What Happened and Why?An introduction to themes and approaches in Economic and Social History

Michaelmas term 2008 and Hilary term 2009

Avner Offer, All Souls College and History Faculty

Deborah Oxley, All Souls College and History Faculty

For formal assessment criteria and submission deadlines see Instructions to Candidates for your degree at: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/postgrad/noticeboard/index.htm#exams

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS
The course is designed (in conjunction with the quantitative methods courses) to prepare graduates for research in economic and social history. It provides an opportunity to view the subject as a whole and to consider its origins, its methodological foundations, its relations with adjacent disciplines and its current trends, achievements, and problems. It presents some of the central methodological issues of the social sciences, and some of their recent advances. The course is structured loosely around the problem of rationality. The rational choice paradigm dominates economics, and has strongly influenced the other social sciences. It presents an intellectual challenge which historians need to acknowledge, even if they come to reject it. The problem of rationality is wider still, and embraces social, psychological, political and moral issues. This focus is meant to provide coherence and continuity: to raise a set of questions at the outset, for which answers will begin to emerge towards the end. It is not intended to endorse any of the particular approaches, but rather to highlight their respective strengths and limitations.

COURSE ARRANGEMENTS
This course provides a philosophical and methodological grounding for social and economic history. It will be taught over the Michaelmas Term, with four additional lectures and seminars in the Hilary term. During the Michaelmas term there will be two sessions a week (two every other week in Hilary term). The first consists of a lecture on a particular method (held on Thursdays). The second session is a seminar in which the method is applied to an historical problem (held on Fridays). The seminars are structured loosely around the theme ‘From agrarian society to industrial capitalism’, and provide a substantive historical course. Seminar introductions are assigned to students, taking account of their preferences.

• Lectures: Thursday 11.30-12.45 in the Large Lecture Room at Nuffield College.Arrive early and expect to leave late. (Note. The postgraduate seminar follows on from this across the courtyard).Coffee from 11.15.
• Seminars: Friday in the Hovenden Room at All Souls College.
• Group A will meet at 10.00-11.45
• Group B will meet at 2.00-3.45
• Allocations to Group A and Group B will be announced in Week 0.
• Weeks 1-8 in Michaelmas term
• Weeks 2, 4, 6 and 8 in Hilary term

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance at lectures and seminars is mandatory. Students will be required to introduce one session per term (sometimes jointly with another student). The introductions should be approximately fifteen to twenty minutes long, followed by seminar discussion. Preparation for this presentation should go beyond the reading lists below.

At the end of the first term, students will submit a paper on one of the lecture or seminar themes (not the one introduced), or on another theme agreed in advance, of up to 4,000 words. The paper is due no later than 5.00 p.m. on Friday 19 December 2008.

Students should begin to work on their dissertation topics during the Michaelmas term, and in assigning presentations, this research interest (as well as prior expertise) will be taken into account. During the Hilary term, they will be required to prepare a methodological introduction to the course dissertation, based on the coursework and their own research. The essay of up to 4,000 words should explain the historical problem addressed in the dissertation, it should describe the method chosen and justify this choice, and it should also provide some indication of the existing literature and of any findings already available. This methodological essay is due on the first Monday of Trinity term, i.e. Monday 27 April 2009.

The methodological essay will also be the subject of a twenty-minute presentation to a forum of students and course tutors at the Seventeenth Annual Workshop, held at the end of the fourth week of Trinity Term, i.e. Friday 22 and Saturday 23 May 2009. See below. All students are required to submit an abstract of no more than 100 words no later than the first Monday of Trinity term, i.e. Monday 27 April 2009 for inclusion in the conference proceedings. Emai abstracts to deborah.oxley@all-souls.ox.ac.uk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copies of the majority of course readings will be available on the ESH shelves in the lower reading room of Nuffield College library. A set of readings will also be available in the Social Science library, with at least one copy of every reading confined to the library. We also hope to have a good selection of the main readings behind the issue desk for temporary use. These copies cannot be borrowed. Students are requested to return items without fail after photocopying.

