, there are two distinct factors driving social evolution: personal agents and the impact of their unique qualities on
4059-454: The decisions, works, ideas, and characters of "heroes", giving detailed analysis of six types: The hero as divinity (such as Odin ), prophet (such as Muhammad ), poet (such as Shakespeare ), priest (such as Martin Luther ), man of letters (such as Rousseau ), and king (such as Napoleon ). Carlyle also argued that the study of great men was "profitable" to one's own heroic side; that by examining
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4158-411: The defeminization of farm work encouraged the rural version of the "women's sphere." These findings strongly contrast with those in the old frontier history as well as those found in the new urban history. The historiography of religion focuses mostly on theology and church organization and development. Recently the study of the social history or religious behavior and belief has become important. While
4257-476: The dimensions of class, gender and race, reflecting a leftist political agenda that assumes outsiders in politics are more interesting than the actual decision makers. Social history, with its leftist political origins, initially sought to link state power to everyday experience in the 1960s. Yet by the 1970s, social historians increasingly excluded analyses of state power from its focus. Social historians have recently engaged with political history through studies of
4356-525: The direction of urbanization. The subfield has flourished in Australia—where most people live in cities. Agricultural History handles the economic and technological dimensions, while Rural history handles the social dimension. Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of modern English rural history and identifies an "orthodox" school, focused on the economic history of agriculture. This historiography has made impressive progress in quantifying and explaining
4455-573: The exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, which are never colonized. Major processes in the continent involve resistance, independence, reconstruction, self-rule, and the process of modern politics including the formation of the African Union. Post-colonial milestones towards stability, economic growth, and unity have been made with continuous developments. Natural phenomena and subsequent economic effects have been more pronounced in countries such as Ethiopia followed by ethnic-based social crises and violence in
4554-643: The exploits of the powerful, within limited diplomatic and political spheres, and its reliance on archival sources and methods (see historical method and archive ) that exclude the voices of less powerful groups within society. Social history has used a much wider range of sources and methods than traditional history and source criticism, in order to gain a broader view of the past. Methods have often including quantitative data analysis and, importantly, Oral History which creates an opportunity to glean perspectives and experiences of those people within society that are unlikely to be documented within archives. Eric Hobsbawm
4653-463: The field is declining, and stresses its innovation, modification and renewal. Kirk also detects a move into conservative insularity and academicism. He recommends a more extensive and critical engagement with the kinds of comparative, transnational and global concerns increasingly popular among labour historians elsewhere, and calls for a revival of public and political interest in the topics. Meanwhile, Navickas, (2011) examines recent scholarship including
4752-534: The first application of social history as McQueen's A New Britannia (1970), although some believe Russel Ward 's The Australian Legend (1958) may have been a prototype new social history. The study of the lives of ordinary people was revolutionized in the 1960s by the introduction of sophisticated quantitative and demographic methods, often using individual data from the census and from local registers of births, marriages, deaths and taxes, as well as theoretical models from sociology such as social mobility . H-DEMOG
4851-473: The formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History in 1960. He reports that labour history has been mostly pragmatic, eclectic and empirical; it has played an important role in historiographical debates, such as those revolving around history from below, institutionalism versus the social history of labour, class, populism, gender, language, postmodernism and the turn to politics. Kirk rejects suggestions that
4950-646: The genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown. ... Before he can remake his society, his society must make him. William James , in his 1880 lecture "Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment", published in the Atlantic Monthly , forcefully defended Carlyle and refuted Spencer, condemning what James viewed as an "impudent", "vague", and "dogmatic" argument. James ' defence of
5049-441: The great man is preserved then the environment is changed by his influence in "an entirely original and peculiar way. He acts as a ferment, and changes its constitution, just as the advent of a new zoological species changes the faunal and floral equilibrium of the region in which it appears." Each ferment, each great man, exerts a new influence on their environment which is either embraced or rejected and if embraced will in turn shape
