Abstract
Since the early 1970s there has been a move for social historians to free themselves from social science models and, making use of their own vast accumulation of social description, to generate their own theories (Zunz, 1985, p. 100). Embedded in this critique is a revulsion against unlinear, ‘Big Bang’ or ‘before and after’ models, whether modernisation or Marxist. Attention is drawn to a more holistic approach, the methodological metaphor is the ‘single web of meaning’ among innumerable variables.
The title is taken from a lecture given by the Rev. Richard Cobbold on ‘The Character of Women’ for the benefit of the Governesses Benevolent Institution of London, in 1848. This paper was first presented as the Philip Abrams Memorial Lecture at the British Sociological Association in Edinburgh, March 1988. I would like to thank the following for ideas, suggestions and criticisms: Ava Baron, Paola DiCori, Catherine Hall, Donna Haraway, Ludmilla Jordanova, Jane Lewis, Carole Pateman, Sonya Rose, Joan Scott, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Judith Walkowitz. I am especially grateful to Helen Corr and Lynn Jamieson for editorial perception and patience.
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Davidoff, L. (1990). ‘Adam spoke first and named the orders of the World’: Masculine and Feminine Domains in History and Sociology. In: Corr, H., Jamieson, L. (eds) Politics of Everyday Life. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20705-3_11
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