In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain (review)

During the late 1960s and 1970s, what came to be called the new social history, which had been inspired originally by Edward Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963), became virtually hegemonic in the historical profession. In the last two decades, however, social history has come under increasing attack as a new generation of historians has rejected Marxism in its varying forms and turned to postmodernism and poststructuralism for inspiration. The resulting "linguistic turn" has proved highly controversial and provoked extensive debates about the limits of historical understanding. On one side are historians who proclaim that the assumptions of the new social history remain valid and that historical "experience" can be grasped by traditional empirical methodology. At the other extreme are historians who argue that language or discourse constitutes social reality, that reality is a matter of "text," and hence that historians can rely only on deconstruction and other methods of textual criticism to understand the past.

Epstein stakes out a middle position in this debate. He accepts the logic of the "linguistic turn," but wants to preserve some of the older social history by defending four "propositions"—that "culture is never free of power, of unequal relations and access to cultural resources"; that "political culture is not an autonomous field, but a site of struggle"; that "full consideration of how 'texts' do their work includes not only paying close attention to formal properties of language ... but analyzing the social conditions of their production and reception"; and that "it is critically important to pay attention to the situated nature of expression," that is, of "context," without which "meaning cannot exist" (9-10). In Practice is a collection of essays that seeks to explain and validate these points, or, as Epstein writes, they are a "series of response to the changing terrain of historical studies" (10).

The resulting volume is highly satisfactory. It is brief, clear, and cogently argued. For those not familiar with recent historical debates, it provides an accessible entry to them, particularly as British historians have engaged in them. The first two essays critically examine the work of Stedman Jones and Joyce, both of whom are leading social historians who have taken the "linguistic turn." Indeed, as Epstein points out, Stedman Jones' 1982 essay, "Rethinking Chartism," "marked the opening of the 'linguistic turn' in British social history" (15).¹ Epstein examines in detail Stedman Jones' claim that changes in "political discourse itself" rather than changes in "'social being' explained shifts in political behaviour and ideology" (16). Drawing on his own extensive knowledge of the Chartist movement, Epstein argues in response that "paying attention to the formal aspects of language ... must be fused with a concept of language as a social practice, an awareness of how language is put into play. This defines the real challenge for historians" (25). The outcome is a convincing anatomization of the strengths and shortcomings of Stedman Jones' work. Epstein subjects Joyce to the same critical scrutiny.

The rest of Epstein's book constitutes a demonstration of how historians might rise to this "challenge." He presents four case studies—on late eighteenth-century trials, on political rituals and culture, on politics and space, and on political leadership—that show the importance of textuality and language but that continue to place historical figures in some sort of historical context. Only in that way, he rightfully contends, can we make sense of the choices that individuals made or their own political changes. The result is a successful engagement with recent theoretical debates and an example of how historians can benefit from them in practice.