Returning to Social History

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and

expanding group.

He also surveys social

history

developments

in France

An-

nales and

the U.S.

( social-scientific

history ).

For Eley the turn

to Marxism was

absolutely

central.

He

was

deeply

influenced

by authors

like Raymond

Williams, Antonio Gramsci,

and particularly

Edward P.

Thompson,

whom

he

selected

as

his model. As

a

result,

Eley

developed

a

strong

identification

with a specific

type of social

history that was

still defined

by

the

belief

in

the primacy

of

socio-economic

factors of explanation,

which

was highly

interested

in culture

in

the

sense of embedded

cultural

practices, and which

heavily

I

would say, narrowly)

concentrated on

the history of class

(especially

the

working

class)

while pursuing

a

totalizing ambition, namely,

the

aim

of

understanding

the

history

of

society

at large

from

the perspective

of

Marxist class

analysis. Under

the

heading

Optimism,

the

first part of the

book

manages well

to

reconstruct the

excitement,

the dynamics,

and the productivity

of

those years.

Eley

shows why

it

was

a

good time

to

become

a

social historian

with broad interests in

societal his-

tory.

He

revives

the

high

hopes

young social historians

with his

profile

then

cher-

ished with

respect

to changing

the discipline as well

as the world.

In

the second part

of the book (61-114)

Eley

tries

to

show

that,

how,

and why

these hopes

have failed.

For that purpose

he rehashes

an old controversy

that he

had with

a German group

of

social historians

(including

this reviewer) in the

1970s, and

that seems

to have left

its

scars.

He recollects how

his initial excite-

ment

about

the Bielefeld

School

turned

into disappointment.

The

controversy

related

to specifics

of

research

on the

German

Kaiserreich

(especially

by

Hans-

Ulrich Wehler);

to the

comparative

interpretation

of modern

German

history rela-

tive

to the West

and

with regard

to

the

breakdown

of German democracy under

the onslaught

of Nazism

in

1933

(the

Sonderweg

debate); and to

the relation

be-

tween

structure/process

and

perception/agency

in

social-historical explanation.

In

retrospect

I concede that Eley

had

many

good

points. Positions

he then attacked

have been

modified

later

on,

the advocates

of

the Sonderweg

thesis

have

learned

to

historicize their

position,'

and

there

was indeed an

overemphasis on

structures

and processes

here and there

to be corrected in

the following

years. In retrospect

it

is

quite clear that

Eley's

The

Peculiarities

f

German

History:

BourgeoisSociety

and

Politics

in Nineteenth-CenturyGermany,

which

he co-authored

with David

Blackbourn,

2

had a productive

influence, for

example, on the

emerging research

about the bourgeoisie

of

nineteenth-

and twentieth-century

Europe, a

field that al-

lowed

German

historians

in the 1980s

to

interconnect social

and

cultural history

in a specific way.

(This

is an

important

development,

not

mentioned

in

Eley's

account at all.) In other

aspects

of the

controversy,

I think we

were

right, and

Eley

was

wrong:

the victory of

fascism in some

European

countries

cannot

be suf-

ficiently

explained in

terms

of

capitalist

crisis

nor by the immediate turbulences

following

World War

I,

but

was made

possible

and

was facilitated

by long-term

JORG N

KOCKA

422



RETURNING

TO

SOCI L

HISTORY?

The reconstruction

of

perceptions

and

actions

is

indispensable,

but

cannot

replace

the analysis

of

structures

and

processes

that

both

condition (not

determine)

as

well

as

follow

them

(frequently

in

unintended

and

unanticipated

forms).

Eley

had

no

access

to the

Weberian

spirit in which

we

in

Bielefeld

used

social

con-

cepts

and

theories, including

Marxist

ones.

From

Weber one

could

learn to avoid

any kind

of

social

determinism

and

to

understand

how much

one's conceptual

choices

always depend

on one's own

cultural

constellation

and normative

orienta-

tion,

which

change

and

are

not shared

by everybody.

From

Weber

one

could

learn

that

even

the most

comprehensive

history

of

a whole

society

cannot but

be

selec-

tive

and

constructed

according

to

the research

interests,

questions, and

concepts

of

its

author, that

is,

it

cannot really

be total

and

is

never

definitive.

For Eley

we were

not

Marxist

or

culturalist

enough, while

at

the

same

time

we

were

too

liberal

and

perhaps too

Social

Democratic

(94).

His presentation

of West German

social

history

in

the 1970s

is

one-sided

and partisan.

He likes to

divide

the

world

between

friends

and foes, and

he

remembers

well

who belongs

to whom.

Finally,

everything

was

very

much

in flux

in

the 1970s,

including

in

the small

Bielefeld

grouping.

Why

should

such a normal

and

interesting

controversy

among

social

historians have

led

Eley

into

deep

doubts

about

the

potential

of his

variant

of

social

history

and

of social

history

in

general?

His

other arguments

are better.

