31 Historical method in sociological research

M Rajivlochan

1. Objective

In this module you will learn about the nature and use of the historical method for sociological research. At the end are given some digital resources for use as also a brief bibliography pertaining to the use of the historical method.

2. Introduction

• Early sociology strongly historical in its orientation.
• With the emergence of quantitative streams of sociology those using the historical method get categorised as doing ‘qualitative’ sociology.

Sociology at its birth was practised as what would today be called ‘historical sociology’. The writings of Auguste Comte (Comte 1865) — the one who brought into widespread use the term ‘sociology’— and Herbert Spencer (Spencer 1851) were centred on the practise of history. Both Comte and Spencer, in their own way, were trying to make sense of large scale transformations in society and identify structures and processes that underlay the working of society by trying to evolve a ‘scientific’ understanding of society as it changed over time using information about the past. By the late nineteenth century the professionalization of the disciplines, the demands for more direct evidence and much more resulted in a presumption gaining importance within sociology that studying live individuals, in a suitably scientific manner, would provide the required scientific insight into the working of society that sociologists hoped to find. Gradually, what would broadly be known as ‘quantitative method’ in sociology was evolving into its own. In contrast, there was the ‘qualitative method’ that came to be more associated with names like Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Both, Marx and Weber, practised what would be today called ‘Historical Sociology’. However, they were very sensitive to the fact that history, as it was being practised in the nineteenth century, was essentially a discipline that revelled in the historians’ whimsy: what the historian was saying was history; you believed it to be correct at your own risk and responsibility. The best that historians from Germany could do was to restrict the craft of history and making it as close to being ‘scientific’ as possible. Let us note the celebrated injunction from the German historian von Ranke, who in the mid-19th century was the ‘Royal Historiographer’ in the Prussian court: history should be practised as a scientific discipline, the historian should back up their conclusions with information from the archives and it was important to first have a critical analysis of the sources. But, neither von Ranke nor his equally celebrated students provided a textbook method of how this could be done. Under the circumstances, people like Marx and Weber, interested more in the problems of contemporary times and delving into the past only in order to get an insight into their own specific contemporary problems, were forced to come up with their own strategies of systematisation and being scientific.

Marx’s way of being more ‘scientific’ involved taking a template of human behaviour that was considered to be universally true, hence ‘scientific’. ‘All history is a history of class struggle’, was the opening line of the Communist Manifesto, one of the earliest documents authored by Marx (1848). The subsequent endeavour to understand history involved stretching and testing evidence about social and individual action against this template. Marx’s much celebrated studies on the history of capitalism and the condition of industrial workers were significantly based on historical data from official archives (1867). This data had been mostly generated by the authorities of the State and the Church in order to

facilitate the governance of their respective institutions. Bringing about revolutionary changes or empowering people was not the purpose of these efforts at data collection and maintenance. It was Marx’s efforts to stretch the archival data over a revolutionary template that provided the basis of understanding the faults of nineteenth century society and the possibilities of bringing about changes in this society.

Max Weber equally used historical method to write both the history of medieval business organisations in 1889 (Weber 2003) and Roman agrarian history and its significance for public and private law in 1891 (1891). This, one could say, was Weber before Weberian sociology came into being. It was during these studies that Weber began to also systematise the concepts on the basis of which society could be studied, adding to the body of systematisation of concepts that would enable sociology to claim scientificity for itself.

• Little logical or methodological reason for separation between the ‘sociological’ and ‘historical’ method

Within the broad realm of the qualitative method in sociology came, by the mid-twentieth century, those enquiries in which the historical method was used more extensively. Many sociologists, whose practise varied considerably, have commented on how the sociological method was not entirely divorced from the historical. Anthony Giddens (Giddens 1979) insisted that there was no logical or methodological reason to distinguish between the historical method and the more quantitative one. Two decades earlier C Wright Mills had made a similar exhortation: “Every social science … requires an historical scope of conception and a full use of historical materials” (Mills 1959).