COURSE PROGRAMME
Note: You are unlikely to succeed in reading everything; use your interests to guide your selection; readings marked with an asterisk (*) are especially recommended. A good deal of the journal literature can now be read on-line. See Oxford University’s e-Journals (http://sfx7.exlibrisgroup.com/oxford/az).

Michaelmas term lectures are presented by Professor Avner Offer,Chichele Professor of Economic History

NOTE. The following eight lectures are held weekly on Thursdays (starting on 16 October 2009) promptly at 11.30 a.m. at Nuffield College.Each is followed by a seminar on the Friday.

Session 1. INTRODUCTION: HOW DO WE KNOW?

1. Who killed Berardelli?
2. Approaches to the past: narrative, causal, axiomatic
3. Origins of economic and social history (Britain, Germany, France, USA).
4. Causation and explanation.
5. Conventional and analytical narratives.

• G. Cappoccia and R. D. Kelemen, ‘The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism’, World Politics, 59 (April 2007), pp. 341-69.
• Paul David, ‘Path Dependence—A Foundational Concept for Historical Social Science’, Cliometrica 1, 2 (2007). http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/ecohist/readings/david-pathdependent206.pdf

• J. B. Kadane and D.A. Schum, A Probablistic Analysis of the Sacco and Vanzetti Evidence (1996), chs.1–2, 4 [probablistic approach to causation; a short introduction to Bayseian reasoning in Kadane & Schum, pp. 121–131, and Judea Pearl, Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference (2000), pp. 2–8 combined. After reading these, you might wish to try A. P.Dawid, ‘Baye’s Theorem and the Weighting of Evidence by Juries’ in Baye’s Theorem, ed. Richard Swinburne (2002), pp. 71–90 Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 113, or D. Dion, 'Evidence and inference in a comparative case study', Comparative Politics, 20.2 (1998), pp.127-45.] See http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/ecohist/readings/probability.pdf
• P. Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (1988), ch. 1, ‘The European Legacy: Ranke, Bacon, Flaubert’.
• *M. Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber, ed. H. Gerth and C.Wright Mills (1970), pp. 129–56. [is value-free science possible?]
• Sacco and Vanzetti website,
  http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/SaccoV.htm

ASSIGNMENT: What effect did the transition to industrial capitalism have on manual work effort?

Read Thompson (cited below). Place it in relation to the three traditions in economic and social history (French, American, British). Compare with a more recent study (Voth). What explanatory strategy do they use? Compare on dimensions of argument, narrative power, objectivity, causal mechanism, and probative value of evidence.

• Gregory Clark, ‘Factory Discipline’, Journal of Economic History, 54, 1 (1994), 128-163.
• Lynn Hunt, 'French history in the last twenty years: The rise and fall of the Annales paradigm', Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986), pp. 209-24.
• Paul Pierson, 'Big, slow moving, and ... invisible: Macro social processes in the study of comparative politics', inJames Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative historical analysis in the social sciences (2003), pp. 177-207.
• *E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present no.38 (Dec. 1967), 56–97. [reprinted, E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (1991); also in M.W. Flinn and T.C. Smout (eds.), Essays in Social History (1974).]
• *Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘Time and Work in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 58(1), March 1998 [rigorous] OR Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750–1839 (2000), pp. 16–106 [more accessible].

Session 2. IN PURSUIT OF OBJECTIVITY: PHILOSOPHY AND METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

1. Explanation in science: deduction and induction
2. Logical Positivism
3. Verification and falsification
4. Scientific Revolutions and Personal Knowledge
5. Scientific Research Programmes
6. Methodological Pluralism
7. Social Construction of Knowledge.

