CHAPTER 2 THE SYNTHESIS OF SOCIAL CHANGE REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY
BY OLIVIER ZUNZ
The "new" social history began to affect the course of American his- toriography in the 1960s. Although it emerged in the United States significantly later than it did in Europe, its rise to prominence was swift, and the changes it brought with it were pervasive. It replaced the romantic and essentially undefined vision of "the people" that had satisfied historians for so long with detailed accounts of ordinary men and women who had heretofore no voice in the historical rec- ord. It displaced the conventional divisions that political historians
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I wish to thank the contributors to this volume for their insightful criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay. I am grateful for the advice I received from my col- leagues at the University of Virginia, especially Lenard Berlanstein, Robert D. Cross, Charles Feigenoff, Michael F. Holt, Stephen Innes, and Joseph F. Kett. Other friends have also helped me formulate my ideas on social history. Thomas Dublin and Michel de Certeau organized a most stimulating discussion of an early version of this chapter at the University of California, San Diego. In their turn, John Bodnar and Stephan Thernstrom criticized my section on assimilation at the 1984 meeting of the Organization of American Historians and presented alterna- tive views in a forum of the Journal of American Ethnic History 4 (Spring 1985). And John Higham stimulated the writing of the essay by enlisting my participation in a session on "the problem of synthesis in American history" at the centennial meet- ing of the American Historical Association ( 1984), and by giving the chapter a close and critical reading.
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Publication Information: Book Title: Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History. Contributors: Olivier Zunz - editor. Publisher: University of North Carolina Press. Place of Publication: Chapel Hill, NC. Publication Year: 1985. Page Number: 53.
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