Abstract
As I indicated in the Introduction, the subject-matter of social history usually consists of large aggregates of people (or collectivities) and of the social categories that make up these collectivities. The term collectivity may refer to a whole society, a cluster of societies, an empire, a civilization, a large segment of people within a society, a local community, an institution and so on. The term social category refers to a subset of a collectivity. Thus the peasants in a society could be taken as a social category, as could its urban population, its men over sixty, tribes-people living by lakes, children with red hair, the top quintile of income-earners, home-owners, the people born in a certain series of years (a ‘cohort’), women who have given birth to two children and so forth and so on. I will distinguish a social category from a social group by stipulating that a category consists of people who do not necessarily know each other, interact, engage in reciprocity, have the same beliefs and values or have a common identity, whereas the people belonging to a group necessarily possess these attributes. Thus while many social categories may also have the attributes of social groups, by no means all will; a great many will be purely abstract entities, having no group life at all. Social historians do not always study large collectivities and social categories; they also study individuals as well as families and other very small groups. But when they do their purpose is generally to contribute to our knowledge of a collectivity.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes, References and Further Reading
L. Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class, Cambridge, 1995, p. 14.
L.J. Moore, ‘Good Old-Fashioned New Social History…’, Reviews in American History, vol. 24, 4, Dec. 1996, p. 559.
Special issue of the Journal of Social History, Supplement, vol. 29, 1995: B.W. Bienstock, ‘Everything Old is New Again…’, pp. 62, 61; G.R. Andrews, ‘Social History and the Populist Moment’, p. 109; P.N. Stearns, ‘Uncivil War…’, p. 10; J. Kocka, ‘What is Leftist about Social History Today?’, p. 70.
See D. Little, Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science, Boulder, 1991.
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London, 1965.
Thompson, The Making, p. 11.
Thus workplace customary rights are economically determined but Paine’s The Rights of Man is not.
Thompson, The Making, p. 10.
Thompson, The Making, p. 194.
C. Hall, ‘The Tale of Samuel and Jemima: Gender and Working-Class Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, in T. Bennett, C. Mercer and J. Woollacott, eds, Popular Culture and Social Relations, Milton Keynes, 1986.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, p. 75, my emphasis.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, p. 75.
See Thompson’s much quoted and much criticised comment in The Making (p. 417) that the role of Female Reform Societies ‘was confined to giving moral support to the men…’
Although the article’s attack on The Making is oblique, in a later book co-authored with L. Davidoff she expressly states that it was this text she was criticising. See L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, London, 1987, p. 30 and p. 474 fn. 61.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, p. 89.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, pp. 75, 73.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, pp. 74–5.
Hall, ‘Samuel and Jemima’, pp. 74 and 80.
F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip London, II, trs. S. Reynolds, 2 vols, 1972. An abbreviated version, edited by Richard Ollard, was published in 1992. The term Annales comes from the title of the journal which the leaders of the movement founded in 1929, Annales d’histoire sociale et économique. It is now called Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations.
Bernard Bailyn quoted in J.H. Hexter, ‘Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien,’ in On Historians: Reappraisals of Some of the Makers of Modern History, Cambridge, Mass., 1979, p. 135.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1999 Miles Fairburn
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fairburn, M. (1999). The Problem of Absent Social Categories. In: Social History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27517-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27517-5_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-61587-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27517-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)