Family History, Social History, and Social Change

Abstract

The renewal of social history in the 1960s and thereafter challenged the standard historical emphasis on explanation by motive, validation by motive-revealing texts, and explication by narrative. Social historians divided, however, in their relative emphasis on reconstitution of lives as people lived them and on the establishment of connections between ordinary people's behavior and large social processes such as industrialization. The standard method of social history—collective biography—aids the study of connections more than it aids reconstitution, although its uncritical use often suggests false connections, and many borrowings from the social sciences lead to erroneous analogies. Family history illustrates these points as an exemplar for the study of large-scale social change, as a direct contribution to that study, and as a challenge to its improvement. Among the challenges faced by family history and by social history as a whole are (a) the shift of analyses from calendar time sequences, (b) the identification of coherent social units, (c) the specification of regularities in the behavior of those units. The article presents several examples of each point.

Family and Kinship, History of

“…Contemporary historians of the family have sought to reintroduce human experience into historical research and to emphasize the complexity of historical change (see Hareven, 1971Hareven, , 2000aTilly, 1987). Family history has complex roots in both the historical demography of the early 1960s and the 'new social history' of the same period.…”

What Difference Does It Make?

“…As Charles Tilly (1987) expressed it, the main goal of social history is to understand the linkage between individual lives and small-scale experiences and the larger processes of social change. The family plays a central role, because it is an arena in which many of the relations between individuals and social change are acted out.…”

La transformación de Uruapan en la época colonial. Demografía y sociedad: segunda mitad del siglo XVII y siglo XVIII

“…La Corona quería terminar con la encomienda y con el poder de los caciques; 3 causando cambios, fundamentales en la vida de los pueblos. 4 Las transformaciones tienen una fuerte variación regional, de acuerdo a los antiguos señoríos o imperios prehispánicos, la forma como fueron conquistados y el poder que conservó la antigua élite gobernante; así como por la aplicación de las disposiciones reales a favor de los indígenas.…”

“…1-2 y 58-59. 4 Margarita Menegus establece tres fases de cambios en el siglo XVI: del año 1521 a la década de 1550 cuando se conserva la propiedad indígena, el gobierno y las formas de tributación. De 1550 hasta la década de 1570 se tiene la implantación de la república de indios, congregación en pueblos, reelaboración del sistema tributario y reorganización de la propiedad indígena.…”

“…Los cabildos fueron establecidos a semejanza del municipio español, con derechos comunales a la tierra, gobierno propio y la responsabilidad colectiva de pagar tributo y proporcionar mano de obra. 4 La república de indios suplantó al señorío prehispánico, eliminando la relación de autoridad entre señores y maceguales, 5 piedra angular del sistema prehispánico.…”