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BEHAVIORAL HISTORY: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO A NEW FRONTIER
| By Peter Stearns |
George Mason University |
| The expansion of social history research over the past several decades provides an exciting opportunity for practitioners that begs for more formal and systematic exploration. The ability to offer serious historical analysis for all major population groups, and even more the growing capacity to cover aspects of life from sleep to the senses, from boredom to courtship, puts social historians in a position to contribute, directly and explicitly, to an understanding of current patterns of behavior. Hence the idea of behavioral history, to focus key aspects of historical analysis on contemporary issues. The idea is to show how a current behavioral pattern has emerged from the past—when the pattern took hold, what caused it, what has reinforced it, and what its prospects are—bringing history more precisely than ever before into a core position in discussing the current human condition.1 |
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The general claim derives from the conviction that substantial components of contemporary beliefs and actions, in any society, are shaped by developments in the past and cannot be assessed without examining their origin and the factors that have sustained them. Social history's redefinition of the past, to include far more than politics and to recognize the wide range of behaviors susceptible to significant change (and therefore requiring historical analysis), is fundamental to this claim in turn, providing an exciting path to social self-appraisal. |
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Behavioral history, applied to areas like the emotions, sexuality or the senses, propels social historians into direct conversations with psychologists and biologists, improving the capacity to discuss the relationship between social variables and "human nature" or genetic determinisms in shaping key aspects of behavior. Even more generally, social history, directed at explaining human behavior, puts historians in comprehensive interactions with other disciplines involved in the same venture, not just providing a background chapter prior to the real stuff of social science analysis, but forming part of the analysis itself. Happily, these kinds of interactions have already developed in areas such as the study of alcoholism or smoking, where social historians are members of the core research team—a development that offers more than theoretical promise for this new application of social history.2 |
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There are some caveats, of course: no one would want this particular branch of social history to preempt the field. We still need social historians devoted to exploring the past for its own sake, or interested in efforts that will help provide identity and legitimacy for neglected groups. We can also expect disappointments. Two decades ago John Demos wrote of his frustration in trying to sell serious family history to legislators debating family policy—an obvious opportunity for a behavioral history perspective, that Demos was well qualified to provide, that simply misfired, given a desire to write an idealized past against which contemporary family patterns could be judged.3 |
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But examples of influential behavioral history—though not so named—also abound. It would be negligent, for example, to discuss problems of anorexia nervosa4 without active awareness of its recent history, or to deal with addictions5 such as gambling or smoking without the perspective of addiction's modern history and its role in American culture. Negligence happens, of course, but it is up to an appropriate group of social historians, bent on expanding the contributions of the field, to reduce its likelihood by illustrating the necessity of sociohistorical analysis and advertising its availability and utility. |
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