PART I

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

INTRODUCING THE ISSUES

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

By Peter N. Stearns

George Mason University

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

Social history has often had its temperature taken. In the United States the first
probes came in the 1960s, when social historians had to define their core interests
against a skeptical history establishment, reluctant to accept new topics and approaches that did not necessarily aim to illuminate standard subjects. This stock
taking evolved, by the 1970s, into seemingly endless needs and opportunities to
define the "new social history" to teachers and others now a bit more willing to
accept legitimacy but still unsure of what subjects and methods were involved.
With the 1980s came the challenge of the "new cultural turn"-was it something
different from social history, even a danger to it, or rather an innovation within
it?-and also attacks from conservative historians like Gertrude Himmhelfarb,
convinced that social history was unseating history's true purposes in uplifting
youth and the general public through examples of heroic action and reemphasis on political ideals. Social historians themselves generated a new wave of
self,examination, centered around a concern about the field as a multiplicity of
topics without a coherent and unifying big picture of its own. Some attention
also applied to issues of presentation and narrative. These discussions carried
into the early 1990s, with particular reaction to the political attack on social
history embodied in the hostile response to the national History Standards in
1994. 1
Since then, substantial silence has ensued on some of the big issues, which
might of course imply that the field has faded sufficiently that general comment
is no longer warranted, or that it has become sufficiently hegemonic that as,
sessment seems superfluous. Recently, however, several voices have encouraged
a new round of stock,taking. Europeans have taken the lead (and their voices
are represented in the comments in this issue). The]oumal of Social History now
joins in, seeking a multi-faceted discussion over the next few years.
There are several motives. First is the conviction that the field remains sufficiently vibrant and promising to require recurrent self-study, Despite a number
of problems both old and new, social history has expanded and continues to
expand our knowledge about the past in a variety of ways. The fundamental
twin premises-that ordinary people not only have a history but contribute to
shaping history more generally, and that a range of behaviors can be profitably
explored historically beyond (though also including) the most familiar political
staples-are still valid. They explain in turn why the field has outlived fad status, to become a permanent part of the historical arsenal. If some of the brashest
early hopes have not been realized-history in general has not been converted to
social history or to a sociohistorically informed version of total history, and a de,
cisive sociohistorical periodization has not replaced more conventional, usually
political markers-the discipline has nevertheless been transformed. Maintain,
ing the transformation merits and requires a periodic update on where social
history stands.
The field is also approaching its half-century mark (granting a previous French

10

journal of social history

fall 2003

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

lead and granting the importance of some earlier social history efforts even
outside of France). However artificial, half,centuries are good points for stock,
taking. They also contribute a generational challenge. In the United States, the
pioneers of the new social history-many of them remarkably productive over a
long period of time (social history as longevity formula?)-are now passing from
the scene. The field's future rests in younger hands. It's a moment that invites
some reflection by some of the older hands, and, even more, some strutting by
a sample of the many promising newcomers as well as some of the mid-career
leaders active, for example, in expanding social history's range outside Europe
and the United States.
The passing of the most assertive aspects of the "cultural turn" also invites
comment. Many of the essays in this collection note a revival of sociohistorical
explanations and/or the need for social history correctives to overindulgence in
the cultural turn. While cultural approaches to social history, emphasizing the
importance of beliefs and assumptions and their causal role in group behavior, still
predominate, at least in the United States, other vantagepoints are beginning
to reemerge. There is even a modest revival of quantitative work, around issues
in family history and other topics. And some venturesome social historians
are generating large statements based on non'cultural factors such as economic
structure or marriage patterns. Finally, while references to Foucault, Bourdieu,
Habermas and others continue, they seem to be diminishing. Lynn Hunt has
noted, not without some wistfulness, the decline in theory interest.i
The result opens both problems and opportunities for social history. The field
has passed through two dominant, though never monopolistic, methodologies,
quantitative and cultural. It has passed through two successive social science
flirtations, first with sociology, then with anthropology. Social history seems to
be sufficiently resilient and flexible to survive and even benefit from mutations
of this sort. The cultural turn had always raised questions for social historians,
about how cultural causation might mix with other factors; about the range of
documentation needed to establish a cultural case-whether unpacking mean,
ings in a single document or ritual sufficed for a social as opposed to a purely
cultural historian; and about cultural versus other determinants of social class.
At the same time, cultural interpretations helped answer, and continue to help
answer, questions about the reasons for changes in behaviors in such areas as
demography. And there is danger as well as invitation in the lack of any overarching new approach, as the cultural turn recedes. Here, then, is ample occasion
for further conversation around four related topics: what pre-cultural interests
might now be usefully be revived; how can we preserve the undeniable strengths
of the cultural turn; do we need to pay renewed attention to issues of narrative
style (an older issue which receded during the cultural enthusiasm); and what's
next for the field as a wholej"
In sum: the occasion for renewed discussion of social history's status and
prospects involves a combination of two transitions: generational (in my view
at least, as part of the passing crowd eager to identify younger leadership) and
methodological. The occasion invites brief nostalgia, a review of some of the
concerns social historians have grappled with for many years with mixed success,
and a comment on some new issues emerging with unusual force.

