LOSSES, GAINS AND OPPORTUNITIES:

SOCIAL HISTORY TODAY

By Jiirgen Kocka Freie Universitat Berlin
The impression is widely spread that this is not a good moment to be a so'
cial historian. It has become common-place that our present situation differs
strongly from the situation around 1970 when Eric Hobsbawm made his famous
proclamation of optimism. Social history seems to have gone through a long
period of decline which started in the early 1980s and may not have reached its
rock, bottom yet. Mounting challenges to social historical views from outside,
increasing internal doubt about basic principles of social-historical thought, frag-
mentation and loss of identity, declining popularity among researchers, students
and in the public at large have been characteristic for the last 20-25 years, or
so it seems. Certainly in Germany nobody would nowadays characterize social
history the way it was characterized by Hans Rosenberg in 1969. With irony and
sympathy he remarked that social history has become a nebulous code for every'
thing deemed to be desirable and progressive in West German historiography.'
But the news from other countries is not much better: For decades, a "Social
History Seminar" had been offered in Cambridge University. A while ago it
was renamed into "Themes in Modern History", and students talked about "the
seminar formerly known as social".
While there is overwhelming evidence which supports the skeptical notion of
a long, term decline of social history, the characterization is only half true. First,
there were not only losses, but gains as well. Depending on the criteria used, the
latter may be seen as more important than the former. Second, a new turn seems
to be imminent which may lead to a renaissance of social history though in a
deeply restructured form.
The following remarks will not tell the story of social history as it developed
from the 1960s to the present day, for the story is familiar.r Rather I shall corn'
ment first on some losses and secondly on some gains which social history seems to
have experienced since the time when Rosenberg and Hobsbawm wrote. Thirdly,
I shall comment on some challenges and opportunities which are visible today.
These will be general remarks, but with some concentration on the German
case. My field is modern history.
I have two meanings of social history in mind: (1) social history as a special,
ized sub-discipline concentrating on social structures, processes, and actions in
a specific sense (inequality, mobility, classes, strata, ethnicity, gender relations,
urbanization, work and life of different types of people, not just elites), in con'
trast to other sub-disciplines like economic history, constitutional history or the
history of ideas; (2) social history as a specific approach to or way of looking
on general history, by stressing broad structures and processes as well as those
dimensions of historical reality emphasized by social history in sense (l).
3
History as a discipline is tremendously rich, varied and heterogeneous. For
every generalizing remark on the recent and present state of the profession it is
easy to find evidence to the contrary and a host of exceptions, particularly in a

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22 journal of social history fall 2003
short comment like the following. If its shortcuts can be excused at all, it is by
referring to the larger discussion toward which it is directed.
Social ..scientific history in decline
Besides economic history and historical demography social history belonged to
those sub-disciplines whichhave offered most opportunities for the application of
analytical methods. It was in the history of social inequality, mobility, migration
and protests as well as voting and some other areas that mass-data could be
systematically collected and analvzed, by using advanced statistical methods,
sharply defined concepts, sophisticated models and rigid procedures for testing
them. Impulses from the neighbouring social sciences played a major role. Social-
scientific history in this sense was always only a small part of social history.
Most historians always knew that it would never conquer the whole since the
availability of such sources and the applicability of such methods would always
be limited to certain areas and problems, and since they would never be apt to
replace the more interpretative methods and fulfill their functions. Still, in the
60s and 70s, social-scientific history was a field of experiment, exitement and
innovation in which many new insights were generated, old legends criticized
and challenging hypotheses brought forward for further research. This had an
indirect impact on other parts of social history. It helped to raise the standards of
accuracy, rigidity and self-reflectivity within the historical discipline as a whole.
Social-scientific history has not disappeared altogether. The regular Social
Science History Conferences continue to draw sizeable numbers of historians
and social scientists, both in North America and in Europe. Those who continue
to use advanced analytical methods have further improved them. They are con-
tinuously aiming at sophistication and exploring new problem areas. But by and
large the appeal of this kind of research has clearly gone down. Social-scientific
history has become a narrow specialization in which other historians are little
interested. On the one hand disappointment has grown with the asymmetric
ratio between invested efforts and resulting insights. On the other hand, new
narrative approaches have captured the field. Most important, historians have
turned to new or, at least, other types of questions which cannot be answered by
quantification, analytical methods and scientific rigour.
It was never valid to over..estimate the potentials of social..scientific history,
and this is even truer today. It was always obvious that neither history at large
nor social history as a whole could be turned into a rigid "science". Still, at least
in Germany, these endeavours have been given up too early. We have criticized
social history's scientification before thoroughly exploiting its potentials, which
it undoubtedly offers in certain areas. Counting is certainly not everything, but
sometimes it helps. Giving it up altogether means a step back. In this respect we
have to register losses."
Losing the economy
Traditionally social history was closely tied to economic history. Both the his..
tory of social structures and processes as well as the history of the economy had
been neglected and marginalized by 19th and early mainstream

