ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contribution of social history to historical inquiry. It examines the ways in which social historians have found the concept of value in social stratification and discusses one of the other organizing concepts of social history, namely, the family. The chapter shows that as religious attachment was expressed through attending the various houses of worship, the working class was singled out by contemporaries and then by sociologists and historians as lacking religious attachment. Since the 1960s social historians have applied themselves to the task of overcoming the sorts of criticisms levelled by Eric Hobsbawm, and the branch has continued to flourish. According to E. P. Thompson, there was 'a sociological itch' to generalize, to claim typicality in descriptions of phenomena when historians should be more inclined to find contrast and difference. Socialism and organized labour in Britain actively grew out of the rich associational life of the nonconformist chapel and the ethical principles of nonconformity.
