Reinhard Sieder 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical 
Cultural Science?* 
Since the mid-1980s, terms such as "the everyday" (Alltag), "expe-
rience", "life-world" and "culture" have achieved a meaning and significance 
which have come to define the new direction taken by social history in the 
last decade.1 In what follows, I will first of all outline the conjunctural links 
between these new or renewed concepts and the criticisms that have been 
directed at objectivist structural functionalism in historical social science. I 
will then go on to ask whether labels such as "the history of everyday life" 
(Alltagsgeschichte), the "history of experience" (Erfahrungsgeschichte) or "his-
torical anthropology" (Historische Anthropologic) are able to symbolise and 
develop further post-structural changes in social history. Or might it not be 
more appropriate to speak about the beginnings of a new historical cultural 
science (Historische Kulturivissenschaft)? Are we dealing with the belated 
introduction of a qualitative paradigm2 in the field of historical social sci-
ence (Historische Sozialiuissenschaft) ? Do the exponents of the new approaches 
already constitute a "third generation" of historical social scientists, succes-
sors to both the first generation, who formulated their conception of an 
historical social science in the 1960s and 1970s and defended it against the 
mainstream of the time,3 and the second generation, who spread its new 
social scientific paradigm in the 1980s? Finally, I will ask where all this fits 
into the discourse of post-modernism. 
* Original German version published in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft^ (1994), pp. 445-68. 
1 I would like to thank Ulrike Docker and Erich Landsteiner for their comments and 
criticism on this article. 
2 For an introductory overview, see: U. Flick et al. (eds.), Qualitative Sozialforschung, 
München 1991; S. Lamnek, Qualitative Sozialforschung, vol. I: Methodologie, vol. II: 
Methoden und Techniken, München 1988/89; A. Giddens, Interpretative Soziologie, 
Frankfurt 1984. 
3 H-U. Wehler, Geschichte als Historische Sozialwissenschaft, Frankfurt 1973; J. Kocka, 
Sozialgeschichte. Begriff - Entwicklung-Probleme, Göttingen 1977, 2 n d edition 1986. 
Filozofski vestnik, XVIII (2/1997), pp. 257-283. 257 
Reinhard Sieder 
Structure instead of culture — a categorical confusion. 
During the founding period of historical social science in the 1960s and 
1970s, those members of the German historical profession who were more 
open to innovation and new theoretical developments - at that time, a group 
very much in the minority - focused on the structures behind social, eco-
nomic and political phenomena. Partly, this was done by employing statisti-
cal data or by converting other kinds of documentary material, such as 
nominative sources, into statistical data, using statistical techniques which 
operated far more descriptively than analytically. The initial work in this 
direction was carried out above all by French historians of the so-called 
"Annates school". After a certain interval, the ideas of the Annates historians 
came to heavily influence historians in West Germany (and later still, in 
Austria), who began to employ structural paradigms, albeit in modified form 
and - after the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust - in a 
politicised manner.4 The subsequent years witnessed a large amount of re-
search in this vein, which provided new and interesting insights into such 
areas as household and kinship systems, family structures, property or la-
bour relationships and yields on landed and feudal estates, changes in prices 
and wages, the social structure of the memberships of political parties (such 
as the NSDAP) and so on. 
From today's point of view, the greatest weakness in the first wave of 
German-language structural historical research (as was the case with com-
parable work undertaken in France, Britain and the U.S.) was its thorough-
going neglect of the supposed subjects of the work in question. That is to 
say that the interpretations, actions and experiences of the historical actors 
themselves tended to be ignored, because of the specifically structural per-
spective adopted when investigating such themes as households, families, 
feudal estates, firms, associations, political parties or whatever, even if the 
concern was not simply to construct "structural models", but also to write 
history - a new, social scientific history.5 Just as Fernand Braudel's grand 
4 A more extensive discussion of these issues is given in: R. Sieder, "Was heißt 
Sozialgeschichte? Brüche und Kontinuitäten in der Aneignung des Sozialen", in: 
Osterreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (ÖZG) 1 (1990) 1, pp. 25-48. On 
some of the differences between the use of structural concepts in the social history 
practised by the French Annatistes and that of German-speaking historical social 
scientists, see (among others): H. Kaelble, "Sozialgeschichte in Frankreich und der 
Bundesrepublik: Annales gegen historische Sozialwissenschaften", in: Geschichte und 
Gesellschaft (GG) 13 (1987)", pp. 77-93. 
5 My own earliest scientific research at the end of the 1970s was very much in line with 
this structural functionalist tradition. For example: R. Sieder, "Strukturprobleme der 
258 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
narrative La Méditerranée (1949) had begun to treat time and space as sub-
jective actors,6 so a number of structural-analytical studies located themselves 
within the same categorical shift: the logic of structures replaced the social 
logic of the actors. To give just one example, the following citation from 
Arthur E. Imhof 's article on "Rural family structures" stands as a typical 
example of 1970s social history (both in terms of its title and content): 
"Mal thus ian shocks were greatly f e a r e d l ong be fo re Malthus; over-
p o p u l a t i o n a n d its r e d u c t i o n by m e a n s of positive checks ( f amine , 
plague, war) hi t large sections of the populat ion directly and severely. 
T h e r e were constant efforts to prevent such a development , ia that the 
potent ia l fertility of women was restricted, be it th rough the control of 
mar i ta l f ecund i ty ( l eng then ing of the intervals between concept ion , 
lowering the age at b i r th of the last child) or th rough increasing the 
p r o p o r t i o n of u n m a r r i e d a d u l t s in t h e p o p u l a t i o n , e x t e n d i n g 
w i d o w h o o d or, f inal ly , by m e a n s of r a i s ing the m a r r i a g e age f o r 
w o m e n . " 7 
ländlichen Familie im 19.Jh.", in: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte'il (1978), pp. 
173-217; see also: R. Sieder and M. Mitterauer, Vom Patriarchat zur Partnerschaft. Zum 
Strukturwandel der Familie, (1977), 4 t h edition, München 1991; engl.: The European 
Family, Oxford 1982, 4 r d edition 1989. 
6 F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le Monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris 1949. 
So far as I know, the earliest reception of Braudel's ideas in the German-speaking 
countries was W. Conze in: Historische Zeitschrift (HZ) 172 (1951), pp. 358-62. In 
retrospect, it now seems understandable precisely why the group associated with the 
Annales and later, the first generation of historical social scientists associated with 
Geschichte und Gesellschaft in West Germany, turned away from the subjective in order 
to draw attention to the "structures" and "conjunctures" at work behind the subjects 
themselves. This was very much a reaction to what they saw as the hegemony of an 
historicist tradition which was oriented around politics, states and great individuals. 
Yet in effect, this move away from the idealistically conceived subject merely ended 
up throwing out the baby with the bath-water: in Braudel's work, people find 
themselves in a form of prison, where the sentences are of different length; they act 
and make decisions only at the uppermost and more superficial of the three levels 
into which he divides historical time, namely that of l'histoire événementielle. As the 
older Braudel wrote, "history" on the contrary is made "far removed from our persons 
and our daily misery [...], shift ing slowly, as slowly as the ancient life of the 
Mediterranean", see: F. Braudel, "Personal Testimony", in Journal of Modern History 
44 (1972) pp. 448-67. In the following decades, historiography increasingly lost sight 
of the individual as a "societal being" (Karl Marx). Social history was written virtually 
without people, in terms of data; or to borrow the chic phraseology of its French 
originators, the structural approach represented the death of the subject. 
7 A. E. Imhof , "Ländl iche Fami l iens t ruk turen an e inem hessischen Beispiel: 
Heuchelheim 1690-1900", in: W. Conze (ed.), Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit 
Europas, Stuttgart 1976, p. 206. 
259 
Reinhard Sieder 
This sample text shows just how easily historians fell into the trap of 
reifying these kinds of structures. These narratives (which actually aimed to 
be anything but "narratives") removed the actual impact of structural changes 
either to the realms of the general consciousness of anonymous historical 
actors ("Malthusiasn shocks were greatly feared...") or else structures were 
assigned the status of quasi-actors. In doing so, historians blurred the differ-
ence between a scientific classification system based on collected data and 
the social specificity of what they thought they were observing. This was a 
result of the heady euphoria created by the belief that historians had attained 
a greater degree of scientific exactitude through their statistical measure-
ment of certain phenomena, rather than comprehending the meaning of 
what people tell about themselves (their "statements"). I would describe this 
substitution of the social logic of the actors with the logic of a specific kind 
of structures, or the attribution of subjective characteristics to these struc-
tures, as structural realism. This constituted a disciplinary variation on the 
structural functionalism predominant in all the social sciences during the 
1960s and 1970s. Within that genre, historical subjects only appear - if at all 
- as puppets on the strings of structures. They occupy social positions and 
use interpretations which are already predetermined: for example, they alter 
their fertility patterns as if they were already obeying Malthus' theory long 
before Malthus himself. In practice, however, this methodology contradicted 
in one central respect the - at the time oft proclaimed - desire to stimulate 
an emancipatory and illuminative social science: the new direction failed to 
provide adequate empirical insights into the processes whereby historical 
actors contributed actively to the formation or alteration of the relationships 
within their particular space for acting (Handlungsspielraum). 
