Social history as "sites of memory"? The insitutionalization of history: microhistory and the grand narrative.

Flashbacks

In 1976, to mark the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the Journal of Social History (JSH) put out a special volume containing a number of articles on the status and position of social history within the academic world. Among the contributors was Theodore Zeldin, professor at Oxford in England, who presented an overview of the advances made within the discipline over the first three quarters of the 20th century--including the following piece of sound advice for aspiring scholars:</p> <pre>

I believe that the history you write is the expression of your individuality; I agree with Mommsen that one cannot teach people to

write history; I believe that much more can be gained by encouraging

young historians to develop their own personality, their own vision,

their own eccentricities, than by setting them examples to follow.

Original history is the reflection of an original mind, and there is no prescription which will produce that. (1) </pre> <p>In the year 2002 I spent a happy term as a Fullbright Scholar in the USA, teaching and doing research at my old university, Carnegie Mellon. It was wonderful to get the chance to renew my acquaintance with the faculty that had had so great an influence on my attitudes and opinions on history. On top of this, I had the unexpected opportunity of observing the selection process in the course of appointments to two posts within the department. This was, for me, especially welcome as I had, from the time I completed my doctorate at the end of 1993, kept an interested eye on the job advertisements in Perspectives and been struck in most cases by how standardized and restrictive they had become. My impression was that universities seemed always to be looking for scholars of the same type, equipped with the same kind of expertise (in their own particular areas)--scholars who would be able to teach so or so many courses, who would be able to fulfil certain academic roles laid down by all the schools; individuals who were, to a greater or lesser extent, all cast in the same mold.

The social historians called in for interview were, without exception, admirably capable individuals, apparently endowed with great academic qualities. However, also without exception, they all seemed to wear the selfsame colors as the scholars specified in the job advertisements: they all delivered lectures that sounded as if they had been written by the same person. Their treatment, ideas, presentation, research questions and conclusions were strikingly similar, and there was no easy way of saying what had come from which of them, however different the actual subjects being treated.

I asked one of the professors at the school why they never advertised for people who might be considered "flaky", who had ideas that were out of the ordinary and who set themselves up against received thinking within the discipline. I recall that the professor in question seemed not to understand what I was getting at and failed entirely to see the point behind my question.

As I see things, Zeldin's recommendations have, regrettably, had absolutely no effect on the shaping of young scholars in recent years. For my own part, I have no definitive view as to why so many social historians have finished up as generic clones, being in no position to judge this properly. (2) However, in what follows in this article I wish to offer a few points for consideration that seem to be connected with the problem facing the discipline. Many of the points I want to bring out here go hand in hand with the extremely positive development of social history in recent years and are directly related to the main gains achieved by the subject following its bitter struggle with conservative forces within the world of scholarship. In this sense, social historians at the forefront of the discipline have done a remarkable job and the subject will undoubtedly reap the benefits of this in the years to come. But every victory leaves behind it an aftermath that can, in an instant, turn any positive result into its converse. As I see it, social historians are now standing at a major watershed and their responses to what is happening now will to a large extent decide how the discipline evolves over the coming decades.

To gain a better idea of what this watershed involves, it is worth going back over the course of the academic debate in the pages of the JSH since its inception and considering how scholars have responded to the challenges and problems facing the discipline at different times. I shall also seek to draw connections between these developments and my own ideas and experiences of academic work, with the aim of assessing the state of the discipline in the early years of the 21st century.

Young scholars who at the present moment (and in fact over the last decade and a half) find themselves on the social history market need to face up to certain issues:

1. The institutionalization of the discipline, which is having the following consequences:

A. The discipline is ceasing to take risks.

B. The academic powers are defining the domain or "expertise" of the discipline on the basis of narrow institutional interests.

C. Ever stiffer competition for academic positions is discouraging younger scholars from taking risks and trying new things; we are seeing the formulation of standardized images of what constitutes "good" social history.

D. Graduate students are opting for "safe" doctoral subjects--subjects that will "sell".

E. Competition between university institutions is encouraging more rigid definitions of the image of social history, limiting the variety of approach and the room for experimentation.

2. The demand for the kinds of knowledge social historians have to offer has increased in several areas:

A. In the production of educational books and teaching materials.

B. In the demand for "syntheses", i.e. summaries and overviews from within the discipline, a demand that has arisen as a result of its complex and controversial status.

C. There has been a great increase in the publication of encyclopedias and reference works treating different genres and areas of social history.

D. There has been an increased demand for books and articles on individual areas of social history aimed at general and non-specialist readerships.

E. Demand generated by "the heritage industry", linked to the enormous increase in educated and cultural tourism, means that museums and historical sites are being designed with ever greater reference to the "grass roots", i.e. the ordinary people in history and their lives and occupations. (3)

"The heritage industry" provides the most visible example of this trend and its current success can be attributed to a range of factors, including: a changed awareness of the environment; interest in migration and transnational movements, civilization and globalization; new connections to collective memory; changes in tastes in "the entertainment experience"; revived interest in heritage and genealogy; and new developments in the media. All these factors have combined to encourage museums and exhibitions to create and present new images of the past. (4)

All developments of this sort are of course positive--signs of the discipline's success--but I stress that this success also has its downsides. The boom in the heritage industry does not necessarily equate to a boom in social history as an academic discipline. On the contrary, one might argue that, as a result of this very success, social historians have felt no reason to take scholarly risks--there is simply no incentive for them to do so. As a result, the image becomes ossified and scholars are tempted to start treating social history as nothing more than a series of "sites of memory", as monuments that can neither be moved nor challenged, like a statue that is polished up solely so as to be able to gleam back resplendently into the eyes of those that behold it. (5) The demand for a particular type of knowledge already exists and so there is little room for experiments that might lead scholars on to new paths. (6) If one accepts this view of things, then social history is facing a major problem.

Improved Social History

The last years of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s were characterized by two areas of debate. Firstly, historians working within each of the various subdisciplines of social history put increased emphasis on strengthening the theoretical foundations of their fields of study; efforts were made to consolidate individual areas through discussion of the state of knowledge and the advances achieved through research within them. Secondly, there was continuing debate on how to bring the many disparate fields within the discipline together through a synthesis taking in the ideas of different scholars, with the aim of making the contribution of social history to general historiography the more decisive. (7) The period saw a number of key attempts to institutionalize the discipline, a trend that had already been going on for some time but which now received a new and considerably more powerful impetus.

From the earliest days of the JSH, its editor Peter N. Stearns had written articles at regular intervals intended to serve as a kind of overview of the position and status of the discipline as he saw it at any given time. (8) Stearns's articles, which appeared in the "Social History Update" columns of the journal and elsewhere, also extended to how he envisaged the future development of the subject. (9) These articles, which appeared at more or less five-year intervals, together with those by other social historians published in special "anniversary issues" of the journal, provide a vivid testimony to the steady and systematic advance of social history within the academic community. At the close of the 1980s, it was as if the discipline was standing at a crossroads.

