CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

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© Lee Harvey 1990, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024

Page updated 8 January, 2024

Citation reference: Harvey, L., [1990] 2011, Critical Social Research, available at qualityresearchinternational.com/csr, last updated 8 January, 2024, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.

A novel of twists and surpises

5.7 Radial historicism
Radical historicism presupposes that constructing histories is an interpretive process rather than the recording of 'facts'. Although usually reconstructing the past through reference to the present it does attempt, in one way or another, to dig beneath the surface of the historical development of structural forms. This it does usually in one of two ways. First, as Marx did in Capital, to address the prevailing structural forms and deconstruct them. This structural analysis then logically guides the reconstruction of history. Rather than the taken-for-granted, apparent, social structure informing a presentist history it is the deconstructed social structure that is used as the basis for historical analysis.

The second approach is to adopt a critical perspective or world view that informs the reconstruction of history. The intention is to address the taken-for-granted current social structure not as self-evident but as having emerged from an ideological legitimation of oppressive structures. It presupposes that, for example, patriarchal or racial oppression exists and thus examines particular social practices in relation to the legitimating ideologies and economic structures that endorse it. Thus, Mumtaz and Shaheed undertook their study of women in Pakistan by initially focussing on the history of the embryonic Women's Liberation Movement and progressively widening their study to situate the details of the history of women's movements in the context of nationalist and religious struggles.

Radical historicism involves the uncovering of historical evidence but the meaning of the evidence depends upon a reconceptualisation of dominant social structures. The reconstruction of history takes place alongside the structural analysis: it both informs and is informed by it. Liddle and Joshi, for example, did not just document the stages in the curtailment of women's freedom in India but related the particular practices, on the one hand, to economic considerations related to the concentration of wealth in upper castes, and on the other, to a concerted effort by males to undermine the female power principle.

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