An alternative: the praxiological approach 
Around the mid-1980s, a number of social historians began to study 
the works of the French cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. His critique 
of structural functionalism and structuralism (as practised in the disciplines 
of sociology and ethnology) proved to be of greatest interest, because 
Bourdieu's arguments provided the basis for an effective and theoretically 
well-versed critique of the latent attachment to structural realism displayed 
by so many works of historical social science. It now became clear that a 
significant consequence of the one-dimensionality present in historical so-
cial science was that societies and their sub-systems (political parties, asso-
ciations, firms, bureaucracies, households, families etc.) were treated as socio-
260 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
structural "facts", as "things" in pure Durkheimian fashion.8 Partly drawing 
on the arguments of Max Weber's interpretative sociology, Bourdieu dem-
onstrated that these socio-structural "facts" actually only become social real-
ity when they are appropriated by historical actors. In systemic terms, the 
appropriation of social conditions can mean either the continuation (the 
reproduction) of those conditions or their alteration. In both cases, the situ-
ation derives partly f rom individuals (through the decisions and actions 
pertaining to their personal life-course) and partly from the context of so-
cial action in which social groups and classes, societies or international or-
ganisations are involved. In all these situations, people are very much ac-
tors, rather than simply being the mere puppets of external conditions or 
prisoners of structures. In the social theoretical approach offered here, in-
dividuals are no longer determined from above, but neither are they "free" 
to act in completely autonomous fashion, in line with their conscious actions, 
knowledge and intentions (as in the idealist conception of history). 
A new social theoretical conception of social history's general object 
developed on the basis of Bourdieu's arguments. Where Braudel, Conze 
and others had viewed social history as the investigation of the hierarchical, 
structural orders determining human action, whose conjunctural variations 
consisted of mid- to long-term trends and short-lived events,9 this new con-
ception understood its subject-matter to be a dialectical process between what-
ever conditions for action existed in a particular time and place and the actual 
practices of historical actors. "Social reality", a central notion taken on board 
from interpretative sociology, now seemed to be constituted in a dual way: 
on the one hand, "social reality" consisted of a set of given factors, which 
could be described in terms of social, economic and political structures. On 
the other hand, it also comprised the actions and interpretations of actors, 
who produce, extenuate or change those given, structured conditions for 
action; in other words, social agents "structurise" social reality. Contrary to 
the practice of structural social history, conditions for action no longer took 
pride of place in historical analysis, because they were not now considered 
8 E. Dürkheim, Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode (Paris 1895), Frankfurt ] 984, p. 115:. 
"The first and most basic rule is to treat sociological things as facts". 
9 See, F. Braudel, "Histoire et sciences sociales. La longue durée", in: Annales 13 (1958), 
pp. 725-53; German: "Die longue durée", in: H.-U. Wehler (ed.), Geschichte und Soziologie, 
Köln 1972, pp. 189-215; also in:. C. Honegger (ed.), Schrift und Materie der Geschichte. 
Vorschläge zur systematischen Aneignung historischer Prozesse, Frankfurt 1977, pp.47-85. 
For a comparatively positive treatment of (political) action, see: W. Conze, Die 
Strukturgeschichte des technisch-industriellen Zeitalters als Aufgabefür Forschung und Unterricht, 
Köln 1957. 
261 
Reinhard Sieder 
to be any more "real" than the actions, interpretations, ideologies and dis-
courses.10 Myths, mentalities and behaviour ceased to be a kind of intellec-
tual mist obscuring historical reality and became instead its constitutive 
components, and thus a central part of the subject-matter of social histori-
cal research. For this reason, it is possible to speak of a "cultural theoretical 
change" in social history, whereby "culture" is understood as being inclu-
sive of actors' viewpoints, meanings and interpretations, as well as their 
structurised symbolic expression in texts, images, objects, rituals, gestures 
and so on.11 
Admittedly, even within the framework of a post-structural and cultural 
theoretically expanded interpretation of social history, it is still necessary to 
pose the question as to what possibilities historical actors actually have to 
shape and change circumstances according to their own interests and pre-
conceptions. In other words, we must ask if, and how, actors succeed in cre-
ating a consciousness of common interests and perceptions (for example, 
of "justice"), and which alliances they enter into on the basis of such a con-
sciousness. If the consciousness of historical actors can no longer be more 
or less deduced from structures (as in structural functionalism) nor always 
be described as a "false consciousness" that will necessarily be corrected in 
the course of history (as in objectivist marxism), then we are obliged to raise 
again the question first posed by E. P. Thompson1 3 at the end of the 1970s: 
is it possible to talk about present or historical societies in terms of the clas-
sical sociological terminology of "class" or "estate"? And what is the rela-
tionship between these analytically conceived schemas and what was per-
ceived as social reality at any given moment in time? How can we avoid the 
1 0 Michel Foucault tried to draw the attention of "reality obsessed" historians to this 
issue, albeit with seemingly little success. See: M. Foucault, "La poussiere et le nuage", 
in: M. Perrot (ed.), L'impossible prison. Recherches sur le systeme penitentiare au XIXe siècle, 
Paris 1980, p.34.; see also, M. Foucault, Archäologie des Wissens, Frankfurt 1973. 
1 1 For an informative overview of the changing conceptions of the term culture in the 
historical and social sciences, see: U. Daniel , „Kultur" u n d „Gesel lschaft" . 
Überlegungen zum Gegenstandsbereich der Sozialgeschichte, in: GG19 (1993), pp. 
69-99. 
1 2 Not "post-structuralist", because neither French nor German-language social history 
or "structural history" was ever "structuralist" in the sense of Lévi-Strauss or any 
other structuralist concept in the field of ethnology or sociology. As an introductory 
essay see: A. Honneth, "Ein strukturalistischer Rousseau. Zur Anthropologie von 
Claude Lévi-Strauss", in: idem., Die zerrissene Welt des Sozialen. Sozialphilosophische Aufsätze, 
Frankfurt 1990, pp. 73-92. 
1 3 E. P. Thompson, Das Elend der Theorie. Zur Produktion geschichtlicher Erfahrung, Frankfurt 
1980. 
262 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
by now notorious mistake of equating historical reality with our precon-
ceived theoretical schemas, or to put it another way, of confusing social logic 
with the logic of the (social scientific) question? Bourdieu suggested that in 
logical terms we should think of class as an "ensemble of actors with similar 
attitudes [...], similar conditions and conditioning [...], to all intents and 
purposes similar dispositions and interests [... ] and consequently similar prac-
tices and ideological positions". "Classes" of this kind are primarily theo-
retical in nature, not real, effective classes "ready for struggle". Yet at the 
same time, the above-mentioned similarities would lead us to expect that a 
consciousness of these similarities might develop among actors under cer-
tain circumstances. Adequately constructed theoretical classes are thus "prob-
able classes", and in no sense "automatically necessary".14 The differences 
between theoretical and actual classes are thus no longer blurred. This rep-
resents an effective break with marxist tradition, which equated constructed 
and real classes with one another, or declared both "virtual" and "actual" 
classes to be real phenomena, with the transition from one to the other being 
described in either deterministic or voluntaristic terms. 
The quality of a theoretical framework such as "social classes" can be 
measured according to the degree of precision and complexity with which 
it constructs the relationships within the order of praxis. In this respect, 
Bourdieu argues that it is necessary to define the actor's "position" and "place" 
in social space as precisely as possible. An actor's place and position result 
f rom their relationship to the respective positions of the other actors in 
whichever social space has been constructed, because "what really exists is a 
relational space".15 These relationships are defined in terms of the differ-
ent sorts of capital that the actor brings into play, be they material, spiritual, 
or intellectual, forms of gender capital (which always place the actor in a 
relationship with the other gender) or physical attraction and physical strength 
(whose worth is defined in relation to competing actors in the same field), 
and so on. Which kinds of capital will predominate at any given moment or 
effectively define social relationships (social inequality, distribution of power, 
chances for success) depends upon the type of social field that we construct: 
education, knowledge and academic grade or title predominate in the sci-
entific field, speed and physical strength in the area of sport, material capi-
tal and business know-how in the economic sphere, and so on. As a rule, it 
is a particular accumulation of several types of capital that defines the ac-
tor's position and place in a given social space. However, all sorts of capital 
1 4 P. Bourdieu, Sozialer Raum und Klassen, Frankfurt 1985, p. 12. 
1 5 Ibid., p. 13. 