3. Learning Outcome

       This module would acquaint you with the historical method in sociological research along with some examples of the same. It will also provide an introduction to the more important resources used whilst using the historical method.

4. Historians making use of sociological insights

It was not just sociologists who were exhorting researchers to make use of the historical method to obtain a superior insight into their research problems. Historians too would do the same, in the other direction,— ask historians to make use of sociological insights. Peter Burke (1980) was one such example who in his studies of cultural history was influenced enough by the sociological method and concepts that he argued for the need for social scientists to be skilled in both history as well as sociology.

5. Historical method needed to makes sense of society as a whole

So long as historians and sociologists try to make sense of the society as a whole, Peter Burke would say, there is no way in which one can ignore the other (Burke 1980: 1). If sociology is defined as the study of human society, with an emphasis on generalizations about its structure and development then”, Burke would say, “history is defined as the study of human societies…placing the emphasis on the differences between them” (Burke 1992: 2).

6. The interlinking of the sociological and historical methods

Such exhortations about interlinking the historical and the sociological method have continued over the years from the side both of historians and sociologists. Today, we might take for granted the importance and relevance of both the methods. Which method would be given primacy would depend on the manner in which the research questions have been framed and the kind of evidence available at hand.

John H Goldthorpe, the sociologist has even gone to the extent of dismissing any difference between the method of the sociologist and that of the historian even while insisting that the manner in which historians and sociologists reach their conclusions are substantially different. He insisted that mostly the difference lay in the historians emphasising their findings as time-space localised whereas sociologists believed that their understanding transcends space-time coordinates (Goldthorpe 1991). As the practise of history has evolved over the twentieth century, it has become clear that historians are more interested in reconstructing events, understanding phenomenon and explaining processes. Partly this has to do with the nature of the source material which comes to us from the past. It is more scattered, less systematised and cannot necessarily be moulded to suit the questions under research. It is not so much the questions that determine the nature of the evidence to be collected, rather questions in historical research often get framed on the basis of the material available for research.

7. The reason for using the historical method to understand sociological questions

• Social structures are not stand alone entities
• Events of the past influence the way the present is structured

If happenings of the past influence contemporary structures, processes and interactions, then the historical method is an important way of uncovering the past. If society is a multi-layered entity then historical enquiry sensitises us to the fact of uniqueness of some layers of a society and their changeability with time and context. The need to use the historical method also arises because society is not a timeless entity. It changes according to the specific place and time in which it is located. The manner in which people exist, their combining to form associations, groups and even larger entities like nations change significantly over time. Moreover, even contemporary societies, the ones that sociologists study, do not exist on a stand-alone basis, as it were. They stand in a larger stream of history. Their contemporary existence itself is being influenced in significant ways by the larger processes of history of which they are part.

7.1 Historical method helps contextualise research

Hence, it is important to be

• (a) Sensitive to the historical processes within which the society is located;
• (b) Able to examine the changes occurring over time.

      As Charles Tilly, the American sociologist who conducted a number of historical enquiries, noticed that historical enquiry sensitises us to the fact that boundaries of social units are porous, structures keep  changing, sequences never quite repeat themselves, what has happened before affects the character of the next structure, sequence or process (Tilly 1994).

Something akin to this was experienced when insights from America were sought to be imposed on Third World societies in the aftermath of the Second World War. In the case of India, in the early decades of independence, the efforts at ‘development’ produced positive results only till such time that the agency sponsoring them continued to care for them. More often than not, the infrastructure and tools that would have brought about ‘development’ in local society were simply allowed to rot away the moment they were handed over to local society (for one set of examples of studies done on the matter of development see, Bottomore 1962). It almost seemed as if the people were not interested in the development that was being sponsored by western sources. It was only after much time and money had been wasted that a realisation set in amongst those sponsoring ‘development’ that it might be a good idea to be able to make schemes that fulfilled the felt needs of the local people rather than the needs that the sponsors had presumed to exist. It would take still more time before the idea took hold that important to any sponsored development was an effort to co-opt the people who were to be subjected to that development process.

