Historians and Their Theories/Methodologies

Randall Stephens

Theories/methodologies come and go. Take a look at the history profession over the last half century to see how that works out. Where are the pyschohistorians? The social historians armed with computer punch cards and prosopographic reports? The consensus historians clutching well-worn copies of Adorno's Authoritarian Personality? The world systems historians of international affairs? And the Marxist historians? (I'm not pointing this out in some neanderthal effort to convince historians to ditch theory. Far from it. If anything, thinking about how things fade and move on might make us a little more humble.)

In this vein Terry Eagleton reviews Eric Hobsbawm's How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011 in the March 2011 LRB. Eagleton is, for me, always a pleasure to read. He begins:

In 1976, a good many people in the West thought that Marxism had a reasonable case to argue. By 1986, most of them no longer felt that way. What had happened in the meanwhile? Were these people now buried under a pile of toddlers? Had Marxism been unmasked as bogus by some world-shaking new research? Had someone stumbled on a lost manuscript by Marx confessing that it was all a joke?

We are speaking, note, about 1986, a few years before the Soviet bloc crumbled. As Eric Hobsbawm points out in this collection of essays, that wasn’t what caused so many erstwhile believers to bin their Guevara posters. Marxism was already in dire straits some years before the Berlin Wall came down. One reason given was that the traditional agent of Marxist revolution, the working class, had been wiped out by changes to the capitalist system – or at least was no longer in a majority. It is true that the industrial proletariat had dwindled, but Marx himself did not think that the working class was confined to this group.>>>

50 Years of Counter-Counter-Subversion

Chris Beneke
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Before the year ends, it may be worth noting that 2010 marks the fiftieth anniversary of a classic work in American history. In September 1960, a full tenure-cycle before the appearance of his classic tomes on slavery and abolitionism, David Brion Davis, published a modestly titled article in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review (today, The Journal of American History) called “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature.” Perhaps overshadowed by the subsequent publication of Richard Hofstadter’s monumental The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964), Davis’ little gem has been, and continues to be, profitably invoked by historians and non-historians alike.

A half century is a long-time for a publication with heavy interpretive implications to stay afloat in the roiling waters of American historiography. Most significant arguments from that long ago now rest under an ocean of dissertations and monographs. Occasionally they resurface—only to be unceremoniously dunked under again by a desperate graduate student. But “Some Themes” has remained buoyant even amid massive shifts of interpretive currents over the last five decades. Google Scholar alone counts 118 citations, many of them fairly recent.

Davis’ topic was antebellum hostility toward three outlier groups: Masons, Catholics, and Mormons, and he discovered conspicuous parallels in the structure of prejudice against them:

What distinguished the stereotypes of Mason, Catholic, and Mormon was the way in which they were seen to embody those traits that were precise antitheses of American ideals. The subversive group was essentially an inverted image of Jacksonian democracy and the cult of the common man; as such it not only challenged the dominant values but stimulated those suppressed needs and yearnings that are unfulfilled in a mobile, rootless, and individualistic society. It was therefore both frightening and fascinating. (208)

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The themes of nativist literature suggest that its authors simplified problems of personal insecurity and adjustments to bewildering social change by trying to unite Americans of diverse political, religious, and economic interests against a common enemy. Just as revivalists sought to stimulate Christian fellowship by awakening men to the horrors of sin, so nativists used apocalyptic images to ignite human passions, destroy selfish indifference, and join patriots in a cohesive brotherhood. Such themes were only faintly secularized. (214)

My hunch is that Davis’ argument has avoided the twin perils of irrelevance and infamy because it presaged a discernible shift in the historiographical current. In particular, “Some Themes” provided early American historians with a handy, empirical point of access to the theory of The Other—the ubiquitous scholarly assumption that our understanding of self and community is always developed against imagined understandings of another (usually benighted and/or marginal) culture or people. In the five decades since, few ideas have exercised a more profound influence on historical interpretation. Davis’ article also captured the ideological spirit of the post-Red Scare academy, which has embraced the subversive and the counter-counter-subversive.

“Some Themes” had the additional virtue of not being overly burdened with clinical baggage. While Davis gestured toward mid-century concerns about identity formation and social anxiety, he was clearly more concerned with the cultural and political causes and manifestations of what is nowadays sometimes called “othering.” That too aligned his argument with late twentieth-century (at least post-1970s) historical study, which has never been comfortable with the essentialism of the psychological and philosophical foundations on which so much of it rests.

More Bouncing Balls for Friday

Heather Cox Richardson

Awhile back, I wrote a post about a video representing changes in four empires over the past two hundred years. The empires were shown as balls, growing, bouncing into each other, and finally exploding after WWII. Reactions to that video were mixed—one person wrote that watching it was like watching paint dry.

Nonetheless, I remain unbowed.

Here is another video of history through bouncing balls. It is a fascinating representation of statistics, along

with their strengths and weaknesses.

I think this one, even more than my earlier, more sedate bouncing balls, would need to be used as the start of a conversation in a classroom, rather than without comment. It is, of course, an entirely Whiggish version of world history. That itself would be an interesting starting point for a class discussion.

It also remarks on the dramatic changes in life expectancy after WWII without speculating about why they happened. This could be productively interrogated in a classroom, too, since much of that change should probably be attributed to the heavy use of petrochemicals in commercial fertilizer and transportation systems, a use that many believe to be both unsustainable and potentially so environmentally destructive it will ultimately wipe out huge populations. It might be useful to juxtapose some of the historical questions of technology and environment alongside this cheery version of the last two hundred years.

It’s also notable that the narrator insists he is showing a triumphant progress, and indeed, for his own field of global health, he is. But change along the axis of wealth is notably small for Africa. That, too, could be productively discussed in a classroom, in terms of world history, national history; systems and exceptionalism.

Anyway, it’s a cool video for a Friday.