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#17328849456875148-608: The great man theory can be summarized as follows: The unique physiological nature of the individual is the deciding factor in making the great man, who, in turn, is the deciding factor in changing his environment in a unique way, without which the new environment would not have come to be, wherein the extent and nature of this change is also dependent on the reception of the environment to this new stimulus. To begin his argument, he first sardonically claims that these inherent physiological qualities have as much to do with "social, political, geographical [and] anthropological conditions" as
5247-451: The heady early promise of the movement in the late 1960s: The Social Science History Association was formed in 1976 to bring together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history. It is still active and publishes Social Science History quarterly. The field is also the specialty of the Journal of Social History , edited since 1967 by Peter Stearns It covers such topics as gender relations; race in American history;
5346-483: The heroes. The textbooks help inspire students to become public schools teachers and thereby fulfill their own civic mission. The crisis came in the 1960s, when a new generation of New Left scholars and students rejected the traditional celebratory accounts, and identified the educational system as the villain for many of America's weaknesses, failures, and crimes. Michael Katz (1939–2014) states they: The old guard fought back and bitter historiographical contests, with
5445-448: The histories of collective action, environment and human ecology, and gender issues, with a focus on work by James Epstein, Malcolm Chase , and Peter Jones. Women's history exploded into prominence in the 1970s, and is now well represented in every geographical topic; increasingly it includes gender history. Social history uses the approach of women's history to understand the experiences of ordinary women, as opposed to "Great Women," in
5544-464: The history of ethnic groups (usually not including Black or Native Americans). Typical approaches include critical ethnic studies; comparative ethnic studies; critical race studies; Asian-American, and Latino/a or Chicano/a studies. In recent years Chicano/Chicana studies has become important as the Hispanic population has become the largest minority in the US. Labor history , deals with labor unions and
5643-462: The history of personal relationships; consumerism; sexuality; the social history of politics; crime and punishment, and history of the senses. Most of the major historical journals have coverage as well. However, after 1990 social history was increasingly challenged by cultural history , which emphasizes language and the importance of beliefs and assumptions and their causal role in group behavior. Social history has dominated French historiography since
5742-593: The history of these. This theory is usually contrasted with " history from below ", which emphasizes the life of the masses creating overwhelming waves of smaller events which carry leaders along with them. Another contrasting school is historical materialism . Carlyle stated that "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men", reflecting his belief that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and divine inspiration. In his book Heroes and Hero-Worship , Carlyle saw history as having turned on
5841-521: The ideas histories of major reformers, but a new social history has recently emerged, focused on who were the students in terms of social background and social mobility. In the US attention has often focused on minority and ethnic students. In Britain, Raftery et al. (2007) looks at the historiography on social change and education in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with particular reference to 19th-century schooling. They developed distinctive systems of schooling in
5940-412: The inarticulate masses in the cities, as opposed to the mayors and elites. A major early study was Stephan Thernstrom 's Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964), which used census records to study Newburyport, Massachusetts , 1850–1880. A seminal, landmark book, it sparked interest in the 1960s and 1970s in quantitative methods, census sources, "bottom-up" history, and
6039-407: The instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction." James then argues that these spontaneous variations of genius, i.e. the great men , which are causally independent of their social environment, subsequently influence that environment which in turn will either preserve or destroy the newly encountered variations in a form of evolutionary selection. If
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#17328849456876138-482: The interaction of production, or traditional labor, and reproduction, the work of caring for children and families, in its analysis of women's wage labor and thus helped to bring together labor and family history. Much work has been done on the dichotomy in women's lives between the private sphere and the public. For a recent worldwide overview covering 7000 years see Maynes and Waltner's 2012 book and ebook, The Family: A World History (2012). For comprehensive coverage of
6237-434: The leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were
6336-407: The lives led by such heroes, one could not help but uncover something about one's own true nature. As Sidney Hook notes, a common misinterpretation of the theory is that "all factors in history, save great men, were inconsequential", whereas Carlyle is instead claiming that great men are the decisive factor, owing to their unique genius. Hook then goes on to emphasize this uniqueness to illustrate
