New Social History, Post Modernism & the Modern Era

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.

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[1] Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011,174

[2] Ibid., 177.

[3] Ibid., 212.

[4] Ibid., 213.

New Social History, New Left, & Postmodernism

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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[1] Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011), 172.

[2] Hoefferle, 173.

[3] Hoefferle, 173.

[4] Hoefferle, 212.

[5] Hoefferle, 218.