The Pitfalls of a Social History Approach to Investigating the Past

Social history, also referred to as “the history of the people with the politics left out”, has been widely criticised for celebrating experience rather than explanation, dwelling on the trivial instead of the profound and constructing its arguments off fragmentary myths, as opposed to cohesive evidence. Subsequently, whilst the field possesses many unique benefits relating to its anti-elitist approach to the past and eclecticism, it is yet to be assigned the same academic notability of economic, political or military history or Rankean historiography. This essay will thus outline the three main criticisms of the discipline; ineffective methodology, the risk of self-importance in its application and the ambiguity of its definition, as well as assessing how these pitfalls have emerged and their implications on the field.

One of the greatest pitfalls of a social history approach to investigating the past has been alluded to by historian Miles Fairburn, who has accused social historians of “extrapolating the unknown from the known”. Despite the novelty of its content, social history has been criticised for repeating many of the characteristic biases of its predecessors through applying common sense empiricism and naïve realism, reflecting the belief that an exhaustive description of the past equates to greater authenticity. The reasons behind this application of few relevant examples to sizeable, historical claims are summarised by Fairburn as being as a result of; simplicity, readability and the method being a convenient alternative to mass quantification. Out of all the historical methods that can be employed to examine social history, common sensical suppositions are the easiest to apply universally and, if after intensive research, an historian is yet to find information contrary to what they have previously found, it is of little surprise that they will make a generalised assumption regarding the patterns and trends over this period. Many social historians are also of the belief that implementing a limited number of well-chosen examples to consolidate their hypothesis is more effective than providing dense statistical evidence, as it provides greater insight into the past and ensures readability. Likewise, mass quantification methods are perceived by many as being too obscure and inapplicable to the context of social history making the alternative, which was the dominant methodology in ancient history, effective when examining the past.

Whilst the motivations behind applying this methodology are plausible, generalising from the particular is fundamentally problematic and a major pitfall of social history. This is as the elite suffer the least from this approach to examining the past as their experiences would have been most explicitly documented over periods of time as a result of better access to education and higher literacy rates. Consequently the field, which strives to encapsulate “history with the people put back in”, paradoxically best represents the dominant classes as social historians are required to make less assumptions regarding their experiences. In contrast, history’s unheard voices and the experiences of ‘ordinary people’, such as workers in the industrialising societies of the ninetieth and early twentieth century, undergo more speculation and thus more suppositions are made about the experiences of the subordinate classes. Social history thus fails to fulfil its impetus of restoring the dignity of ‘ordinary’ people through providing those unheard by history’s traditional focus on politicians, diplomats, generals, etc with a voice, as the voice it assigns them is heavily rooted in guesswork and postulation.

Furthermore, as a result of typicality and social historian’s inclinations to view the past under a microscopic lens and accumulate lifelike detail from events, they fail to make the conceptual room necessary for considering areas where “the documentary record is silent”. Not only this, but the field’s preference for ‘human’ documents and intricacy puts it a risk of domesticating certain subject matter and thus portraying certain events as harmless, or obscuring the “picturesque and the lifelike” in that one may exist as no more than a chance appearance. It is therefore clear that, whilst other schools invite historians to “admire giants of the past” and “share in their triumphs”, the intimate relationship created between historian and the past in social history no longer “reminds us of the heights we cannot scale”, and instead prompts historians to apply modern day assumptions to events potentially antithetical of the contemporary societal climate.