6435-446: The lives of people who had previously been neglected by older generations of historians. The two most significant social historians of Australian historiography, Ann Curthoys and Humphrey McQueen have both identified a lack of interest in social history among scholars compared with other national historiographies and a general non-Marxist, a-theoretical approach to social history among Australian social historians. Scholars generally see
6534-535: The make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000" and that "from the beginning of the world no revolt against a public infamy or oppression has ever been begun but by the one daring man in the 10,000, the rest timidly waiting, and slowly and reluctantly joining, under the influence of that man and his fellows from the other ten thousands." In 1926, William Fielding Ogburn noted that Great Men history was being challenged by newer interpretations that focused on wider social forces. While not seeking to deny that individuals could have
6633-982: The measurement of upward social mobility by different ethnic groups. Other exemplars of the new urban history included Kathleen Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836-1860 (1976); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1975; 2nd ed. 2000); Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton, Canada West (1976); Eric H. Monkkonen , The Dangerous Class: Crime and Poverty in Columbus Ohio 1860-1865 (1975); and Michael P. Weber, Social Change in an Industrial Town: Patterns of Progress in Warren, Pennsylvania, From Civil War to World War I. (1976). Representative comparative studies include Leonardo Benevolo, The European City (1993); Christopher R. Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (1995), and James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru. eds. Edo and Paris (1994) (Edo
6732-545: The modernization theory of Max Weber , with concepts also from Karl Marx , Otto Hintze , Gustav Schmoller , Werner Sombart and Thorstein Veblen . In the 1970s and early 1980s German historians of society, led by Wehler and Jürgen Kocka at the "Bielefeld school" gained dominance in Germany by applying both modernization theories and social science methods. From the 1980s, however, they were increasingly criticized by proponents of
6831-434: The narrower preoccupation with giving voice to the voicesless (justice-seeking) is the basis of present-day confusion about the definition of social history. The confusion arose from Thompson's own inner political turmoil. Staughton Lynd sees Thompson's career as a gradual departure from Marxism until, in his last interview, he declined to describe himself as a Marxist. Where Thompson had said he did not believe in "theory with
6930-431: The odds to defeat rivals while inspiring followers along the way. Theorists say that these leaders were then born with a specific set of traits and attributes that make them ideal candidates for leadership and roles of authority and power. This theory relies then heavily on born rather than made, nature rather than nurture and cultivates the idea that those in power deserve to lead and shouldn't be questioned because they have
7029-443: The output and productivity achievements of English farming since the "agricultural revolution." The celebratory style of the orthodox school was challenged by a dissident tradition emphasizing the social costs of agricultural progress, notably enclosure, which forced poor tenant farmers off the land. Recently, a new school, associated with the journal Rural History, has broken away from this narrative of agricultural change, elaborating
7128-583: The overall course of events. He thus concludes: "Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community." Before the 19th century, Blaise Pascal begins his Three Discourses on the Condition of the Great (written it seems for a young duke) by telling the story of a castaway on an island whose inhabitants take him for their missing king. He defends in his parable of
7227-427: The past have unfolded and continue to unfold. In keeping with the cultural turn , many social historians are also gender historians who study how discourses interact with everyday experiences. The History of the family emerged as a separate field in the 1970s, with close ties to anthropology and sociology. The trend was especially pronounced in the US and Canada. It emphasizes demographic patterns and public policy, but
7326-537: The past. Feminist women's historians such as Joan Kelly have critiqued early studies of social history for being too focused on the male experience. Gender history focuses on the categories, discourses and experiences of femininity and masculinity as they develop over time. Gender history gained prominence after it was conceptualized in 1986 by Joan W. Scott in her article "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." Many social historians use Scott's concept of "perceived differences" to study how gender relations in
7425-497: The point: " Genius is not the result of compounding talent. How many battalions are the equivalent of a Napoleon? How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? How many run of the mine scientists will do the work of an Einstein ?" American scholar Frederick Adams Woods supported the great man theory in his work The Influence of Monarchs: Steps in a New Science of History . Woods investigated 386 rulers in Western Europe from
