How did the events of
the 1960s and 1970s impact the emergence of the New Social History? How is the new social history an outgrowth of
the New Left? In what ways do postmodernism
and the new cultural history both build on and challenge the new social
history?
The 1960s and 1970s greatly
influenced how historians thought about history. As attitudes were changing and
evolving about social, political, and economic situations, so were the
attitudes about history and how it was conducted, analyzed and studied. As the
New Left became popular and people began to advocate for minority, women, and
homosexual rights, a seed was planted that would eventually expand the world
view on certain subjects. Rallies, movements, and marches popped up all over
the United States and included prominent historical figures like Martian Luther
King Jr., John Hope Franklin, and William Leuchtenburg.[1]
With access to higher education by minorities and women the entire system began
to evolve; including history programs which became much more diverse. There
were also some really important historians to advocate progress in
historiography in the 60s like E. H. Carr who wrote “What is History?” In which he wrote, that the main goal of history
was to help us to understand the present and shape the future.”[2]
I think one of the most important points to take away from some of the major
changes during the time is that as historians became more diverse socially and
culturally, they began to discover and unearth biases from a previously white
male dominated subject.
New social history was less explicitly
theoretical and more empirical than New Left history, and as a consequence was
much more acceptable to the mainstream historical profession.[3]
New social history took its foundations from the New Left; like advocating for
minorities and women. They then used those key principals and other social and
historical study to create a social history based on fact and evidence.
Jean Lyotard’s book, “The Postmodern Condition” explained
[postmodernism] as ‘a disbelief in metanarratives’; a metanarrative is an
overarching story of belief held by a society as a universal truth”[4]
Postmodernism historians believe that because every person has their own unique
perspective in life, that every account of an event will be different from
every person. If this is true, there can be no universal truth in history
because all of history is completely subjective. Postmodernism really took the
skepticism on perspective that the New Social History movement advocated to a
new level. They exhumed and revealed biases and examined and analyzed how those
biases affected how history was studied.
Cultural history has been around
for ages but originally was focused on cultural leaders of the time. In the
1970’s cultural history began to evolve into a much more in depth analysis of
culture and cultural identity. Cultural historians, “now seek to understand how
past cultures shaped identity and created knowledge and reality.”[5]
Cultural history, like the New Social History movement, take into account
various other subjects like anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. to help
aid in the understanding of their field.
Work Cited:
Gilderhus, Mark T. History and Historians: A Historiographical
Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010.
Hoefferle, Caroline. The Essential Historiography Reader.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010.
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