Talk:Social history

History Mid‑importance

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Sociology Mid‑importance

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older comments

Wikipedia isn't a homework resource. Don't treat it as such. 199.5.204.100 22:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In general, isn't social history focused around religious, economic, and class related topics? OttOO 05:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

require cleanup?

What part of the article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards? Please list or removed the tag. J. D. Redding 03:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

???

Social history (medicine) --84.137.13.165 (talk) 12:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a PhD Student in History, I can attest to the fact that this is an absolutely terrible description of social history. Generally speaking, social history is a type of historical writing concerned with documenting the history of those groups left out of conventional political, military and economic histories (which focused narrowly on the history of powerful individuals and groups). It is a way of doing history, however, not an area of historical inquiry. The American Civil Rights movement is not an example of social history. You could write a social history of the American Civil Rights movement, but you could also write a political or cultural history about the same topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.165.230 (talk) 20:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we invite you to help us make it better. If you're a PhD student then you have access to university libraries and research tools. You can certainly help us improve the article considerably. Protonk (talk) 20:26, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I don't have the time to re-do the entry right now because I am studying for my comprehensive exams. I wrote the comment mainly because I was concerned that the "needs improvement" tag would be removed if no one elaborated on what was wrong with the article. This entry does not accurately describe what social history is and contains a number of factual errors. It would be unfortunate if the tag were removed and readers were misled. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.165.230 (talk) 02:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can help rewrite to focus on what social historians actually do. It's a hodge-podge right now (rather like "social history" was in 1950), but an enormous amount of scholarship by thousands of professions historians deserves attention. Rjensen (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes

These are of relevance and I have seen Trevelyn's comment used as an example of the debate surrounding social history's place elsewhere (ironically, it was in Fulbrook's Historical Theory, 2002, p.38). Yohan euan o4 (talk) 22:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article needs an overhaul

Women's history and gender history are poorly defined. There should be a subfield on the history of sexuality. And there should be a deeper discussion about the linguistic turn and the relationship between social and cultural history. A lot has happened since the '90s. But these are only a few of the issues I see.

Parts of this article are poorly written and not well informed. Two examples:

"Gender history focuses on women's history, the gender roles and homosexuality, in terms of actual behavior." First of all, gender history and women's history are often used together to study the experiences of women but women's history is not the main focus. Secondly, what does the latter part of that sentence even mean? There is an established and growing literature on the history of sexuality, so trying to lump homosexuality into gender history is not necessary. What this sentence means by "actual behaviour" is beyond me.

"Political historians complain that social historians are likely to put too much stress on the dimensions of class, gender and race, reflecting a leftist political agenda that assumes outsiders in politics are more interesting than the actual decision makers." Some do, but I know that *many* political historians borrow heavily from insights about intersectional identities to write their histories. Also, intersectional identities do not just focus on the "outsiders." There is a lot more attention right now being focused on how issues of class, race and gender have affected elites, as well as the interactions between the state and political subjects. This section needs to be more reflective of the current discussions between political and social history.

I have exams right now, but I will contribute as much as I can over the holidays. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cronowing (talk • contribs) 06:26, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And please someone define gassy terms like 'discourse', so often thrown into the mix to make some trivial matter sound significant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:44B8:3102:BB00:581C:E55C:C0BE:BDE2 (talk) 20:51, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

External links section needs a careful review

For example, links to a society's main webpage is WP:SOAP.

In an attempt to de-escalate the disputes between myself and Rjensen, I may not be prompt in responding to comments here until the other disputes are further along. --Ronz (talk) 04:35, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I in fact did give it a careful review--I actually looked at each site and evaluated it & erased some dead sites. It is false and nonsense to state "links to a society's main webpage is WP:SOAP." [the rule at wp:EL is Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. These links are normally exempt from the links normally to be avoided ] Rjensen (talk) 04:54, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an official link. --Ronz (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Page rewrite for worldview

I've rewritten the page so that it has a worldview taking into account all the various sub-definitions of social history as they emerged in various countries. The page on People's history doubles up and redirects 'history from below' to it. This is not accurate as new social history is history from below whereas people's history is very much associated with Howard Zinn's approach as he defined it in the book The Politics of History. I suggest the people's history page is subordinated to this social history page. The River Bytham (talk) 22:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article does not clearly explain why the Marxism template is used

Hi, the article contains the Marxism template prominently near the top of the article, but just from reading the introduction there is no explanation on Social history's relation to Marxism, or whether there is one. I'm sure this is a topic of study in the West as well, so having the Marxism template featured so prominently at the top might be a little bit misleading.

An appropriate change by to creating a section exclusively for Marxism study of Social history and sliding the template down to be next to that new section. Alexysun (talk) 16:57, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be misleading to shed social history of its history. As other sections wtihin the wiki explain social history is historiographically linked to Marxism and its repudiation of great man history. The raison d'etre was the view that history was made by society as a whole not by the rich and powerful in a vacuum. This social history very slowly spread from the UK and France, both schools owing a debt to Marx as well as Engels who wrote social history. In the 1980s however the field became confused, like so much else, as historians were detached from philosophy and political economy. Certain sub-fields of social history then became a curiosity-driven "what was life like for normal people" affair of no particular relevance to the bigger debates it was concerned with. This was especially so among historians in the USA. The wiki on People's History/the American social history approach does need to be renovated as it is still very confused although there again Zinn and the like were socialists influenced by Marxism if not actual Marxists! The People's History page does not have a Marxist template (rightly in my view) as many non-American social historians don't see people's history as social history (wrongly in my view). I will change the introduction of the social history page to improve on clarity. The River Bytham (talk) 10:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]