The joy of economic historians
It's only 1:41 pm here (or 13:41 in Brit time), and I'm already thrilled with my day. The lecture series I signed up for this term is brilliant.
To give a tad of backstory, the DPhil program I am in is an Arts program - meaning, when I graduate I will recieve a doctorate of philosophy in History, which is considered one of the Arts, not a Social Science. There is a history program at Oxford where you can receive a DPhil in history with a basis in Social Science. However, for that program you have to focus on economic history, and take lots of econ classes, and be incredibly enthused about numbers/statistics. The difference between the two programs centers mainly on how the historians approach "doing history."
As with most subdivided fields there are overlaps, and some social historians (what I am) dabble in economic issues (which I do), and some economic historians dabble in social issues. Overall, this fluid boundary works well. However, it becomes problematic when someone initiates dabbling without the proper background in the dabbled area. I will be the first to admit, I have a poor grasp on economics (modern and historical). To rectify this problem, I decided to crash an economic history methodology lecture series this term (with the prior consent of the professor, of course).
My first class was this morning at 11 am...and it totally blew my mind.
Economics was not what made this class so interesting. In fact, the prof spoke very little on that subject. What rocked my world was the revelation of the program's view on "valid" ways to go about researching and explaining the past. What they (or at least, this professor) consider the key differences between "scholarship" and "art." From the lecture, it seems many economic historians would consider most post-modern social historians work as "art" not "scholarship." This is because post-modernist methodology is based on the idea that there is no way to discern "truth." On the other hand, social science necessitates the belief in "truth," since uncovering the "truth" (or "the answer") is what motivates their work. From the social science historians' standpoint, what motivates post-modernist work is (what the prof termed) "individual arousal." In other words, if a post-modern social historian enjoys a topic, they study it, and then come up with their own subjective representation of the topic. However, they will not say it's "true," they will say "this is possible." The gist of today's lecture was that the work of most post-modern historians is one step above Hollywood "historical" blockbusters. And, like these Hollywood blockbusters, post-modern history is not scholarship, it is informed entertainment.
Wow.
Now, I've heard criticisms of post-modern history before, but I've always heard them from social historians working for change from the "inside." What I experienced today was completely different, no-holds-barred, and must have been similar to when the doctor slapped my bottom after I was born. Only this time it was my brain screaming for clarity instead of my lungs. What he said made sense - a lot of sense - the kind of sense that has me questioning my own methods and beliefs when it comes to what I do, and what kind of historian I want to become. Do I believe in historical truth? Am I doing "good history" when I give "qualitative" instead of "quantitative" interpretations of sources? At this point I have no idea, but it's something that will be occupying much larger portions of my brain power from this day forward.
Quote of the day:
"Whatever their interpretation of history, they won't say
that Belgium invaded Germany." -Clemenceau
posted by Tiffany @ 1:39 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Those are tough questions, but I really think there's a need for both kinds of methodologies. Qualitative work can provide a roadmap for the quantitative, and vice versa.
Is there a way you can be more quantitative and concrete in your historical analyses without losing your connection to humanity, without discarding your imagination? I encountered a bit of this sort of schism when I studied Classics, with archaeologists (quantitative) on one side and philologists (qualitative) on the other. For me I was always more interested when scholars explored the more human aspects, rather than dwell overlong on numbers (to be sure, I'm just not too keen on the boring backbreaking labor of that sort of thing...which is part of why I dropped out of graduate school).
One memorable lecture I attended in college featured Victor Davis Hanson comparing Epaminondas (4th Cent. BC Theban Politician) with Sherman and Patton. Almost all the other students attending the lecture scoffed, and the profs were politely amused. I thought it was interesting and honest and, importantly, imaginative.
(It was actually a conversation I had with Dr. Hanson at lunch during that same visit that sewed the seeds of my disillusionment with academia and my eventual dropping out.)
You want the view of a social historian who dabbles in legal history and statistics and cultural history?
He's talking bollocks about what the bulk of social historians are currently doing. We accept the uncertainties of our sources, and we think in terms of what is possible and hopefully probable. There's nothing new about any of that.
There have been (and clearly still are) historians who forget that historical sources are not true scientific data and that, therefore, historians can only ever be at best partially scientific in their methods and results. And some would say that, to some extent, post-modernist approaches to history have been a reaction and a necessary corrective to the naive positivism of earlier wannabe scientific historians.
Oh, and calling many of the more extreme post-modernists' works 'entertainment' is quite amusing, since it's hard to say which is more unreadable: the jargon of the econometric historians or the jargon of the pomos.
Audrey, TN and Sharon -
In my previous work on poor women and plague relief in Ipswich, I tried very hard to straddle the line of qualitative and quantitative analysis and description. The opening paragraph of the introduction of my master's thesis was a dramatized vignette of the life of one of the plague relief women I was able to trace through various printed primary sources. It most certainly wasn't exactly what happened, but it was a plausible example of her situation, what sights/sounds/realities surrounded her as she was quarantined in a house with the last of those dying in the household. The reason I tried to "recreate" her experience was because that's what I feel draws readers into the subject...the human aspect. This is one of the main reasons I became a social historian (it sounds like TN and I are very similar). At the same time, in the body of the thesis I tried to number crunch as much as I could to back up my assertions. One of the main problems with doing any kind of quantitative analysis in early modern history is often the size of the sample won't be large enough to claim any statistically valid trend. This is even more true when you're looking at one locality (as I was then, and am planning to do again for my DPhil thesis). Consequently, I was faced with having to still qualitatively interpret my number crunching. I think my qualitative analysis is sound, but I would never claim it to be "true." (For the exact reasons Sharon explained at the beginning of her comment.)
To be fair to the professor, he did say that there was a good balance between qual and quant that can be reached. His criticisms mainly centered on social and cultural historians who rely mainly on qual. methods and ignore quant. angles. His biggest targets were the old school post-mods, and the rise of certain subfields that have produced history (at times) to further certain agendas - such as gender, race, post-colonial, etc. I need to mention that I am not saying I agree with his assessment of social history and social historians, just that he was persuasive enough in his argument to make me sit up and think "hold on a minute," after I got over my initial fury of hearing him categorize my work with the likes of Shakespeare in Love.
Thank you all for your thoughts, especially Sharon. It's wonderful to e-meet another early modern historian here in the UK!
Yeah, I got a bit overheated there too. I mean, there really are some way out pomo-ists out there who just talk a load of drivel and I can't stand them. (So I think I might be a bit over-sensitive about someone lumping me in with them!) But not many social historians are like that.
I agree that sometimes you need to have quantification. There is a lovely book about women's crime in early modern Germany by Ulinka Rublack, but she doesn't do any quantification at all. So often you have no way of assessing the significance of things she discusses, or whether there were changes over time, and so on. But with some types of cultural-social history I don't think quantification could work, and that doesn't make them invalid. Some sources can't be handled that way.
Two final thoughts. It's interesting that the professor seems to equate 'scientific' with 'quantitative'. I don't think that's right - not all science is about what you can count. Secondly, that he links non-quantitative with postmodernist. For most historians, not counting is the *traditional* way to do things. You won't find much quantification in old-fashioned political history!
Oh, and if you come over to my place sometime you'll find that there's a whole bunch of crazy online early modernists lurking around... I particularly recommend Kristine, Pilgrim/Heretic and scribblingwoman.
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