7524-424: The political bias in discussions on greatness and heroism, stating: "the new liberalism’s antipathy to superior statesmen and to human excellence is peculiarly zealous, parochial, and antiphilosophic." Ian Kershaw wrote in 1998 that "The figure of Hitler , whose personal attributes – distinguished from his political aura and impact – were scarcely noble, elevating or enriching, posed self-evident problems for such
7623-632: The politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in." In Germany the Gesellschaftsgeschichte movement introduced a vast range of topics, as Kocka, a leader of the Bielefeld School recalls: Before World War II, political history was in decline and an effort was made to introduce social history in the style of the French Annales School. After the war only Marxist interpretations were allowed. With
7722-597: The post-Roman " Migrations Period " of European History is compiled under the biography of Attila the Hun . This heroic view of history was also strongly endorsed by some philosophers, such as Léon Bloy , Søren Kierkegaard , Oswald Spengler and Max Weber . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , proceeding from providentialist theory, argued that "what is real is reasonable" and World-Historical individuals are World-Spirit's agents. Hegel wrote: "Such are great historical men—whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are
7821-494: The protest movement became increasingly violent, Lynd began to have misgivings. As a self-described " social democratic pacifist " and "Marxist Existentialist Pacifist", he became more interested in the possibilities of local organizing. Lynd's obituary in The New York Times described his political influences as "drawing equal inspiration from Marxism, American abolitionism and Quaker pacifism". In 1967, Lynd signed
7920-475: The quality of labor, productivity and economic growth, and rates of return on investment in education. A major recent exemplar is Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz , The Race between Education and Technology (2009), on the social and economic history of 20th-century American schooling. The "new urban history" emerged in the 1950s in Britain and in the 1960s in the US. It looked at the "city as process" and, often using quantitative methods, to learn more about
8019-455: The relationship between schooling and urban growth by studying educational institutions as agents in class formation, relating urban schooling to changes in the shape of cities, linking urbanization with social reform movements, and examining the material conditions affecting child life and the relationship between schools and other agencies that socialize the young. The most economics-minded historians have sought to relate education to changes in
8118-550: The relationships between state formation, power and everyday life with the theoretical tools of cultural hegemony and governmentality . Great man theory The great man theory is an approach to the study of history popularised in the 19th century according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men , or heroes : highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities, or divine inspiration, have
8217-445: The shipwrecked king, that the legitimacy of the greatness of great men is fundamentally custom and chance. A coincidence that gives birth to him in the right place with noble parents and arbitrary custom deciding, for example, on an unequal distribution of wealth in favor of the nobles. Leo Tolstoy 's War and Peace features criticism of great-man theories as a recurring theme in the philosophical digressions. According to Tolstoy,
8316-454: The significance of great individuals is imaginary; as a matter of fact they are only "history's slaves," realizing the decree of Providence. Jacob Burckhardt affirmed the historical existence of great men in politics, even excusing the rarity among them to possess "greatness of soul", or magnanimity : "Contemporaries believe that if people will only mind their own business political morality will improve of itself and history will be purged of
8415-756: The social history of workers. See for example Labor history of the United States The Study Group on International Labor and Working-Class History was established: 1971 and has a membership of 1000. It publishes International Labor and Working-Class History . H-LABOR is a daily email-based discussion group formed in 1993 that reaches over a thousand scholars and advanced students. the Labor and Working-Class History Association formed in 1988 and publishes Labor: Studies in Working-Class History . Kirk (2010) surveys labour historiography in Britain since
8514-522: The study of elites and political institutions has produced a vast body of scholarship, the impact after 1960 of social historians has shifted emphasis onto the politics of ordinary people—especially voters and collective movements. Political historians responded with the "new political history," which has shifted attention to political cultures. Some scholars have recently applied a cultural approach to political history. Some political historians complain that social historians are likely to put too much stress on
8613-402: The unique traits that make them suited for the position. One of the most forceful critics of Carlyle's formulation of the great man theory was Herbert Spencer , who believed that attributing historical events to the decisions of individuals was an unscientific position. He believed that the men Carlyle supposed "great men" are merely products of their social environment: You must admit that
