ABSTRACT
My intention now is to begin my discussion of the role of social theory inhistorical thinking. I will do this by reference to the link between reality and concept, the conflict between science and humanism, the role of the documentary source (the Rankean turn) and the eventual dominance within the profession of social theory constructionism. Having said this, while most historians would not agree that ultimately history is as much a narrativelinguistic as an empirical-analytical undertaking, I suspect most will accept that even the most social scientific history takes the form of a representation. For example, as the realist philosopher of history Georg Iggers says, few historians would flatly deny that history is a narrative prose structure (Iggers 2000: 382). It is plain that histories take the shape of stories. Moreover, these days, most historians would probably admit that these stories do not emerge unproblematically from the sources. Historians generally accept that to be coherent and full of meaning historical accounts require a narrative construction (of a story) that goes beyond the raw data. Indeed, as Iggers concedes, historical narratives demand an emplotment (ibid.). What is more, a significant element in any narrative is its power to explain – this happened then that, because . . .’. Hence, for the most part, historians accept that they couldn’t proceed in the construction of their story without explanatory presuppositions and positions. Apart from, as we shall see in the last section of this book, the implications for ‘doing history’ of the narrative presuppositions and prefigurations of the historian, Iggers points us to the conceptual, theoretical and ideological presuppositions of all historians. But what undoubtedly remains important in these debates is that all histories are at least in part built upon hypotheses (sometimes called the assumptions of historians) about why something happened. But what is particularly significant about this, as the
British social historian John Tosh reminds us, is that all ‘historical hypotheses amount to an application of theory’ (Tosh 2000: 134) and Mary Fulbrook’s assertion that ‘all history is intrinsically a theoretical enterprise’ (Fulbrook 2002: 86).