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LOSSES, GAINS AND OPPORTUNITIES: SOCIAL HISTORY TODAY 23
history. The emerging social sciences did not yet isolate social and economic
phenomena from each other. After all, they were intimately related. As a conse-
quence social history was seen and dealt with as an integral part of Wirtschafts,
und Sozialgeschichte, Histoire economique et sociale and Economic History (in,
eluding social aspects), as the emerging subdiscipline was called. This tradition
remained very influential throughout the first three quarters of the 20th century.
Marxist ideas reenforced the combination of social and economic history, We'
berian theories worked in the same direction, and so did prevelant intellectual
moods of the time up to the 1970s, which frequently granted remarkable weight
to economic factors of different kinds in explaining social, political, and cultural
changc'
Over the last two or three decades, social history has not only expanded and
diversified. It also loosened its ties to economic history while becoming more
independent and specialized or while moving closer to cultural history. This was
part of a process of the professionalization and the increasing autonomy of social
history as a sub, discipline. It was also a reaction to the increasing specialization
and self-referentiality of economics (and of those practitioners of economic
history who strictly oriented themselves towards the demands, theories and
methods of the economists). Finally, social history reacted to the rise of cultural
interpretations and the decline of economic interpretations of social change, a
decline which preceded but was reenforced by the collapse of institutionalized
Marxism in the late 1980s.
As a consequence, social history emancipated itself from problematic "ma-
terialist" paradigms, sometimes related to outdated base-superstructure models
of thought. At the same time, many social historians have lost interest in re'
lating their topics to broad economic structures and processes, to the modes of
production and distribution, to the basic needs of people and the constraints
set by scarcity. It is somehow ironic: At a time when capitalism is victoriously
completing its world, wide extension, when commercialisation penetrates the
most internal and intimate dimensions of our life, and when the power and the
crisis of the globalizing economy make themselves felt universally, many social
historians display a strange distance from the economic world. Fiddling while
Rome is burningi?
Paradigm change
The intellectual climate has deeply changed, at least in the West, in the last
quarter of the 20th century, and so has the set of predispositions which indirectly
influence the study of history. The declining popularity of socio-economic expla-
nations of historical change as well as the rising interest in culture and cultural
interpretations both of the present and of the past are part of this change. In
addition, we have become much more skeptical about the possibility of grasp'
ing broad structures and processes and of using them for explaining actions,
biographies and events.
There are many interests which motivate us to deal with history. They usually
eo-exist and mix. But it seems fair to say that a generation ago many people
studied history in order to learn from it, with respect to the present and the
future. Nowadays, many people deal with history in order to find out where