To take another example in which the use of the historical method enabled the researchers to come up with a richer explanation: the case of terrorist violence in Punjab in the 1980s-90s. So long as those trying to understand that violence remained insensitive to history, they continued to focus on ‘economic troubles’ of Punjab, the ‘decline in the profitability of agriculture’ as the main cause for violence. The problem of course was that this argument about decline in the economy of Punjab was being made at a time when Punjab was one of the most prosperous states in India. If anything, economists noticed a distinct reduction in poverty in Punjab (Singh and Shergill 1995). Other regions, facing greater economic hardships, did not seem to be fostering terrorism.

It was those researchers who went into the history of Punjab who noticed that terrorist violence was linked to a peculiar sense of dignity, linked with the use of violence that had been fostered by the mix of religion and politics in Punjab (Fox 1885). Subsequently, one of the most influential sociological studies, based on interviews with terrorists used such historical insights to notice how the failure of the state in Punjab had allowed for an opportunity for some young-men to use the excuse of religion to pick up the gun and demand from local society dignity for themselves and their families (Puri, Judge and Sekhon 1999). Earlier, in the case of Punjab, a similar effort at reclaiming dignity for themselves had been noticed by Paramjit Judge in the Naxal movement that had emerged in Punjab since the late 1960s. By a detailed historical re-construction of the events in which the Naxals were involved, Judge was able to show the inter-linkages between the issues of dignity and ideologically driven violence in Punjab (Judge 1992).

A similar use of history was made in the writings of Ronki Ram wherein the assertions by those of the lower castes were traced through history to show how the battle for caste equality was not just about gaining economic status but also about reconstructing a new culture and a new history for those who felt robbed and cheated by the system of caste hierarchies (Ram 2012, 2014). It was the detailed investigations into the history of the movement that enabled Ronki Ram to go beyond issues of caste exploitation and processes of ‘Sanskritization’ that had often been noticed by others studying the same processes. Important in both cases, that of the studies done by Paramjit Judge and Ronki Ram, was the effort to recreate the events surrounding the subject of study much as would be done by a historian.

Such detailed reconstructions of the past help understand the antiquity (or absence of it) for many of the social phenomenon that one might observe in field work and as being important in contemporary times. It was on this point that the young historian Sudhir Chandra found fault in the analyses of the caste system and Sanskritization that the great sociologist M N Srinivas had to offer. Chandra charged Srinivas of having over read the presence of caste as an organising principle of society in India whilst the only thing that could be said with certainty was that in the area where Srinivas did his field work caste was an important component of social organisation (for a brief overview of that debate see, Chandra 1972, Srinivas 1971). Much later, Peter Mayer would subject the Jajmani system to an extended investigation to discover that what sociologists of India had been representing as an important part of the economic – services exchange system in village India – was but a construct from the nineteenth century (Mayer 1993).

7.2 Bench-marking through time

Often benchmarking through time has provided interesting insights. One important example from India we saw previously is that study by A. M. Shah wherein he demonstrated the historicity of the joint family in India (Shah 1968). Shah informed a nation that was lamenting the demise of the joint family system that this was not the dominant mode for family structure even in the past. Many years later, in a more global setting, study on the invention of tradition showed up the absence of antiquity of many cultural artefacts that had been presumed to be part of some long-standing tradition (Ranger and Hobsbawm 1983). Minimally, the use of archives might prevent the researcher from reinventing the wheel, so to say. Ignoring the historical method results in

• lopsided explanations:

o  Gives the impression that society is unchanging.

o Phenomena observed currently are incorrectly presumed to be rooted in history even when none such exists.

Self Check Exercise 1:

1. What is the need for using the historical method?

The historical method is used for getting a more complete picture of the subject under investigation.

2. Is there any logical or methodological reason for distinguishing between the historical and the sociological method?

   No. There is no logical or methodological reason for this separation. The distinction, such as it exists, is mainly because of the nature of questions asked. A study of contemporary student political behaviour, for example, might benefit from knowing how student politics was in the past but it is not necessary for merely laying down the basics of contemporary student politics.