In response to the two developments mentioned above, there was a lively debate in the "Social History Update" pages of the JSH on various aspects of social history. The contributors represented a wide spectrum of interests from within the discipline; examples included articles, all concentrating on methodology, on the current state of affairs in areas such as social mobility, the American contribution to social history, spatial analysis, legal history, slave resistance, sociology and emotions. (10) All these articles constituted significant contributions to the debate that was then going on within the subject on its current position and how best to move it forward into the future. In other words, social historians at this time were looking inwards and asking themselves in increasing measure where their discipline stood and how it was placed within the main patterns of general history.

Around the same time Peter Stearns brought a new and radical factor into the equation: the challenges of postmodernism. (11) This was followed two years later by an important paper by Joseph and Timothy Kelly on "the new historicism". (12) These two articles are the first I am aware of in the pages of the JSH to bring postmodernism into the debate on social history to any significant extent--with one highly interesting exception in the form of an article by Ellen Somekawa and Elizabeth Smith published in 1988. (13) Somekawa and Smith's article was something genuinely challenging and innovative, coming as it did like a dash of cold water in the faces of the readers. Peter Stearns himself has remarked that no other article in his time at the journal has excited so great a response. This paper of Somekawa and Smith's can thus be seen as a kind of foretaste of what was to come.

In his 1990 article on postmodernism Stearns made the point that much of what the postmodernists had been advocating fitted in well with the ideas and working practices of social historians. In this regard he cited three things in particular:

1. Ideas about power and authority and their place and status in the sources: how the voice of power in the sources influences how scholars conduct their research.

2. The emphasis on cultural factors in the study of societies of former ages. Both the postmodernists and the social historians had accepted the importance of working with texts of all and every kind. (14)

3. A common interest shared by postmodernists and social historians in an interdisciplinary emphasis in their research. But here Stearns anticipated various obstacles to fruitful dialogue: "Here, however, their talisman is the new literary criticism, sometimes labeled literary historicism or post-structuralism, rather than one or another of the social sciences." (15)

The main problems of dialogue between the postmodernists and social historians thus related to this third point, though even here, according to Stearns, there were manifest points of contact between the two parties, particularly as regards new emphasis apparent among literary critics on giving increased attention to context. This gave Stearns cause for optimism despite the obvious distance separating, on the one hand, deconstructionism, "the language model" and poststructuralism and, on the other, social history: "Nevertheless, developments in literary and in sociohistorical research are sufficiently parallel to permit some new dialogues across humanistic, as well as social science, boundaries." (16)

Peter Stearns plainly took the view that certain social historians would be able to talk constructively to moderate postmodernists, to their mutual benefit, particularly in connection with the study of cultural relationships in the past. But, as Stearns made clear, what influence postmodernism might have was far from obvious; there were very few who were actively involved in research based on this ideology and thus there was no way of predicting what the outcome might be.

Another striking feature of this article is a palpable change in Stearns's assessment of the current position of social history within the world of humanistic studies, a change that marks a definite turning point in discussions of the discipline: "Social historians are now part of the establishment, though as recent deviants they (we) may be particularly sensitive to the slings of the new rebels on the block." (17) Up to this point social history had always felt a need to be somewhat on the defensive: the subject had, to be sure, established its position, but it still needed to be wary of some very powerful opposition. But now, at a time when a new force was appearing on the scene demanding that its voice be heard, social history appears in a new context, that of "part of the establishment". It is important to bear in mind that Stearns considered it a matter of great importance to consider and discuss the new ideas that were coming from postmodernism and how they might influence social history in the future, for good or bad. But Stearns's observations were without doubt absolutely correct for the particular time when they were made, as regards both the then position of social history and the opportunities that were opening up through dialogue between social historians and postmodernism.

And just at a time when it might have been expected that social history might change in this regard--at a time when a new approach had appeared on the scene--it seems for all the world as if the subject slammed the door on itself, with a hardening of the attitude that social history was something completely separate and special and other scholarly approaches something quite different, that it was subject to other rules than applied to other scholarly disciplines. This hardening of attitudes can be traced to the conflicts surrounding the History Standards for High Schools and Colleges and the new political climate of the 1990s. It is my belief that this proved to be a turning point in the otherwise relentless advance of social history that stretched back to before 1970. It was at this point that the discipline lost its scholarly "drive" and the sense of adventure that had carried it forward for three decades, and set out to entrench its position, to defend its status and domain, it seems to me without consideration of the dangers this carried along with it.

Darnton's farewell speech

I completed my doctorate in the last decade of the 20th century. When I moved home to Iceland in 1994 I found the outlook for young scholars bleak indeed; this affected me personally and I was also aware that many of my American friends saw no prospect of finding work of the kind they were qualified for in the immediate future. (18) Robert B. Townsend's regular articles in Perspectives also confirmed that mobility within the academic community was much less than might have been expected and the renewal of contracts was being put on hold, in part because university faculties were cutting posts in history and retrenching. The same picture was repeated all around the academic world throughout the remaining years of the century.

For instance, in the January 2000 issue of Perspectives there was a very interesting article by Robert Darnton in which he surveyed the entire field of history and gave an informed assessment of its current situation. In the article he recalled a particularly poignant moment from his term as a president of AHA, when "A hundred or more unhappy members crowded into a session devoted to the lot of part-time and adjunct teachers and to independent historians, many of them unemployed. One after another they told stories about the struggle to survive at the margins of the profession." (19) Darnton went on to discuss this far-reaching trend within the field of history and, in fact, in higher education in general: new management structures at universities were exploiting scholars like these who lived on the margins of academia and were easy prey, with little means of fighting back. Darnton asked: "What can the AHA do about this? Little, I'm afraid." (20) His answer is a sad testimony of the prevailing conditions, but this, unfortunately, is just the reality we have to live with, isn't it?

At this point readers--and in particular readers who find themselves in the predicament highlighted by Darnton in his article--might take heart from something that has happened at my own home front. It concerns an alternative academy recently set up in Iceland. First I need to set the scene.

Iceland is a young, modern society that has grown rapidly in the last 50 years. Technological advance has been enormous and the general population is among the best educated in the world. Not surprisingly, the educational system has had its share of growing pains. After 1970 the number of students enrolled in institutions of higher education increased dramatically. The renewal of the Student Loan Fund resulted in large numbers of students going abroad for graduate education. Many gained admittance to the finest educational institutions in the world and, for whatever reason, the great majority of these students eventually returned to Iceland, some after a decade or more abroad.

Up until 1990 people with high-level educational training could count on solid academic positions on their return to Iceland, either in the public or private sector. Once in place they had ample opportunity to make use of their skills and knowledge. Many have gone on to become the pillars of their community and found ways of using their education for the benefit of society.