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

11

Youth and Vigor

how and why people function as they do.

Social history has shown a remarkable capacity to generate new interests,

while maintaining a recognizable allegiance to its commitment to exploring the
experiences and roles of diverse groups and the wide range of human behaviors.
Few of the topics that commanded prime attention forty years ago now head
the lists. Sometimes, indeed, social history's topics may revolve too quickly: one
of the tasks for the future may entail returning to earlier interests that need
fuller exploration or an updating in light of more recent developments or social
needs. I think for example of social protest, that played such a fundamental role
in launching the field but which now has few adepts, at least where American
social history is concerned, but which begs for renewed commentary. Social rnobility, dropped far too quickly in the United States after such fruitful beginnings,
is another case in point. Mary Hartrnan's sweeping (forthcoming) reinterpretation of early modem European history in light of the European-style family,
another fundamental interest that was too blithely abandoned, shows the power
of reexamining older topics and findings and extending their reach. Old age
history was abandoned too fast, after a few stimulating general surveys and a sur,
prisingly small number of (good) specific monographs, and as Pat Thane's essay
suggests, it will surely return as the implications of graying gain global attention.

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

Nostalgia, but within limits: It may be hard for younger practitioners to realize
how exciting social history was thirty or forty years ago, when the field seemed
brand new, defying the canons of conventional history. Eric Hobsbawm had it
right back then when he talked of what a great time it was to be a historian."
We knew each other, by work if not in person, and we could easily identify
ourselves against the many historians bent on adhering to the same tired list
of standard periods and topics. I doubt that this spirit can ever return to social
history, if only because of the success the field has obtained-which means also
that it would be distracting to wallow in regret. At a time when a large minority
of historians proclaim themselves as social historians at least in part, and when
social history has moved from birth pains to some phase of mottled maturity,
defiant self, identification inevitably blurs. It was fun when all topics seemed
new, when youth of field and youth in profession combined, when the world
needed conversion.
But it is not only unwise to press nostalgia too far-there's no surer way of
losing the audience I want to reach-but inaccurate as well. There are still drag,
ons to be slain, in the various kinds of conventional history that still resist the
social history vision and the various partisan takes on history that dispute social
history directly. There are new topics to explore. Every year, as jSH editor, I
receive a number of really good articles, including two or three that literally
produce shivers of excitement because of the new data and insights involved,
because of what is suggested about basic human behavior over time. Add to this
the Similarly inspiring articles placed elsewhere, plus the periodic path-breaking
books, and there seems little question that the enthusiasm remains. I can only
assume that the historians involved share this same sense of fundamental discovery, of important questions asked and answered-about the past, and about