3. Do historians make use of sociological insights?

Yes. They do. Just as sociological research is poorer for ignoring insights from history so is historical research poorer for ignoring insights from sociology.

8. What is the historical method?

There is no single definition of what the historical method consists of. But broadly speaking, the practise of historians, in examining changes in society over time, is what constitutes the historical method. Historians usually are more interested in happenings, events and processes than on more sharply defined research problems that usually interest sociologists.

If there is no single definition, then, correspondingly, there is no single way of doing history either. In significant ways, inquiries into history depend on the questions asked as also on the availability of material to help the investigation.

• Types of historical sources: o Primary

o  Secondary Sources that are close to the happenings are termed as ‘primary’ sources. Those that are at a distance from the happenings are classified as ‘secondary’ sources.

• Historians prefer  to  consider  primary  sources  as  more  reliable  for  reconstructing  the  past.

Two large categories of sources for history:

o  Primary: those that are close to the events under study

o  Secondary: those that are removed away from the events under study

8.1 Secondary sources

Secondary sources include monographs published by scholars, theses, journal articles etc.

8.2 Kind of primary sources

It is the primary sources that are the more important for pursuing a historical enquiry. Given below is a brief introduction to the kinds of primary sources that are available. Do note that initially historians almost exclusively focussed on government documents, autobiographies and memoirs as primary sources, but later a more imaginative use of sources became possible and the number of sources that could possibly be used for historical research has increased manifold. The list below does not preclude the use of some newer kinds of sources that have remained below the radar of historical enquiry.

• Till now two kinds of primary sources exist: o Written
• Published
• Unpublished
•  Unwritten

8.2.1 Written sources

There is no exclusive ‘list’ of sources on the basis of which the past can be interpreted. The practise of historians suggests that historians extensively use written records, whether in the form of official files, published and unpublished reports and files, censuses, records with various institutions, private papers, diaries, contemporary newspapers and journals, published and unpublished tracts, books and pamphlets produced during the events under investigation. Virtually every institution or business leaves behind a paper trail. Those papers are the grist to the historians’ mill. Those papers, whether published or not, are the ones that become ‘primary sources’ for a historical enquiry.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the French social historian, for example used the records left by the inquisition to reconstruct the social world of the 13th/14th century medieval village of Montaillou in the Occitan region of France (Ladurie 1980). Ladurie based his entire reconstruction of the social and cultural life of the village of Montaillou on the inquisition records. The Inquisition was a department of the Christian Church which examined the villagers charged with heresy, maintained detailed records, cross tallied the evidence provided by different individuals. In the case of Montaillou the entire village had been charged with heresy. He is careful not to leap to conclusions, however tempting. Rather he quotes the exact words used within the records to reach his conclusions. Such heavy dependence on just one set of historical sources is usually avoided by historians. Ladurie’s careful usage, however, demonstrates that it is possible to be able to reconstruct the social life of the village on the basis of the answers that the villagers provided to the Inquisitors. Those answers, carefully recorded by the Inquisitors and preserved by the Church, were an important source of information on village society in medieval France.

8.2.2 Need to know languages

To say that research requires knowledge of languages would be to state the obvious. However, when using the historical method, language knowledge is even more important. In the specific case of India using the historical method often means also being able to work comfortably with multiple languages other than English since often ‘primary sources’ are available in local languages and not English. One recent example of a rather competent use of primary sources is in the reconstruction of the socio-economic micro-history of the Chamars using extremely localised information from published and unpublished tracts (Ciotti 2010). Here Ciotti documents in detail the history of weaving in the Chamar community—which is otherwise associated only with leather work—till its virtual disappearance in the 1990s. Badri Naryan (2007) in his documentation of the extensive use of local language tracts, in which the concerns of the lower caste people are expressed, notes the significance of being able to engage with local language publishing in order to make sense of the changing concerns of lower caste people. It is also possible to construct the local history of the subject under investigation using primarily English language sources along with a judicious use of the interview technique as van der Veer (1988) did in his study of the religious sects in north India.