263 
Reinhard Sieder 
and the various combinations between them only become socially relevant 
when they are recognised by other actors, or in Bourdieu's words, when they 
become effective as symbolic capital.16 
Clearly, this also means that the actor's actions, interpretations and 
experiences should form a central part of our general research focus, be-
cause they define the capacity to accumulate particular types of capital, to 
assert oneself through them in a given sphere and to exert control and power 
over others. At the same time, actors can be seen to produce and structure 
social space through their actions and interpretations, given that we under-
stand social space as constituted by social relationships and interactions. We 
attain information about actors' actions, interpretations and experiences 
essentially by means of interpreting their statements (understood in the broad-
est possible sense). That is the reason why the methodology of text interpre-
tation and text production (such as various kinds of memory-based inter-
views) play such a central role in post-structural social history. 
Historians' confrontation with questions relating to texts as forms of 
written, acoustic or audiovisual statements by historical actors on the one 
hand, and the historiographical texts written about those actors (and their 
texts) on the other hand, have followed two rather different paths in recent 
years, despite the fact that both directions are frequently described in un-
differentiated fashion as a single "linguistic turn'. In the first place, adher-
ents of "Intellectual History" in the U.S.A. were influenced by the methods 
and practices of literary theory (history and literary theory having always 
been much closer disciplinary neighbours in terms of university organisa-
tion there than in Europe). The main consequence of this trend has been 
the extensive discussion surrounding the fictional (that is to say, the liter-
ary) nature of historiography, as part of the critical confrontation with Hayden 
White's theory of historiographical tropes.17 Secondly and by way of con-
trast, German-language social history came into contact with social scientific 
1 6 On the concept of "sorts of capital", see: P. Bourdieu, "Ökonomisches Kapital, 
kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital", in: R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten (= Soziale 
Welt, Sonderband 2), Göttingen 1983, pp. 183-98; P. Bourdieu, Rede und Antwort, 
Frankfurt 1992, esp.: Raum und symbolische Macht, pp. 135; for an introduction to 
Bourdieu's cultural sociological thinking, see again: A. Honneth, Die zerrissene Welt der 
symbolischen Formen, Frankfurt 1990, pp. 156-81. 
1 7 See: H. White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Centruy Europe, 
Baltimore 1973; German: Metahistory. Die historische Einbildungskraft im 19.fh. inEuropa, 
Frankfurt 1991; idem., Die Bedeutung der Form. Erzählstrukturen in der Geschichtsschreibung, 
Frankfurt 1990. For discussions of White's theories, see "Metahistory: Six Critiques", 
in: History & Theory (HT) Beiheft 19 (1980); B. D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The 
Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History, Philadelphia 1990; G. Brude-
264 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
theories and models of text analysis. By the very nature of their disciplines, 
social scientists working in the fields of sociology, psychology, pedagogy and 
psychoanalysis always deal with texts and the problems of their analysis. The 
methods of text analysis and production developed in this sphere were there-
fore taken over, adapted and developed further by a number of social his-
torians.18 
The areas of research where these social scientific models of text analysis 
have most frequently been employed in the last decade or so have been the 
history of National Socialism and the post-war era, a number of themes 
pertaining to the history of everyday life and regional history, and most 
recently of all, the history of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and 
Stalinism.19 Based on the research methods just mentioned, social history 
has jo ined the ranks of those social and textual sciences which employ an 
explorative social scientific research methodology to try and appropriate a 
sense of "what the actor in a given historical sphere of action already knows 
and has to know, in order to 'get his or her bearings' in the daily activities 
of social life".20 It is at this point that social history becomes an interpreta-
tive social science (verstehende Sozialwissenschaft), to borrow a phrase coined 
by Max Weber. 
At the same time, however, it is not enough for an interpretative his-
torical social science to confine itself to the textual analysis of subjective state-
ments, because these cannot be properly explained in terms of themselves 
alone, but only with reference to the structure of social, economic and cul-
tural relationships as well, together with the conditions for action present 
Firnau and K. MacHardy (eds.), Fact and Fiction. German History and Literature 1848-
1924, Tübingen 1990; K. MacHardy, "Crisis in History, or: Hermes Unbounded", in: 
Storia della Storiografia 17 (1990), pp. 5-27; H. Nagl-Docekal, "Läßt sich die 
Geschichtsphilosophie tropologisch fundieren?" In: OZG4 (1993), pp. 466-78. 
1 8 See H.-G. Soeffner (ed.), Interpretative Verfahren in den Sozial- und Textwissenschaften, 
Stuttgart 1979; G. Landsteiner, "Zum Stellenwert linguistischer Modelle in einer 
wissenssoziologischen Textanalyse", in: Wisdom 6 (1992), pp.49-78; R. Sieder, 
"Geschichten erzählen und Wissenschaft treiben. Interviewtexte zum Arbeiteralltag. 
Erkenntnistheoretische Grundlagen, Quellenkritik, Interpretationsverfahren und 
D a r s t e l l u n g s p r o b l e m e " , in: G. Botz et al. (eds.) , Mündliche Geschichte und 
Arbeiterbewegung, Wien 1984, pp. 203-31; R. Sieder and Ch. Gerbel, "Erzählungen sind 
n icht n u r „wahr". Abst rakt ionen, Typisierungen und Gel tungsansprüche in 
Interviewtexten", in: G. Botz et al. (eds.), „Quantität und Qualität". Zur Praxis der 
Methoden der Historischen Sozialwissenschaft, Frankfurt 1988, pp. 189-210. 
1 9 See Footnotes 63-68. 
2 9 A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Cambridge 
1984; German: Die Konstitution der Gesellschaft. Grundzüge einer Theorie der Strukturierung, 
Frankfurt and New York 1988, p. 338. 
265 
Reinhard Sieder 
in a particular social space. As is already implicit in the theoretical formula-
tion of the dual construction of social reality, social historical analysis must 
therefore also examine the historical conditions for social action (conditions 
which have been structured by social practices). Post-structural history thus 
reconstructs external structures too, albeit without any longer believing that 
these structures strictly determine social actions and interpretations: the 
"structural" is seen instead as characteristic of the relationships produced by 
social interaction. Post-structural social history thus has a variety of meth-
ods at its disposal, including both techniques of statistical and demographic 
research and those of discourse and text analysis,21 in order to illuminate 
the conceptual space with which actors are confronted when making their 
interpretations, and to understand the changes that those spaces undergo. 
The kind of post-structural social history proposed here is in this re-
spect differentiated from strictly phenomenological sociology or ethno-
methodology, which confine their research programmes to the investigation 
of social interaction, rituals, gestures, interpretations and meanings.22 From 
the same standpoint, a number of works of the so-called "new cultural his-
tory"23 would appear to be overly "culturalistic" in focus, to the extent that 
they reify symbolic forms and ignore the ontological difference between 
surviving texts and past practices. They focus too narrowly on the meanings 
of symbolic forms, without fully recognising that the latter can also be ap-
propriated and used by actors in various ways.24 I would therefore argue 
for a social history capable of overcoming the varieties of objectivism, sub-
jectivism and culturalism in equal measure. Bourdieu has suggested that we 
call this a praxiological mode of knowledge,25 and it is precisely this kind of 
approach that many social historians are now attempting to apply to the 
history of everyday life, historical anthropology or micro-history, whatever 
their differences and disagreements on points of detail. 
2 1 See, above all: M. Foucault, Archäologie des Wissens; idem, Die Ordnung des Diskurses, 
München 1974, 2 n d edition Frankfurt 1991; a recent critique ofFoucault ' s authorial 
interpretation of discourse, as if the latter were itself a social actor, can be found in: 
V. Biti, "Geschichte als Literatur - Literatur als Geschichte", in: ÖZG4 (1993), pp. 
371-96. 
2 2 See: E. Weingarten et al. (eds.), Ethnomethodologie. Beiträge zu einer Sozialgeschichte des 
Alltagshandelns, Frankfurt 1976. 
2 3 See: L. Hunt , History, Culture, and Text, in: idem (ed.), The New Cultural History, 
London 1989, pp. 1-22. 
2 4 See R. Chartier, "Text, Symbols, and Frenchness", in:/MF757 (1975), pp. 682-95, esp. 
_ p. 690. 
25P. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen 
Gesellschaft, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 146. 
266 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
The argument about labels 
The terms "everyday life" (Alltag) and "experience" respectively refer 
only to certain aspects of the dual constitution of social reality that I have 
just described. "Everyday life" and the resultant label, "the history of every-
day life", point to the constant reproduction of social realities and the fact 
that social realities are constructed day in, day out by interpretations and 
actions. In common with the first generation of historical social scientists, 
therefore, social historians working on the history of everyday life reject the 
limitation of research to specific or unusual events and extraordinary per-
sonalities. At the same time, however, there is a frequent misconception that 
the history of everday life is bound up with a concrete place, "the everyday", 
which differs from other concrete realities. As with the term 'structure', it is 
again possible to observe a tendency towards objectification and reification, 
in the sense that the way in which actions and interpretations appropriate 
circumstances (the modus operandi) is often objectified as a definite object 
(an opus operatum). Moreover, to rely on an actor's "intuitive" knowledge 
and actions remains within the limits of the phenomenological mode of 
recognition. Therefore, many historians of everyday life have already moved 
onto a praxiological mode. They oscillate in hermeneutically analytical fash-
ion between the actors' manifest and latent meanings and their structured 
circumstances. 
