Can we still do social history?
In this alert and incisive essay, Olivier Faure opens the debate: he demonstrates to what extent cultural history has gradually gained ascendancy over the methods and approach of social history.
This text is intended to be a plea for a history that brings to the fore the concrete conditions in which individuals and groups live. It thus invites us to multiply the scales and to use concepts from sociology, while calling into question certain preconceived ideas (the rural exodus, the existence of homogeneous classes, etc.).
A useful little book to guide all those interested in history, in the choice of their research subject, their problem and their method.
Olivier Faurehistorian, has devoted his research to the relationship between the health system and society. It highlighted the social demand for care in populations and the role of auxiliary medical professions. He notably published The French and their medicine in the 19th century (Paris, Belin, 1993) and more recently Against medical deserts. Health officers in France in the first 19th century (Tours, PUFR, 2020).
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Table of contents
Introduction
I – A forgotten but necessary approach
From domination to disappearance?
The triumph of cultural history
The return of social history
Socio-history and social history
II – A demanding method
Archives of individuals and families
Heritage archives
From some other sources
III – Multiple approaches
Men and women
Orders, classes and professions
Order societies and class societies
Groups, networks, cohorts and generations
The microstoria
Biography at the service of social history
IV – Thinking about society
Individuals and society: the false opposition
Determinisms and freedom
Distancing or empathy
What if it was all literature?
V – Certainties shaken up
The myth of the rural exodus?
Proto-industrialization or soft industrialization?
Cities and countryside: an outdated distinction?
A shattered bourgeoisie?
“The end of the working class? »
VI – Administer, know and organize society
Appease society
Know and classify
Identification of people
VII – Prevent, protect, treat
Rising medical consumption
One revolution among others: medicalization
Environmental risks
Professional risks
VIII – Surveillance and benevolence
Poor or poverty
Monitor and punish or the impossible prison
Charity and philanthropy
The fragmented assistance
IX – A story facing the fray
Fight for new causes
Historians face activism
From the social question to the racial question?
Conclusion. For an open social history