The situation now is very different--and not for the better. The intellectual community has continued to grow at an unprecedented rate, but without the educational institutions keeping pace. People with doctorates from abroad have been returning home to find all doors closed. I was lucky: when I moved back to Iceland in 1994 I had a handsome three-year grant from the Scientific Council of Iceland, and a burning desire to take on new challenges in my area of specialization. In addition I managed to find some teaching work at the University of Iceland, generally one course a year. However, this was the sum total of the contact I had with the Department of History, the main institution in my field. I did my research in the archives but the rest of my work went on in my bedroom, so to speak; I had no option but to do all my analysis and writing at home. Coming from a very dynamic academic atmosphere in the USA, I found this situation deeply depressing, almost debilitating. It was not what I had hoped for, which was more along the lines of a soldier returning from the wars, with people hanging on to his every word as he told his tales of adventure, wherever there was somewhere for him to tell them.

As it was, I felt more like a caged animal. I found myself pacing my apartment, talking to myself about my work and the things that were on my mind. It was in fact my students that saved me: the contact I had with them in the classroom proved an enormous inspiration. Without this intellectual stimulus I would never have been able to get on in a structured and methodical way with the line of research that has occupied me for the last few years, namely micro-history.

During the course of this work I became involved in a movement in Reykjavik aimed at creating an association of independent scholars dedicated to bringing together people from different disciplines and enabling them to carry out primary research. I was invited to take a seat on the board and later became the first chairman of the new organization, which took the name the Reykjavik Academy (RA). Within a few years this group succeeded in establishing what must be considered in many ways a rather remarkable independent research institute. As things now stand, there are currently over eighty scholars affiliated to the institute, carrying out research, contributing to the design of university courses, organizing conferences and seminars, and arranging funding issues through application for research grants in Iceland, Scandinavia and Europe. The central concept of the founders of the Academy was to create a broad-based forum for research, focusing on higher education and the application of academic learning within society in general. (See www.akademia.is)

Of the many projects the RA has spawned, my personal "baby" is the Center for Microhistorical Research, which encourages independent research along microhistorical lines and promotes the publication and distribution of microhistorical monographs and articles. The Center has become an alternative forum for scholarly debate very much in tune with the spirit of new ideas circulating within the RA (see microhistory.org).

One of the prime motivations of the founders and members of the RA was the realization that academic expertise needs to be challenged on a dynamic level on a daily basis if it is not to atrophy. For this reason it is important for historians and scholars around the world to use their intellects positively and work towards setting up their own organizations where they can be in control of their own destinies. The main thing, however, is that the institutions that already exist do not make demands of their members that constrain all their thoughts, that constrict all imagination, that force all scholars into the same mold and insist on them all coming out looking the same. In the latest special issue of the JSH, a newly qualified historian, Richard Gassan, describes his situation after graduate school thus:</p> <pre> The challenge we face as regards our direction was compounded by the mechanics of graduate school. What topics could we choose that would,

many years hence, get us that job? Did our dissertations have to be tiny snippets, micro historical studies, limited, nearly insignificant? Did we have to look at the poorest, or could we look at other social classes? And what if we were interested in the Dead White Males: if we were, say, diplomatic, political, or even military historians by inclination? (21) </pre> <p>Gassan himself, it seems, decided to opt for material that fell within the bounds set by the discipline, material that would give him a chance of getting a job and carrying on his work as a conventional historian, just as thousands of other graduate students have done over recent years and decades.

It is my belief that the structural constraints on university systems around the world have not only inhibited natural turnover and regeneration within the academic community but have also prevented the subjects themselves, as in the case of social history, from being able to develop in the way that they ought to. I realize that this is a big claim and I intend to try and justify it in what follows. The creation of the Reykjavik Academy perhaps provides an object lesson on how young and "middle aged light" scholars can take matters into their own hands and how academic groups such as social historians can enter into constructive discussion about their subject in order to counter the increasing institutionalization of learning and thus prevent it from becoming so calcified and restrictive that new ideas simply wither on the vine. And one way to open the doors to new intellectual currents is to provide the means for regular scholarly symposiums on the current state of knowledge, just as the JSH has now done three times in the last ten years.

Two Special Issues

The impetus for my 2003 article in the JSH on the status of microhistory and its ideological connections with postmodernism and general social history came originally from a reading of the debate on the position of social history that appeared in a special issue of the journal in 1996. (22) The specific motivation for the special issue was the attacks that had been launched on social history by right-wing groups within the US Congress. Quite properly, the editor of the JSH felt obliged to make a forceful response to these attacks and published 15 articles dealing with the position of the discipline, in most of which social historians were urged to unite and stand together as one in defense of the subject's interests. (23)

Though fully aware of the danger posed by the rightist attacks on the practice of social history that were then emanating from the US Congress, I could not help being startled at the way in which the social historians writing in the special issue of the JSH reacted to them. These attacks had the undesirable effect of encouraging social historians to speak of their subject as if it were a single entity, with a common purpose that all could subscribe to and that it was imperative to stand guard over. Only shortly prior to this, people of the stature of Peter Stearns had been speaking of the importance of welcoming new intellectual currents into the discipline, taking the view that it was necessary to look with sympathetic eyes at the new scholarly experiments that had grown up from similar soil to the one that had spawned social history a few decades earlier. So far as I can see, ideas like those associated with postmodernism were, as mentioned earlier, given a fairly positive reception, although in some cases considered to go to extremes. But in the middle years of the last decade of the 20th century such welcoming voices seem to have fallen silent and the concept of social history was ring-fenced, as if circumscribed within agreed common boundaries. This I considered to be bad news, and still do. When, added to this change in attitude, there arose the universal tendency toward ever more stringent demands in the running of university institutions that came down particularly hard on young and potentially innovative scholars, it seemed to me that the noose was really being tightened around the academic independence of social history. As a result of these changes, the subject moved in the direction of greater and more sharply defined institutionalization; it was being forced into a particular mold that suited both the political predicament it found itself in and the general trend in university politics, as pointed out by Robert Darnton in his article.

We did not have to wait long for the consequences to make themselves felt. As a scholarly discipline, social history, it seemed to me, started unconsciously to tighten its academic grip on its approach and subject matter--to put more emphasis on restricting and circumscribing what might be considered "good" social history. These tendencies became ever more apparent in the last decade of the 20th century and manifested themselves in a variety of ways. Leading figures from within the discipline, for instance, contributed to this by producing enormously influential encyclopedic works on social history. (24) Works such as these, of course, have great significance for the scope and domain of a subject, serving to endow it with a definable status within the university community and an academic gravitas, and may perhaps be viewed as the equivalent of the discipline's memorial sites, its own "sites of memory".

These encyclopedic writings are just a visible manifestation of the situation. Alongside all this there was, as touched on at the beginning of this paper, a new and compelling demand from "the heritage industry" for certain types of knowledge that fell within the province of social historians. Put briefly, social historians as a group had, perhaps of political necessity, adopted a course that took them away from the vibrant, rebellious nature of their discipline in the direction of a much more easy-going and circumscribed path into the future. It might thus be fair to say that social history now stands in an analogous position to that of conventional political history at the time when social history began to make its triumphal advance after around 1970; it has set up barriers against new approaches within the humanities by refusing to consider ideas that might potentially threaten its epistemological underpinnings.