Within the overall conception of the "history of everday life", the "eve-
ryday" refers not to any particular well-defined object, but instead to the 
analytical focus on social actors' living and working relationships, and the 
ways in which those relationships are "experienced" (reception, interpreta-
tion, action etc.).26 What is more, the term frequently used as a synonym 
for the "history of everyday life", the "history of experience" (Erfahrungs-
geschichte) , also gives rise to misunderstanding. If this were interpreted ab-
solutely literally, it would refer to a sub-discipline dealing with social actors' 
historical experiences. Yet experience - the gradual building up of inter-
pretations, feelings and memories that accompanies social action — consti-
tutes only one of the two aspects of social reality formation. The term, "his-
tory of experience", thus actually comprises neither the deeds and actions 
preceeding and accompanying experience, nor the external circumstances 
in which actors are located. To lose sight of the activities and conditions for 
action would mean culturalistically reducing social historical reality to mere 
interpretation, consciousness and mental processes. 
2 6 See my discussion with A. Lüdtke, "Alltagsgeschichte. Zur Aneignung der Verhältnisse", 
in: ÖZG2 (1991), 2, pp. 104-13. 
267 
Reinhard Sieder 
Of late, increasing numbers of social historians have turned enthusi-
astically towards historical anthropology, a new label for which Rebekka 
Habermas and Nils Minkmar have recently tried to define a clear research 
paradigm (in the introduction to a volume of collected essays27). It is par-
ticularly noteworthy that they try to do so almost exclusively by differentiat-
ing themselves from "the history of everyday life" and "the history of men-
talities". Without at any point going into the historical and methodological 
variations or differences between these two approaches, they indiscriminately 
accuse them of treating "people" as "objects determined by their material 
conditions" and argue that historical anthropology should "strongly disso-
ciate" itself from such kinds of approach.28 Even if the criticism that Braudel's 
Méditerranée (cited by Habermas and Minkmar as representative of the his-
tory of mentalities) is overly deterministic is more or less justified, the same 
can certainly not be said for other exponents of the so-called "history of 
mentalities". Rather like historical anthropology, the latter is in practice so 
varied and at the same time so vaguely defined in social theoretical terms 
that the assertion, that it rests on deterministic foundations, is certainly 
unjustified and implies a kind of uniformity which does not actually exist.29 
Even more unjustified is the claim that leading historians of the "history of 
everyday life" (such as Hans Medick and Alf Lùdtke30) are likewise overly 
deterministic, particularly when it is considered that it is precisely histori-
ans such as these who have sought most to avoid the pitfalls of determinism 
by employing the concepts of appropriation and social practices. After such 
strenuous efforts to distance themselves from other labels by accusing them 
2 7 R. Habermas and N. Minkmar (eds.), Das Schwein des Häuptlings. Sechs Aufsätze zur 
Historischen Anthropologie, Berlin 1992, pp. 7-19. 
2 8 Ibid., p. 7 ff. Byway of contrast to Habermas and Minkmar, Wolf Lepenies has written 
that the history of mentalities stands at the very centre of historical anthropological 
research. See: W. Lepenies, "Geschichte und Anthropologie", in: GG1 (1975), p.331. 
2 9 See: U. Raulff (ed.), Mentalitätengeschichte. Zur historischen Rekonstruktion geistiger Prozesse, 
Berlin 1989, esp. pp.7-15; R H. Hutton, "Die Geschichte der Mentalitäten. Eine andere 
Landkarte der Kulturgeschichte", in: U. Raulff (ed.), Vom Umschreiben der Geschichte. 
Neue historische Perspektiven, Berlin 1986, pp. 103-31; E. Schulin, "Geistesgeschichte, 
Intellectual History und Histoire des Mentalités seit der Jahrhundertwende", in: 
idem, Traditionskritik und Rekonstruktionsversuch, Göttingen 1979, pp. 144-62. 
3 0 See: A. Lüdtke (ed.), Alltagsgeschichte. Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrungen und 
Lebensweisen, Frankfurt 1989, esp. the introduction and the reprint of an influential 
article by H. Medick, '"Missionare im Ruderboot '? Ethnologische Erkenntnisweisen 
als Herausforderung an die Sozialgeschichte", pp.48-84. Both articles contain 
fundamental statements about the "history of everyday life", which in fact coincide in 
many points of detail with the conception of historical anthropology proposed by 
Habermas and Minkmar. 
268 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
of determinism, Habermas and Minkmar only succeed in ending up at the 
point which the "history of everyday life" (Alltagsgeschickte) has already 
reached: thus we learn that historical anthropology {Historische Anthropologie) 
deals with "social processes as a form of interaction between structures on 
the one hand and perceptions, interpretations and actions on the other".31 
So where exactly does historical anthropology differ from the history of everday 
life? Do they both have the same program after all? 
I have in fact found little or no difference amongst authors who have writ-
ten conceptual pieces on historical anthropology. André Burguiere has described 
those French social historians interested in the qualitative methods used for 
analysing "systems of representation" as "historical anthropologists", as opposed 
to the numerous historians (including a great many in and around the Annales 
school) who have devoted themselves to the investigation of the "serial sources" 
to be found in rural history, demographic history and so on. Burguiere thus 
considers Marc Bloch's Les Rois thaumaturges 32 and Georges Duby's study of 
demonstrative profligacy in the high middle ages33 to belong to the field of 
historical anthropology. But couldn 't we equally asj ustifiably consider these works 
to be part of the history of everday life, rather like numerous other examples 
of French social history dealing with social, economic, religious and political 
relationships in a particular region and their appropriation by historical ac-
tors? Burguiere himself is reluctant to describe historical anthropology as an 
"independent branch of historical research".34 Michael Mitteraurer, for exam-
ple, confines tire anthropological side of his research on the history of the fam-
ily to social history's interdisciplinary contact with "social anthropology, ethnol-
ogy" and the "individual ethnographies of different European countries", to-
gether with themes "which can be broadly understood as anthropological, in 
that they are of fundamental relevance to research on the family".35 What is 
more, Anthony Giddens rightly points out that "any form of social research" 
possesses "a cultural anthropological aspect".36 
Historical anthropology would not therefore appear to be a clearly de-
fined field of historical science, distinguishable from the other mentioned la-
bels in terms of questions, theory or method.37 Moreover, there is nodiing very 
3 1 Habermas and Minkmar (eds.), Das Schwein des Häuptlings, p. 9. 
3 2 M. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges, Paris 1961. 
3 3 G. Duby, Guerriers et Paysans, Paris 1974, German: Kriegerund Bauern, Frankfurt 1977. 
3 4 A. Burguiere, "Historische Anthropologie", in: J. Le Goff et al. (eds.), Die Rückeroberung 
des historischen Denkens, Frankfurt 1990, pp. 62-101. 
3 5 M. Mitteraurer, Historisch-anthropologische Familienforschung,Wien 1990, p. 16. 
3 6 Giddens, Konstitution der Gesellschaft, p. 338. 
3 7 H. Wunder comes to the same conclusion in: Kulturgeschichte, Mentalitäten-
geschichte, Historische Anthropologie, in: R. van Dülmen (ed.), Fischer Lexikon 
Geschichte, 2 n d edition, Frankfurt 1990, p. 80. 
269 
Reinhard Sieder 
new about the aim of looking at European history through social or cultural 
anthropological eyes.38 However, if one wants to make an impact or stake a 
claim in the academic world, it is necessary to present what one is doing 
under a new label. We are thus dealing with a kind of conceptual slogan, 
which - like the terms "history of everyday life" or the "history of experi-
ence" - is intended to help force through a cultural theoretical change within 
social history. If there is one thing that various attempts to formulate an 
historical cultural anthropological methodology have in common, it is un-
doubtedly the employment of the praxiological mode of knowledge men-
tioned above. That, however, is something that historical anthroplogy shares 
in common with the history of everyday life and micro-history, women's and 
gender history, ethnographers who interpret their discipline as an histori-
cal cultural science39 and post-structural variations of ethno-history,40 to 
mention only the historical disciplines within the social sciences. 
Be that as it may, by no means all practitioners of historical anthropol-
ogy adhere to the post-structural, praxiological maxims implicit in the dia-
lectical analysis of conditions for action and social practices. Some of their 
number have not followed the post-structural trend, keeping instead within 
the structuralist tradition of Lévi-Strauss.41 Others are unable to apply 
praxiological maxims, because they remove marriage, birth, family, death, 
nutrition, etc. from their immediate socio-cultural or socio-economic con-
text, such that they are studied as isolated phenomena and subjected to 
sweeping comparisons with other societies and continents,42 similar to the 
3 8 Compare the extensive bibliography in: U. Daniel, „Kultur" und „Gesellschaft", pp. 
82; M. Sahlins, Inseln der Geschichte, Frankfurt 1992; N. Z. Davis, "Die Möglichkeiten 
der Vergangenhei t . Geschichte und Ethno log ie : Neue Blicke auf ve r t r au te 
Landschaften", in: Raulff (ed.), Vom Umschreiben der Geschichte, pp. 45-53. 