• A. F. Chalmers, What is this Thing Called Science? (3rd edn. 1999) [basic outline; OR Deborah A. Redman, Economics and the Philosophy of Science, chs.1–4]
• Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (1999), chs. 1, 3
• P. K. Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (rev. edn. 1988), ‘Analytical Index’, ‘Introduction’, chs. 1–3, 15.
• Noretta Koertge, ‘“New Age” Philosophies of Science: Constructivism, Feminism and Postmodernism’, in Clark, Peter and Hawley, Katherine (eds.), Philosophy of Science Today (2003), pp. 83–99.
• *T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd edn. 1970), esp. chs. 4–7.
• *I. Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’ in I.Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970).
• P. Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (1991), ch. 4.
• Bryan Magee, ‘Logical Positivism and its Legacy: Dialogue with A. J. Ayer’, in his Men of Ideas: Some Creators of Contemporary Philosophy (1978)
• K. Popper, ‘Science: Conjectures and Refutations’, in his Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (5th edn. 1989)

ASSIGNMENT: Interpreting The New Poor Law of 1834. How and why has understanding changed?

• Mark Blaug, ‘The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 23 (June 1963), 151–84
• G. Boyer, ‘An Economic Model of the English Poor Law, c. 1780–1834’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 22, 2 (April 1985), pp. 129–67. [expanded in G. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 (1990), see esp. pp.265–72]
• *EITHER The Poor Law Report of 1834, ed. S. and O. Checkland (reprint of 1834 edition, 1974), ‘Introduction’ and pp. 334–53, 375–7*OR Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government. English Poor Law History: Pt II. The Last Hundred Years, vol. 1 (1929), ch. 1: ‘The Royal Commission of 1832–1834’ [classic work, explains theoretical underpinnings of the New Poor Law]
• Martin Daunton, Progress and Poverty (1995), ch. 17 [good textbook account of old poor law] OR A. Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930 (2002), chs. 3–4.
• E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Captain Swing (1969), ch. 10.
• *Peter Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (2005), ch. 4, 'Interpreting the Puzzles of Early Poor Relief'.

Session 3. ECONOMICS AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE: THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

1. Methodological individualism and rational choice
2. Competition, equilibrium, the Invisible Hand
3. Positive and normative economics.

• [Kenneth Arrow] 'Economic Theory and the Hypthesis of Rationality', John Eatwell and Murray Millgate (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (1987) - especially for economists.
• M. Blaug, The Methodology of Economics, or How Economists Explain (1980), chs. 1–2, 15.
• *D. M. Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (1992), chs. 1–3. [Economists, have a look at V. C Walsh, Rationality, Allocation, and Reproduction (1996), Introduction and ch. 7.]
• Milton Friedman, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, in F. Hahn and M.Hollis (eds.), Philosophy and Economic Theory (1979); also in M. Martin and L.C. McIntyre (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (1994), 647–660; and in M. Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (1953).
• Philip Mirowski, ‘Physics and the “Marginalist Revolution’ in his Against Mechanism: Protecting Economics from Science (1987), ch. 1
• *M. Reder, ‘Chicago School’, in J. Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (1987); more extended version in idem., ‘Chicago Economics: Permanence and Change’, Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 20, 1 (March 1982), pp. 1–38.

ASSIGNMENT: Economic history, Chicago style: ‘Did Victorian Britain Fail?’

• N. Crafts, ‘Forging Ahead and Falling behind: The Rise and Relative Decline of the First Industrial Nation’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 2 (1998), 193-210.
• W. P. Kennedy, Industrial Structure, Capital Markets, and the Origins of British Economic Decline (Cambridge, 1987), chs.1, 3, 5–6
• D. McCloskey and Lars Sandberg, ‘From Damnation to Redemption: Judgments on the Late Victorian Entrepreneur’, Explorations in Economic History vol. 9, 1 (Fall 1971), 89–108
• *D. McCloskey, ‘Did Victorian Britain Fail?’ Economic History Review vol. 23, 3 (Dec. 1971), 446–59.

Session 4. COLLECTIVE ACTION AND SOCIAL DILEMMAS

1. Arrow's impossibility theorem
2. Game theory: Prisoner's dilemman, Chicken.
3. Competition, free-riding.
4. The tragedy of the commons.
5. The rise and fall of nations.

• Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Co Operation (1984), ch. 2.
• Colin Camerer and Ernest Fehr, ‘Measuring Social Norms and Preferences Using Experimental Games: A Guide for Social Scientists’, in J. F. Henrich et al., Foundations of Human Sociality : Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (2004), ch. 3, 55-95.
• *G. Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science vol. 162 (1968), 1243–8; also in Scott W. Menard and Elizabeth W. Moen (eds.), Perspectives on Population (1987). http://dieoff.org/page95.htm
• *Shaun Hargreaves Heap, et al., The Theory of Choice: A Critical Guide (1992), chs. 7–9.
• *M. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982), esp. ch. 2.

Additional introductory reading on game theory:

• Leon Felkins, ‘The Social Dilemmas’: http://perspicuity.net/sd/sd.html
• Ian MacLean, Public Choice: An Introduction (1989), ch. 7.

• *John R. Bowman, Capitalist Collective Action: Competition, Cooperation and Conflict in the Coal Industry (1989), chs. 4–7.
• Torben Iversen and David Soskice, 'Distribution and redistribution: The shadow of the nineteenth century', Conference on Distribution, Yal 2005, available at: http://www.yale-university.org/polisci/info/conferences/DistributivePolitics/papers/Soskice-01.pdf
• W. Lewchuk, American Technology and the British Vehicle Industry (1987), chs.9–10.
• Edward H. Lorenz, Economic Decline in Britain: The Shipbuilding Industry, 1890–1970 (1991).
• Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (2004), pp.20-23 and ch. 3 'The Evolution of skill formation in Britain', pp. 92-147.
• *Sydney and Beatrice Webb, ‘The Standard Rate’, Industrial Democracy (new edn. 1902).

Session 5. ARCHAIC SOCIETIES: RECIPROCITY OR SELF-REGARD?

1. Relevance of archaic societies.
2. The emic-etic distinction.
3. Social preferences, reciprocity and social capital.
4. Do archaic societies maximize? and what?

• Peter S. Bellwood, First Farmers : The Origins of Agricultural Societies (Malden, Mass., 2005), ch. 1.
• *Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher, ‘Why Social Preferences Matter – The Impact of Non-selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives’, Economic Journal, vol. 112, 478 (2002), pp. C1–33 ORErnst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher, 'The economics of strong reciprocity' in H. Gintis et al., Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (2005), ch. 5, pp. 151-91.
• H. Gintis et al., Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (2005), ch. 1. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262072521chap1.pdf
• *Marvin Harris, ‘History and Significance of the Emic–Etic Distinction’, Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 5 (1976), 329–50
• J. F. Henrich et al., Foundations of Human Sociality : Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (2004), ‘Overview and Synthesis’, 8-54.
• *E. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), chs. 2, 3, 22.
• M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (1stpubl. Paris, 1925; transl. W.D. Halls, 1990 [much better than 1954 translation]), Introduction, chs. 1–3, pp. 1–46.
• M. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (1972), chs.1, 4, 5.

ASSIGNMENT: Is there an historical transition from the gift economy to the market economy?

• Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006), ch. 4.
  http://www.benkler.org/wonchapters.html
• G. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), ch. 2.
• J. Henrich et.al., 'Costly punishment across human societies', Science, 312 (2006), pp. 1767-70.
• A. Offer, ‘Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard’, Economic History Review, vol. 50, 3 (Aug. 1997), 450–76; OR A. Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the USA and Britain since 1950 (2006), ch. 5.
• *Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time (1944), chs. 3–8, 12–14, 17.
• Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), ch. 1, pp. 15–28.
• *E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present no. 50 (Feb. 1971); reprinted in his Customs in Common (1991).

Session 6. WHO CAN YOU TRUST? THE PURPOSE OF INSTITUTIONS

1. The Coase Theorem and Property Rights
2. Markets and Hierarchies
3. Principals and Agents
4. Rent Seeking and Public Choice.

