What factors led to the emergence of the new social history?
How did the new social history change both the topics and methods that
historians used? What is postmodernism and how has it impacted the writing of history
in the modern era?
As we
studied last week, during the 60s and 70s attitudes were changing towards
social matters. New Social History surfaced due to a necessity for social
change, especially regarding minorities and women. One important factor was the
admission of minorities and women into the historical profession through
universities. This brought in a lot of new perspective into the research and
study of history. The movements, rallies, and marches of the time were also
heavy factors into how new social history became so popular; people were
advocating for the rights of minorities in a primary middle class white ran
country.
With the emergence of so many
minority and women historians into the profession, how history was studied
changed also. Most importantly the perspective of history changed rapidly, how
it was viewed changed drastically. History was primarily written by white
males, now a new plethora of people were conducting research and writing
history from their view points. According to our book race histories were,
“shaped by the rising civil rights movement and America’s renewed commitment to
equality following WWII, new theories of race relations arose to challenge the
“mint-Julep” school of thought on African Americans.”[1]
And women’s history, “surged as the civil rights moment and other social
movements of the sixties inspired thousands of young women to explore the
historical origins of sex discrimination in their quest to achieve equality and
justice for women.”[2]
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”[3]
Postmodernism, as I discussed in the last discussion, is really interesting
because the historians that promote it basically state that every person has
their own unique perspective, and because of that no historical account can
ever be viewed as fact or the complete truth. Our book dictates that
postmodernists, “argue that historical truth is shaped by and reflects the
perspective of the historian and the society in which he or she writes, and is
thus relative and reflexive, making all conclusions at least somewhat
subjective, and true objectivity an impossibility.”[4]
I think postmodernism in some ways is still a part of the objective historian’s
research and method. If you are focusing on creating a completely objective
account you are keeping in the back of your mind the fundamentals of post
modernism.