3 9 See: W. Kaschuba and C. Lipp, Dörfliches Überleben. Zur Geschichte materieller und sozialer 
Reproduktion ländlicher Gesellschaft im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 1982; W. 
Kaschuba, Lebenswelt und Kultur der unterbürgerlichen Schichten im 19. und 20. Jh., 
München 1990; idem, Volkskultur zwischen feudaler und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft. Zur 
Geschichte eines Begriffs und seiner gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit, Frankfurt 1988, esp. p. 31; 
R. van Dülmen and N. Schindler (eds.), Volkskultur. Zur Wiederentdeckung des vergessenen 
Alltags, Frankfurt 1984. 
4 0 See: KR. Wernhart und W. Zips, "Ethnohistoire und Kulturgeschichte. Diskussion 
der theoretischen und methodologischen Grundlagen", in: W. Schmied-Kowarzik 
and j . Stagl (eds.), Grundfragen der Ethnologie. Beiträge zur gegenwärtigen Theorie-Diskussion, 
2 n d edition, Berlin 1993, pp. 259 and 264. 
4 1 For an introduction, see: A. Honne th , "Ein strukturalist ischer Rousseau. Zur 
Anthropologie von C. Lévi-Strauss", in: idem, Die zerrissene Welt des Sozialen, pp. 93-112. 
4 2 Compare the criticism made by J. Kocka, "Historisch-anthropologische Frage-
stellungen - ein Defizit der Historischen Sozialwissenschaft? Thesen zur Diskussion", 
in: H. Süssmuth (ed.), Historische Anthropologie, Göttingen 1984, p. 77: "In order to 
270 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
way as the doctrine of cultural circles (Kulturkreislehre) was employed in the 
nascent ethnology of the start of the century.43 
It is not easy to define the relationship between the concept of the his-
tory of society ( Gesellschaftsgeschichte) and the terms just mentioned, because 
there are a number of contradictory conceptual definitions in existence. In 
the introduction to his History of German Society, Hans-Ulrich Wehler formu-
lates a program for a "socio-structural" history of modern German society 
and the "changing impact of economy, power, culture and the social inequali-
ties which go to make up that society".44 For Wehler's pupils, however, the 
term Gesellschaftsgeschichte defines a much broader church, under whose roof 
it should be possible to "integrate" the history of everyday life, historical 
anthropology, womens' and gender history, the history of mentalities, a new 
interpretation of political history and the history of ideas, and even a "his-
toricism redefined for the present day".45 If this were really the case, then 
the term Gesellschaftsgeschichte (history of society) would serve no other pur-
pose than to act as a short-hand for the sum total of quantificatory and in-
terpretative approaches belonging to the historical social sciences. 
In practice, terms like history of experience, history of everday life, 
historical anthropology or history of society (in so far as it is not conceived 
of as a catch-all concept), are fairly indistinguishable, more or less inter-
changeable rallying cries. Like all rallying cries, they have their logical weak-
nesses and give rise to misunderstandings. There are nonetheless good rea-
sons for continuing to employ terms like history of everyday life, due to their 
bring out particular aspects of a situation or forms of behaviour which change only 
very slowly, broadly extended conceptions of space and time are employed, which 
almost necessarily means that social phenomena (for example, such as youth protest) 
are taken utterly out of their specific historical context (societal, cultural, political 
and so on), thereby automatically ignoring the usual strictures and rules implicit in 
historical analysis. For this reason, the approach conflicts with certain key principles 
of historical social science (above all, the importance of context and basic historical 
methodology)." 
4 3 See K. E. Müller, "Grundzüge des ethnologischen Historismus", in: Schmied-Kowarzik 
and Stagl (eds.), Grundfragen der Ethnologie, pp. 197-232, esp. p. 202. 
4 4 H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 1: Vom Feudalismus des Alten Reiches 
bis zur Defensiven Modernisierung der Reformära 1700-1915, München 1987, esp. 
pp. 7-12. 
4 0 M. Het t l inget al. (eds.), Was ist Gesellschaftsgeschichte?München 1991, Vorwort, pp. 9-
10; see also: H. Wunder, Kulturgeschichte, Mentalitätengeschichte, Historische Anthropologie, 
a n d j . Mooser, "Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, Historische Sozialwissenschaft", 
in: R. van Dülmen (ed.), Fischer Lexikon Geschichte, pp. 65-85 and pp. 86-101, esp. 101: 
„Die Gesellschaftsgeschichte ist daher angewiesen auf die Kulturgeschichte und 
Historische Anthropologie, ebenso wie auf die Politische Geschichte". 
271 
Reinhard Sieder 
function as a kind of signal enabling us to point to the neglect of social actors' 
perspectives and actions in the more objectivist variants of social history and 
the "history of society". If these efforts eventually achieve their aim - and a 
number of signs indicate that they will - then the battle slogans themselves 
will become obsolete. Having become "sociologised" in the 1970s and 1980s, 
social history will thus be expanded into an historical social and cultural sci-
ence. Historical actors' viewpoints will be integrated into social historical re-
search in a way that has long been true for social structures (incidentally, the 
latter being a shift that occurred without the label "social history" being re-
placed by "structural history", as Werner Conze once suggested should hap-
pen) . At the same time, it is only to be expected that new labels will repeat-
edly crop up in the future, in order to mark out new territories and proclaim 
one's own approach as "new", "nouvelle" or "neu", in contrast to well-estab-
lished approaches. Social science achieves its dynamic as a societal institution 
not least through the constant struggle between those already in possession 
of jobs and positions and those striving after them, as well as the respective 
efforts of such groups to build up power and influence by forming research 
groups and methodological schools. But unfortunately, academic self-repro-
duction has - up until now - not been subjected to the same careful examina-
tion as that which is applied to the subject-matter of social science, a fact that 
necessitates critical reflection about the latter's programmatic statements and 
the labels it employs.46 In my opinion, the frequentiy confusing impact of the 
- often quite aggressive - use of rallying cries is carried out for reasons of 
academic politics, in order to establish differences between certain groups 
and to exclude others. On closer inspection, however, most of these differ-
ences prove to be unsubstantiated both in terms of social scientific theory and 
the actual history of the disciplines concerned. 
A return to narratives without theory ? 
Members of the first generation of historical social scientists have re-
peatedly accused the history of everyday life and the history of experience 
as "completely lacking in theory" and its practitioners of being "hostile to 
theory",47 and it can be supposed that the same accusations will be levelled 
4 6 See: P. Bourdieu, Homo academicus, Frankfurt 1988; idem, "Narzißtische Reflexivität 
und wissenschaftliche Reflexivität", in: E. Berg and M. Fuchs (eds.), Kultur, soziale 
Praxis, Text. Die Krise der ethnographischen Repräsentation, Frankfurt 1993, pp. 365-74. 
4 7 See J. Kocka, "Zurück zur Erzählung? Plädoyer für historische Argumentation", in: 
GG10 (1984), pp. 395-408; idem, "Klassen oder Kultur? Durchbrüche und Sackgassen 
in der Arbeitergeschichte", in: Merkur 36 (1982), pp. 955-65. 
272 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
against the proponents of historical anthropology. Admittedly, there are a 
few historians amongst those choosing workers, peasants, serfs and slaves 
as their subjects who claim to get by without employing any theory. But a 
good proportion of social historians interested in the history of the everday 
life, historical anthropology and so on, base their approach precisely on 
the above-mentioned social theories pertaining to the dual constitution of 
social reality.48 Hostility to theory is thus directed only at those theories which 
adhere to objectivistic paradigms. On the basis of their criticism of both the 
one-dimensionality of structural functionalism and culturalistic narrowness, 
the new generation of social historians has been able to develop a more 
advanced theoretical understanding. 
Accusations as to lack of theory are closely bound up with talk about a 
lapse back into historical narrative (which also lacks theory). This has stimu-
lated a highly productive debate and, above all, has illustrated that the crea-
tion of a binary opposition between narrative and explanation misses the 
point about the very nature of historical scientific discourse. Or as Roger 
Chartier has formulated the problem, the specificity of historical knowledge 
consists "in the narrative and the construction of that narrative"; the degree 
of historical intelligibility is measured by the plausibility of the given narra-
tive.49 Jorn Riisen has argued in much the same way. For him, narrative is 
nothing less than the actual means by which historical explanation takes 
place, on condition that the narrative goes beyond the purely mimetic to a 
level of construction which is then testable, reflective and theorising.50 The 
accusation that the history of everyday life or the new cultural history repre-
sents nothing more than a lapse into narrative without theory proves unten-
able, because it relies on an artificial dichotomy between narrative and 
explanation and refuses to confine its criticism to particular authors who 
are in fact decidely antitheoretical in their approach. In all its various shapes 
and sizes, be it structural analytical, quantificatory or qualitative, the writ-
ing of history is inherently narrative in form because it is always based on 
the construction of links in time and space, which cannot be presented in 
4 8 Above all, see: Lüdtke, "Einleitung, and Medick, 'Missionare im Ruderboot'?" both 
in: A. Lüdtke (ed.), Alltagsgeschichte, R. Sieder, "Zur Theoriebedürftigkeit der Neuen 
Alltagsgeschichte", in: H. Nagl-Docekal and F. Wimmer (eds.), Neue Ansätze in der 
Geschichtswissenschaft, Wien 1984, pp. 24-41. 