8712-565: The well-established historiography of the "rural idyll." Most rural history has focused on the American South —overwhelmingly rural until the 1950s—but there is a "new rural history" of the North as well. Instead of becoming agrarian capitalists, farmers held onto preindustrial capitalist values emphasizing family and community. Rural areas maintained population stability; kinship ties determined rural immigrant settlement and community structures; and
8811-717: The will of the World-Spirit." Thus, according to Hegel, a great man does not create historical reality himself but only uncovers the inevitable future. In Untimely Meditations , Friedrich Nietzsche writes that "the goal of humanity lies in its highest specimens". Although Nietzsche's body of work shows some overlap with Carlyle's line of thought, Nietzsche expressly rejected Carlyle's hero cult in Ecce Homo . This theory rests on two main assumptions, as pointed out by Villanova University : This theory, and history, claims these great leaders as heroes that were able to rise against
8910-510: The younger students and scholars largely promoting the proposition that schools were not the solution to America's ills, they were in part the cause of Americans problems. The fierce battles of the 1960s died out by the 1990s, but enrollment in education history courses never recovered. By the 1980s, compromise had been worked out, with all sides focusing on the heavily bureaucratic nature of the American public schooling. In recent years most histories of education deal with institutions or focus on
9009-607: Was a conscientious objector who was assigned to a non-combatant position in the U.S. military, but amid the McCarthy Era , he was dishonorably discharged after it was found that he had briefly affiliated with communist groups while an undergraduate at Harvard College . He went on to earn a doctorate in history at Columbia University and accepted a teaching position at Spelman College , in Georgia , where he worked closely with historian and civil rights activist Howard Zinn . When Zinn
9108-513: Was an American political activist, author, and lawyer. His involvement in social justice causes brought him into contact with some of the nation's most influential activists, including Howard Zinn , Tom Hayden , A. J. Muste , and David Dellinger . Lynd's contribution to the cause of social justice and the peace movement is chronicled in Carl Mirra's biography, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970 (2010). Lynd
9207-409: Was an important UK social historian, who has both produced extensive social history of the UK, and has written also on the theory and politics of UK social history. Eric Hobsbawn and EP Thompson were both involved in the pioneering History Workshop Journal and Past & Present . Ireland has its own historiography. In United States historiography, history from below is referred to as "history from
9306-468: Was broader, and the Germans called it Gesellschaftsgeschichte . It is the history of an entire society from a social-historical viewpoint. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible." While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with
9405-661: Was fired from Spelman at the end of the 1962–63 academic year, Lynd protested. During the summer of 1964, Lynd served as director of the SNCC -organized Freedom Schools of Mississippi. After accepting a position at Yale University , Lynd relocated to New England . In 1965 he gave lectures on 'The History of the American Left' at the Free University of New York . Lynd married Alice Niles in 1951. They had three children and were married until Lynd's death from multiple organ failure at
9504-473: Was inverted into a modern focus on structures, the traditional focus on culture was inverted into a modern focus on structures, and traditional emphatic understanding was inverted into modern causal explanation. Jürgen Kocka finds two meanings to "social history." At the simplest level, it was the subdivision of historiography that focused on social structures and processes. In that regard, it stood in contrast to political or economic history. The second meaning
9603-548: Was one of two children born to the renowned sociologists Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd , who authored the groundbreaking " Middletown " studies of Muncie, Indiana , in the late 1920s and 1930s. Though the family lived in New York City, his mother elected to give birth at a hospital she preferred in Philadelphia . Lynd followed not only his parents' academic occupations, but also their strong left-wing beliefs. He
9702-415: Was the old name for Tokyo). There were no overarching social history theories that emerged developed to explain urban development. Inspiration from urban geography and sociology, as well as a concern with workers (as opposed to labor union leaders), families, ethnic groups, racial segregation, and women's roles have proven useful. Historians now view the contending groups within the city as "agents" who shape
9801-420: Was then political , military , diplomatic , constitutional history , the history of great men and intellectual history . It was a hodgepodge without a central theme, and it often included political movements, such as populism , that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. The popular view is that new social history emerged in the 1960s with the publication of Thompson's The Making of
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