Tensions of Social History: Sources, Data, Actors and Models in Global Perspective (Global History: European Perspectives and Approaches)

Public debates and anxieties about illegal migrants to Europe (and the US border, between India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, etc.) focus not just on abstract considerations about the ‘others’ but also on empirical evidence: how many migrants are really coming? What is their social status on departure and their political status on arrival?Observers inevitably compare current trends with historical ones. The same is true for debates about social inequalities on global scale, at the very core of social studies since the beginning of the millennium and peaking with Piketty’s bestseller, Capital in the 21st Century. His book’s success is closely related to the quantification in its main argument. Or consider evaluations of the social impact of global warming and environmental change: any suggestions or timetabling about the future require the measurement of multiple variables and their past trends. Attempts to put global warming into a ‘natural’ very long term have been made by economic andpolitical lobbies hostile to any restriction of current lifestyles and economies. Cover 1 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 Part 1 What is a source? Archives, memory and contested contextualities 28 1 Revolutionary archives 30 Where multiple worlds meet: revolution, theatre and cosmographies 32 Archives and the French Revolution 36 2 Archives in the twentieth century: from communism to the decolonization 42 Totalitarian archives? 42 Written sources against oral documents: the invention of the source and people with no history 51 Locating the archives 54 Conclusion: Part 1 63 Part Two The social life of data 66 Introduction: archives, data and models 67 3 When one person eats two chickens and another none, on average they eat one chicken each. The invention of social statistics under capitalism 72 The social construction of an artefact: questionnaires, expeditions, texts and data 76 Back to the future. From Russian statistics to Piketty 79 4 Environment and social inequalities: how are data made and by whom? 82 Weather forecasting: science, divination or both? 85 Predicting future harvests 88 Cyclones: from travel narratives to forecasting 94 Cyclones in the archives 101 Conclusion: Part 2 106 Part Three Fragments of social worlds 110 Introduction 111 How can this discussion be developed in transregional and global perspective? 112 5 What is a worker, what is a slave? 116 Who is the ‘real’ slave? 121 6 What is a peasant? The global history of ‘immobile people’ 132 Fighting for or against ideal types. Peasant studies in the Cold War 135 Peasants in history? Pluri-activity and multiple identities 139 7 What is a consumer? Identities and alterities in the stomach 150 Quantifying consumption and its roots: famines or speculation? 153 Quality in consumption: Who defines it? 157 Standardization and mass consumption 164 Conclusion: Part 3 168 Part Four The quest of universality: values, theories and the European model 170 8 Societies and their evolution: from the Enlightenments to Marxisms 172 Marx’s social actors in global context 175 Neo-Marxism and the ‘social turn’ 180 9 Weberian worlds 184 The great divergence: Weber on his head? 190 Durkheim and the Annales School 193 Social structures and the longue durée 195 Back to anthropology? 198 Conclusion: Part 4 202 General conclusion 204 References 211 Index 245 ''This book seeks to overcome the tension between 'western' and 'non-western' categories and tools in the study of global history, showing how most western approaches to the social sciences and history have developed through transnational and colonial interactions. Offering a transnational and global history of the main tools we have to understand the word and its transformations over the last three centuries,Tensions of Social Historyexplores the construction of archives and historical memory, the making of statistics and their use in politics, the identification of social actors, and the emergence of key social theories. Providing key insights into how to write history and develop social sciences in the global era while avoiding eurocentrism and cultural exceptionalism, this ambitious book shows how global history is made of encounters rather than confrontations between civilizations.''-- Site de l'éditeur This book seeks to overcome the tension between 'western' and 'non-western' categories and tools in the study of global history, showing how most western approaches to the social sciences and history have developed through transnational and colonial interactions. Offering a transnational and global history of the main tools we have to understand the word and its transformations over the last three centuries, Tensions of Social History explores the construction of archives and historical memory, the making of statistics and their use in politics, the identification of social actors, and the emergence of key social theories. Providing key insights into how to write history and develop social sciences in the global era while avoiding eurocentrism and cultural exceptionalism, this ambitious book shows how global history is made of encounters rather than confrontations between civilizations. Led by Ben Offiler and Rachel Williams, the authors demonstrate the benefits of embracing a broad definition of philanthropy, examining how American concepts including benevolence and charity have been used and interpreted by different groups and individuals in an effort to shape - and at least nominally to improve - people's lives both within and beyond the United States