4 9 R. Chartier, Die unvollendete Vergangenheit. Geschichte und die Macht der Weltauslegung, 
Berlin 1989, p. 35. 
5 0 J . Rüsen, Zeit und Sinn. Strategien historischen Denkens, Frankfurt 1990; for a criticism of 
Rüsen, see: R. Possekel, "Die Widersprüche der Geschichtswissenschaft. Überlegungen 
zu Jörn Rüsens Historik", in: ÖZG4 (1993), pp. 479-91. 
273 
Reinhard Sieder 
any other way than by narrative explanation. Seen f rom this point of view, 
historical argumentation - which, as Jürgen Kocka has emphasised, repre-
sents the distinctive, excursive style of historical social science - constitutes 
one of several different types of textual forms within historiographical nar-
rative, along with description, evaluation, numeration and so on. The main 
thing for social historians - and especially those concerned with the history 
of everyday life or interested in cultural anthropological approaches — to 
learn from this debate is that they must avoid placing a naive trust in the 
directness of mimetic approaches. The desire to be the mouthpiece of the 
"voiceless" oppressed, as was constantly proclaimed in the nascent phase of 
"the history of everyday life", potentially ignores the constructive, fictional 
element in historiographical narrative and averts the focus onto the ideals, 
processes of idealisation, norms and values that are thereby set in motion.51 
Some methodological consequences 
A number of methodological conclusions must be drawn from these 
theoretical considerations. The first and most basic of these is that - in their 
absence - we must empirically investigate historical actors' viewpoints by 
analysing in a social scientific manner those texts which record relevant state-
ments on their part. That is equally as true for the interpretation of surviv-
ing texts (such as diaries, autobiographies, travelogues, police reports) as it 
is for texts generated during the research process itself, as is the case with 
the technique of narrative or other kinds of interview. The problems of text 
analysis raise the question as to how historical actors' interpretations and 
actions can be understood and explained when the researcher belongs to 
another time, another society and to other systems of knowledge, belief, 
sensibility and certainties. If culture is understood in accordance with our 
hypothesis concerning the dual construction of social reality, then it follows 
that culture is also produced by social actors' daily activities, rather than 
simply being a system of given symbols, norms and values that are external 
and pre-existing for each member of society. Every culture is thus bound up 
with a specific life-world, through which it is created in praxi and for practi-
cal purposes. If, however, we want to study a past life-world, we are obliged 
- nolens volens - to take up the position of observer. Bourdieu has argued 
that ethnologists and anthropologists are frequently in danger of becoming 
culture-centric because of their theoretical standpoints and reflexive distance 
5 1 On the fictional character of historical writing, see: V. Bid, "Geschichte als Literatur". 
274 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
from the field of investigation.52 That is undoubtedly a criticism that can also 
be applied to social historians, given that the surviving textual sources are 
even less likely to provide counter-arguments to the researcher's interpreta-
tion than the living subjects studied by ethnologists and anthropologists. If 
a contemporary life-world is to be studied, we can enter into a communica-
tive relationship with its participants, and thus ourselves become virtual 
participants in this foreign life-world.53 This can result in a lengthy (and only 
partly successful) "second socialisation" process, in which we are gradually 
able to accumulate experience of the rules, meanings and characteristics of 
the life-world in question. In most social historical research, however, it is 
usually the case that the life-world no longer exists: all that remains are written 
or oral narratives, data, objects and pictures. This greatly widened episte-
mological gap forces us to recognise the different characteristics of the past 
life-world and to draw methodological consequences from that fact. The 
Italian social historian Carlo Ginzburg has gone so far to develop a radical 
maxim on this basis: "The fundamental technique of research is that of dis-
tancing oneself from the subject-matter, the ability to make things seem dis-
tant and incomprehensible - and not the other way round, as historians 
usually try and do. Historians frequently turn to the past with a purely ret-
rospective projection of how the past might have been, [...] in a way that 
does not see or seek out what is different, but on the contrary, excessively 
strives after identification with the past!"54 
The fact that everything cultural is inherendy bound up with signs (sym-
bols) implies that in methodological terms, we should make sense of these 
signs by processing them hermeneutically and analytically. Moreover, 
Ginzburg's hypothesis about the different nature of past cultures means that 
historical science's traditional hermeneutic approach is no longer sufficient. 
Historicism was premised upon the idea that there was one single history of 
humanity, whose meaning could be concluded from the historian's intuitive 
interpretation of the sources.55 However, cultural anthropologists and so-
cial historians influenced by them no longer assume that they share one and 
5 2 Bourdieu, Theorie der Praxis, p. 142.; idem, Sozialer Sinn. Kritik der theoretischen Vernunft, 
Frankfurt 1987, p. 63. 
5 3 See: J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Bd. 1, Frankfurt 1981, p. 63. 
5 4 C. Ginzburg, "Geschichte und Geschichten. Uber Archive, Marlene Dietrich und die 
Lust an der Geschichte", in: idem, Spurensicherungen. Uber verborgene Geschichte, Kunst 
und soziales Gedächtnis, Berlin 1983, p. 22. 
5 5 For a critique of German historicism's basic theory of knowledge and philosophy of 
history, see: W.J. Mommsen, Die Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Historismus, Düsseldorf 
1971; idem, "Geschichte als Historische Sozialwissenschaft", in: P. Rossi (ed.), Theorie 
der modernen Geschichtsschreibung, Frankfurt 1987, pp. 107-46. 
275 
Reinhard Sieder 
the same world with the actors who form the subject-matter of their research. 
The more historians open themselves up to the viewpoints of historical ac-
tors, the more it becomes clear that those actors' perspectives belong to 
different life-worlds, or to put it another way, occupy a different horizon of 
meaning.56 It is therefore necessary to recognise that we can no longer trust 
in a common horizon of meaning, as Dilthey and other "hermeneutic ide-
alists"57 did. Nor can we draw conclusions about historical actors' experi-
ences on the basis of our own experiences, "imagine ourselves" to be in the 
same situation as people in the past, or trust in an almost secretive kind of 
"intuitive understanding". That would inevitably lead to our projecting onto 
the past the experiences and interpretations formed in our own life-world 
and transposing them to different life-worlds. 
Yet what other methodological alternatives are open to us? As long as 
we dispose of texts that allow us to reconstruct the viewpoints and experi-
ences of his tor ical actors, we are able to em p loy a systemat ical ly 
reconstructive hermeneutic-analytical approach. By this I mean forms of 
text analysis which analyse the multi-layered, context dependent nature of 
texts (and to a certain extent, visual images as well) as precisely as possi-
ble, in a way that reconstructs the original narrative along the lines of how 
it originated in the past.58 Whether it be an oral narrative, a diary entry, 
court record or whatever, the text will be treated as the protocol of a par-
5 6 The term "life-world" derives from the phenomenological sociology of the 1930s and 
1940s (E. Husserl and A. Schütz) and became commonly used in social history in the 
1980s, opposing the dominance of structural funct ional ism. In contrast to its 
phenomenological meaning (i.e. the subject's "horizon of meaning"), social historians 
frequently equate "life-world" with local or regional societies. In doing so, however, 
they lose both the constitutive meaning of life-world, which is bound up with the way 
actors' interpret and make sense of their life-world, and the methodological necessity 
of exploring the entirety of its meaning through interpretive social science methods. 
On the phenomenological concept of "life-world", see: A. Gurwitsch, "Problems of 
the Life-World", in: M. Natanson (ed.), Phenomenology and Social Reality. Essays in 
memory of A. Schütz, Den Haag 1970, pp. 53-61; A. Schütz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der 
sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie, Frankfurt 1974; B. Waidenfels, 
In den Netzen der Lebenswelt, Frankfurt 1985; R. Grathoff, Milieu und Lebenswelt. Einführung 
in die phänomenologische Soziologie und die sozialphänomenologische Forschung, Frankfurt 
1989. On the sociologisation of the concept, see: Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen 
Handelns-, for a critique thereof, compare: A. Linkenbach, Opake Gestalten des Denkens. 
J. Habermas und die Rationalität fremder Lebensformen, München 1986. 
5 7 W . Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, Frankfurt 
1981. 
5 8 An overview of reconstructive analytical methods as they have developed up until 
now is provided by: Lamnek, Qualitative Sozialforschung, vol. II. 