12

journal of social history

fall 2003

Problems in Maturity
But if vitality seems endemic to the field, even as it has matured, so do some
characteristic problems-some, perhaps, a function of vitality itself. Another
interesting feature of the essays in this collection-perhaps depressing, perhaps
simply inevitable-is the extent to which they grapple with many familiar issues,
albeit sometimes in new ways. The roster includes narrativity; synthesis and
fragmentation; and the state and politics-in all of which current comment
echoes unresolved definitional issues from decades past. As was the case forty
years ago, for example, there are still social historians who think in terms of
,. It isrevealing, in the diverse essays that follow, howfew concernsaboutevidencesurface,
in contrast to the anxiety in the field's earlydays. Of course there remain topics where
evidence is frustratingly elusive or inconclusive. But generaldiscussion has shifted from
whether evidence is available to what kinds should be preferred and how meaning can
best be derived.

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

But the gains of flexibility and the capacity to move on are important as well.
Gender history was, after all, not on the original topical roster, but flowed from
the combination of political movement and the tools social history offered. The
history of childhood seemed on the whole too difficult when modem social his,
tory first began, despite a few provocative efforts, but it is now receiving varied
and imaginative attention. The history of emotions, though called for early on,
only became possible within the past twenty years, partly because of the cultural
turn, and it continues to yield surprising findings. The point is clear, at least to
my biased eyes: the good old days have been followed by some pretty good new
days. The field retains its ability to innovate and excite.I
I once argued that no aspect of human behavior should be denied to social
history, not even sleep. And now we have some really promising efforts even
on sleep.P Add to this the number of historical staples that have been redone
by social history-from religion to consumerism-and the number of social
history topics that have themselves become cottage industries, like women,
or working class, or leisure, or slavery and emancipation,-and the sense of
continued accomplishment is hard to deny.
Indeed, social history's capacity to generate new topics belies some of the eom,
mon criticisms of the field. While there is no single methodology, the openness
to the historical construction of various aspects of the human experience, the
valuation of relatively ordinary people as historical subjects and agents, and some
sense of key historical causes and big changes in the human experience over,
all, combine to create considerable analytical power. A willingness to provide
historical explanation for a changing parade of topical concerns makes social
history a vital player in social inquiry more generally, while steadily expanding
the definition of a usable past.
And even though the sense of novelty has inevitably waned, some of the early
constraints have diminished as well. Documentation is a key case in point. Who
talks now, for example, of the inarticulate, when it turns out there are so many
ways of getting at the voices of the previously unheard, and of finding evidence
for some of the more private aspects of the human experience?* The vitality of
the field has transcended many of the barriers that seemed so daunting early on.