• *T. Eggertsson, Economic Behaviour and Institutions (1990), chs. 5–6
• Granovetter, Mark, 'Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness', American Journal of Sociology, 91, 3 (Nov. 1985), 481-510.
• Y. Hayami and O.Keijiro, The Economics of Contract Choice: An Agrarian Perspective (1992), chs.1, 6, 8, 10; or Otsuka, Keijiro, Chuman, Hiruyoki and Hayami, Yujiro, ‘Land and Labor Contracts in Agrarian Economies: Theories and Facts’, Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 30 (1992), pp.1965–2018.
• Stewart Macaulay, ‘Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study’, American Sociological Review, 28, 1 (1963), pp. 55–67.
• *J. W. Pratt and R. J. Zeckhauser (eds.), Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business (1985), chs.1–2
• O. Williamson, Sidney Winter and Ronald Coase, The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution and Development (1991), esp. chs. 1–2, 7.

ASSIGNMENT: Transformation of Common Property Resources: The example of the Open Fields

• Robert C. Allen, ‘Community and Market in England: Open Fields and Enclosures Revisited’, in M Aoki and Y Hayami (eds.), Communities and Markets in Economic Development (2001), pp. 42–69.
• *C. T. Bekar, and C. G. Reed, 'Open Fields, Risk, and Land Divisibility', Explorations in Economic History, 40 (2003), pp. 308–25.
• G. Clark, ‘Commons Sense: Common Property Rights, Efficiency, and Institutional Change’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 58, 1 (1998).
• ‘Two Poems on the Enclosure of Commons by John Clare (1793-1864)’
  http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/ecohist/readings/clare-poems.pdf
• C. J. Dahlman, The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution (1980), chs. 3, 4. [+5 on enclosure]
• J. L. and B. Hammond, The Village Labourer, 1760–1832: A Study of the Government of England Before the Reform Bill (1911), e.g. ch. 3 [class-conflict]
• *D. N. McCloskey, ‘The Open Fields of England: Rent, Risk and the Rate of Interest, 1300–1815’, in David Galenson (ed.), Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past (1989), pp. 5–51
• Gary Richardson, ‘The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions in Medieval English Agriculture’, Journal of Economic History, 65, 2 (2005), 386-413.
• *Henry E. Smith, ‘Semicommon Property Rights and Scattering in the Open Fields’, Journal of Legal Studies, 29, 1 (2000), 131-169.
• Elaine Tan, ‘The Bull is Half the Herd: Property Rights and Enclosures in England, 1750–1850’, Explorations in Economic History, 39, 4 (2002), 470–89.

Session 7. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

1. Behaviour in Groups
2. Cognitive biases in reasoning. Bounded rationalities
3. Needs and satisfactions
4. Motivation and incentive
5. Historical applications.

• [*]Camerer, Colin, George Loewenstein, and Drazen Prelec, , 'Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience can Inform Economics', Journal of Economic Literature, 48 (2005), pp. 9-64. [paradigm-breaking article – but requires big effort!]
• *Gerd Gigerenzer, and Reinhard Selten, (eds.), Bounded Rationality : The Adaptive Toolbox (2001), esp. chs. 2–3. or Peter M. Todd and Geoffrey F. Miller ‘From Pride and Prejudice to Persuasion: Satisficing in Mate Search’ in Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, ed. G. Gigerenzer and P.M. Todd (1999), pp. 287–308.
• Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950 (2006), ch. 3.
• *A.Tversky and D. Kahneman, ‘Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’, Science, vol. 185 (1974), pp. 1124–31; reprinted D. Kahneman, P.Slovic and A. Tversky (eds.), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1982); also in P.K. Moser (ed.), Rationality in Action: Contemporary Approaches (1990), pp. 171–88.
• D.Kahneman, ‘New Challenges to the Rationality Assumption’, in D.Kahneman and Amos Tversky (eds.), Choices, Values, and Frames (2000), pp. 758–74.

Two Assignments: You may attend both.

Is war rational? (Group A)

• *B. Bueno de Mesquita and D. Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives (1992), chs.1–2.
• Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004), 563-595.
• *N. Dixon, The Psychology of Military Incompetence (1976), chs. 12–24.
• Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender : How Gender Shapes the War and Vice Versa (2001), esp. ch. 7.
• A. Offer, ‘Going to War in 1914: A Matter of Honor?’ Politics & Society, vol. 23, 2 (June 1995), 213–241.
• M. Van Creveld, On Future War (1991), ch. 6.

