Doing history forces us to make choices about the scale of the history with which we are concerned. Take the analogy suggested by the maps above. Are we concerned with Asia, China, or Shandong? Or in historical terms, are we concerned with the whole of the Chinese Revolution; the base area of Yenan, or the specific experience of a handful of villages in Shandong during the 1940s? And given the fundamental heterogeneity of social life, the choice of scale makes a big difference to the findings (post).
Historians differ fundamentally around the decisions they make about scale. William Hinton provides what is almost a month-to-month description of the Chinese Revolution in Fanshen village – a collection of a few hundred families (Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
). The book covers a few years and the events of a few hundred people. Likewise, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie offers a deep treatment of the villagers of Montaillou; once again, a single village and a limited time (Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
). Diane Vaughan offers a full study of the fateful decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle (The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
). She hopes to shed light on high-risk technology decision-making through careful study of a single incident. These histories are limited in time and space, and they can appropriately be called “micro-history.”At the other end of the scale spectrum, William McNeill provides a history of the world (A World History
) and a history of the world’s diseases (Plagues and Peoples
); Massimo Livi-Bacci offers a history of the world’s population (A Concise History of World Population
); Jared Diamond offers a history of the interrelationships between the Old World and the New World through the medium of weapons and disease (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
); and Goudsblom and De Vries provide an environmental history of the world (Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective: Myths, Maps and Models
). In each of these cases, the historian has chosen a scale that encompasses virtually the whole of the globe, over millennia of time. These histories can certainly be called “macro-history.”Both micro- and macro-history have important shortcomings. Micro-history leaves us with the question, “how does this particular village shed light on anything larger?”. And macro-history leaves us with the question, “how do these grand assertions about causality really work out in the context of Canada or Sichuan?”. The first threatens to be so particular as to lose all interest, whereas the second threatens to be so general as to lose all empirical relevance to real historical processes.
There is a third choice available to the historian, however, that addresses both points. This is to choose a scale that encompasses enough time and space to be genuinely interesting and important, but not so much as to defy valid analysis. This level of scale might be regional – for example, G. William Skinner’s analysis of the macro-regions of China (post). It might be national – for example, a social history of Indonesia (M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200
). And it might be supra-national – for example, an economic history of Western Europe. The key point is that historians in this middle range are free to choose the scale of analysis that seems to permit the best level of conceptualization of history, given the evidence that is available and the social processes that appear to be at work. And this mid-level scale permits the historian to make substantive judgments about the “reach” of social processes that are likely to play a causal role in the story that needs telling. This level of analysis can be referred to as “meso-history,” and it appears to offer an ideal mix of specificity and generality.Here are a few works that represent the best of meso-history: R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience
; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
; and Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990 - 1992
. Wong and Tilly define their scope in terms of supra-national regions. Pomeranz argues for a sub-national scale: comparison of England's agricultural heartland with the Yangzi region in China. Each pays close attention to the problem of defining the level of scale that works best for the particular task. And each does a stellar job of identifying the concrete social processes and relationships that hold this regional social system together.Both macro- and meso-history fall in the general category of "large-scale" history. So let's analyze this conception of history. Large-scale history can be defined in these terms.
- The inquiry defines its scope over a long time period and/or a large geographical range;
- the inquiry undertakes to account for large structural characteristics, processes, and conditions as historical outcomes;
- the inquiry singles out large structural characteristics within the social order as central causes leading to the observed historical outcomes;
- the inquiry aspires to some form of comparative generality across historical contexts, both in its diagnosis of causes and its attribution of patterns of stability and development.
- History of the “long durée”—accounts of the development of the large-scale features of a particular region, nation, or civilization, including population history, economic history, political history, war and peace, cultural formations, and religion
- Comparative history—a comparative account, grounded in a particular set of questions, of the similarities and contrasts of related institutions or circumstances in separated contexts. E.g. states, economic institutions, patterns of agriculture, property systems, bureaucracies. The objective is to discover causal regularities, test existing social theories, and formulate new social theories
- World history—accounts of the major civilizations of the world and their histories of internal development and inter-related contact and development
Thanks for this wonderful post.