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24 journal of social history fall 2003
they come from and who they are, or with the aim of discovering and observing
alternative ways of life, or with the desire of enriching their mind, of broadening
their base of experience and of educating their senses. "Memory" has become a
central concept and a major activity when it comes to relating the past to the
present. This was not the case thirty years ago.
It is hard to explain such intellectual changes. To a small degree they may have
resulted from dynamics within the historical discipline. Previously held assump-
tions about the explainability of historical phenomena in terms of economic
and social processes were challenged and ultimately eroded, due to more thor-
ough research, its results and its failures. But mostly such intellectual changes
are part of larger cultural, social and political evolutions which should be seen
as conditions rather than consequences of scholarly work.
Their impact on social history has been manifold and cannot be easily bal-
anced with respect to gains and losses. To be sure, the relative place of social
history, in comparison with cultural and political history, has declined. But
in itself social history has become much richer and more sophisticated. On
the one hand, theory-orientied argumentations and systematic interpretations
of interrelatedness-in German: Zusammenhang-have frequently been chal-
lenged and rejected, in the postmodern climate of recent years, while they had
been and are attempted by some practitioners of social history. On the other
hand, the constructivist turn which has made itself felt in the humanities and
social sciences over the last decades, has helped to make social history more
self-reflective and subtle. In the course of this paradigm shift, explanation has
become less obvious, less self-evident, less desirable or less manageable for many
historians. Understanding has regained center-stage. Historians have become less
interested in establishing the causes and conditions, and more interested in
(re)constructing the meanings of past phenomena, i. e. the meanings a phe-
nomenon of the past had for contemporaries as well as the meanings it has or
may have for present historians and their audiences,"
Clearly, this shift is related to the changing expectations which guide our
dealing with history, and which were mentioned before. Some may deplore this
shift, and, indeed, question whether it is possible at all to reconstruct the his'
torical meaning of past phenomena without trying to explain them. Others may
welcome the shift from explanation to understanding, from causes to meanings,
as a step towards more freedom in dealing with the past. But one thing is clear:
Social history has not been upgraded by this shift, quite on the contrary, since
attempts towards systematic explanation, including causal explanation, have
always been and continue to be important in social history.
Gains
It would be wrong to overstress losses. Gains have been at least as important.
Two of them should be mentioned without describing them in detail.
If one compares the social history of 1970 with the social history of 2000, the
changes are deep reaching, broad and encouraging. The challenges of women's
and gender history; a new stress, in the 1980s, on perceptions, experiences and
actions as dimensions of historical reconstruction (in addition and in relation
to structures and processes); the rise of different variants of cultural history;

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LOSSES, GAINS AND OPPORTUNITIES: SOCIAL HISTORY TODAY 25
the "linguistic turn" and the challenges that it posed-these were some of the
important innovations. Partly they emerged from inside social history, but largely
they came from other spheres of scholarly and intellectual life. They led to vivid
debates and fights, there was much competition, there were winners and losers.
On balance, social historians learned from these challenges; they adopted and
incorporated what they perceived as valid among the suggestions and demands
of the challengers.
As a consequence social history has changed. In some respects it has greatly im-
proved. Social historians have learned to analyze the manifold relations between
different dimensions of social inequality, especially class, gender and ethnicity,
but also age. The stories they tell have become more complex. Social historians
have become better in relating structures and processes to perceptions and ac-
tions. The study of interests has been supplemented by the study of experiences.
Social historians have learned to take language seriously. They are more aware
nowadays of the "constructed" character of their objects, constructed by sernan-
tic, social and political acts of contemporaries as well as by the categories of the
researcher. Social historians have become more sensitive towards contextual,
ization. They have developed new alliances with anthropologists and cultural
historians. They have learned to decode symbolic practices. Their work has be,
come more self, reflective though not more analytical. Many of them now know
how better to play with macro" meso- and micro, levels of interpretation and
analysis. Social history has strongly expanded and, at the same time, diversified:
by and large much enrichment and a lot of progress.f
At the same time, social historians have penetrated the fields of general his,
tory to a remarkable extent. Take a German example, the major handbook of
German history, the Gebhardt, and here the volume on the 19th century. The
8th/9th edition was conceptualized in the 1950s. The chapters, which followed a
chronological order, were basically chapters on the history of politics and ideas.
Since this was so, a final chapter was added which encompassed the whole cen-
tury and dealt with "German economic and social history". Presently the 10th
edition has begun to appear. The volume on the 19th century will no longer
have a separate chapter on economic and social history. Instead, each of the
chronological chapters thoroughly deals with social history and interconnects
it with political, economic and cultural history."
Take both gains of social history together: internal expansion, enrichment,
differentiation and sometimes fragmentation; external expansion, i. e. social his,
tory's victorious entry into general history which, as a consequence, has been
deeply restructured and made more social-historical. If one considers this it is
very understandable why it has become less necessary, less meaningful and even
less possible to continue speaking of social history as a well identified subdisci-
pline or approach.
Up to the 1960s and 70s, social history established itself in contrast to gen-
eral history which had been largely political history, in essence. Social history
emerged either as a marginal or as an oppositional subdiscipline or approach, in
contradistinction from the received type of conventional history. It dealt with
problems and used methods which the mainstream of the discipline largely ne,
glected or marginalized. It identified itself by stressing this difference.-But: in
the meantime social historians' approaches, viewpoints, topics and results have