• *G.A Akerlof, ‘Procrastination and Obedience’, American Economic Review, vol. 81, 2 (1991), pp. 1–19.
• *Browning, C. R., Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992), chs. 1, 5, 7, 8.
• Daniel Chirot, and Clark R. McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All? : The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder (2006), ch. 2.
• Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap : Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 5.
• *S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974), chs 1–6.
• James Waller, Becoming Evil : How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, 2nd edn. (2007).
• Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil (2007), ch. 12. See also http://www.prisonexp.org/

Session 8. IS OBJECTIVITY POSSIBLE? PROBLEMS IN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION

1. History as empirical narrative
2. History as a mental process
3. Macro-history and micro-history
4. The heresy of postmodernism.
5. Historical causation and judgement

• Catherine Belsey, Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002) [the case for] OR Francois Crusset, French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States(2008).
• *E. H. Carr, What is History (1964), chs. 1, 4–5 [classic macro approach]
• *R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (1939), ch. 10, ‘History as the Self-Knowledge of Mind’ [or his The Idea of History (1946), Part V, ch. 5, ‘History as Re-Enactment of Past Experience’, pp. 282–302] [idealist approach]
• Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (1997), chs. 4, 8. [critical]
• Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader (1997), esp. Lyotard and Baudrillard, pp. 36–46 [read more widely here if you are interested in ‘the linguistic turn’]
• Neville Kirk, ‘History, Language, Ideas and Post-Modernism: A Materialist View’, Social History, vol. 19, 2 (1994), pp. 221–40 [also in Jenkins, above].
• *P. M. Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads and Intrusions (1992), esp. chs. 4–5.

ASSIGNMENT: Michel Foucault and John Braithwaite: two interpretations of crime: post-modernist and modernist?

• J. Braithwaite, ‘Shame and Modernity’, British Journal of Criminology, vol. 33 (Winter 1993), 1–17.
• Brad Bushman and Roy F. Baumeister, ‘Threatened Egotism, Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and Direct and DisplacedAggression: Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Lead to Violence?’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1( 1998), 219-229. [or light version, R. Baumeister, ‘Violent Pride: Do people turn violent because of self-hate or self-love?’, Scientific American Mind, Aug-Sept. 2006, pp. 54-59.] http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/ecohist/readings/baumeister-violence206.pdf

• *J. Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989), chs. 3–8.

• M. Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (1984), pp. 170–238 [or M.Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977), e.g. pt1/1, pt2/1–2, pt3/1]
• Richard F. Hamilton, The Social Misconstruction of Reality (1996), ch.6, ‘Michel Foucault: The Disciplinary Society’ [critical]

Hilary term lectures are presented by Dr Deborah Oxley

NOTE. The following four lectures are held fortnightly on Thursdays (starting on 29 January 2009) promptly at 11.30 a.m. at Nuffield College.Each is followed by a seminar on the Friday.

Session 9. GOVERNMENT AND RATIONALITY

1. Government: Paternalism or Self-Interest?
2. Voting: Muddle or Rational Choice?
3. Wagner’s Law, or Why is the Public Sector so Large?

• T. Besley, Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government (2006), ch. 1.
• *J. M. Buchanan, and R. A. Musgrave, Public Finance and Public Choice : Two Contrasting Visions of the State (1999),chs. 1.2, 1.3, pp. 11-49.
• D. P. Green and I. Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory : A Critique of Applications in Political Science (1994), chs. 1–4, 7.
• P. H. Lindert, Growing Public : Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (2005), chs. 1, 2.
• D. C. Mueller, Public Choice III (2003), chs. 14, 15, 28, 29.

