Table Of ContentSOCIAL HISTORY
Also by Miles Fairburn
The Ideal Society and Its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern
New Zealand Society, 1850-1900
Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial
Labourer's Diary
Social History
Problems, Strategies and Methods
Miles Fairburn
Proffessor of History
Canterbury University
New Zealand
© Miles Fairburn 1999
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First published 1999 by
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To Maria, Geoffrey and Nikos
Contents
Acknowledgements Vlll
Introduction
1. The Problem of Absent Categories 13
2. The Problem of Generalising from
Fragmentary Evidence 39
3. Some Solutions for the Problem of
Fragmentary Evidence 58
4. The Problem of Establishing Important Causes 85
5. The Problem of Establishing Similarities and
Differences-of Lumping and Splitting 112
6. To Count or Not to Count? 145
7. The Problem of Socially Constructed Evidence 177
8. The Problem of Appropriate Concepts 203
9. The Problem of Determining the Best Explanation 235
Notes, References and Further Reading 281
Glossary of Terms 309
Bibliography 313
Index 323
VII
Acknowledgements
This book arose out of a fourth-year History Honours course I
taught at Victoria University in 1994 and 1995. I am most grateful
for the assistance and encouragement I received in teaching it
from good friends and colleagues in other Departments. They
included John Pratt (Criminology), David Pearson, Kevin White
and Bob Tristram (Sociology), and Ed Mares and Kim Sterelny
(Philosophy). I also owe a great deal to the students who took the
course and stimulated my thinking on various issues. My debt to
John Morrow (Politics Department) and Bob Tristram is particu
larly heavy: they not only persuaded me to take on the book but
went to the trouble to read and criticise closely an earlier draft.
The contribution of Dr Trevor Burnard (one of my new col
leagues at Canterbury) must also be acknowledged since he pro
vided invaluable information and advice on several points. Lastly,
I must thank Pauline Wedlake for her secretarial assistance.
MILES FAIRBURN
Vlll
Introduction
During the last two or three decades, social history has become
the fastest growing and the most fashionable area of professional
historical writing, research, and teaching in the English-speaking
world. The growing popularity of the subject has brought in its
train a large and expanding body of discussion about what social
historians have done, what they are doing, and about what they
can, might and should do. Although the subject-matter of all this
discussion about the discipline is quite diverse, the bulk of it focuses
on a more restricted range of concerns.
The first concern is with straightforward historiography. This
discussion is of a basically descriptive kind. It variously covers the
origin, rise, present condition and prospects of the discipline as a
whole, or of one of the many sub-disciplines or 'schools' within the
discipline. Typically, such discussion details the aims, approaches,
backgrounds and major works of the leading practitioners, the in
fluences upon the practitioners, the defining characteristics of par
ticular sub-disciplines or of branches within a sub-discipline, and
how social history is different from what has been called the 'old'
history (political, administrative, diplomatic, constitutional and
biographical history, generally presented in a narrative fashion).
Falling into a second category is the discussion that has dwelt on
the relationship of the discipline to the social sciences. Some of
this discussion has set out simply to introduce historians to the dif
ferent concepts and theories of the social sciences (notably socio
logy and anthropology) and to show how particular studies by
practising social historians have employed these concepts and
theories to advantage. A large portion of the discussion, however,
has become a debate about the whole identity of social history in
relation to the 'old' history and to the social sciences. On one side
of the debate have been those who have claimed that history and
sociology (or anthropology) have a natural affinity; and those who
have dismissed the 'old' history as impressionistic and have urged
that social history should model itself upon one or a combination
of the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and geography. On
2 Social History: Problems, Strategies and Methods
the other side of the debate, have been the followers of the 'old'
history who have argued that history and the social sciences are
incompatible; and some social historians who have criticised the
influence of the social sciences on their discipline, saying (for
instance) that the social sciences have no capacity to explain what
is central to the past, change over time, or that social science theor
ies are too deterministic, and so forth.
Critical discussion of the discipline forms a third category.
Some of the criticism has been directed towards the more popular
of the sub-disciplines (notably the history ofmentalites). Other criti
cism has been directed at the whole discipline, saying (amongst
other things) that practitioners too often study trivial topics and
neglect politics and elite ideas which exercised (it is asserted) a far
greater impact on ordinary people.
A further category of discussion is made up of 'bedrock' argu
ments by social historians about what society is, how it can be
known (if at all) and the language that should be adopted to talk
about it. The arguments, that is to say, have been over the nature
of people as social beings, and about what 'schools' of social hist
ory, approaches and varieties of theory provide the best ways of
examining and talking about people as social beings. Frequently
such arguments have arisen during the course of debates over
particular interpretations of the past. Very often the arguments
have spilt over from anthropology, sociology, speculative philo
sophy and, increasingly of late, literary theory. There have been
arguments, for example, about whether quantification and mod
els are appropriate devices for representing collective human
activity; whether the social past should be written in narrative
form (event-oriented history) or in analytical form (structure
oriented history); whether social historians should study large
scale structures or minute localised settings; whether culture/
ideology is more fundamental to a society than its material forces
or its social arrangements or its power structure; whether the
job of social historians should be to explain the causes of peo
ples' outward behaviour or to understand peoples' intentions
and social meanings; whether the concepts which are used to
analyse a society should be drawn from within it or from outside
it; whether gender has primacy over class as a social category;
whether language ('discourse') makes (or 'constitutes') the
social world.