The 2003 special issue of the JSH opened my eyes to the fact that the discipline was again standing at a crossroads that would probably decide its future course and thus how it would influence our future ideas about the past. The 19 articles came from many quarters and treated a wide range of topics. The methods used and the directions taken were also highly varied, suggesting that some social historians at least are once again beginning to consider their links with outside ideas and concepts that may potentially be important in determining where the subject will go from here. However, the great majority of the contributions seem to be marked by a decided caution towards change and even a total rejection of any view that trends such as postmodernism and poststructuralism might ever have anything to offer social history.

The intellectual heavyweights who get the debate under way, Peter N. Stearns, Jurgen Kocka and Hartmut Kaelble, provide what is often a thought-provoking overview of developments within the discipline. (25) In general terms their assessment accords with much of what has already been said in scholarly discussions of the position of social history in recent decades. All the main lines of development are acknowledged: in the years after 1970 there was a major revolution in history during which the methods and categories underwent radical changes under the influence of social history; the years after around 1980 were marked by a fair amount of disagreement among social historians themselves as to how best to conduct research, with the main point at issue concerning the respective statuses of quantitative and qualitative methods; after about 1990 social history had become so well established that any argument over its status seemed redundant, but at this point the discipline came under sudden attack from two unexpected quarters: first, there were the political attacks from the right, resulting in social historians feeling compelled to close ranks; and second, there were the challenges of postmodernism and poststructuralism, which at least a section of social historians viewed as constituting a threat to the subject itself.

Kocka, for example, makes the points that social history has become so all-pervasive that it has lost its position as the revolutionary force within history: "But: in the meantime social historians' approaches, viewpoints, topics and results have been accepted and incorporated by many other historians who would not call themselves social historians. Social history has successfully penetrated its opponents. By losing its opponents it is losing part of its identity. A victory? A crisis? Or both? At any rate: nothing to complain about, on the contrary." (26) "On the contrary"--that is just the point: it is a matter of serious concern for any academic discipline when its key scholars are well satisfied not to have new and fresh winds breathing life into their subject. Kocka's attitude--that social history can be handled as a set of "sites of memory", something to be admired and to pride oneself on--seems to me tantamount to accepting that the subject is moribund.

This attitude is echoed by Hartmut Kaelble. Yes, social history is not as "hot" as it once was, the books aren't selling as well, and journalists are not as taken by its findings; but even so, the subject remains in rude health: "Around 2000 the leading European journals in history, though difficult to compare, did not contain fewer articles on social history than around 1975. A monumental Encyclopaedia of European Social History was published by Peter N. Stearns." (27) So far as Kaelble is concerned, only one conclusion is possible: social history has "gained an established and uncontroversial position in history teaching and research." (28) Once again, I see Kaelble's attitude as indicative of the problem facing social history, the tendency to welcome its institutionalization, to celebrate what has at last been achieved, and to feel that there is no cause for any disquiet.

There can be no disputing that what social historians have achieved has been highly impressive. But this does not alter my view that the discipline is in crisis. The problem manifests itself, for instance, in the fact that social history has to a large extent turned a blind eye on what might be called the imperatives of postmodernism and poststructuralism. This comes out clearly in several of the articles in the 2003 special issue of the JSH. Paula S. Fass, for instance, feels compelled to discuss the influences of postmodernism, but does so in much the same way as Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob did in their book Telling the Truth about History: there is no reason to take these kinds of intellectual currents seriously. (29) The really interesting thing is that social historians like Fass and Kocka appear to take the view that the subject ought rather to be going back to its roots, returning to its origins: "It may well be that, after the cultural, linguistic and constructivist turns of the past, a new 'social turn' is imminent. It is likely that the waves of cultural history and discourse history which have swept the discipline in the last two decades have now reached and transcended their high point, and a new demand for social history is going to surface." (30) However, in Kocka's view, this would not be a re-emergence of the good old social history, but rather "social history after the linguistic turn," without further specifying the particular form that this might take. The same attitude appears in Prasannan Parthasarathi's article on social history in India: (31) the author in fact complains about conventional social history having to yield ground before new tides and currents; these have failed to live up to expectations, and thus Parthasarathi wants a return to social history as it once was, with economic and material issues taking center stage.

A second group of contributors to the volume is more concerned with recent developments within other academic disciplines. This group is interested in using these developments for the light they shed on the methodological problems of social history. Perhaps the most interesting observations on social history in the postmodern world appear in the article by Nicole Eustace. Eustace points out that, even in the animal kingdom, the traditional categories of analysis have started to break down, or, as she puts its, "the supposedly objective and empirical world of science [is] rapidly coming undone"--and the same problem extends to history. (32) The author asks: "Could it be that in history, as in all areas of human knowledge, we are finally ready to concede that there is no single story, no total system, that will encompass and explain all we want to know? More than thirty years ago, social history embarked on the bold project of bringing science to history; I think if would not be premature to state that it has ended up bringing history to science--and to history itself." (33) Eustace goes on to discuss the distinguishing features of the attempts made by social historians in the years since 1970 to introduce scientific methodology into their work and assesses the value of these attempts for people's understanding of history. The conclusion is unequivocal: the discipline was irrevocably changed by the wave of research that employed new technologies and theories and by the re-examination of new and old sources in the light of new objectives, viz. those of bringing into the spotlight the everyday lives of ordinary people. As a result the discipline became fragmentized and it became harder to orient oneself to the main lines of history. Many scholars of the 1980s called from syntheses intended to link the various subdisciplines within social history and create some kind of whole out of the incredibly varied flora of research. But there "still remains a vocal minority less certain of the desirability of synthetic history. For if social history first opened up the discipline to the theories and methods of other fields, that gate has never again been closed." (34) It is clear that social history cannot turn back on itself and continue investigating the structures of society as if nothing has happened; or in Eustace's own words: "it proved a short step from efforts to study the structures of society to attempts to study the construction of those structures, or more precisely to deconstruct the seemingly natural structures of power." (35)

One thing that we owe to poststructuralism is a change in our perceptions of the attempts at synthesis "written in the service of the nation states." Eustace points out that those who have advocated syntheses as a necessary underpinning of social history must logically also accept that social history needs to be studied within the boundaries of the nation state, i.e. that this is the essential unit of analysis. In this context, Eustace quotes Thomas Bender's comment that synthesis is "an embrace of the nation-state as a unit of analysis [that] certainly reveals a professional conservatism." (36) The abandonment of such ideas is a central plank of poststructuralist thinking, and scholars are urged to approach their material as complex, ambiguous and multidimensional and eschew all attempts at simplification of the sort that synthesis inevitably entails.