8.2.3 Unwritten sources

As noticed above, it is possible for a researcher sensitive to the method of history to be able to re-construct the past insofar as it is required for the inquiry at hand using information gathered through interviews (van der Veer 1988). Historians too have made use of unwritten records as a source to understand the past. Once again there is no exclusive list of such sources. The practise of historians suggests that unwritten records that have been used include: oral testimonies, interviews that were conducted either for the purpose of the research or for some other purpose; aural evidence in the form of recordings from the past, as in recordings of music, speeches etc.; pictorial evidence as in photos, illustrations, paintings etc.; folk songs and folk memories. Currently many of the important repositories of historical research conduct and preserve interviews with people whom they consider important for purposes of history.

Self-check Exercise- 2

1. What is the historical method?

The historical method consists of using sources from the past mainly to re-construct an event or happening.

2. What are the kinds of sources that can be used for an historical investigation?

There are two kinds of sources that can be used for the conduct of historical investigation: primary sources– sources that are proximate to the events under study; secondary sources– sources that are removed in time and space from the subject under study.

3. In what form might we find ‘primary sources’?

Primary sources often are written documents, either published or unpublished. Primary sources can also include unwritten sources such as recordings, songs, images etc.

9. Archives

• Archives are repositories, places where relevant materials are deposited and stored.
• Holdings: the material kept in the archives is known as the holdings of the archives
• Holdings may consist of records, books, private collections, microfilms and microfiches etc.

9.1 Archives yet another resource

The use of archives in social research is not a ‘method’ of research; it is merely the use of yet another resource for getting an understanding. Historians specialise in using archives. They use them to inspect social, institutional and personal memories. Those memories then are often re-crafted to form an understanding of something that is bothering contemporary society. Sometimes an inquiry into the archives is also to find an insight into the society in days gone by. Whatever may be the motive for accessing the archives, using archives is about accessing memories – of places, people, things, institutions, social formations etc., – from a time gone by. Memories, especially those held contemporaneously have a funny way of seeming to have considerable permanence even when they are completely transmutable over time. For one who is involved in social research, therefore, examining the archives could also be a device to bench mark the subject under study through time.

Many of the written and unwritten records are stored in archives. Many institutions maintain active archives. Business houses, banks, governments retain archives. Often these are available for consultation by researchers. In India, most of the active archives are linked to the Indian Historical Records Commission that is headquartered at the National Archives of India. A specific query sent by email, to the National Archives of India, usually results in accurate guidance on where specific archives are located. Links to these are given at the end of this module.

A search through secondary literature generated by historians contains adequate guidance as to the availability of archival sources.

Some records, such as land records, are available for consultation with the village level Revenue Officials. Similarly judicial records remain stored with the concerned court. Police Thanas retain their case diaries and other records in perpetuity. Such records are not ‘archived’ in the sense of being brought to the central repository such as the State or National Archives of India.

Archiving, in India, however, is too scattered. Not all records of importance are archived.

Just as it is important to understand the numbering system of a library in order to retrieve a book from the library, so in archives, it is important to understand the system of cataloguing records and archiving information. That information varies from archive to archive. Even a rudimentary knowledge of the archiving and cataloguing strategies of an archive helps speed up research considerably. The help-desk staff of the archives usually are more than willing to assist all researchers in this regard.

Historical records in archives are prized documents. Access to them is usually restricted to bona fide researchers. Therefore, before visiting an archive it is important to check out the specific terms and conditions that they lay for allowing their holdings to be consulted.

10. Analytical tools used for the historical method

The historical method relies very heavily on the written word. Correspondingly, there has been pressure to be more sensitive to the use of language and the meanings underlying words. Prior to the post-modernist turn in history, say before the 1980s in India, there was no specific injunction to be careful about the use of language. However, since the 1980s, there has been greater emphasis on usages and meanings of words and their being heavily context dependent and ever changingness. Historians of the 1960s vintage also insisted on making a distinction between the ‘historical fact’ and the fact that has not historical importance. However, today it is understood that this is a false distinction and what fact is of value for understanding the past is dependent on the manner in which questions are posed and answers sought.

