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Social history has the defects of its qualities. Its preference for ‘human’ documents and for close-up views have the effect of domesticating the subject matter of history, and rendering it – albeit unintentionally – harmless. The ‘sharp eye for telling detail’ on which practitioners pride themselves, the colloquial phrases they delight to turn up, the period ‘atmosphere’ they are at pains faithfully to evoke, all have the effect of confusing the picturesque and the lifelike with the essence of which it may be no more than a chance appearance (much the same defect can be seen on the ‘background’ detail of historical romance and costume drama). Whereas political history invites us to admire the giants of the past and even vicariously to share in their triumphs, its majesty reminds us of the heights we cannot scale. Social history establishes an altogether intimate rapport, inviting us back into the warm parlour of the past.
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A third view of social history is that it is concerned with experience rather than action. One might argue that people who are wage-earners, parents, citizens, consumers and much else besides must possess some sense of identity which underlies all these particular roles and must experience the world in ways which extend beyond these roles. The job of the social historian is to provide a general understanding not at the level of ‘society as a whole’ but at the level of the individual or the members of particular social groups.But there are problems with this. All the historian can do is study the records of people’s actions in the past which still exist. The temptation to go ‘behind’ those actions to the ‘real’ people can lead to unverifiable speculation. It can lead away from the concern with specific events which is the essence of history. Finally it can lead away from the social into the psychological. The recent upsurge of interest in the history of ‘everyday life’ has sometimes demonstrated these weaknesses when it has sought to go beyond the rather antiquarian pursuit of bits and pieces of ‘ordinary life’.