Eustace also discusses the significance of narrative in historical practice. The problem with telling a story is that it invites a single-toned presentation, with a spuriously unified and coherent plot and explanations: "To a certain extent, then, narrative synthesis and theoretical analysis will always be at odds; the fact remains that the deepest attraction of stories is their ability to create the very illusion of seamless wholeness that deconstruction seeks to subvert." (37) But here Eustace calls not for fewer stories, but for more. In the argument in which a belief in variability is dominant, the keyword is fragmentation. It is on this basis that social historians should be aiming to move their work forward; however decisively old ideas on systems and structures may have been rejected, this does not in any way mean that it is impossible to dig around in the remains of the past for explanations to human behavior. Eustace ends her piece with a discussion of certain new attempts at synthesis, though it seems to me that this part of her article rather misses its mark since what she is dealing with here are varieties of research with characteristics that are atypical of synthesis, including some that might even be classed as microhistory! In her closing words she makes the following important declaration: "[O]ne must concede that the theoretical underpinnings provided by post-structuralist theory are allowing historians of early America to reengage with questions of power in important new ways, to reassess once rejected sources, and to reimagine the very idea of synthesis." (38)

The main point in all this is that Nicole Eustace and several of the other writers accept the importance of working with and applying postmodernist and poststructuralist ideas in a way that undeniably has a more profound bearing on how we conceive history than many other social historians seem prepared to acknowledge. (39) I believe that the approaches that we as individuals adopt can legitimately differ and that it is important that we do not balk at making use of whatever the new approaches have to offer in the way of directing and informing fresh experimentation within the field of social history.

Though there are many who appear to recognize the opportunities that lie head and the necessity of responding to them, there are others who subscribe totally to the view that postmodernism and poststructuralism were simply a bubble that has now burst, something that social history has had to stand up to and put behind it. This is what Richard Gassan had to say about the status of these ideas at the time he was in graduate school: "And although they seemed permanent in 1995, we could not realize that they were beginning a steep decline. They, too, would pass. And pass they have; each year has made these 'post-' movements look increasingly antiquated." (40) As I see things, it is of crucial importance that we reject attitudes like those expressed here; they simply make no sense, and will only mean the death of social history. If, on the other hand, social historians are willing to examine the opportunities the winds of postmodernism bring with them, then I believe our subject will be set fair for a new and very exciting future.

Bad luck

As things stood in the year 1990, social history appeared to have the future before it, just as Peter Stearns describes in "Encountering Postmodernism," because social historians at the time seemed ready to keep their minds open to the new ideas that the postmodernists were promulgating. The comparison between the time when social history first came of age and the beginnings of postmodernism is highly illuminating. But it seems to me that social historians have never really undertaken the essential processing of postmodern and poststructuralist ideas. Various traces of such activity can be discerned in the scholarly debate going on at present, for instance in the articles by Peter Stearns, Jurgen Kocka and Hartmut Kaelble reviewed above, each of whom has done so much to shape social history as we know it today. My criticism is directed particularly at the attitude of those who want to rest on their laurels and simply defend the scholarly advances that have been achieved rather than give serious thought to how we can change social history to bring it better into line with the needs of contemporary society. In saying this, I am not implying that these scholars do not want to face up to the challenges and issues of the present moment: quite the contrary--they have specifically urged social historians to find ways of broadening their sphere, of reaching out further and extending to more varied groups. But the premises behind such potential advances remain unchanged, the same scholarly presuppositions as social history has rested upon for the last several decades.

The tendency to push aside all discussion of postmodernism and poststructuralism is noticeably apparent in the articles of the three scholars just mentioned. Peter Stearns, for example, comments that "[m]any 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. [...] 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." (41) Stearns goes on to discuss many areas that have undergone change in recent years as a result of new approaches and concludes that "the good old days have been followed by some pretty good new days." (42) It is of course possible to agree with much of what Stearns includes in his catalogue of new sides to old subjects; the thing that worries me is the simple fact that he and the two Europeans, Kocka and Kaelble are ignoring, it seems to me, the influences that "the linguistic turn" has had on the foundations of the search for knowledge, and in particular on the question of to what extent and in what way we can consider ourselves to be dealing with a real past using the resources of conventional social history. As I see it, they are overlooking the core of the argument Nicole Eustace presents in her article:</p> <pre> So thoroughly has post-structuralist theory undermined the totalizing authority of texts (understood to mean any form of cultural production) that the concept of typicality, one of the new social history's proudest early achievements, no longer even seems tenable. Rather than trying to argue that any one person can ever be statistically or substantially representative of any other, many have begun to adopt a social model that assumes that any and every social actor is embedded in a matrix of relationships based on myriad categories of identity and power, of which the three most commonly cited--race, class, and gender--are but the beginning. No two subject positions are ever identical; yet each and every one that can be plotted tells us something more about the matrix with in which all are situated. Whether we are reading Martha Ballard' birthing records or Philadelphia tavern records we are amassing information about myriad threads in the social web. (43) </pre> <p>It is in the light of such considerations that social historians need to reassess almost all their former methods and approaches, taking full account of how their epistemological basis has changed. The challenge is to identify in what ways it is possible to go forward and find meaningful methods of approaching the past using the new appreciation that poststructuralism has given us of the situation of the subject. But one thing is certain: the categories upon which we have based sociohistorical research hitherto are no longer sufficient, and social historians need to take this fact into account.

I feel that social historians can learn a great deal from their own history, particularly in so far as it concerns the methodological structure of the discipline. I have suggested above various external reasons why social historians have failed to balance their account with postmodernism satisfactorily, i.e. used and worked out from its criticism of conventional historical methods. But I believe it is also possible to look inwards to see how a substantial section of the discipline--the section that should have been best placed to take on the new ideas associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism--avoided the task or simply lacked the confidence to take it on. Here I am referring to the historians who were most closely involved with the concept of "mentalities" (the history of mentalities) in the late 1980s. Instead of working systematically on the basis of the ideology at the center of this approach, scholars applying the history of mentalities looked in a quite different direction for methodological guidance, namely to quantitative analysis. It is hardly surprising that many historians who worked with mentalites at the time employed quantitative methods in their research, since the Annales scholars, who were beyond question the leading force inside social history in the second half of the 20th century, accorded cultural discussion, such as on the mentalities, a lower status on the intellectual pecking order. This is noted by Christopher E. Forth in an article on the old and the new cultural history in the encyclopedia mentioned earlier: "The Annalistes nevertheless failed to provide a rigorous theorization of the relationship between mentalites and other environmental factors, and some like Pierre Chaunu concluded that it represented a 'third level' of historical inquiry more or less determined by developments taking place on the putatively more primary level of social and economic life. Hence, the Annalistes contended that culture was at heart an expression of underlying structures, and shared the marxist reluctance to accord it an autonomous status." (44) So we are forced to concede, whether we like it or not, that the leading ideology of the Annalistes never found a solution to the methodological problem facing their studies. It was enough for the scholars who worked with mentalites to follow methods and paths that had been developed by people in other areas in which the subject material was in any case bound up with the course of economic developments. In other words, according to the ideology of the Annalistes, the basis for historical analysis was not to be found in mentalites but in other areas of social studies. (45)

The reason for bringing up these patterns is that I believe strongly that social historians can learn from the sad case of "the history of mentalities" and that it helps to explain the weak ideological basis of sociohistorical studies at the present time. As I have described, many scholars have chosen to ignore new currents and movements within the humanities because those who were involved in "the history of mentalities" were never really put in a position of having to test out whether it was possible to identify a particular ideological grounding for their work. As time went on, this approach began to lose its footing and eventually became just part of history, though without any formal notification of its demise. As I see things, social historians are facing a peril of a similar nature at the present moment, i.e. if they succumb to the temptation to carry on looking at their material with the same eyes as scholars have done over the last years there is a serious danger that much of the discipline's force and vigor will be dissipated.