276 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
ticular action,59 and interpreted in accordance with our social historical 
knowledge of its context (contrary to the purely textual models of interpre-
tation employed by linguistics) .60 In this kind of text analysis, subjects actu-
ally come into view as actors, that is to say that their interpretations are not 
treated independently of their actions or conditions for action, just as the 
conditions for action are always viewed in connection with their appropria-
tion by historical actors.61 
In doing so, it is necessary to consider that the possibility for individu-
als to change a given situation through social action exists up to a certain 
point, but this is something often only available to social groups, who can 
coordinate their actions to a particular end and define a common goal on 
the basis of common interests (which does not necessarily mean that that 
goal will always be achieved). If we speak about actors in Bourdieu's sense 
of the term, then we do not really mean individuals acting alone, but rather, 
people who exist and act in communicative and interactive relationships. 
Or to put it more precisely, the actor is our intellectual construction, through 
which we hope to express accurately aspects of an historical person who 
communicated and acted in concert with others. At the same time, it seems 
worthwhile - wherever possible - to take individual actors as case studies, 
5 9 H . - G . Soeffner, "Prämissen einer sozialwissenschaftlichen Hermeneutik", in: idem. 
Auslegung des Alltags - Der Alltag der Auslegung. Zur wissenssoziologischen Konzeption einer 
sozialwissenschaftlichen Hermeneutik, Frankfurt 1989, pp. 66-97. 
6 0 For attempts at this kind of textual interpretation, see my articles, '"Vater, derf i 
aufstehn?' Childhood experiences in Viennese working-class families around 1900", 
in: Continuity and Change 1 (1996)1, pp.53-88; "A Hitler Youth from a Respectable 
Family: The Narrative Composition and Deconstruction of a Life Story", in: D. Bertaux 
and P. Thompson (eds.), Between Generations. Family Models, Myths and Memories, Oxford 
1993, pp. 99-120; "Freisetzung und Bindung. Eine Fallstudie zu aktuellen Dynamiken 
im Ehe- und Familienleben", in: J. Ehmer et al. (eds.), Historische Familienforschung. 
Ergebnisse und Kontroversen, Michael Mitterauer zum 60. Geburtstag, Frankfurt and New 
York 1997, pp. 229-255. 
6 1 Compare the technique applied by Gabriele Rosenthal for the sequential analysis of 
data and texts. By adapting the ideas developed by F. Schütze and U. Oevermann, 
Rosenthal essentially takes two main analytical steps: firstly, the analysis of what the 
au thor of the text wants to say, and secondly, the experimental weighing up of all 
possible meanings (Lesarten) that are additionally conceivable. The systematic 
investigation of the differences between the intended and latent sense of a text seems 
to be one way of acknowledging the cultural difference between historical actors 
and the scientific interpretation of their statements, as well as of employing that 
difference heuristically in the search for historical scientific truth (which is always a 
truth concerned with difference). See: G. Rosenthal, Erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte. 
Gestalt und Struktur biographischer Selbstbeschreibungen, Frankfurt and New York 1995, 
esp. pp. 186-226. 
277 
Reinhard Sieder 
in order to side-step the frequent pit-fall of structural functionalist social 
history whereby social groups, collectivities and classes are ontologised as 
"the family", "the household", "the workforce", "the proletariat", "the bour-
geoisie" etc.. By avoiding the attribution of collective characteristics to such 
groups prior to the research actually taking place, as well as the temptation 
to smooth over the internal differences within a group (e.g. between men 
and women, young people and adults, skilled and unskilled workers and so 
on), it is possible for us to undertake a full social historical investigation on 
the basis of analytical case-studies, thus improving the empirical quality of 
our research. In other words, our hypotheses and arguments will be tied to 
an analysis of empirically reconstructed cases, which can then be tested by 
comparison with other cases and examples.62 
Admittedly, there are a number of impor tan t questions for which 
there are no, or hardly any, relevant surviving statements f rom histori-
cal actors, and without there being any possibility of generating statements 
by means of interviews, because the interval of time is simply too great. 
In such instances, we only dispose of statements about the actors, be they 
from the side of the authorities, contemporary observers, or proto-soci-
ologists, such as the society writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. These 
texts can be subjected to discourse analysis, which is still able to treat 
the text's author as an empirical case-study, even if it is unable to do so 
for the actual actors themselves. The author 's interests, social position, 
education etc. must be reconstructed with the greatest possible attention 
to detail, in order for that text to be "deconstructed" and for the obser-
vations and claims made about "the bourgeoisie", "the peasants", "the 
people", and so on, to be interpreted as contextually d e p e n d e n t social 
actions with their own particular perspectives. 
This does not necessarily mean stopping at the construction of case-
studies: a number of cases can be compared, and the typology resulting 
from that comparison (whether systematic or unsystematic) can provide 
insights into the actual workings of specific periods and cultures. This 
6 2 It is often claimed that such a high level of empirical accuracy can only be attained by 
social historians working on near-contemporary history, because they are able to 
employ qualitative research techniques, such as narrative interviews. However, it is 
also the case that sources from much more historically removed periods can be 
successfully analysed in terms of the dialectic between conditions for action and 
social practices, as some stimulating works on the social history of the early modern 
period have shown. See, for example: E. Landsteiner, "Einen Bären anbinden", in: 
ÖZG 4 (1993), pp. 218-52; Michael Stolberg, '"Mein äskulapisches Orakel ! ' 
Patientenbriefe als Quelle einer Kulturgeschichte der Krankheitserfahrung im 18. 
Jahrhundert" , in: ÖZG7 (1996), pp. 385-404; and many others. 
278 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
case-study and comparative typlogy based approach has in fact already 
been employed in many fields of interpretative social history. Social his-
torians have tried to use case-studies in their research on the history of 
social groups (such as a factory work-force63), socio-cultural milieus (for 
example , youth groups engaged in political resistance in the Third 
Reich6 4), village micro-societies,65 means of survival in National Socialist 
concentration camps,66 and the political behaviour and everyday experiences 
of particular generations or social classes,67 to name but a few. Social scien-
tific biographical research should also be included here, given that it occu-
pies an interdisciplinary middle-ground between sociology and social his-
tory and is concerned with the detailed reconstruction of individual lifestories, 
which can then be contrasted, compared and presented in typological 
form.68 
Contrary to the claims made by its critics, all these variants of a cul-
tural scientifically expanded social history do not represent a conception 
opposing historical social science (Historische Sozialwissenschaft). They are 
very much a part of historical social science, albeit one which avoids reduc-
6 3 See, for example: I. Bauer, "Tschikweiber haum's uns g'nennt..." Frauenleben und 
Frauenarbeit an der „Peripherie": Die Halleiner Zigarrenfabriksarbeiterinnen 1869 bis 1940. 
Eine historische Fallstudie auf der Basis lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews, Wien 1988. 
6 4 See, for example: Ch. Gerbel, A. Mejstrik, R. Sieder, "Die 'Schlurfs'. Verweigerung 
und Opposition von Wiener Arbeiterjugendlichen im 'Dritten Reich'", in: E. Tälos et 
al. (eds.), NS-Herrschaft in Österreich, Wien 1988, pp.243-68. 
6 5 See, for example: D. Sabean, Powerin the Blood. Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany, 
Cambridge 1985; German: Das zweischneidige Schwert. Herrschaft und Widerspruch im 
Württemberg der frühen Neuzeit, Berlin 1986; idem, Property, Production, and Family in 
Neckarshausen, 1700-1870, Cambridge 1990; R. Beck, Unterfinning. Ländliche Welt vor 
Anbruch der Moderne, München 1993. 
6 6 Among others, see: M. Pollak, Die Grenzen des Sagbaren. Lebensgeschichten von KZ-
Uberlebenden als Augenzeugenberichte und als Identitätsarbeit, Frankfurt 1988. 
6 7 See: L. Niethammer (ed.), "Diefahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll". 
Faschismus-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet, Bonn 1983; idem and A. von Plato (eds.), "Wir 
kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten", Bonn 1985; L. Niethammer et al. (eds.), Die volkseigene 
Erfahrung: Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR Berlin 1991; L. 
Passerini (ed.), Memory and Totalitarianism, Oxford 1992; idem, Torino operaia efascismo, 
Roma 1984; English: Facism in Popular Memory, Cambridge 1987. 
(>8 For biographical studies relating to research on the Third Reich, see: G. Rosenthal 
(ed.) , Die Hitlerjugend-Generation. Biographische Thematisierung als Vergangenheits-
bewältigung, Essen 1986; idem, "Als der Krieg kam, hatte ich mit Hitler nichts mehr zu tun". 
Zur Gegenwärtigkeit des "Dritten Reiches"in Biographien, Opladen 1990; idem, "Wenn alles 
in Scherben fällt... " Von Leben und Sinnwelt der Kriegsgeneration, Opladen 1987; W. Fischer-
Rosenthal et al. (eds.), Biographien in Deutschland, Opladen 1994; a comprehensive 
bibliograpy is given in: BIOS 1 (1988) and 2 (1989). 
279 
Reinhard Sieder 
ing its subject-matter either objectivistically (to the external conditions for 
social action and interpretation) or subjectivistically (to "lived experience"). 
It is not the case - as is all too often asserted - that this form of social history 
abruptly swaps subjective viewpoints for objective structures. Instead, as I 
have tried to show, it investigates the dialectical connection between structured 
conditions for action and social practices, which structurise relationships 
within certain social spaces. 