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

13

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

topics and causation that largely leave the state out (though they no longer say
so explicitly), and others who find political explanation one of social history's
main purposes-a healthy tension, I would argue, but certainly an endemic one.
Early on, practitioners noted the gap between a sense of kindred sociohistorical enterprise and the fact that the field consisted of a variety of subtopics
rather than a general vision of the past. Family, crime, protest, slavery-all were
social history, but what their causal or chronological links, one to the other,
'were unclear at best. If anything, this issue of fragmentation has intensified.
Partly because of further specialization and topical expansion, partly because of
the distraction of the cultural turn, and partly perhaps because of partial incorporation into general textbooks, the effort do to general social histories of key
areas has fallen by the wayside. Few if any historians have recently attempted
Charles Tilly's "big changes" approach as a means of talking about basic social
history turning points. Correspondingly, the invitation to develop characteristic
social history periodization, to replace both a topic-by-topic chronology and the
need to rely on conventional political markers, has not been fully answered. To
be sure, a social history focus has helped spur attention to the decades around
1820 as a key watershed in American history, but this seems an exception to the
rule. If social history is to be measured by coherent overall frameworks, it falls
short-and immaturity is no longer an excuse. We need renewed attention to
broader synthesis not only to address an endemic problem, but to respond to the
additional, almost inherent particularism of the cultural turn. 7
The dilemma of social history and history teaching remains open as well.
Early on, it seemed clear that so much energy and reward were going into innovative research, that there simply was inadequate attention available for teaching
models.f More recently, at least in the United States, the combination of routine,
mindedness and overwork among many teachers, with the resurgence of political
conservatism and its deep hostility to social history in the classroom, have generated scant incentive for further advance. Some change has occurred. Social
history discoveries plus sheer political and pedagogical pull have gained women
and some minorities a place in standard textbooks. No longer does slavery, in
American history, exist mainly to be abolished in a triumph of humanitarian
enlightenment. But the social history topics are still squeezed into a largely con,
ventional political framework, and they sometimes appear sporadically, without
offering the opportunity to analyze key changes over time. And the behavioral
findings in social history-the work on family, or leisure, or manners-simply
don't make it into mainstream teaching agendas, which means that few students
gain access to social history's explanatory power in assessing how current pat'
terns emerge from the past. Here, there really is an opportunity for a new sense of
missionary zeal, related in some sense to a capacity to develop some big-picture
social history. For American practitioners: Take a look at the history learning
standards adopted in most states, their meager social history content and their
resolute sense that history is great people and great events, and get mad. But I'm
not sure where the missionaries are, where the constructive anger is, in an aspect
of the history agenda that was never one of social history's great strengths.
The relationship between social history and a wider reading public is less dire,
but it remains mixed and mysterious. As many have noted, American interest
in historical museums, broadly construed, has increased spectacularly, and many

14

journal of social history

fall 2003

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

museums have become sophisticated sites of social history presentation. Some

social history offerings have also made good use of new media, and a few films
add to the list, again with popular effect. But formal reading fare, and the history
channel on cable television, continue largely to define history in terms of battles
and wars, spiced by an occasional biography. Explicit efforts by social historians
to write for a wider public have typically yielded little fruit-one can get on local
talk shows, in their hunger for subject matter, usually to answer random questions,
but there's little sense of breakthrough either to wide sales or to impact on
popular historical thinking. It's hard to argue that public understanding of social
history staples like family or work patterns has been much affected by popularized
scholarly findings or analysis. In some cases, even where museum presentations
are involved, the conservative surge in the United States has further weakened
social history program content, lest key donors and self-appointed patriots be
offended. Yet here too, occasionally, a glimmer of hope. Surely historians who
helped convey the internship experiences of the Japanese, in World War 11, and
work them into public consciousness, contributed to the quick understanding,
after 9/11, that Muslim Americans must not be scapegoated at least to the same
extent.
And there's real progress as well on another front, long debated. Twenty years
ago John Demos lamented his failure to work social history findings into the
thinking of policymakers on family subjects," And perhaps he would be no more
heartened today. But social history, on its behavioral side, has become a standard
part of analyses of topics like drinking, or gambling, or sexuality, or crime, or
dieting and obesity, and some of this welcome spills over into presentations to
a wider public as well. This is a far cry from the early days when one historian,
invited to a presentation on gender issues, was urged not to identify his disci,
pline lest he alienate his audience. The sense that social history is a routine
part of explaining why people function as they do, and why characteristic social
problems and behaviors have emerged as they have, is a tremendous gain, and
one that a next generation of social historians can build upon. Social history has
become a key player in fundamental discussions of the culturally and socially
constructed aspects of the human experience, and we can and should press for,
ward on this interdisciplinary front. Researchers in contemporary social history
should become more aggressive in linking their findings to contemporary issues,
through vigorous discussions of change, continuity and causation in basic human behaviors, more fully exploiting the connections that have already emerged
with other fields of behavioral inquiry.
Indeed, one of social history's key strengths, though not obvious at the outset,
is its capacity to respond to changing social concerns by providing not just
historical background, but active analytical perspective. This contributes to the
frequently changing topical roster-think, for example about the tremendous
strides in the history of death, when this subject seized public consciousness
by the late 1960s, or the contributions to historicizing youth or to old age;
all subjects that are now, for the moment, more quiescent. Unquestionably,
the agility contributes greatly to apparent fragmentation, but there are some
underlying unities in: the interest in breadth of human experience, the capacity
to relate special topics to larger patterns of cultural or economic change, the
commitment to ordinary more than to extraordinary people, and the imaginative