• Gregory Clark, 'The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540-1800', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 26 (1996), pp. 563–88.
• S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth : The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 (2000), chs. 1, 2, 8.
• *D. C. North and, B. R. Weingast, 'Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England', Journal of Economic History, 49 (1989), pp. 803–32.
• Nathan Sussman and Yishay Yafeh, ‘Constitutions and Commitment: Evidence on the Relation between Institutions and the Cost of Capital’, CEPR Discussion Paper 4404 (2004)www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP4404.asp

Session 10. GENDER AND THE FAMILY

1. The Family
2. Household and market
3. Gender.

• Maristella Botticini and Aloysius Siow, 'Why Dowries?' American Economic Review, 93 (2003), pp. 1385-1398.
• *W. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the Twentieth Century (1991)
• Dora L. Costa, ‘From Mill Town to Board Room: The Rise of Women’s Paid Labor’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 14, 4 (2000), pp. 101–122.
• Tamara K. Hareven, ‘The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change’, American Historical Review vol. 96, 1, Feb. (1991), 95–124
• H. Hartmann, ‘The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: the Example of Housework’, Signs, vol.6 (1981), 366–94
• A. Offer, The Challenge of Afflence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the USA and Britain since 1950 (2006), chs. 13-14.
• *Joyce P. Jacobsen, The Economics of Gender (1994), chs. 3–5.
• Joan Scott, ‘Women’s History’, in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (1991), ch. 3.

• M. Berg, ‘What Difference Did Women’s Work Make to the Industrial Revolution?’, History Workshop Journal, 35.16 (1993), pp.22-44.
• S. Horrell and J. Humphries, ‘Women’s Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the Male Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865’, Economic History Review, 48.1 (1996), pp. 89-117.
• S. Horrell, D. Meredith and D. Oxley, ‘Measuring Misery: Body Mass, Ageing and Gender Inequality in Victorian London’, Explorations in Economic History, 46.4 (2008)
• J. Humphries, ‘At What Cost Was Pre-Eminence Purchased? Child Labour and the First Industrial Revolution’, ch. 11 in P. Scholliers and L.D. Schwarz (eds.), Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe Since 1500 (2004), pp. 251-68.
• John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869) ch. 1. Available online at: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645s/
• P. Sharpe, ‘Continuity and Change: Women’s History and Economic History in Britain’, Economic History Review 48 (1995), pp. 353-69.
• Jan de Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, Journal of Economic History, 54.2 (1994), pp. 249-70, OR Jan de Vries, ‘The Industrious Revolution and Economic Growth, 1650-1830’, in P. David and M. Thomas (eds.), The Economic Future in Historical Perspective (2003), ch. 1.

Session 11. SOCIAL BONDS AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

1. Marxist interpretation of history
2. Max Weber: the iron cage
3. Durkheim: social cohesion
4. Sociological approach to stratification
5. Elites and power.

• Emile Durkheim, ‘Suicide’ in Readings from Emile Durkheim, ed. Kenneth Thompson (1985)OR sample in editions of Durkheim, Suicide.
• David B Grusky (ed.), Social Stratification : Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective (1st edn. 1994), articles by Sorensen (basic concepts), pp.229ff. & Lieberson (ascriptive stratification, i.e. discrimination), pp.649ff.
• S. Kuznets, ‘Economic Growth and Income Inequality’, American Economic Review, 45 (1955), pp. 1-28.
• Gordon Marshall, Stephen Roberts, and Adam Swift, Against the Odds? Social Class and Social Justice in Industrial Societies (1997), chs. 3–4.
• J. Roemer, ‘Historical Materialism’, ch. 8 in his Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy (1988)
• *Albert Weale, ‘Homo economicus, Homo sociologicus’, in Shaun Hargreaves Heap et al., The Theory of Choice: A Critical Guide (1992), pp. 62–72
• Nancy L. Stokey, ‘Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves: The Economics of Social Mobility’ in Jacobs, Donald P., Kalai, Ehud, Kamien, Morton I., eds. Frontiers of Research in Economic Theory (1998).

• *Max Weber, ‘Class, Status and Party’, in From Max Weber, ed. H. Gerth and C.Wright Mills (1970), pp. 180–95

ASSIGNMENT: How can we understand the role of education in social stratification in nineteenth-century England?

