The shift from Political History to Social History

[1stOVIGuard]

Hey there guys, I hope this is the right place to post this!
Moderators I appologize if it isn't.

I have noticed from personal experience, and probably influenced by being an undergrad still in school, that since I started reenacting here in Ohio in 97' that there has been several shifts in the CW reenacting world from a focus on the political history of the ACW to the Social history of the ACW. I have pondered on this for a looong time and have come to the conclusions of:

a. Social history more directly reflects the attitude of AC's and thus maybe the mainstream world is slowly making a hint of a shift for a more AC mentality

b. People in the hobby are less concerned with the political issues of the ACW and focus on the lives of the people during the ACW.

c. It is maybe seen as though the public already knows enough and is educated enough on the subject of ACW, but here I must disagree on a personal level due to going to college with MANY who do not even know what the Confederacy was and misplace the years of the war to be in the 20th century.

I just thought these might be some interesting points and be a great subject of conversation. I have not participated, sadly, in any AC events but am longing to eventually so I may meet some of you guys in person and be more directly influenced by the AC part of the hobby. This is to point out that I only know what I know about the hobby from the mainstream point of view so I am sorry if it does not clearly reflect that of the AC portion.

[CSchneider]

Well, that's just following in the general scholarly trend of academic fields such as History, American Studies, and now Museum Studies (and even among folks who study military history), where the switch began to be made about 40 years ago. Could it be a more scholarly approach to authentic side living history or the effects of a new generation of research, books, and exhibits on living historians and the public in general?

-Craig Schneider

[1stOVIGuard]

That is a good point, after all, it is the social history that is the new vast and open field for research. Maybe political history is exhausted and after awhile a trend will go back to the political side. From what I have read of old history texts there is a trend (at least it seems to me) that there is a cycle for the political history and social history rotation. It is just now with the internet and wide range of resource wells out there that extensive social history research can be done, but alas we run into bad sources and secondary sources that we must track down through the plethora of materials out there. Maybe some of the guys from the 60's on can provide some deeper insight into the trends.

[Curt Schmidt]

Hallo!

Just to further the discussion, by going Zen-like...
Is everything old, new again?

Maybe you are now coming to discover the same "point" or benchmark on your personal Path and Journey towards "Life in the Past" that others have already discovered on theirs 5, 10, 20 years ago as they shift toward the right on the ever-evolving F/M/C/P/H/A Paradigm?

I do not go back that far, but I know/knew professors who were teaching American, Central American, South American, European, and Asian social history in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Maybe you have not encountered shifts but rather just came to the some of same or similar milestones in your own growth, progress, and evolution?



Curt
Heretic

[5thMIkeydet]

While I agree with Mr Schmidt and Mr Dyre, there is something to be said in a shift of focus that is not necessarily cyclic. As history expands and is continually researched I think people do tend to emphasize the Social and cultural side more. We will never be done studying the politics of the Civil War and other wars, but they are often times (arguably) more exhaustively studied than cultural issues. Often the more well known and comprehenisve studies of the ACW focus on big picture thinking. In some ways the individual soldier and civilian and their world are virgin forest waiting to be harvested.
I do disagree with the idea that Progressive Reenactors are behind this movement. If anything we are a tool of the movement. The modern layperson probably isn't as interested in being able to recite from memory all the members of Lincoln's cabinet as some members of this forum may be bale to do. They are interested in learning about the individuals who made up the time period and attempting to connect to their past. We facilitate that by doing a lot of the research into that and attempting to imitate them as truthfully as possible.
I think that we are seeing a natural progression. As time continues to distance itself from the events of our past, more and more study is done. As more and more is researched, the quest for knowledge will naturally cause us to explore different areas. Eventually areas of simingly less grander consequence quickly become much more important. Is inconsequintial to history which kind of wool was used in the Richmond Depot type II jacket. Yet we find ourselves, as living historians, seeking out some of the most insanely minute details of the ACW Joe and his family back home. We do this as part of our effort to educate ourselves and others and really appreciate those smaller building block and pieces that make up the larger Political and Economic issues that result from the war and influenced, in some degree or another, American History in the last 150 yrs.
Just 2 cents from a fellow undergrad.
This would make an interesting essay to develop and research more fully. And take out the generalizations.

[CSchneider]

If you're really interested in learning about the historiographical study of the Civil War, take a look at this volume:

Woodworth, Steven E. ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996).

Let's make it clear that at 750 pages this is far more than a "handbook," and being compiled in 1996 is a bit dated, but is a good record of the historiography of Civil War scholarship up to that point.

-Craig Schneider

[Hank Trent]

I've definitely noticed a shift from military/tactical history to social history in the last 15+ years in reenacting, and as everyone has mentioned there's been a general shift, overall, from political to social history in the last couple of generations.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I've never really noticed a huge emphasis on the interpretation of political history in reenacting, other than the occasional appearance of a Lincoln impersonator or some Confederate reenactors who genuinely want to bring the Confederacy back, and their enemies. But even they seem to argue more from a social-history or military-history viewpoint. Not so much "Jeff Davis's economic policy..." or "The federal government's relationship with Russia...," but "my grandpa was a poor farmer who didn't own no slaves so it's all about heritage not hate," or "If only General Lee had done X we could have won."

Military and tactical history, yes. Who marched where, who should have done what at what point during the battle, what made general so-and-so decide to do what he did--that was the major focus (rightly so) when reenactments were pure battle re-creations. Then interest increased in researching and trying to recreate the experience of the common soldier, his military life outside of the battle, his life before the war, his family at home, the affect of war on the population around the battlefield and the homefront, and so forth, all of which required a social history viewpoint.

What are we referring to concerning the widespread interpretation of political history at reenactments? I wonder if I'm breaking out military/tactical history as something separate, when I really should be including it under the umbrella of political history.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Benedict]

I, as a student of History, can only cosign the remarks that there has been a trend from the political, top-down point of view in History to the "average joe" perspective. This is not to say that social studies are replacing discussions on politics and leaders, but that they coexist. Maybe this also has to do with a growing tendency of interdisciplinary work- History and Archeology, or a more intense implementation of Gender Studies in History, for example. After all, History is not just "History", but Social History, Military History, and so forth.

[Curt Schmidt]

Hallo!

True.

I would add though, IMHO, there are two "forks in the path" at work here that may need to be developed further.

I look toward the academic discipline of "historiography" as being two things: one, a studying of the growth and development of "history" over time as an academic discipline (as well as in different times and among diffrent peoples and cultures). And the studying of the methods and particular tools that were used, and are being, used.
And, two, the actual writings that were written about a certain topic or event during a certain time.

So yes, there is the study of the history of political events, but there is the shift toward social history and "mental structures."
When it comes to so-called "reenacting" or so-called "living history" as a developing mix of recreation, pageantry, practice, history, social history, political history, etc., we have seen its own "historiography" grow and develop into the "F/M/C/P/H/A Paradigm" since the rise of "leisure time" after WWII.

I see these two things as an evolution down the Path that some lads chose to take as part of their Mental Pictures- and how both part of the "historical method" has been borrowed and adapted by "reenacting" to unite a shift in focus from the names, dates, and places of "famous" personages and battles down to the everyday happenings in the lives of Everyday men, women, and children (the Cosmic Events in Ordinary Lives).

Curt

[styler]

How many times do we refer to the Crisis of 1857 in our reenacting lives?

History is a whole, but that's sometimes more than folks want to bite. Nibbling at diverse subjects often seems the only way to digest the past.