Moreover, application of modern day assumptions prompts the projection of the primitive versions of our ideal selves onto historical subject matter. This is perhaps one of the greatest pitfalls of social history approaches as it causes the past to be perceived in terms of today’s values rather than its own, and serves as a self-congratulatory measure through which historians can demonstrate “enlarged sympathies and benevolence”. Not only this, but this distortion of the historical subject in the eyes of the present day historian serves as a double misrecognition whereby the subject’s individuality is neglected, and a sentimental view of the historian is fortified. The ineffectiveness of inserting modern values and assumptions into distant historical contexts are demonstrated when reviewing a papyrus from Roman Egypt dating back to the first or second century AD, which depicted a widowed, slave-owners appeal to the authorities for compensation from a careless donkey driver who had ran over a young girl on her way to a singing lesson; “I loved and cared for this little servant-girl, a house-born slave, in the hope that when she grew up she would look after me in my old age, since I am a helpless woman and alone”. When reading this passage, it is imperative historians consider that Roman society was burdened with epidemic, high mortality rates and acute living standards; all of which are reflected in the concerns of the widow who would have also faced threats of magic, cruelty and religious prosecution. The fact these societal components are generally absent in the climate a social historian would operate in today reinforces the notion that empathy is an ineffective tactic of historical discovery. Likewise, the class struggles reflected in the statement further support this as our consciousness of status distinctions would have differed substantially from the values implemented in this era. Paradoxically, the slave-owner in this instance loves her slave and organises for her to attend singing lessons; a concept alien to our preconceptions of the institution of slavery. It is thus clear imposing modern categories and prejudices onto past societies, which social historians are guilty of, is not only ahistorical but denies the subject their otherness. Furthermore, surviving sources from the Roman world force historians to reconstruct the past with imagination, as the information provided is fragmentary and merely demonstrates vignettes of the lives ‘ordinary’ people endured. This, as previously alluded to, further prevents social historians from fairly portraying history from below, as does it cause the gap that should have been left for great absences to be forced shut.

It is thus evident social historians are in danger of viewing past communities as “comfortable alternatives to critical awareness and self-questioning, allowing us to borrow prestige from our adoptive ancestors, and to dignify the present by illegitimate association with the past”, as a result of the lack of distance created between historian and subject. Key applications of defamiliarization are deficient in the field as some of its proponents confine themselves to the consciousness of their ancestors, making social history less something that can be interpreted from past to present but instead a vehicle of empathy that reveals something about one’s current self.

Lastly, another major pitfall of employing a social history approach to investigating the past is the broadness of the term ‘social history’ itself, encompassing considerably more subject matter than alternative schools. Confusion is thus caused as to where the boundaries of social history is drawn; military history is outlined by war, political history is outlined by politics, but the defining factor of social history proves ambiguous as ‘social’ is too broad to define as an academic genre. This hesitancy regarding the field’s definition is reflected in the fact that three definitions have been developed in an attempt to outline the field’s meaning. The oldest interpretation proclaimed that social history encapsulated the history of manners, leisure, and social activities that occurred independent of the political, economic, and military sphere. However, this definition generated issues in that it excluded the histories of women, the family and education from its domain, forcing these fields to emerge as independent disciplines. Not only this, but the exclusion of more official societal sectors caused the field to become trivialised in the eyes of some as key developments from the top down were overlooked. In an attempt to quash criticism, proponents of the discipline argued that social history captured the history of society, including the implications of political, military, and economic decisions alongside the influence of women, the family and education. This notion was put forth with the view that it was fundamental for all aspects of society to be considered in a single framework if the entirety of society was to be understood. However, this approach also proved problematic as it centralised on the assumption that a society was in existence for historians to study, putting them at risk of merely categorising various elements of what they perceived to be a society as opposed to analysing and describing specific events. Furthermore, the third interpretation of the discipline proposed that social history should be concerned with experiences, not actions, and should seek to represent the life of the individual as opposed to the society in which their life occurred. Though, as previously alluded to, this definition can encourage unverifiable speculation as it forces historians to search beyond current records of people’s actions and underestimates the influence of specific events, leading the discipline away from the social and into the psychological. The argument can therefore be put forth that one of social history’s greatest pitfalls is that it lacks a legitimate intellectual core, as there is little theoretical agreement regarding the discipline’s nature and past attempts to define the field prove contentious and unconvincing.

To conclude, it is evident investigating the past through a social history lens evokes a multitude of issues, ranging from the ways in which different histories are interpreted to the roles of social historians themselves. Whilst issues pertaining to methodology and the inherent application of empathy may be easier to overcome, it appears that a cohesive, single definition with distinct boundaries is yet to be established. These pitfalls do not negate the field’s importance however, nor do they make it less meaningful when compared to its more intellectually acclaimed counterparts as the information revealed by a social history approach to the past is highly relevant and insightful. It is thus crucial social historians strive to reach a consensus as to what the field should embody and the means that should be employed to fulfil the field’s diverse, far-reaching potential.