In a well

considered

and

fair

reconstruction

of

the

outstanding

work

by

Tim Mason

(on Nazism

and

the working

class)

and

of

his

failure to

develop

this into

a

comprehensive ( totalizing )

analysis

of

German

fascism

from

a social-historical,

class-analytical

point

of

view,

Eley

manages

to

show

that

there

are

limits

to what

social-historical

analysis

can

reach,

particularly

if it

works from

a Marxist

class-analytical

standpoint

A

a Thompson.

In addition,

this

type of

social

history

faced

other limits

when

confronted

with non-class

is-

sues

like

gender, increasingly

discussed

and

dramatized

by feminists.

Eley

plausi-

bly

argues

that

he,

like

other social

historians,

became

aware

of

such

limits in

the

late

1970s

and

1980s.

He convincingly

shows

that

this

sobering

learning

process

was

decisively

supported

by the

changing

political

climate

of

the

late 1970s

an d

1980s,

when, not only

in

Britain, the

left

lost

out

and

the

Forward

March

of La-

bour in which

many

socialists

had

still believed

came

to

a halt (to

use

the title

of

Hobsbawm's

famous

speech

of

1978).

In those years

at

many

places, small

cracks

became

visible,

at

least

more

visible

than

before,

in

the widespread

(though

never

universal)

belief

in

the

superiority

of

the

social-historical

paradigm.

Eley traces

them

well.

I think that

the

shift

of

the

Zeitgeist

described

by

Eley

had many

ramifications

and

causes

hard

to

identify

in

a

short

book.

The

decline of

the intellectual

power

of Marxism

was, after all,

a

worldwide

phenomenon,

following several

decades

in

which

Marxist

ideas

had

experienced

a

surprising

revival

that

may

be

even

harder

423



JURGEN KOCKA

source of collective

identity

than

as a medium

that showed the changeability of

the

world.

Eley has interesting things to

say

about

this topic

(148-155).

On the

other

hand, I

think

that

Eley

tends to overstate

his case. Throughout

the book he overstresses

the

impact

of politics on

the

historical discipline

and

underestimates

the

degree

to

which

it

follows

a

logic

of

its

own.

In

addition,

the

crisis he

describes

was

much

more a crisis of

the class analytical standpoint

of Thompsonian

social

history (112)

than of other

variants of

social history

or

social history

in general.

But

the

main

thrust

of his argument

is

convincing.

The

time in which

nearly everybody

had

wanted

to become

or at least be called

a so-

cial

historian

ended in

the late 1970s

and early 1980s.

It had

lasted

not more than

a

decade.

The

third part of

the book (115-182) is

a

fascinating

account

of how Eley, now

at the University of Michigan,

reacted to this

perceived

crisis: by programmati-

cally

moving

away from social

history, by fully

embracing

the

cultural

turns

of

the 1980s

and

1990s,

by deeply

plunging

into the

post-structuralist,

culturalist

mood of the time.

Eley combines

a

vivid account of

single conferences, forma-

tive

encounters,

and

specific

reading

experiences

with short

introductions

into

an

impressive number

of fresh, at least

newly perceived,

intellectual

departures and

scholarly

fashions,

and

then tries

to

make clear

why he joined them.

Taking

the

turn (121) would

be

the

appropriate

heading for

the

whole chapter.

Eley

deals

with

the

challenges

and

opportunities

of gender

history (very important for him),

new social

theorizing, Anglo-American

cultural studies,

the

renewed

alliance

be-

tween history

and

anthropology,

non-class

issues like

race and post-colonial

think-

ing

about transcultural entanglements,

as

well as the nearly promiscuous

(143)

boom

in public

memory work

as

a form

of nostalgia

for

the present (Fredric

Jameson), which

in

my view,

however,

did not lead to

blurring

the lines

between

professional

history

and other

forms

of

historical remembrance

but to the

rise

of

a

new subfield:

history

of

memory, Eley

has much

to

say

about

the linguistic

turn

and postmodern

thought, about

decentering

the

writing of

history, and the

importance

of subjectivity,

this last in

relation to older

trends

like microhistory

and

everyday

history. Some of

his miniatures

are

brilliant,

and many

of

them

not

only strongly partisan

in an affirmative

sense, but

also informative,

particularly

for

readers who,

like

this

reviewer,

have

been more

reluctant

in

embracing

the

cultural

turn in all its

facets. I particularly

like

Eley's

short

exposition

of what

Foucault

meant

for

him

and may

offer

to

historians

(127-129),

as well as his well

informed

genealogy of

the postcolonial

impact on

historical

thought

and writing

in England,

the

U.S., and India

since the 1980s

(138-148).

Backing

Away

from

the

Social

(155)

can be seen

as

the common

denomina-

tor of

most of these

trends, as

well as a

growing

distance

from economic

history

and reasoning.

It

is

surprising how affirmative

and

uncritical

Eley's

account

of

424



RETURNING

TO SOCI L

HISTORY?

other hand it

is irritating

to

read

how

little Eley-who

continues

to

see

himself

as

a

Europeanist -has

to say with

respect

to

the

fundamental

caesura

around

1989-1991

about

what

it

meant

for intellectuals

from

the

left and

for

historical

thought

and

writing.