The Future of Social History

The American historian Nina Rattner Gelbart made the following observation in her recent book The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray:</p> <pre> For centuries history was written in an authoritative, detached voice, communicating an illusion of logical progression, objectivity, completeness. It claimed to have discovered "how things really were," to be scientific and factual, and to present a linear, seamless tale. Recently such empiricist presumptions of certainty in the discipline have been attacked; recovery of the past once and for all, the "whole story," now seems a naive and strange conceit. (46) </pre> <p>Gelbart notes that it has largely been feminists and postmodernists who have turned against these particular modes of thinking with a view to exposing the faults in the reasoning of those who advocate them. In conventional social history, the views of "the others" were entirely discounted and there was a pretence that the vast majority of mankind did not exist or affect things in any way. "Such energetic challenges," Gelbart goes on to say, "bring to the field tremendous new vitality and interest, but also considerable discomfort." (47) With some justification one might say that what Gelbart is describing here lies at the heart of the conflicts that have been going on inside history for the past ten or fifteen years. I have described how the scholarly world set about tackling the problem Gelbart alludes to, and come to the conclusion that, after a certain amount of dither and fluster during the 1990s, all too many social historians have elected to stick to the solutions and tactics of the old "new social history", while accepting that "the history of mentalities" is now entirely defunct. (48)

There are, as I see it, two main reasons for this development. Firstly, I believe that the scholars who were most closely associated with the area that was under attack, i.e. social historians working within the precepts of the history of mentalities, were ill-prepared for the criticism of the postmodernists and poststructuralists. As mentioned above, the weak ideological and methodological underpinnings of the history of mentalities meant that scholars lacked the confidence to face up to the new challenges of contemporary scholarship. The discourse was unfamiliar to many of them and scholars who had thrown in their lot with historical demography and quantitative analysis had no problem disregarding this criticism. This was also the recourse of social historians who had espoused the history of mentalities when the ground started slipping from under their feet late in the 1980s. Historians who had massed under the banner of quantitative analysis simply considered their theoretical position to be so strong that there was no need to waste their time on the kind of academic wrangling that postmodernist criticism was adjudged to be: the quantitative approach was tried and tested and, in the view of those who used it, had proved itself by its results. (49) Postmodernist currents could thus be left to their own devices.

Secondly, it was clear that the failure of the grand narratives--so named by scholars working in fields such as literary analysis, philosophy, ethnology and anthropology--would mean a realignment of historical ideology and that the work of historians who were then at the height of their reputation would need to be reassessed on new premises. So it is hardly surprising that many historians chose to shut their eyes to what was happening: the potential danger from the breakdown of the grand narratives was simply too great.

One group of historians has, as mentioned, been willing to take on these challenges in a systematic fashion and attempt to consider the implications of these new ideas for the discipline as a whole and how it might be possible to work with them constructively within the field of history. These historians have had the benefit of guidance from scholars in other fields, such as literary criticism and philosophy, where similar criticism has been exerting an influence for much longer than in history. My own attempt at approaching the past in the light of the new poststructuralist perspectives has been through what I call "the singularization of history", as described in my article in the JSH in 2003. (50) This approach, which draws on the experience and methods of many microhistorians, tries to address various significant criticisms aimed at contemporary history. The guiding principle is, to quote Gelbart, a frank acknowledgement and acceptance of the fact that "Historians always have to work with fragments and lacunae, with revelations and secrets. We may crave coherence and synthesis, but because much remains indecipherable we do not get it." (51)

The ideology of "the singularization of history" is grounded in the fact that it is impossible to know more than a tiny fragment of the story, that the sources preserve only a minute selection of the moments, and that if the compass is increased our possibilities of attaining an understanding of what has happened decrease still further. I see it as a major mistake on the part of the majority of microhistorians and social historians to put the main emphasis on seeking ways to incorporate their own research units within greater wholes (contextualization). The grand narrative monopolizes all the attention, since academic tradition lays down as a condition that without such greater historical connections the research becomes incomprehensible (a condition that goes under the name of scientific working practice); odd disjunctive bits and pieces left behind from the past are not seen as valid unless placed in an analyzable context. The grand narrative, whether masquerading under the name of modernization, the Enlightenment, Christianity, socialism, or whatever, determines the questions that research is expected to ask, the form of the main argumentation and the positioning of the research within the world of academic study.

This rejection of the grand narrative is also advocated by the American historian Barbara H. Rosenwein in an article published recently in American Historical Review. (52) In it she discusses what has been called "the history of emotions" and its status within the discipline as a whole, noting that scholars have tended to draw a supposed distinction, in accordance with modernization theory, between traditional farming communities in the early part of the modern age and the kinds of communities that began to coalesce towards the end of the 18th century. This has been especially marked in discussions of the emotional lives of ordinary people. Rosenwein rejects the grand narrative that has shaped the whole course of research in this area in recent decades, preferring to see people as having lived at all times in what she calls "emotional communities", i.e. independent, fluid and unpredictable groupings. Each of these is subject to its own laws and customs and so needs to be studied on its own terms. "There are two points here," says Rosenwein, "not only does every society call forth, shape, constrain, and express emotions differently, but even within the same society contradictory values and models, not to mention deviant individuals, find their place." (53) What Rosenwein is saying here is that historians and others dealing with the history of emotions need to attempt to approach sensitive research material in ways other than those imposed by the grand narrative. The area for research needs to be broken down into small units. She concludes her case with this simple declaration: "The grand narrative that has dominated emotions scholarship cannot stand. It is based on a debunked theory of the emotions and its concomitant, but flawed, notion of progressive self-restraint." (54) This conclusion of Rosenwein's, in fact, highlights the greatest strength of the microhistorical method, i.e. the opportunity it give us to break away from the shackles of the grand narrative and approach the research material free from the constraints of any predetermined scholarly conception of what is significant and what is not, and where the difference lies.