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

15

use and discovery of relevant sources. Though not its only function, social history
serves as a mirror of changing 'contemporary concerns, and its contributions to
interdisciplinary inquiry expand accordingly.
The New Challenge: Global Issues
Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

Up to this point, aside from defining the current moment in terms of generational transition and the fading of the cultural turn, we've stayed on fairly
familiar ground, with topics that have been part of state-of-social-history discussions for at least two decades. The contours have changed: the incorporation
of social history into topical social science research is one example on the plus
side, the deflating effect of American conservative hostility to social history is
another decidedly on the negative. But the agenda was clear some time ago. We
turn now to a newer area, whose implications constitute a real challenge to the
social history of the future. The subject is geography and globalization. Again,
many of the following essays expand on this topic as well.
Social history, like its parent discipline, has almost always been highly place'
specific. The advantage is obvious: when dealing with new topics, often corn,
plexly embedded in regional cultures and local geographies and economies, know
your area well. Even aside from regional social history, most social historians felt
insecure exploring beyond the nation-state (whose relevance for many social
history topics was often however questionable). Some historians, pushing now
for more microhistory, feel that the field has already been too venturesome. 10
The cultural turn, on the whole, though not wedded to microhistory necessarily,
gave further impetus to reliance on fairly small geographical scope. Against
this grain, for what it's worth, I had long hoped that topical social history
might loosen geographical constraints a bit, toward more interest in behaviors such as crime or leisure that would cut across regional lines. I have always
tried to arrange JSH articles and reviews accordingly, with what effect I am not
sure.
And there have been gains. Though still distressingly limited, comparative
social history has flourished in some topical areas, such as slavery, emancipation,
and more recently working class. Social history plays a key role, also, in the
emerging attention to crosscutting interregional forces, particularly in Atlantic
studies (though we need comparable attention to other geographical cornbinations). Even more cheering, and a vital part of the field's future, the topical range
initially developed for Europe or the U.S. has increasingly emerged in regional
specialty areas like Latin America and Africa. Asian, African and Latin Arnerican social history has long been strongly developed around some crucial subjects
(the peasantry, for example), as part of area studies more generally. But now
we have rich family and childhood history, leisure studies, and the like, though
this expansion is clearer for some regions than others. Modern Russian social
history, similarly, has expanded beyond a preoccupation with origins of revolution to deal with popular culture, sexuality, and of course gender. Collectively,
this is all a net increment for the link between social history and appropriate
geographic scope, whether comparative or transregional.!'
But new challenges emerge. International relations and social history have

16

journal of social history

fall 2003

*****
We probably face three options for social history's future, though it is vital to
hear other voices on the subject. The first will involve some continued interest
in social history on two different bases: first, where younger practitioners un-