Here

he has lost

contact

with

the changing

reality of histori-

cal

scholarship and

thought,

at least in

Europe. If

this is the price

to

be

paid

for his

cultural

turn with

a

Marxist

flavor, it

is

too

high.

In

a short final

chapter,

titled Defiance,

Eley starts his

own reflections

about

the

costs

and

the shortcomings

of the last

decades'

move

toward cultural

history.

He

realizes that,

in practical

historical research and

writing, the

hotly

debated op-

position between

social history

and cultural

history is

frequently transformed

into

interesting

combinations

that bring elements

from

both sides together.

(This

is, I

want to

add, very true

and

at

least

as old

a phenomenon as the

heated

debate

on

social

vs.

cultural

history itself.

If

one takes this

seriously,

it

relativizes

the weight

of

this debate quite

a

bit.) Eley

also

concedes that

important large-scale

problems

like state-formation,

nation-building,

class conflict,

revolutions, capitalism,

social

inequality,

and

long-term

changes

of

whole

societies have been

utterly

neglected

or driven underground

under the

impact of the

different cultural,

linguistic,

and

other turns

that kept us

busy.

He

hopes

that the possibility

will

be regained

of

grasping

society

as

a

whole,

of

theorizing

its

basis of cohesion and

instability, and

of analyzing

its form

of

motion

(201-202). He

throws

skeptical

glances

at

what

happens

outside

the

new cultural histories,

for example, global

history

and

histori-

cal

sociology. Grand

narratives

can't

be

contested

by

skepticism

and

incredulity

alone,

least of all

when new or

refurbished grand

narratives

are so

powerfully

reordering

the

globe (203).

For these

tasks so central

for

a politically commit-

ted

history

on

the

left he

does

not

find

much

in

the

new

cultural

histories. He

is

correctly convinced that

a simple

return to

the social

history of

the 1960s and

1970s is impossible. But

he wants

to explore how

and

in what

form

the

earlier

moment of social history

might be

recuperated (xii).

He

concludes with the

quest

for

new

histories of society

that would profit

from both shocks

of innovation in

my lifetime,

the social

history wave and

the new

cultural history (203).

All that

is well

and

good. It resonates

with

many

previous criticisms

of cul-

turalism

and

with skeptical

voices

from inside the

cultural historical

camp

that,

ever since

the

late 1990s,

have

started

to

look

beyond the

cultural turn.

It fits

recent experiments

of younger

historians with new

variants of

social-cultural

his-

tory under the name

of history of

practice.

The

new curve

in

Eley's intellectual

biography

deserves full support.

But so far it

remains vague,

indeterminate, and

in a way

helpless.

If Eley

means

it

seriously he will have

to distance

himself

more

clearly, certainly

not from

the many rich

results and

impressive

achievements

of

the

discipline's

cultural

turn

in

general,

but from the

anti-analytic, anti-structural,

voluntaristic, and fragmentizing

thrusts central

to

some

of

its

theories and prac-

425



JURGEN

KOCKA

are not even touched upon by Eley, who, after

all, is

not really interested in com-

parison.

Other social historians

have

dealt

with the changing

times, the new is-

sues,

and the challenges

of cultural history

in very different

ways neither practiced

nor

described by Eley:

by critical debate,

by partial rejection

and partial adoption

of

new

thoughts

and

challenging alternatives,

by

intensive learning,

by

combining

openness to change

with the virtue

of consistency. Social

history has undergone

a

deep

restructuring,

has lost old opponents and

gained new

ones,

became

even

more

heterogeneous,

more fragmented, and still

harder to delineate;

it entered into

many

new

combinations

and penetrated

historical thought

and writing

in

general.

It remains

lively,

dynamic,

and

good

for

surprises, in numerous

forms

and

in

many countries.

Presently

its

transnationalization

is

well

on the way.'

Today

the

concept

social

history

is less

in

vogue

than

some

decades

ago.

Social

history

is

presently

less

political

and

utopian than

in

the 1960s and 1970s.

Compared with

those

early years, social

history

is

now

less of

a program,

but more of a

reality.

rich literature

is

available that offers

many impulses

and building

blocks to any-

body interested

in writing histories

of societies.

But it needs

new viewpoints,

questions, and categories

to bring them

together and off

the ground.

JURGEN

KOCKA

Free University

of Berlin

3.

Informative overviews,

reflections,

and

examples documenting

recent developments in

social

history

worldwide can be

found

in

Journalof Social History 37, no.

(Fall

2003). Just a

few

examples

from a German

and European perspective include

Hans-Ulrich

Wehler's four-volume history of

German

society,

Deutsche

Gesellschaftsgeschichte

Munich:

C. H.

Beck, 1987-2003); a

final volume

on

the

period

1949-1990

will

appear

in

2008; G6ran

Therborn,

European Modernity

and Beyond: h

Trajectory

o

European

Societies

1945-2000

(Newbury

Park, CA: Sage

Publications,

1995);

Charles

S.

Maier, Consigning the 20th

Century to

History: Alternative

Narratives for the

Modern Era,

426



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TITLE: Returning to Social History?

SOURCE: Hist Theory 47 no3 O 2008

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