10.1 Examples of the use of the historical method

Some examples of sociological analyses using the historical method using both primary and secondary sources over and above those mentioned previously in the text:

• o Some examples (arranged alphabetically) from studies done in the west:
  • Barrington Moore (1966)
• Charles Tilly (1964)
• E. P. Thompson (1964)
• Immanuel Wallerstein (1974)
• Perry Anderson 1974)
• Reinhard Bendix (1978)
• Theda Skocpol (1979)
• o Some examples (arranged alphabetically) from studies done in India:
  • Tom Kessinger (1974)
• D. N. Dhanagare (1983)
• Sujata Patel (1986)
• Meeta and Rajivlochan (2006)

11. Limitations of the historical method

• Limitations
  • o based on a very small body of evidence, often just one piece of evidence

• o heavily dependent on interpretations of words with little possibility of cross checking the actual meanings

History is an interpretational exercise that does not exist before it is written. Even whilst it influences contemporary events, happenings and processes, it is not as if history is an artefact from the past waiting outside of the research field waiting for being picked up, unearthed and brought to light. It is unlike a piece of pottery or a cave painting waiting to be ‘discovered’. It is what the researcher makes of it.

For any period beyond living memory, the material left behind by the past will be physical evidence, and from it a pattern of events is constructed which, it is contended, actually happened. Historians insist that their reconstruction is fair even if the evidence base is fairly small. Generalising out of one or at most a handful of examples might provide insights, but those insights need to be tested out more thoroughly. A single instance does not necessarily indicate a trend. The same logic works as a check on extra enthusiasm for insights provided by historical research. They are just that, insights. In fact historians are currently bound to say that all historical insights are subject to qualifications, change and modifications. Historical research does not claim to be representing any Big Truth about the subject under investigation.

Self-check exercise 3

1. What are archives?

Archives are repositories for maintaining various kinds of records.

2. What is the difference between archives and libraries?

Archives maintain records while libraries are repositories for books and journals. Archives do not necessarily subscribe to journals or retain books.

3. What is National Archives of India?

National Archive of India is a government department charged with holding all those government records that have been archived.

4. How does one get access to archives?

Access to archives is dependent on being a bona fide researcher.

12. Summary

By the end of this module you have acquired a familiarity with the manner in which the historical method helps a sociological understanding of society. You have seen some of the debates that have taken place over the use of the historical method and its value in helping strengthen sociological research. You have also become acquainted with some of the resources used by historians and sociologists when they do a historical investigation into society. Also you have become familiar with some of the more seminal works that have used the historical method for sociological research.

. Some useful links and e-resources

16. Bibliography

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1. Dhanagare, D.N. Peasant Movements in India: 1920-1950. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983.
2. Meeta, and M Rajivlochan. Farmers Suicide: Facts and Possible Policy Interventions. Pune: Yashada, 2006.
3. Kessinger, Tom G. Vilyatpur 1848-1968: Social and Economic Change in a North. Indian Village. Berkeley:
4. University of California Press, 1974.
5. Goldthorpe, John H. “The Uses of History in Sociology: Reflections on Some Tendencies.” The British
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7. Ciotti, Manuela. Retro-modernIndia: Forging the Low-caste Self. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.
8. Naryan, Badri. “Reactivating the Past.” Economic and Political Weekly XLII, no. 19 (May 2007): 1734-1738.
9. van der Veer, Peter. Gods on Earth; The management of religious experience and identity in a North Indian pilgrimage centre. London: Athlone Press, 1988.
10. Shah, A M. “Changes in the Indian Family-An Examination of Some Assumptions.” Economic and Political Weekly III, no. 1 – 2 (January 1968).
11. Ranger, Terence O, and E J Hobsbawm, . The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
12. Marx, Karl, and F. H. Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848.
13. Marx, Karl. The Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meisner, 1867. Weber, Max. The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages (1889). Translated by Lutz
14. Kaelber. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.—. Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1891.