ReplyDeleteIn the premodern era in mainland Southeast Asia it is definitely regional history that is important. Things are just too interconnected and at least for the early Ming dynasty this has to include China on the northern borderlands.
Writing regional history you also get more out of the often rather limited historical chronicles of premodern agrarian states also.
Jon, thanks for your very helpful comment. Lots of interesting issues to dig into. Dan
ReplyDeleteThere are other "resolutions" of the macro-/micro-level issues. Including those which go from one scale to the other, as researchers see fit. For instance, an ethnographer working on the "small-scale" may call up "large-scale" analysis when working on causal links. And it's possible for macrosociooogy to "get down to" microsociology to account for particular significance. Both are common enough that examples may not be needed.
ReplyDeleteA variation on these approaches could be called, for lack of a better word, "dialectic." At the core of this approach is the back and forth between levels, scopes, scales. But there's also the notion that one informs and questions the other. No parti pris, here. No matter which approach is used first, it implies its reverse. Again, quite common, but not always explicit. And it may be difficult to distinguish from the old-school comparativist's approach cherry-picking examples in disparate cultural context (thinking of Rouget's Music and Trance, here).
Somewhat different from the "dialectic" and possibly difficult to explain is the slightly more PoMo "glocal" and its declension in the "think global, act local" mode. While it has more to do with open-minded forms of activism than with straight research, it does connect with the way some people work. This way of thinking can help in addressing the complexity of cultural and social issues, making linear-causal thinking unsatisfying.
Yet another way to resolve the micro-/macro-analysis issue is to integrate a large array of micro-level analyses through a whole field. Sure, each ethnographer works particularistically. But ethnographers as a group cover a lot of ground. Plus, they've been trained in a more "general" field, such as folkloristics, economics, sociology, or anthropology. In each of these fields, universals and generalities are discussed. in these fields, there's frequently an “embedded” form of comparativism in that each phenomenon is assessed through both very broad notions of what it means to be human (even cultural anthropologists have archæology in their background) and the experience of difference, leading to intersubjectivity and dialogue,
Meso-level is cool too. But, as you say, it's a variant of macro. And it rapidly gets entangled into issues of national boundaries. Which is where Fredrik Barth's work becomes especially interesting, with or without reference to "Ben" Anderson's work.
There are other "resolutions" of the macro-/micro-level issues. Including those which go from one scale to the other, as researchers see fit. For instance, an ethnographer working on the "small-scale" may call up "large-scale" analysis when working on causal links. And it's possible for macrosociooogy to "get down to" microsociology to account for particular significance. Both are common enough that examples may not be needed.
ReplyDeleteA variation on these approaches could be called, for lack of a better word, "dialectic." At the core of this approach is the back and forth between levels, scopes, scales. But there's also the notion that one informs and questions the other. No parti pris, here. No matter which approach is used first, it implies its reverse. Again, quite common, but not always explicit. And it may be difficult to distinguish from the old-school comparativist's approach cherry-picking examples in disparate cultural context (thinking of Rouget's Music and Trance, here).
Somewhat different from the "dialectic" and possibly difficult to explain is the slightly more PoMo "glocal" and its declension in the "think global, act local" mode. While it has more to do with open-minded forms of activism than with straight research, it does connect with the way some people work. This way of thinking can help in addressing the complexity of cultural and social issues, making linear-causal thinking unsatisfying.
Yet another way to resolve the micro-/macro-analysis issue is to integrate a large array of micro-level analyses through a whole field. Sure, each ethnographer works particularistically. But ethnographers as a group cover a lot of ground. Plus, they've been trained in a more "general" field, such as folkloristics, economics, sociology, or anthropology. In each of these fields, universals and generalities are discussed. in these fields, there's frequently an “embedded” form of comparativism in that each phenomenon is assessed through both very broad notions of what it means to be human (even cultural anthropologists have archæology in their background) and the experience of difference, leading to intersubjectivity and dialogue,
Meso-level is cool too. But, as you say, it's a variant of macro. And it rapidly gets entangled into issues of national boundaries. Which is where Fredrik Barth's work becomes especially interesting, with or without reference to "Ben" Anderson's work.