In view of the overwhelming occupation of the "social" by structural 
functionalism, it seems to me an interesting strategic question as to whether 
we should consider returning to the term "culture" - much as it was used as 
a conceptual battle slogan in the late 19th century, as a means of combating 
the primacy of the political - and term the approach outlined above histori-
cal cultural science. Ute Daniel has put this subject up for discussion, whilst 
simultaneously showing just how much the concept of "culture" has changed 
since the earliest attempts to formulate approaches to cultural history in the 
18th century.69 From today's perspective, for example, cultural history as 
practised by someone like Karl Lamprecht seems too objectivistic and heav-
ily influenced by psychological theory, that of authors such as Breysig, 
Toynbee or Morgan as overly evolutionistic in approach, and the works of 
Jacob Burckhardt too narrow in scope.70 It is nevertheless necessary for 
historical science to engage with these older approaches, if it is to overcome 
different configurations of objectivism, idealism and culturalism and move 
in the direction of a putative historical cultural and social science. After all, 
it is only possible to overcome what has first been acknowledged as neces-
sary to be overcome. 
Trends and future perspectives. 
By way of conclusion, I would like to discuss the future perspectives that 
are opened up for social history by the adoption of the praxiological mode 
of research outlined above and its move in the direction of an historical 
6 9 Daniel, "Kultur"und, "Gesellschaft". 
7 0 For some important comments on this topic, see the still relevant discussion by: T. 
Nipperdey, "Kulturgeschichte, Sozialgeschichte, historische Anthropologie", in: 
Vierteljahrsschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 55 (1968) ; i dem, "Die 
anthropologische Dimension der Geschichtswissenschaft", in: G. Schulz (ed.) , 
Geschichteheute, Göttingen 1973, pp. 225-55; see also: Daniel, "Kultur"und "Gesellschaft", 
p. 84. 
280 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
cultural science. What changes have been displayed in the theoretical con-
ception and planning of social historical research? 
A social history which interprets itself as an historical cultural science 
cannot proceed in a culture-centric fashion, but will be obliged to recog-
nise a plurality of cultures and the respective differences between them, based 
on the different social logics constructed by their constituent actors. In ad-
dition, social history will no longer appear to be gender-neutral, but will 
take gender relations as one of its central themes in any given area of research, 
reflecting as it must the impact of the researcher's own gender on the inves-
tigation, interpretation and analysis of historical texts, pictures and data. 
Cultural scientific social historians are in a position to break with the 
universalistic categories ("man" or "people", "the world", "reason" etc.) of 
idealistic, male-dominated historical science, insofar as they thematicise both 
their own standpoints and social interests and those of the historical actors 
they are investigating (which does not mean that they are obliged to lose 
themselves in those viewpoints!). When seen in this light the hegelian and 
marxist conception of a historical meta-narrative, which tells history in the 
form of humanity's gradual emancipation, appears as an unconscious and 
unthinking interpretative framework for the historiography of "the modern". 
The teleological conception inherent in this meta-narrative might thus be 
replaced by a plurality of histories possessing open-ended futures. In doing 
this, however, social historians will no longer be able to conceive of their 
own role as a normative one (in the tradition of the "late Enlightenment"), 
whose evaluations of historical processes have recourse to a universal sense 
of meaning attached to human action.71 In practical and moral terms, this 
form of social history undoubtedly can have a thoroughly political, emanci-
patory impact, as long as it provokes discussion about the actions, experi-
ences and interests of social groups, classes and genders, together with the 
different forms and scope of power exercised by historical actors. Metaphori-
cally speaking, this kind of social history will not be speaking over people's 
heads. The investigation of historical actors' appropriation of relationships 
7 1 Representatives of a "late Enlightenment", such as Jürgen Habermas or Jörn Rüsen, 
see themselves as obliged to refer to a totality, which can be defined as the utopic 
end-product of a successful discourse. In my opinion, this has been justifiably criticised 
from the feminist and cultural scientific standpoint as a "utopic pre-creational scenario" 
and an academic vision of free dialogue relating to those obligatorily interested in 
knowledge. See: R Sloterdijk, Kritik derzynischen Vernunft, vol. I, Frankfurt 1983, p. 47. 
For a feminist critique, compare the contribution by J. Held and U. Frevert in the 
volume by J. Rüsen et al. (eds.), Die Zukunft der Aufklärung, Frankfurt 1988. 
281 
Reinhard Sieder 
and circumstances brings their actions, interpretations, ideas and physical 
experiences to the fore. 
Ever since the first attempts at defining and practising social history, 
there has been a tendency to focus on the regional and local level. This is 
mainly due to the more intense empirical nature of social historical research 
and will probably increase with the proliferation of more culturally scien-
tific oriented works. However, the régionalisation of research themes does 
not exclude their being brought together into compilation volumes for the 
purposes of providing overviews and making comparisons over a broader 
area. Nonetheless, it does present specific problems. Chief among these is 
that the increasing variety of theoretical approaches and methods increases 
the likelihood of results that are incompatible for comparative purposes. 
For that reason, theoretical discussion among researchers and agreement 
over the meaning of concepts, terminology and methods employed, will be 
that much more important, particularly between specialist researchers and 
those presenting comparative synopses of social historical research. 
The current trend should also lead away from deductive or inductive 
closed, homogeneous "grand theories" towards the construction of hypoth-
eses with more modest theoretical claims, which are s t imulated a n d 
abductively developed by the data and texts.72 In place of puristic attempts 
to keep the old grand theories intact has come an ever more positively evalu-
ated eclecticism. Historical interpretations premised upon continuity and 
coherence will decline in importance in the face of the loss of meaning ex-
perienced by "grand theories" and their respective meta-narratives. In their 
stead approaches are beginning to appear which stress discontinuity and 
difference, although that by no means implies that social or cultural histori-
cal science has renounced its claim to be an autonomous discipline, on the 
basis that it focuses on historical change. The theoretical construction and 
descriptions of "historical developments" as "secular trends", something 
which has enjoyed great popularity amongst academic researchers and their 
public in recent years (to name but one example, Norbert Elias' by now 
famous theory of civilisation73), can in many ways be considered somewhat 
7 2 Although as yet scarcely noticed by social history, see the "classic" studies by C. S. 
Pierce, Collected Papers, Cambridge 1931. Foran introduction to Pierce's work, see: L. 
Nagl, C. S. Peirce, Frankfurt 1992; see too the discussions of "qualitative social research" 
in (among others), B.G. Glaser and A.L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: 
Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago 1967; J. Reichertz, Probleme qualitativer 
Sozialforschung, Frankfurt 1985; P. Zedier and H. Moser (eds.), Aspekte qualitativer 
Sozialforschung, Opladen 1983. See also the references given in Footnote 2. 
7 3 N. Elias, Über dm Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 
2 vol., Frankfurt 1976, esp. voi. 2: Wandlungen der Gesellschaft. Entwurf zu einer 
282 
Social History: on the Way to Becoming a Historical Cultural Science? 
suspicious in ideological terms, because of its insistence on a clearly directed 
developmental path. Theoretical analyses stressing continuity and coherence 
favour the suppression of contradictions and the smoothing over of breaks 
and fissures; developmental theories presumably owe their persuasive force 
to their ability to raise hopes about gaining an overview of the broken land-
scapes of the historical world. As long as they are plausible in their formu-
lation, teleological models frequently allow their authors to pass over gaps 
in empirical knowledge or tempt them to offer a "tendentious" interpreta-
tion of texts, images and objects in line with the "developmental path" be-
ing followed. Thanks to its greater empirical strengths, however, cultural 
scientific social history will be able to point up more breakages, interrup-
tions and turning-points in the past, than these "lines of development" can 
cover over. And as the historical philosopher Frank R. Ankersmit has re-
cently put it, social history will not so much contribute to a consolidation of 
identity than to making questionable identities more uncertain.74 
A thoroughly cultural scientific social history will not be working alone 
in applying the approaches sketched here. The trends mentioned above are 
immanent, if not present already, in all the cultural and social sciences and 
humanides disciplines, albeit with different degrees of intensity. Indeed, these 
changes are visible beyond academic disciplines, being apparent in archi-
tecture, literature, philosophy, and not least, in our experiences in daily life: 
whether we agree with the term or not, they are characteristics common to 
the post-modern period,75 a time when modernity is increasing its efforts to 
think critically about its forms of knowledge, not least its idea of history. 
Translation from the German by Laurence Cole/London 
Theorie der Zivilisation. For a critique of the teleological nature of this "theory of 
civilisation", see H. Kuzmics and I. Mörth (eds.), Der unendliche Prozeß der Zivilisation. 
Zur Kultursoziologie der Moderne nachN. Elias, Frankfurt 1991. 
7 4 See the discussion with Frank Ankersmit in: ÖZG 4 (1993), pp. 457-466. 
7 5 See: W. Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, 3 r d edition, Weinheim 1991. 
283