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4. Colonial New England Social History: The Problematics of Contemporary History Writing
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CHAPTEH Foun Colonial New England Social History The Problematics of Contemporary History Writing The discipline ofhistory illustrates some ofthe tensions between the knowledge-making modes of the humanities and the social sciences . On the continuum from particularistic, text-driven, interpretive discourse to conceptually driven, explanatory discourse, writing in history shows forces pulling in both directions. These tensions are often implied in comments by historians about the state ofknowledge in a subfield, for example, Archer's and Zuckerman's complaints about thc lack of synthesis in New England colonial history. And they are revealed in what historians say about neighboring disciplines or what neighboring disciplinary practitioners say about history. In a discussion of the difference between history and sociology, Peter Burke points out history's greater tendency to use a variety of terms for what sociologists might view as one type of phenomenon. Burke writes that political historians have generalized about institutional changes in European history by coining phrascs such as "the state as a work of art," "the new monarchies," "the Tudor revolution in government," "the rise ofabsolutism," and "the nineteenth-century revolution in government" (Burke 70). "To a sociologist," Burke writes, "all these changes will look like local examples of stages of 74 transition from one major type ofgovernment to another, from what Max Weber called a 'patrimonial' to what he called a 'bureaucratic' system. Weber's typology is one of the most important contributions to the theory of political organization since the Greeks distinguished monarchy, aristocracy and democracy" (70-71). The sociological enterprise Burke describes is conceptually driven in its assumption that a set oftranshistorical structural concepts such as patrimony and bureaucracy may provide a unified language and a focal point to begin analysis. For the sociologist, the structural concept as an abstraction exists prior to the examination of particular local circumstances, whereas the historians' varied and less abstract terms ("the Tudor revolution in government," etc.) originate in interpretation of particular phenomena. The historian, then, may be torn between the desire to elucidate local particulars and the desire to generalize about historical processes . An example of this kind oftension may be seen in comments by a social anthropologist, P. C. Lloyd, in Africa in Social Change (1967). He began with a number ofquestions revealing how conceptual issues could drive the need for analysis of phenomena-questions about "the impact of the processes of modernization upon the traditional societies" such as "Howfar are the patterns ofWestern industrial society, and in particular the stratification ofsociety into social classes, being reproduced in West Africa?" (13). This question would not necessarily arise for someone interested primarily in the particulars of African history. For instance, ifthere were an African society with no stratification, the historian beginning with phenomena to interpret would not be likely to raise questions about stratification. But a social scientist beginning with conceptual questions about stratification (especially stratification in the West) might be likely to use models of stratification to ask why an African society does or does not have a particular kind of stratification. The question is conceptually driven, and terms like stratification or modernization are likely to be standardized among writers in the field. Lloyd raised the question of local versus generalizable knowledge in his Introduction: Continually we find apparent paradoxes. Modernization often seems to result in an intensification of tribal relations rather than in their decay; or, it seems to be the society with the less highly developed political structure which accepts change more readily. Many of these Colonial New England Social History / 75 [3.90.187.11] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:37 GMT) paradoxes are, however, resolved when one studies individual societies in detail. And so one is caught between the need for detailed studies of small areas or individual problems, and the urge to generalize.... In abstracting, from the diverse and complex patterns of West African society, the principal variables, we may construct theoretical models which are illustrative of contemporary changes. It is with such models that we might, subject to the availability of relevant data, make our predictions of political revolution, of economic advance or stagnation. (Lloyd 13-14) Lloyd's use of terms like "principal variables," "models," and "predictions " are signs of an affinity for the conceptually driven enterprise of a social scientist. Though his mention of abstracting from the data makes his enterprise sound analogous to the text-driven interpreting of a Gaskell novel, his focus on a generalizable model that could be used to predict social change puts him...