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26 journal of social history fall 2003
been accepted and incorporated by many other historians who would not call
themselves social historians. Social history has successfully penetrated its oppo-
nents. By losing its opponents it is losing part of its identity. A victory? A crisis?
Or both? At any rate: nothing to complain about, on the contrary.
Present opportunities
It is not likely that social history will become again the fascinating alternative
to mainstreamhistory which it used to be in the third quarter of the 20th century.
The concept will not regain this magic power. The internal heterogeneity of
social history has grown. Its outside borders were never sharply drawn. They
have been further blurred over the last decades. Social history today is even less
clearly defined than it used to be three decades ago.
Much has become accepted and integrated which had been controversial in
the 60s and 70s. In many quarters social history is doing well without being
specifically labeled. In many cases one reaps today what has been sown in the
70s. The field remains dynamic, full of innovations and capable of surprises. 10
At the same time, social historians continue to be characterized by convictions
and practices not shared by all historians. They reject all forms of strict method,
ological individualism. They are not primarily interested in single biographies
and specific events, but rather in collective phenomena. They try to reconstruct
"the social" including social inequality. They do not accept that the past can
sufficiently be understood as a context of perceptions, experiences, discourses,
actions and meanings, alone. They insist that conditions and consequences,
structures and processes have to be taken seriously and brought back in. They
try to combine understanding and explanation. Faced by the increasing "Balka-
nization", i. e. fragmentation, of the discipline and of historical reconstructions,
they stress the need for context and interrelation. I I
It may well be that, after the cultural, linguistic and constructivist turns of the
past, a new "social turn" is imminent. It is likely that the waves of cultural history
and discourse history which have swept the discipline in the last two decades
have now reached and transcended their high point, and a new demand for
social history is going to surface. But in this case it will not be the social history
of the 60s and 70s. Rather it will be a social history after the linguistic turn. It
will have to incorporate ingredients from political and cultural history, analyze
social phenomena as constructed, combine structure, agency and perception.
Maybe it will be a history of practice.v
The bulk of the production in social history (as far as it relates to modern
history) remains closely tied to the national historical paradigm. When social
historians leave the national historical level of analysis they tend to move to
smaller spaces (regions, towns, villages) rather than to more comprehensive
ones (although there are of course splendid exceptions to this rule, e. g. Braudel's
work). This is largely due to the same reasons which explain why other historical
sub-disciplines and approaches frequently stick to the national historical frame
of analysis: convention, language, accessibility of sources, the desire to deal
with one's own history, the continuous effects of collective self-identification
in national terms still today. It is remarkable how much even the most radical
social historical revisions of the traditional political history paradigmhave stayed

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LOSSES, GAINS AND OPPORTUNITIES: SOCIAL HISTORY TODAY 27
within the national historical framework, similar to the literature which they
sharply criticised in most other regards. Do some of the central concepts used in
social history-like "society" e. g.-direct historians' attention to the national
or to a sub-national level of analysis but not to a more comprehensive one?
On the other hand, the quest for trans-national approaches is rapdily growing.
Different types of "global" or "world history" are experimented with. This has
undoubtedly something to do with the recent waves of "globalization" which
create or strengthen networks, experiences and expectations far beyond the
scope of the national states.
How do social historians cope with this challenge? International comparison
has been the classical answer, for many years. Comparison can be an excellent
way of transcending the limits of national boundaries. Comparison has led to
remarkable results, and its potentialities are far from being exhausted.l' Still,
international comparison presupposes the notion of state and, in a way, sticks to
it, as much as it tries to overcome it.
"Connected histories", "entangled histories", histoire croisee, Verflechtungs-
geschichte, these are programmatic metaphors for approaches which try to be
trans-national in another way.They intend to reconstruct interrelations, mutual
influences, interconnections and border-crossings, e. g. between the West and
other parts of the world, in the periods of colonization, imperialism and after.
They study travelling ideas, exported and imported goods as well as migrating
people, and they discover the built-in dynamics of change due to interrelations.
Networks and relations become objects of study, instead of social entities like
specific societies or groups within specific societies.i"
So far it seems easier to apply this approach to the historical study of mu,
tual perceptions and influences, cultures and ideas than to social structures and
processes. But the recent experiences of internationalization and the increasing
quest for trans-national approches in historical thought, research and writing
have started to confront social historians with new challenges and opportuni-
ties. It will be interesting to see how they can cope with them and transform
themselves again.
FBGeschichts,und Kulturwiss
14195 Berlin
Germany
ENDNOTES
1. E.]. Hobsbawm, "From Social History to the History of Society," in: Daedalus
100, (Winter 1971), pp. 20-45, 43; H. Rosenberg, Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte
(Frankfurt, 1969), p. 147; G. Eley. "Is All the World a Text? From Social History to
the History of Society Two Decades Later," in: T. ]. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn
in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 193-243; P. Cartledge, "What is Social
History Now?," in: D. Cannadine, ed., What is History Now? (Houndsmills, Basingstock,
Hampshire, 2002), pp. 19-35.
2. Ch. Conrad, "Social History," in: N.]. Smelser/P. B. Baltes, eds., International Ency-
clopedia of the Social andBehavioral Sciences, vol. 21 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 14299-306.