I believe that the kind of history that seeks to reinforce the overall picture, to forge links with certain hypothetical threads that supposedly hold life together, is working on the wrong track. This sets me at variance with Peter Stearns when he urges historians to stand guard over social history and that the best way to do this is by constructing powerful syntheses of the material the discipline deals with. "We need renewed attention," says Stearns, "to broader synthesis not only to address an endemic problem, but to respond to the additional, almost inherent particularism of the cultural turn." (55) As I hope I have made clear, I prefer rather to place "inherent particularism" at the very center of what social historians should be doing in the future.

Hringbraut 121, 107

Reykjavik, Iceland

ENDNOTES

I wish to take this opportunity to thank Peter N. Stearns and the other participants at a conference held in October 2004 at George Mason University under the auspices of the JSH for some exceptionally fruitful and thought-provoking discussions on social history and the current debates within it. Following the three days of the conference, and as a result of the contributions and comments of the 24 scholars attending, I now feel able to view the future of our discipline with considerably greater optimism. I would also like to thank Nicholas Jones (linguist/grammarian) for helping me with the translation and a splendid editorial job. Lastly, I would like to thank many of my friends and colleagues at the Reykjavik Academy for their constructive criticism and support during the course of my research.

1. Theodore Zeldin, "Social History and Total History," Journal of Social History, 10th Anniversary Issue: Social History Today ... and Tomorrow? 10 (Winter 1976), p. 237.

2. Though perhaps an answer can be found in Pierre Bourdieu's book Homo Academicus (Stanford, 1988), in which he assesses and evaluates the nature of academic institutions. As Bourdieu sees things, the development described above is both completely natural and possibly even necessary for any institution in order for it to work. It is possible to take the view that institutions become untenable without the establishment of a discrete, defined and thoroughly thought-through foundation of shared knowledge that serves to validate the discipline's specialization within a limited sphere; it is this that enables different scholars to keep in step with each other and employ the same language in their work. This might be seen as the main justification of those scholars who call for greater synthesis, as discussed later in this essay. However, the drawbacks of this way of thinking seem to my mind to be overwhelming: academic thought becomes blunted and emasculated, and the institution is liable to take on a life of its own, based entirely on its own premises. See also Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (London, 1992).

3. On this last point, Peter N. Stearns had this to say in an article that appeared in a special issue of JSH in 2003: "As many have noted, American interest in historical museums, broadly construed, has increased spectacularly, and many 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." Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Present and Future," Journal of Social History, Special Issue: The Futures of Social History 37 (Fall 2003), p. 13-14. This development is also discussed by Peter Charles Hoffer in Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud--American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York, 2004), pp. 1-10.

4. Much has been written on this development: see, for example, Regina Bendix, "Heredity, Hybridity and Heritage from one Fin de Siecle to the Next," in Peretti J. Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity. A Festschrift for Barbro Kelin (Botkyrka, 2000), pp. 37-56; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Destination Museum," in Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums and Heritage (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 131-176; Barbro Klein, "More Swedish than in Sweden, more Iranian than in Iran. Folk Culture and World Migrations," in Bo Sundin (ed.), Upholders of Culture Past and Present (Stockholm, 2001), pp. 67-80.

5. On "sites of memory", see for example the discussions in Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1. Conflicts and Divisions, trans. Arthur Gold-hammer (New York, 1996); and Pierre Nora, ed., Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Memoire. Vol. 1. The State, trans. Mary Trouille (Chicago, 2001). Specific sites of memory and events that can take on the form of sites of memory have been the subject of considerable research in recent years, as for example Scott A. Sandage, "A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993), pp. 135-167; Marita Sturken, "The Wall and the Screen Memory: The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial," Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the A.I.D.S. Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 44-84; Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," Representations 26 (Spring 1989).

6. This problem is discussed, for instance, by Michael Kammen in In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (New York, 1997), pp. 214-217.

7. The question of synthesis in history generated a lively debate. Among the most important contributions was Thomas A. Bender, "Wholes and Parts: the Need for Synthesis in American History," Journal of American History 73 (June 1986), pp. 120-135. For reactions to Bender's paper, see David Thelen, Nell Irvin Painter, Richard Wightman Fox, Roy Rosenzweig and Thomas Bender, "A Round Table: Synthesis in American History," Journal of American History 74 (June 1987), pp. 107-130; and Eric H. Monkkonen, "The Dangers of Synthesis," American Historical Review 91 (December 1986), pp. 1146-1157. See also Thomas Bender, "'Venturesome and Cautious': American History in the 1990s," Journal of American History 81 (December 1994), pp. 992-1003; and George M. Fredrickson, "Commentary on Thomas Bender's Call for Synthesis in American History," in Gunther Lenz, Harmut Keil, and Sabine Brock-Sallah, eds., Reconstructing American Literary and Historical Studies (New York, 1990), pp. 74-81.

8. Peter N. Stearns, "Some Comments on Social History," Journal of Social History 1 (1967), pp. 3-6; Peter N. Stearns, "Coming of Age," p. 246-255. The same volume also contains the following articles: Harold Perkin, "Social History in Britain," ibid., pp. 129-143; Hartmut Kaelble, "Social Stratification in Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Survey of Research since 1945," ibid., pp. 144-165; Michelle Perrot, "The Strength and Weakness of French Social History," ibid., pp. 166-177; Elizabeth H. Pleck, "Two Worlds in One: Work and Family," ibid., pp. 178-195; Gilbert Shapiro, "Prospects for a Scientific Social History: 1976," ibid., pp. 196-204; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, "The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective," ibid., pp. 205-220.

9. Peter N. Stearns, "Towards a Wider Vision: Trends in Social History," in Michael Kammen, ed., The Past Before Us. Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 205-230; Peter N. Stearns, "Social History and History: A Progress Report," Journal of Social History 19 (Winter 1985), pp. 319-334. The same volume also contains two articles dealing specifically with developments in social history outside America: Micheal Adas, "Social History and the Revolution in African and Asian Historiography," ibid., pp. 335-348; and Konrad H. Jarausch, "German Social History--American Style," ibid., pp. 349-359. The same year also saw the publication of a volume dedicated to bringing together the main strands of sociohistorical research in various different countries: Oliver Zunz, ed., Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History (Chapel Hill, 1985).

10. See Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Sociology of Emotion," Journal of Social History 22 (Spring 1989), pp. 592-599; David B. Grusky and Ivan K. Fukomoto, "Social History Update: A Sociological Approach to Historical Social Mobility," Journal of Social History 23 (Fall 1989), pp. 221-232; Eva Morawska, "Social History Update: Sociology and 'Historical Matters'," Journal of Social History 23 (Winter 1989), pp. 439-444; Lynne M. Adrian, "Social History Update: An American Contribution to Social History," Journal of Social History 23 (Summer 1990), pp. 873-885; David W. Miller, "Social History Update: Spatial Analysis and Social History," Journal of Social History 24 (Fall 1990), pp. 213-220; Michael Grossberg, "Social History Update: 'Fighting Faiths' and Challenges of Legal History," Journal of Social History 25 (Fall 1991), pp. 191-201; Robert L. Paquette, "Social History Update: Slave Resistance and Social History," Journal of Social History 24 (Spring 1989), pp. 681-685.

11. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Encountering Postmodernism," Journal of Social History 24 (Winter 1990), pp. 449-452.

12. Joseph Kelly and Timothy Kelly, "Social History Update: Searching the Dark Alley: New Historicism and Social History," Journal of Social History 25 (Spring 1992), pp. 677-694.

13. Ellen Somekawa and Elizabeth Smith, "Theorizing the Writing of History or 'I Cant Think Why It Should Be So Dull, For A Great Deal Of It Must Be Invention'," Journal of Social History 22 (Fall 1988), pp. 149-161. I should admit here that there may have been other articles that I missed in the JSH around this time in which postmodernism was taken for discussion.

14. Stearns expressed the potential connection here as follows: "To the extent that postmodernists, despite somewhat different points of origin, add to the concern for popular cultures, relevant textual evidence, and issues of interpretation, they offer some possibility of fruitful dialogue with a significant branch of social history." Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Encountering Postmodernism," p. 450.

15. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Encountering Postmodernism," p. 450.

16. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Encountering Postmodernism," p. 451.

17. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Update: Encountering Postmodernism," p. 451.

18. I have written about this experience elsewhere, in an article for the JSH in 2003, and do not want to go over again what I said there. See: Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, "The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge," Journal of Social History 36 (Spring 2003), pp. 701-735.

19. Robert Darnton, "To Eric Foner: Bon Voyage!," Perspectives 38 (January 2000), p. 2.

20. Robert Darnton, "To Eric Foner: Bon Voyage!," p. 15.

21. Richard Gassan, "Social History for Beginners: A 'Young Scholar' Looks at His New Profession," Journal of Social History 37 (2003), p. 160.

22. Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, "The Singularization of History," pp. 701-735.

23. See the following articles published in the volume cited: Peter N. Stearns, "Introduction," Journal of Social History, Special Issue: Social History and the American Political Climate--Problems and Strategies 29 (1996 supplement), p. 3; Peter N. Stearns, "Uncivil War: Current American Conservatives and Social History," ibid., pp. 7-15; Richard Jensen, "The Culture Wars, 1965-1995: a Historian's Map," ibid., pp. 17-25; Gary B. Nash, "The History Standards Controversy and Social History," ibid., pp. 39-49; Jan Lewis, "The Double-Consciousness of the Academic Historian," ibid., pp. 67-71; Barry W. Bienstock, "Everything Old is New Again: Social History, the National History Standards and the Crisis in the Teaching of High School American History," ibid., pp. 59-63; Jurgen Kocka, "What is Leftist About Social History Today?" ibid., pp. 67-71; John K. Walton, "The Lion and the Newt: a British View of American Conservatives' Fear of Social History," ibid., pp. 73-84; Joe W. Trotter, "Reflections on the African American Experience, Social History, and the Resurgence of Conservatism in American Society," ibid., pp. 85-90; Judith P. Zinsser, "Real History, Real Education, Real Merit--or, Why is 'Forrest Gump' so Popular?" ibid., pp. 91-97; Roy Rosenzweig, "The Best of Times, the Worst of Times," ibid., pp. 99-107; George Reid Andrews, "Social History and the Populist Movement: Contesting the Political Terrain," ibid., pp. 109-113; Louise A. Tilly, "History as Exploration and Discovery," ibid., pp. 115-118.

24. See for example Encyclopedia of European Social History. From 1350 to 2000. Vol 1-6, under the general editorship of Peter N. Stearns (New York, 2001).

25. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Present and Future," Journal of Social History, Special Issue: The Futures of Social History 37 (Fall 2003), pp. 9-20; Jurgen Kocka, "Losses, Gains and Opportunities: Social History Today," ibid., pp. 21-28; Hartmut Kaelble, "Social History in Europe," ibid., pp. 29-35.

26. Jurgen Kocka, "Losses, Gains and Opportunities: Social History Today," pp. 25-26.

27. Hartmut Kaelble, "Social History in Europe," p. 29.

28. Hartmut Kaelble, "Social History in Europe," p. 29.

29. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994). Paula S. Fass, "Cultural History/Social History: Some Reflections on a Continuing Dialogue," Journal of Social History 37 (2003), pp. 39-46.

30. Jurgen Kocka, "Losses, Gains and Opportunities: Social History Today," pp. 26.

31. Prasannan Parthasarathi, "The State of Indian Social History," ibid., pp. 47-54.

32. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," ibid., p. 77. The same volume also contains two very intresting articles: Christophe Charle, "Contemporary French Social History: Crisis or Hidden Renewal?" ibid., p. 57-68; Marcel van der Linden, "Gaining Ground," ibid., pp. 69-75.

33. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p.77.

34. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p.82.

35. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p.82.

36. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p. 82.

37. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p. 84.

38. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p. 87.

39. See also the following articles from the 2003 special issue of JSH, which consider the future of social history from a variety of different standpoints: Gilbert Shapiro, "Recent Developments in Social History," ibid., pp. 151-153; Mark M. Smith, "Making Sense of Social History," ibid., pp. 165-186; James E. Cronin, "Memoir, Social History and Commitment: Eric Hobsbawm's Interesting Times," ibid., pp. 219-231.

40. Richard Gassan, "Social History for Beginners: A 'Young Scholar' Looks at His New Profession," pp. 158.

41. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Present and Future," p. 10.

42. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Present and Future," p. 12.

43. Nicole Eustace, "When Fish Walk on Land: Social History in a Postmodern World," p. 87-88.

44. Christopher E. Forth, "Cultural History and New Cultural History," in Peter N. Stearns (editor in chief), Encyclopedia of European Social History. From 1350 to 2000, Vol 1 (New York, 2001), p. 87.

45. A clear exposition of this can be found in Philippe Carrard, Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (Baltimore, 1992).

46. Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley, 1998), p. 9.

47. Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King's Midwife, p. 9.

48. See Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, "The Contours of Social History: Microhistory, Postmodernism and Historical Sources," in Carsten Tage Nielsen, Dorthe Gert Simonsen and Lene Wul (eds.), Mod nye historier. Rapporter til Det 24. Nordiske Historikermfide, Vol. 3 (Arhus, Denmark, 2001), pp. 83-107. See also, idem, "The Singularization of History."

49. See for example Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (London, 1997), pp. 59-60.

50. Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, "The Singularization of History," pp. 701-735.

51. Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King's Midwife, p. 11.

52. Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Review Essay: Worrying about Emotions in History," American Historical Review 107 (June 2002), pp. 821-845.

53. Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Review Essay: Worrying about Emotions in History," pp. 842-843.

54. Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Review Essay: Worrying about Emotions in History," pp. 845.

55. Peter N. Stearns, "Social History Present and Future," p. 13.

By Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson

The Reykjavik Academy