Micro-history is a term growing in its usage, but what is
it? Why is it important to genealogists and family historians?
According to Wikipedia,
Micro-history is the
intensive historical study of a well-defined smaller unit of research. However,
this is a little vague and betrays the fact that it is hard to pin down with
any consensus. An un-credited[1]
page at the University of Victoria (Canada) Web site, entitled What
is Micro-history?, researches the history and various interpretations of
the term, and goes on to suggests that micro-history focuses on the
marginalised individuals, isolated localities, and locally-significant events.
In previous posts, I have lumped a number of fringe topics
loosely associated with genealogy and family history under the micro-history
umbrella, including One-Place Studies, One-Name Studies, house histories, personal
histories, and organisational histories. This is largely based on the
dictionary definition which is not unlike the Wikipedia one above.
More than anything, though, in its current usage
micro-history is by people – ordinary
people – rather than necessarily about
people. We all have a story to tell, and we all have knowledge that we want
to pass on. It doesn’t matter whether it is tales of your local area, the place
you were raised, your family, or your friends. People’s history, if you like. This has the capability to uncover a
real-life that traditional history is likely to miss, and is more likely to
engage ordinary people in the appreciation of history generally.
But isn’t it the same as local
history? According to the dictionary then this is probably true. However,
local history tends to be perceived as more about politics, industry, geology,
geography, development, religion, etc. This is typified by the British
Association for Local History (BALH) whose
Web site states ‘Our purpose is to encourage and assist the study of Local
History as an academic discipline…’. Local history is rarely about the lives of
ordinary people. This has to come from people themselves, either those directly
involved, or their descendants, friends, acquaintances, etc.
We may be forgiven for thinking that TV producers can only
think of celebrity genealogy. However, the BBC has some genuinely good history
programs which fall totally into this discussion of micro-history.
- Secret History of Our Streets. Six ordinary streets, each telling us about how life in London has changed in 150 years. Involves both past and present residents.
- Reel History of Britain. A social history of 20th Century Britain showing how people worked and lived using viewers' personal memories and rare archive newsreel footage.
It may be hard to see how the specific subject in each
programme could achieve mass appeal but it does. Many viewers feel a connection
between their own history and the people being interviewed.
There are many micro-history Web sites being created as
independent projects, not affiliated to any guiding organisation or society, and
involving public collaboration. Subjects include houses, streets, old
photographs, villages, oral history and storytelling, pubs, schools, and
organisations. Would it be naïve to at least expect them to have some central
listing, just as UK local history groups are currently listed at Local History Groups? There
is a Microhistory Network which was ‘created
as a loose group in January 2007 to bring together historians interested in the
theory and practice of microhistory’. It has members from around the world but
it appears to have a more scholarly approach compared to those public
collaborations.
At the time of writing, the UK Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) uses money raised via the National
Lottery to give grants to help share and preserve our heritage in communities
across the UK. A new funding programme, called Sharing Heritage, aims to help
people towards this goal.
So are these public contributions significant to
genealogists and family historians? Absolute yes! Although we may have direct
evidence for discrete events from so-called reliable sources, there is little
chance of interpolating without public contributions. Genealogy wants so much
to be acknowledged as an historical discipline by scholarly historians (see Are
Genealogists Historians Too?) that we risk falling into the same trap as
them: not being able to see the whole
forest for all the trees. A serious issue posed to diligent genealogists
is how to deal with such subjective and hard-to-substantiate evidence. This is
where attribution rather than citation is important. Attribution (in
the journalistic sense) gives credit to the individual providing information or
evidence. All those public contributions should, in principle, have clearly
visible attribution. Anyone hiding behind a username such as MickeyMouse1066 would
be simply diluting their own contribution.
I’m certainly not the only person to suggest that
micro-history is important to genealogists and family historians[2]
but I would further like to suggest that micro-history is the continuation of
an ancient tradition of oral family-lore and folklore, and so is essential for
the preservation of our histories. When this tradition is continued into our
modern electronic world, and especially the Internet, then it results in
contributions that interlock and partially substantiate each other, as well as
providing a very important social connection.
Currently in the UK, the Office for National Statistics
(ONS) is reviewing the needs for the national census beyond
2011, and how those needs might best be met. It is not unexpected that
genealogical research is way down the list of needs, although it is there.
Detailed UK census data is closed for 100 years, which is interesting since
retaining information such as individual personal names cannot be justified for
statistical research alone. Hence, some type of historical research must be
anticipated, be it genealogy, micro-history or otherwise. It may be impractical
but I feel it would be a beautiful idea to allow online respondents to leave a
time capsule for their descendants – a short paragraph about themselves that
they would wish to tell if they could. A picture would be nice, too, but it would
probably take too much space. As the old saying almost goes: a picture is bigger than a thousand words.
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