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

never mixed well, if only because so much diplomatic decision-making is an elite

affair. For a good while, this mismatch resulted simply in a decline of diplomatic
history, as social history soared. But now the felt need for historical perspective
on international relations increases, and social historians need to exercise more
imagination in developing appropriate linkages. Many history departments are
responding to 9/11 with a call for emphasis on diplomatic history, and the impulse
is understandable. In fact, of course, the roots of terrorism, and many responses
to terrorism, are as much social as purely diplomatic, but social historians have
not pioneered in making the necessary connections.
At the teaching level, and to some extent in research, the United States has
experienced a dramatic surge in world history, well before the recent international crisis. Again, social history has not always fit comfortably with a world
history framework. World historians struggle to include women's history and
some issues of social structure, but they are often so busy with their sheer geographical range, and so hampered by the lack of studies of social topics that
explicitly link to global frameworks, that the temptation to emphasize politics,
high culture and trade often proves insurmountable. And from the explicitly
social history side, there has not been a clear response, or indeed any particular
take on world history.
Finally, there is the phenomenon of globalization. Historians of any stripe have
not taken a lead in identifying globalization, and of course the extent and the
novelty of the phenomenon can and should be debated. There are however some
provocative recent approaches. One group, self-styled as "new global" historians,
works on the recency and magnitude of globalization changes. Another studies
analogies between a past experience of globalization, in the decades around 1900
(an experience which ended in retrenchment in the years after World War I),
and more recent developments. Both approaches are interesting, and both are
perfectly compatible with social history. What better way to test the reach of
current globalization than to measure it against, say, the experience of gender or
of childhood? How can one compare two modem surges of globalization without
dealing with the emergence of global popular cultures in both periods? There are
ripe topics here-but to date, social historians have not really seized them. The
lead in historical work on globalization is taken by specialists in international
relations spiced by imaginative mavericks from fields like the history of science
and even psychohistory.V
For a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, historians are reconsidering
their geographical frameworks, with results that place new emphasis on the importance of comparison and on the ability to think in terms of global or at least
interregional connections. Social historians, with increasingly rich results from
work in a wide range of geographical areas, can participate in this reconsider'
ation, but they have not yet seized a leadership role and risk being outflanked.
Could this be the next conceptual challenge, after the cultural turn?

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

17

* One ofthe salutarythemes in severalofthe following essays insists on the importance

of economic causation in the world today, amid growing and distressing stratifications,
as a reminder that, whatever their importance and charm, cultural definitions must not
preclude wider inquiry.
**Note, in the essays that follow in this issue, the frequent reference to the need to reviveattention to socialclass, asa corrective to the frequentquirkiness of the cultural turn,
or as a framework for innovative researchon this historyof the senses, or as a framework
for re-engaging with explanations of political patterns. Revival need not be repetition:
Christophe Charle, forexample, notes the importanceoftuning the explorationsofsocial
structure more finely, to deal with smallersocialgroups.

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

derstand the necessity of including social history findings-on demography, for

example-in their survey teaching and as part of establishing context for their
own research, whether this is on culture, or international relations, or some other
area-without, usually, a strong self-identification as social historians. And second, a deep, excited commitment to further inquiry into special topics within
social history, like childhood or the senses or popular humor. This special topics
approach could maintain the fruitful connection between social history and particular fields of social science inquiry. But here too self-identified social history
would fade. Or third, along with the general interest and certainly the special
topics approach, an ongoing commitment to larger issues of periodization, social
structure, and geographic breadth that can innovate in its own right and help
keep the other two approaches honest.
This third option, to my mind greatly preferable, would incorporate the first
two but add an ongoing and explicit commitment to the field as a whole. This
kind of commitment, I would argue, is ultimately essential to keep the historians who prefer to dip into social history adequately informed and stimulated, to
prevent them from letting the social history materials recede further into the
background, and to provide them with updated findings; essential as well to provide a wider framework for the special topics research, which otherwise risks still
further fragmentation and an inability to deal with basic issues in chronology
and causation. Only this commitment balances the gains of cultural analysis
with appropriate attention to social structure and social causation.* Only this
commitment to the field will allow a renewed attack on concerns like social history in teaching and the onslaughts of conservative pedagogy, or the apparently
endemic tension between new topics and the need for a more general picture.
Only this commitment, finally, will allow social historians to deal directly with
new challenges, such as the changing geographical base for historical inquirychallenges that Vitally affect social history's role in the discipline as a whole, and
which could lead to exciting conceptual breakthroughs in comparative analysis
or assessments of globalization. The question is not whether we should preserve
a special social history identity, even a vigorous reassertion of some of the larger
claims of the field; but whether we will.
The social history of the future does not require agreement on all points,
or on the same level of commitment. We can and should debate, for example,
issues of geographical scope, and listen to the excitement of the microhistorians
while also talking with globalists. We can welcome some fellow travelers and a
variety of sub-specialties, But we do need at least some social historians willing
to recover some of the bigger picture concerns-for example, for discussions of
social class,** or the implications of demographic change-that have receded

