social history present and future journal of social history stearn

PART I

INTRODUCING THE ISSUES

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SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

By Peter N. Stearns George Mason University

Social history has often had its temperature taken. In the United States the firstprobes came in the 1960s, when social historians had to define their core interestsagainst a skeptical history establishment, reluctant to accept new topics and approaches that did not necessarily aim to illuminate standard subjects. This stocktaking evolved, by the 1970s, into seemingly endless needs and opportunities todefine the "new social history" to teachers and others now a bit more willing toaccept legitimacy but still unsure of what subjects and methods were involved.With the 1980s came the challenge of the "new cultural turn"-was it somethingdifferent from social history, even a danger to it, or rather an innovation withinit?-and also attacks from conservative historians like Gertrude Himmhelfarb,convinced that social history was unseating history's true purposes in upliftingyouth and the general public through examples of heroic action and reemphasis on political ideals. Social historians themselves generated a new wave ofself,examination, centered around a concern about the field as a multiplicity oftopics without a coherent and unifying big picture of its own. Some attentionalso applied to issues of presentation and narrative. These discussions carriedinto the early 1990s, with particular reaction to the political attack on socialhistory embodied in the hostile response to the national History Standards in1994. 1

Since then, substantial silence has ensued on some of the big issues, whichmight of course imply that the field has faded sufficiently that general commentis no longer warranted, or that it has become sufficiently hegemonic that as,sessment seems superfluous. Recently, however, several voices have encourageda new round of stock,taking. Europeans have taken the lead (and their voicesare represented in the comments in this issue). The]oumal of Social History nowjoins in, seeking a multi-faceted discussion over the next few years.

There are several motives. First is the conviction that the field remains sufficiently vibrant and promising to require recurrent self-study, Despite a numberof problems both old and new, social history has expanded and continues toexpand our knowledge about the past in a variety of ways. The fundamentaltwin premises-that ordinary people not only have a history but contribute toshaping history more generally, and that a range of behaviors can be profitablyexplored historically beyond (though also including) the most familiar politicalstaples-are still valid. They explain in turn why the field has outlived fad status, to become a permanent part of the historical arsenal. If some of the brashestearly hopes have not been realized-history in general has not been converted tosocial history or to a sociohistorically informed version of total history, and a de,cisive sociohistorical periodization has not replaced more conventional, usuallypolitical markers-the discipline has nevertheless been transformed. Maintain,ing the transformation merits and requires a periodic update on where socialhistory stands.

The field isalso approaching its half-century mark (granting a previous French

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10 journal of social history fall 2003

lead and granting the importance of some earlier social history efforts evenoutside of France). However artificial, half,centuries are good points for stock,taking. They also contribute a generational challenge. In the United States, thepioneers of the new social history-many of them remarkably productive over along period of time (social history as longevity formula?)-are now passing fromthe scene. The field's future rests in younger hands. It's a moment that invitessome reflection by some of the older hands, and, even more, some strutting bya sample of the many promising newcomers as well as some of the mid-careerleaders active, for example, in expanding social history's range outside Europeand the United States.

The passing of the most assertive aspects of the "cultural turn" also invitescomment. Many of the essays in this collection note a revival of sociohistoricalexplanations and/or the need for social history correctives to overindulgence inthe cultural turn. While cultural approaches to social history, emphasizing theimportance of beliefs and assumptions and their causal role in group behavior, stillpredominate, at least in the United States, other vantagepoints are beginningto reemerge. There is even a modest revival of quantitative work, around issuesin family history and other topics. And some venturesome social historiansare generating large statements based on non'cultural factors such as economicstructure or marriage patterns. Finally, while references to Foucault, Bourdieu,Habermas and others continue, they seem to be diminishing. Lynn Hunt hasnoted, not without some wistfulness, the decline in theory interest.i

The result opens both problems and opportunities for social history. The fieldhas passed through two dominant, though never monopolistic, methodologies,quantitative and cultural. It has passed through two successive social scienceflirtations, first with sociology, then with anthropology. Social history seems tobe sufficiently resilient and flexible to survive and even benefit from mutationsof this sort. The cultural turn had always raised questions for social historians,about how cultural causation might mix with other factors; about the range ofdocumentation needed to establish a cultural case-whether unpacking mean,ings in a single document or ritual sufficed for a social as opposed to a purelycultural historian; and about cultural versus other determinants of social class.At the same time, cultural interpretations helped answer, and continue to helpanswer, questions about the reasons for changes in behaviors in such areas asdemography. And there is danger as well as invitation in the lack of any overarching new approach, as the cultural turn recedes. Here, then, is ample occasionfor further conversation around four related topics: what pre-cultural interestsmight now be usefully be revived; how can we preserve the undeniable strengthsof the cultural turn; do we need to pay renewed attention to issues of narrativestyle (an older issue which receded during the cultural enthusiasm); and what'snext for the field as a wholej"

In sum: the occasion for renewed discussion of social history's status andprospects involves a combination of two transitions: generational (in my viewat least, as part of the passing crowd eager to identify younger leadership) andmethodological. The occasion invites brief nostalgia, a review of some of theconcerns social historians have grappled with for many years with mixed success,and a comment on some new issues emerging with unusual force.

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SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE

Youth and Vigor

11

Nostalgia, but within limits: It may be hard for younger practitioners to realizehow exciting social history was thirty or forty years ago, when the field seemedbrand new, defying the canons of conventional history. Eric Hobsbawm had itright back then when he talked of what a great time it was to be a historian."We knew each other, by work if not in person, and we could easily identifyourselves against the many historians bent on adhering to the same tired listof standard periods and topics. I doubt that this spirit can ever return to socialhistory, if only because of the success the field has obtained-which means alsothat it would be distracting to wallow in regret. At a time when a large minorityof historians proclaim themselves as social historians at least in part, and whensocial history has moved from birth pains to some phase of mottled maturity,defiant self, identification inevitably blurs. It was fun when all topics seemednew, when youth of field and youth in profession combined, when the worldneeded conversion.

But it is not only unwise to press nostalgia too far-there's no surer way oflosing the audience I want to reach-but inaccurate as well. There are still drag,ons to be slain, in the various kinds of conventional history that still resist thesocial history vision and the various partisan takes on history that dispute socialhistory directly. There are new topics to explore. Every year, as jSH editor, Ireceive a number of really good articles, including two or three that literallyproduce shivers of excitement because of the new data and insights involved,because of what is suggested about basic human behavior over time. Add to thisthe Similarly inspiring articles placed elsewhere, plus the periodic path-breakingbooks, and there seems little question that the enthusiasm remains. I can onlyassume that the historians involved share this same sense of fundamental discovery, of important questions asked and answered-about the past, and abouthow and why people function as they do.

Social history has shown a remarkable capacity to generate new interests,while maintaining a recognizable allegiance to its commitment to exploring theexperiences and roles of diverse groups and the wide range of human behaviors.Few of the topics that commanded prime attention forty years ago now headthe lists. Sometimes, indeed, social history's topics may revolve too quickly: oneof the tasks for the future may entail returning to earlier interests that needfuller exploration or an updating in light of more recent developments or socialneeds. I think for example of social protest, that played such a fundamental rolein launching the field but which now has few adepts, at least where Americansocial history is concerned, but which begs for renewed commentary. Social rnobility, dropped far too quickly in the United States after such fruitful beginnings,is another case in point. Mary Hartrnan's sweeping (forthcoming) reinterpretation of early modem European history in light of the European-style family,another fundamental interest that was too blithely abandoned, shows the powerof reexamining older topics and findings and extending their reach. Old agehistory was abandoned too fast, after a few stimulating general surveys and a sur,prisingly small number of (good) specific monographs, and as Pat Thane's essaysuggests, it will surely return as the implications of graying gain global attention.

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But the gains of flexibility and the capacity to move on are important as well.Gender history was, after all, not on the original topical roster, but flowed fromthe combination of political movement and the tools social history offered. Thehistory of childhood seemed on the whole too difficult when modem social his,tory first began, despite a few provocative efforts, but it is now receiving variedand imaginative attention. The history of emotions, though called for early on,only became possible within the past twenty years, partly because of the culturalturn, and it continues to yield surprising findings. The point is clear, at least tomy biased eyes: the good old days have been followed by some pretty good newdays. The field retains its ability to innovate and excite.I

I once argued that no aspect of human behavior should be denied to socialhistory, not even sleep. And now we have some really promising efforts evenon sleep.P Add to this the number of historical staples that have been redoneby social history-from religion to consumerism-and the number of socialhistory topics that have themselves become cottage industries, like women,or working class, or leisure, or slavery and emancipation,-and the sense ofcontinued accomplishment is hard to deny.

Indeed, social history's capacity to generate new topics belies some of the eom,mon criticisms of the field. While there is no single methodology, the opennessto the historical construction of various aspects of the human experience, thevaluation of relatively ordinary people as historical subjects and agents, and somesense of key historical causes and big changes in the human experience over,all, combine to create considerable analytical power. A willingness to providehistorical explanation for a changing parade of topical concerns makes socialhistory a vital player in social inquiry more generally, while steadily expandingthe definition of a usable past.

And even though the sense of novelty has inevitably waned, some of the earlyconstraints have diminished as well. Documentation is a key case in point. Whotalks now, for example, of the inarticulate, when it turns out there are so manyways of getting at the voices of the previously unheard, and of finding evidencefor some of the more private aspects of the human experience?* The vitality ofthe field has transcended many of the barriers that seemed so daunting early on.

Problems in Maturity

But if vitality seems endemic to the field, even as it has matured, so do somecharacteristic problems-some, perhaps, a function of vitality itself. Anotherinteresting feature of the essays in this collection-perhaps depressing, perhapssimply inevitable-is the extent to which they grapple with many familiar issues,albeit sometimes in new ways. The roster includes narrativity; synthesis andfragmentation; and the state and politics-in all of which current commentechoes unresolved definitional issues from decades past. As was the case fortyyears ago, for example, there are still social historians who think in terms of

,.. It isrevealing, in the diverse essays that follow, howfew concernsaboutevidencesurface,in contrast to the anxiety in the field's earlydays. Of course there remain topics whereevidence isfrustratingly elusive or inconclusive. But generaldiscussion has shiftedfromwhether evidence is available to what kinds should be preferred and how meaning canbest be derived.

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SOCIAL HISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE 13

topics and causation that largely leave the state out (though they no longer sayso explicitly), and others who find political explanation one of social history'smain purposes-a healthy tension, I would argue, but certainly an endemic one.

Early on, practitioners noted the gap between a sense of kindred sociohistorical enterprise and the fact that the field consisted of a variety of subtopicsrather than a general vision of the past. Family, crime, protest, slavery-all weresocial history, but what their causal or chronological links, one to the other,

'were unclear at best. If anything, this issue of fragmentation has intensified.Partly because of further specialization and topical expansion, partly because ofthe distraction of the cultural turn, and partly perhaps because of partial incorporation into general textbooks, the effort do to general social histories of keyareas has fallen by the wayside. Few if any historians have recently attemptedCharles Tilly's "big changes" approach as a means of talking about basic socialhistory turning points. Correspondingly, the invitation to develop characteristicsocial history periodization, to replace both a topic-by-topic chronology and theneed to rely on conventional political markers, has not been fully answered. Tobe sure, a social history focus has helped spur attention to the decades around1820 as a key watershed in American history, but this seems an exception to therule. If social history is to be measured by coherent overall frameworks, it fallsshort-and immaturity is no longer an excuse. We need renewed attention tobroader synthesis not only to address an endemic problem, but to respond to theadditional, almost inherent particularism of the cultural turn. 7

The dilemma of social history and history teaching remains open as well.Early on, it seemed clear that so much energy and reward were going into innovative research, that there simply was inadequate attention available for teachingmodels.f More recently, at least in the United States, the combination of routine,mindedness and overwork among many teachers, with the resurgence of politicalconservatism and its deep hostility to social history in the classroom, have generated scant incentive for further advance. Some change has occurred. Socialhistory discoveries plus sheer political and pedagogical pull have gained womenand some minorities a place in standard textbooks. No longer does slavery, inAmerican history, exist mainly to be abolished in a triumph of humanitarianenlightenment. But the social history topics are still squeezed into a largely con,ventional political framework, and they sometimes appear sporadically, withoutoffering the opportunity to analyze key changes over time. And the behavioralfindings in social history-the work on family, or leisure, or manners-simplydon't make it into mainstream teaching agendas, which means that few studentsgain access to social history's explanatory power in assessing how current pat'terns emerge from the past. Here, there really is an opportunity for a new sense ofmissionary zeal, related in some sense to a capacity to develop some big-picturesocial history. For American practitioners: Take a look at the history learningstandards adopted in most states, their meager social history content and theirresolute sense that history is great people and great events, and get mad. But I'mnot sure where the missionaries are, where the constructive anger is, in an aspectof the history agenda that was never one of social history's great strengths.

The relationship between social history and a wider reading public is less dire,but it remains mixed and mysterious. As many have noted, American interestin historical museums, broadly construed, has increased spectacularly, and many

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museums have become sophisticated sites of social history presentation. Somesocial history offerings have also made good use of new media, and a few filmsadd to the list, again with popular effect. But formal reading fare, and the historychannel on cable television, continue largely to define history in terms of battlesand wars, spiced by an occasional biography. Explicit efforts by social historiansto write for a wider public have typically yielded little fruit-one can get on localtalk shows, in their hunger for subject matter, usually to answer random questions,but there's little sense of breakthrough either to wide sales or to impact onpopular historical thinking. It's hard to argue that public understanding of socialhistory staples like family or work patterns has been much affected by popularizedscholarly findings or analysis. In some cases, even where museum presentationsare involved, the conservative surge in the United States has further weakenedsocial history program content, lest key donors and self-appointed patriots beoffended. Yet here too, occasionally, a glimmer of hope. Surely historians whohelped convey the internship experiences of the Japanese, in World War 11, andwork them into public consciousness, contributed to the quick understanding,after 9/11, that Muslim Americans must not be scapegoated at least to the sameextent.

And there's real progress as well on another front, long debated. Twenty yearsago John Demos lamented his failure to work social history findings into thethinking of policymakers on family subjects," And perhaps he would be no moreheartened today. But social history, on its behavioral side, has become a standardpart of analyses of topics like drinking, or gambling, or sexuality, or crime, ordieting and obesity, and some of this welcome spills over into presentations toa wider public as well. This is a far cry from the early days when one historian,invited to a presentation on gender issues, was urged not to identify his disci,pline lest he alienate his audience. The sense that social history is a routinepart of explaining why people function as they do, and why characteristic socialproblems and behaviors have emerged as they have, is a tremendous gain, andone that a next generation of social historians can build upon. Social history hasbecome a key player in fundamental discussions of the culturally and sociallyconstructed aspects of the human experience, and we can and should press for,ward on this interdisciplinary front. Researchers in contemporary social historyshould become more aggressive in linking their findings to contemporary issues,through vigorous discussions of change, continuity and causation in basic human behaviors, more fully exploiting the connections that have already emergedwith other fields of behavioral inquiry.

Indeed, one of social history's key strengths, though not obvious at the outset,is its capacity to respond to changing social concerns by providing not justhistorical background, but active analytical perspective. This contributes to thefrequently changing topical roster-think, for example about the tremendousstrides in the history of death, when this subject seized public consciousnessby the late 1960s, or the contributions to historicizing youth or to old age;all subjects that are now, for the moment, more quiescent. Unquestionably,the agility contributes greatly to apparent fragmentation, but there are someunderlying unities in: the interest in breadth of human experience, the capacityto relate special topics to larger patterns of cultural or economic change, thecommitment to ordinary more than to extraordinary people, and the imaginative

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use and discovery of relevant sources. Though not its only function, social historyserves as a mirror of changing 'contemporary concerns, and its contributions tointerdisciplinary inquiry expand accordingly.

The New Challenge: Global Issues

Up to this point, aside from defining the current moment in terms of generational transition and the fading of the cultural turn, we've stayed on fairlyfamiliar ground, with topics that have been part of state-of-social-history discussions for at least two decades. The contours have changed: the incorporationof social history into topical social science research is one example on the plusside, the deflating effect of American conservative hostility to social history isanother decidedly on the negative. But the agenda was clear some time ago. Weturn now to a newer area, whose implications constitute a real challenge to thesocial history of the future. The subject is geography and globalization. Again,many of the following essays expand on this topic as well.

Social history, like its parent discipline, has almost always been highly place'specific. The advantage is obvious: when dealing with new topics, often corn,plexly embedded in regional cultures and local geographies and economies, knowyour area well. Even aside from regional social history, most social historians feltinsecure exploring beyond the nation-state (whose relevance for many socialhistory topics was often however questionable). Some historians, pushing nowfor more microhistory, feel that the field has already been too venturesome. 10

The cultural turn, on the whole, though not wedded to microhistory necessarily,gave further impetus to reliance on fairly small geographical scope. Againstthis grain, for what it's worth, I had long hoped that topical social historymight loosen geographical constraints a bit, toward more interest in behaviors such as crime or leisure that would cut across regional lines. I have alwaystried to arrange JSH articles and reviews accordingly, with what effect I am notsure.

And there have been gains. Though still distressingly limited, comparativesocial history has flourished in some topical areas, such as slavery, emancipation,and more recently working class. Social history plays a key role, also, in theemerging attention to crosscutting interregional forces, particularly in Atlanticstudies (though we need comparable attention to other geographical cornbinations). Even more cheering, and a vital part of the field's future, the topical rangeinitially developed for Europe or the U.S. has increasingly emerged in regionalspecialty areas like Latin America and Africa. Asian, African and Latin Arnerican social history has long been strongly developed around some crucial subjects(the peasantry, for example), as part of area studies more generally. But nowwe have rich family and childhood history, leisure studies, and the like, thoughthis expansion is clearer for some regions than others. Modern Russian socialhistory, similarly, has expanded beyond a preoccupation with origins of revolution to deal with popular culture, sexuality, and of course gender. Collectively,this is all a net increment for the link between social history and appropriategeographic scope, whether comparative or transregional.!'

But new challenges emerge. International relations and social history have

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never mixed well, if only because so much diplomatic decision-making is an eliteaffair. For a good while, this mismatch resulted simply in a decline of diplomatichistory, as social history soared. But now the felt need for historical perspectiveon international relations increases, and social historians need to exercise moreimagination in developing appropriate linkages. Many history departments areresponding to 9/11 with a call for emphasis on diplomatic history, and the impulseis understandable. In fact, of course, the roots of terrorism, and many responsesto terrorism, are as much social as purely diplomatic, but social historians havenot pioneered in making the necessary connections.

At the teaching level, and to some extent in research, the United States hasexperienced a dramatic surge in world history, well before the recent international crisis. Again, social history has not always fit comfortably with a worldhistory framework. World historians struggle to include women's history andsome issues of social structure, but they are often so busy with their sheer geographical range, and so hampered by the lack of studies of social topics thatexplicitly link to global frameworks, that the temptation to emphasize politics,high culture and trade often proves insurmountable. And from the explicitlysocial history side, there has not been a clear response, or indeed any particulartake on world history.

Finally, there is the phenomenon of globalization. Historians of any stripe havenot taken a lead in identifying globalization, and of course the extent and thenovelty of the phenomenon can and should be debated. There are however someprovocative recent approaches. One group, self-styled as "new global" historians,works on the recency and magnitude of globalization changes. Another studiesanalogies between a past experience of globalization, in the decades around 1900(an experience which ended in retrenchment in the years after World War I),and more recent developments. Both approaches are interesting, and both areperfectly compatible with social history. What better way to test the reach ofcurrent globalization than to measure it against, say, the experience of gender orof childhood? How can one compare two modem surges of globalization withoutdealing with the emergence of global popular cultures in both periods? There areripe topics here-but to date, social historians have not really seized them. Thelead in historical work on globalization is taken by specialists in internationalrelations spiced by imaginative mavericks from fields like the history of scienceand even psychohistory.V

For a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, historians are reconsideringtheir geographical frameworks, with results that place new emphasis on the importance of comparison and on the ability to think in terms of global or at leastinterregional connections. Social historians, with increasingly rich results fromwork in a wide range of geographical areas, can participate in this reconsider'ation, but they have not yet seized a leadership role and risk being outflanked.Could this be the next conceptual challenge, after the cultural turn?

* * * * *We probably face three options for social history's future, though it is vital tohear other voices on the subject. The first will involve some continued interestin social history on two different bases: first, where younger practitioners un-

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derstand the necessity of including social history findings-on demography, forexample-in their survey teaching and as part of establishing context for theirown research, whether this ison culture, or international relations, or some otherarea-without, usually, a strong self-identification as social historians. And second, a deep, excited commitment to further inquiry into special topics withinsocial history, like childhood or the senses or popular humor. This special topicsapproach could maintain the fruitful connection between social history and particular fields of social science inquiry. But here too self-identified social historywould fade. Or third, along with the general interest and certainly the specialtopics approach, an ongoing commitment to larger issues of periodization, socialstructure, and geographic breadth that can innovate in its own right and helpkeep the other two approaches honest.

This third option, to my mind greatly preferable, would incorporate the firsttwo but add an ongoing and explicit commitment to the field as a whole. Thiskind of commitment, I would argue, is ultimately essential to keep the historians who prefer to dip into social history adequately informed and stimulated, toprevent them from letting the social history materials recede further into thebackground, and to provide them with updated findings; essential as well to provide a wider framework for the special topics research, which otherwise risks stillfurther fragmentation and an inability to deal with basic issues in chronologyand causation. Only this commitment balances the gains of cultural analysiswith appropriate attention to social structure and social causation.* Only thiscommitment to the field will allow a renewed attack on concerns like social history in teaching and the onslaughts of conservative pedagogy, or the apparentlyendemic tension between new topics and the need for a more general picture.Only this commitment, finally, will allow social historians to deal directly withnew challenges, such as the changing geographical base for historical inquirychallenges that Vitally affect social history's role in the discipline as a whole, andwhich could lead to exciting conceptual breakthroughs in comparative analysisor assessments of globalization. The question is not whether we should preservea special social history identity, even a vigorous reassertion of some of the largerclaims of the field; but whether we will.

The social history of the future does not require agreement on all points,or on the same level of commitment. We can and should debate, for example,issues of geographical scope, and listen to the excitement of the microhistorianswhile also talking with globalists. We can welcome some fellow travelers and avariety of sub-specialties, But we do need at least some social historians willingto recover some of the bigger picture concerns-for example, for discussions ofsocial class,** or the implications of demographic change-that have receded

*One ofthe salutarythemes in severalofthe following essays insists on the importanceof economic causation in the world today, amid growing and distressing stratifications,as a reminder that, whatever their importance and charm, cultural definitions must notprecludewider inquiry.

**Note, in the essays that follow in this issue, the frequent reference to the need to reviveattention to socialclass, asa corrective to the frequentquirkiness of the cultural turn,or as a framework for innovative researchon this historyof the senses, or as a frameworkfor re-engaging with explanations of political patterns. Revival need not be repetition:Christophe Charle, forexample, notes the importanceoftuning the explorationsofsocialstructure more finely, to deal with smallersocialgroups.

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during the cultural turn. We do need some social historians willing to reassert theimportance of teaching about processes rather than events and eager to disputea narrowing or rigidification of the history canon.

In the end, of course, the key to the future lies in social history's capacityto generate new understandings of the past and how the past has shaped thepresent. We're talking ultimately about the continued ability to explore howbasic changes in human behavior occur, and through this to offer fundamentalcontributions to knowledge. Bold claims, but at its best social history has alreadymet the challenge. Through new discovery, new synthesis, and new capacity toteach and disseminate, social history maintains its high potential. There's moreto come.

Department of History and Art HistoryFairfax, VA 22030

ENDNOTES1. Some of us used to write at least one definition a year, which did wonders for the vitaif less for clearing the air. For a record of key developments, see Charles Tilly, "The OldNew Social History and the New Old Social History," Review 7 (1984): 363-406; JamesHenretta, "Social History as Lived and Written," American Historical Review 84 (1979):1293-1323; Mary Layton, Elliott Gom, and Peter Williams, eds., Encyclopedia ofAmericanSocial History, v I: Part Il, Methods and Contexts, 235-434; Lawrence Stone, Past andPresent (Boston, 1981); Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Denigrating the Rule of Reason: The'new history' goes bottoms up," Harper's Magazine (April, 1984);]oumala/SocialHistorySpecial Issue 29 (1995): Peter N. Steams, "Social History Today ... And Tomorrow,"Journal of Social History 10 (1976): 129-155.

2. Lynn Hunt, "Where have All the Theories Gone," American Historical AssociationPerspectives (Mar., 2002).

3. Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989); Lenard Berlanstein,Rethinking Labor History: essays on discourse and class analysis (Urbana, 1993); see alsoLynn Hunt and Victoria Bonnell, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley, 1999).

4. Eric Hobsbawm, "From Social History to the History of Society," Daedalus C (1971):43.

5. On the topical evolution, Peter N. Steams, "The Old Social History and the New," inLayton, Gom, and Williams, eds., Encyclopedia, I, pp. 237-50; on the upcoming floweringof the history of childhood, Paula Fass, ed., The Encyclopedia of the History of Childhood,forthcoming.

6. Roger Ekrich, "The Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber on the BritishIsles,"American Historical Review 106 (2001); Peter N. Steams, Perrin Rowland, and LoriGiamella, "Children's Sleep: Sketching Historical Change," Journal of Social History 30(1997): 345-366.

7. On the big changes approach, Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, HugeComarisons (New York, 1984); Olivier Zunz, ed., Reliving the Past: The World of SocialHistory (Chapel Hill, 1985); for an impressive.recent effort, though quite different fromTilly's, Mary Hartman, The Household in the Making of History: A Subversive View of theWestern Past (Cambridge, forthcoming). On redoing U.S. history periodization, Christo-

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SOCIALHISTORY PRESENT AND FUTURE 19

pher Clark, Roots of Rural Capitalism (Ithaca, 1990); David Hackett Fischer, Growing Oldin America (New York, 1978).

8. Peter N. Steams, "Social History and the Teaching of History," in Matthew Downey,ed., Teaching American History: New Directions (Washington, DC, 1980); Linda Rosenzweig and Peter N. Steams, Social History Curriculum for Secondary Schools (Pittsburgh,1982).

9. John Demos, Past, Present and Personal: The Family and theLifeCourse in AmericanHistory (New York, 1986).

10. Sigurdur Magnusson, "The Singularization of History: Social History and Michrohistory within the Postmodem State of Knowledge," Journal of Social History 36 (2003).

11. Michael Adas, "Social History and the Revolution in African and Asian Historiography," Journal of Social History 19 (1985): 335-378.

12. Robert McMahon, "Globalization and History," paper presented at the Organizationof American Historians annual meeting, April, 2002; Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjers,eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, 1993).

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