• H.J. Graff, 'Literacy, Jobs and Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century', in H.J. Graff (ed.), Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader (1981), pp. 232-60.(Also see chapter by Schofield in this book.)
• B. Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State: Social Welfare in England and Wales, 1800-1945 (2004), ch. 10, pp. 136-49.
• S. Horrell, J. Humphries, and H-J. Voth, ‘Destined for Deprivation: Human Capital Formation and Intergenerational Poverty in Nineteenth-Century England’, Explorations in Economic History, 38 (2001), pp. 339-65.
• M. Sanderson, 'Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England', Past and Present, 56 (1972), pp. 75-104. Also read the ensuing debate: Thomas W. Laqueur, 'Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England', Past and Present, 64 (1974), pp.96-107 AND reply in same issue: M. Sanderson, 'Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England: A Rejoinder', Past and Present, 64 (1974), pp. 108-12
• J. Long, 'Rural-urban Migration and Socio-economic Mobility in Victorian Britain', Journal of Economic History, 65.1 (2005), pp. 1-35.
• R.S. Schofield, 'Dimensions of Illiteracy, 1750-1850', Explorations in Economic History, 10.4 (1973), pp. 437-54.

Session 12. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

1. How important is technology? Growth accounting, social saving, new growth theory.
2. How is technology different from science?
3. Technological change as an evolutionary process.
4. Is technological choice bound by the past?

• S. N. Broadberry, The Productivity Race: British Manufacturing in International Perspective, 1850–1990 (1997), ch. 6, ‘Technology’.
• *Paul A. David, ‘Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History’, in W.N. Parker (ed.), Economic History and the Modern Economist (1986).
• David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (1984), chs. 6–7
• Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines : How We Will Live Work and Think in the New Age of Intelligent Machines (1999), ch. 1. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
• J. Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena (2002), chs. 1, 6.
• David C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America (1998), ch. 1, ‘The Institutionalization of Innovation’.
• N. Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (1982), chs. 1, 10.
• *B. Steil, D. G. Victor, R. R., Nelson (eds.), Technological Innovation and Economic Performance (2002), chs. 1 (Steil et al.), 2 (Mokyr).

• Robert W. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America and the Third World (2004), chs. 1 and 2, pp. 1-42.
• Paolo Malanima, 'Energy Crisis and Growth 1650-1850: The European Deviation in a Comparative Perspective', Journal of Global History, 1 (2006), pp. 101-21.
• Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows,Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update (2004). This is an update of an earlier study in 1972, which has recently undergone empirical testing: see Graham Turner, A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of reality, Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion CSIRO Working paper series 2008-09 (June 2008).
• Clark A. Miller, ‘Climate Change and the Making of a Global Political Order’, in S. Jasanoff (ed.) States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order (2004), ch. 3, pp. 46-66..
• Amos Nur, 'Oil Future and War Now: A Grim Earth-Sciences Point of View' (2004). Complete article available at: http://srb.stanford.edu/nur/OilWar.html
• Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change: Executive Summary available at: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm
• Vaclav Smil, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years (2008).
• David Strahan, 'The Great Coal Hole', New Scientist (19 January 2008), pp. 38-41.
• E.A. Wrigley, Poverty, Progress, and Population (2004), ch. 2, pp. 44-67

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL WORKSHOP 2009

Friday 22 May - Saturday 23 May 2009

Twenty-minute presentations of dissertation methodology and research strategy.

The methodological essay will be the subject of a twenty-minute presentation to a forum of students and course tutors at a Weekend Workshop in the fourth week of Trinity Term, i.e. Friday 22-Saturday 23 May 2009. This takes place at All Souls College (Friday) and Nuffield College (Saturday). The Hicks lecture and Feinstein Prize Award are also components of the Workshop. This is an important event, and all students are expected to attend for the full duration of the workshop. A small number of students will be elected to the organising committee for the workshop, and they will be required to design the programme, arrange for the chairing of sessions, and organise a conference dinner for the Saturday evening.

All students are required to submit an abstract of no more than 100 words no later than the first Monday of Trinity term, i.e. Monday 27 April, 2009 for inclusion in the conference proceedings. Abstracts are to be emailed to deborah.oxley@all-souls.ox.ac.uk.

Past workshops:

Fifteenth Annual workshop 2007

Sixteenth Annual Workshop 2008