18

journal of social history

fall 2003

Department of History and Art History

Fairfax, VA 22030

ENDNOTES
1. Some of us used to write at least one definition a year, which did wonders for the vita
if less for clearing the air. For a record of key developments, see Charles Tilly, "The Old
New Social History and the New Old Social History," Review 7 (1984): 363-406; James
Henretta, "Social History as Lived and Written," American Historical Review 84 (1979):
1293-1323; Mary Layton, Elliott Gom, and Peter Williams, eds., Encyclopedia ofAmerican
Social History, v I: Part Il, Methods and Contexts, 235-434; Lawrence Stone, Past and
Present (Boston, 1981); Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Denigrating the Rule of Reason: The
'new history' goes bottoms up," Harper's Magazine (April, 1984);]oumala/SocialHistory
Special Issue 29 (1995): Peter N. Steams, "Social History Today ... And Tomorrow,"
Journal of Social History 10 (1976): 129-155.
2.

Lynn Hunt, "Where have All the Theories Gone," American Historical Association

Perspectives (Mar., 2002).

3. Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989); Lenard Berlanstein,
Rethinking Labor History: essays on discourse and class analysis (Urbana, 1993); see also
Lynn Hunt and Victoria Bonnell, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley, 1999).
4. Eric Hobsbawm, "From Social History to the History of Society," Daedalus C (1971):
43.
5. On the topical evolution, Peter N. Steams, "The Old Social History and the New," in
Layton, Gom, and Williams, eds., Encyclopedia, I, pp. 237-50; on the upcoming flowering
of the history of childhood, Paula Fass, ed., The Encyclopedia of the History of Childhood,
forthcoming.
6. Roger Ekrich, "The Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber on the British
Isles," American Historical Review 106 (2001); Peter N. Steams, Perrin Rowland, and Lori
Giamella, "Children's Sleep: Sketching Historical Change," Journal of Social History 30
(1997): 345-366.
7. On the big changes approach, Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge
Comarisons (New York, 1984); Olivier Zunz, ed., Reliving the Past: The World of Social
History (Chapel Hill, 1985); for an impressive.recent effort, though quite different from
Tilly's, Mary Hartman, The Household in the Making of History: A Subversive View of the
Western Past (Cambridge, forthcoming). On redoing U.S. history periodization, Christo-

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

during the cultural turn. We do need some social historians willing to reassert the
importance of teaching about processes rather than events and eager to dispute
a narrowing or rigidification of the history canon.
In the end, of course, the key to the future lies in social history's capacity
to generate new understandings of the past and how the past has shaped the
present. We're talking ultimately about the continued ability to explore how
basic changes in human behavior occur, and through this to offer fundamental
contributions to knowledge. Bold claims, but at its best social history has already
met the challenge. Through new discovery, new synthesis, and new capacity to
teach and disseminate, social history maintains its high potential. There's more
to come.

SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

19

pher Clark, Roots of Rural Capitalism (Ithaca, 1990); David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old
in America (New York, 1978).
8. Peter N. Steams, "Social History and the Teaching of History," in Matthew Downey,
ed., Teaching American History: New Directions (Washington, DC, 1980); Linda Rosenzweig and Peter N. Steams, Social History Curriculum for Secondary Schools (Pittsburgh,
1982).

10. Sigurdur Magnusson, "The Singularization of History: Social History and Michrohistory within the Postmodem State of Knowledge," Journal of Social History 36 (2003).
11. Michael Adas, "Social History and the Revolution in African and Asian Historiography," Journal of Social History 19 (1985): 335-378.
12. Robert McMahon, "Globalization and History," paper presented at the Organization
of American Historians annual meeting, April, 2002; Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjers,
eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, 1993).

Downloaded from http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on December 4, 2015

9. John Demos, Past, Present and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American
History (New York, 1986).