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28 journal of social history fa112003
3. M. Perrot, "The Strength and Weaknesses of French Social History," in: Journal of
Social History 10, 1976, p. 166;J. Kocka, Sozialgeschichte. Begriff-Entwicklung-Probleme,
2nd ed. (Gortingen, 1986).
4. Cf. L. J. Griffin/M. van der Linden, eds., "New Methods for Social History" (Interna,
tional Reviewof Social History, suppl. 6), Cambridge 1999 (most authors come from Depart,
ments of Sociology). H. Best/W. Schroder, "Quantitative Historische Sozialforschung,"
in: Ch. Meier/J. Rusen, eds., Historische Methode (Munich, 1988), pp. 235-66; D. S.
Landes/Ch. Tillv, eds., History as Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971).
5. Cf. G. G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, CT, 1975).
6. Again, one at once thinks of many exceptions, e. g. the history of consumption or
the history of entreprise (as far as it has a social historical dimension). But consider the
decline of working class and labour history in the last fifteen years. Cf. J. Kocka, "New
Trends in Labour Movement Historiography: A German Perspective," in: International
Review of Social History 42, 1997, pp. 67-78.
7. Cf. the two recent essays with bibliographical references by D. Cannadine and R. J.
Evans, in: Cannadine, ed., What Is History Now?, pp. VII-XIV, 1-18.
8. Take social history in Germany as an example: J. Kocka, Sozialgeschichte in Deutsch,
land seit1945. Aufstieg-Krise-Perspektiven (Bonn, 2002); Th. Welskopp, "L'histoire so'
ciale du XIXe siecle: tendences et perspectives," in: LeMouvement social 200, [uly/Seprem-
ber2002,pp.153-62.
9. Cf. H. Grundmann, ed., Bruno Gebhardt, Handbuch derdeutschen Geschichte, vol.
3: Von derFranzosischen Revolution bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, Sth ed. (Stuttgart, 1960); J.
Kocka, Das lange 19. Jahrhundert. Arbeit, Nation und burgerliche Gesellschaft (Gebhardt,
Handbuch derdeutschen Geschichte, 10th ed., vol. 13, Stuttgart, 2001).
10. P. Steams, ed., Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000, vols. 1-6
(New York, 2001); H.,U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vols. 1-3 (Munich,
1987-95) (vol. 4 to appear in 2003).
11. "Balcanization" is discussed in Cartledge, "What is Social History Now?" (note 1
above), p. 21.
12. Cf. V. E. BonneU/L. Hunt, "Introduction," in: id., eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn.
New Directions in theStudyof Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 1-32,26; See also
the contributions byThomas Mergel, Sven Reichardt and Thomas Welskopp in the panel
"Gemeinschaft und Politik. Praxistheoretische Ansatze in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"
Deutscher Historikertag in Haale/Saale, September 11, 2002. Further examples in: Le Mou-
vement social, no. 200 (July/September 2002). The issue has the title "L'Histoire sociale
en mouvement".
13. Cf. H.,G. Haupt/]. Kocka, eds., Geschichte undVergleich. Ansiitzeund Ergebnisse inter'
national vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt, 1996); H. Kaelble, Der historische
Vergleich. EineEinfuhrung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1999); H.,G. Haupt,
"Comparison in History," in: N. J. Smelser/P. B. Baltes, eds., International Encyclopedia of
theSocial and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 4 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 2397-2403.
14. Cf. C. Charle, ed., Histoire Sociale, histoire globale? (Paris, 1993); S. Conrad/S. Ran'
deria, "Geteilte Geschichten-Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt," in id., eds., [enseits
des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts, und Kulturwissenschaften
(Frankfurt, 2002), pp. 9-49; J. Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des National,
staats. Studien zuBeziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich (Gottingen, 2001); J. Kocka,
"Comparison and Beyond," in: History and Theory 42,2003, pp. 39-44 (appearing).

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