People's History and Popular Culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2756821 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alastair Davidson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1984 |
| Issue | 46 |
| Pages | 116 |
| Publication date | 1984-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Labour History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-6942 • E-ISSN: 1839-3039 |
| Publisher | Liverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2307/27508649 |
| OpenAlex | W2330339572 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The study of 'people's history', 'popular culture', and the associated 'social history' in increasing. Books like Raphael Samuel's People's History and Socialist Theory; Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic and the more recent Man and the Natural World: A History of Modern Sensibility; Peter Burke's Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe; Robert Mandrou's De la Culture opulaire au 17e et 18e si?cles; Genevi?ve Boll?me's La biblioth?que bleue, Les almanachs populaires^ and in particular for the English-speaking world the influential journals Social History and History Workshop Journal have become the sign-posts to worthwhile research for many historians, sociologists, political scientists and students of culture.1 In Australia, the articles in this journal, publi cations like What Rough Beast and Rebels and Radicals, in particular anthologies about the women's movement and women, and most recently the projected three-volume people's history of Australia show that Aus tralia participates in this cult of people's history and popular culture.2 Yet even its foremost practitioners suggest that people's history has limi tations as a mode of historical explanation or a genre of history writing. Thus Peter Burke points out that it has meant a myriad of different things and that as 'history constructed around heroes and villains' it is not really a useful frame of reference. Stuart Hall, in his 'Deconstructing the Popular', claims that the 'people' do not exist as such. They are only present in structured class forms already subjected to the hegemony of the ruling class and its ideas. Therefore they do not have any autonomy as the object or the subject of history. There is no autonomous people's culture.3 The object of this article is to suggest what those limitations might be for we need to be wary of notions which are sufficiently ill-defined to include both the most conservative and the most radical historians.4
Art · Literature · Media studies · Popular culture · Project commissioning · Publishing · Sociology · Australian History and Society
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
| Citation span | 1986 - 1988 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |