Why historiography from below is important?

Out Prominent Professor & Voice of Dissent
”, Edward Palmer Thomson once called Christophe Hill “A professor beyond an old Oxford College”. Thomson is above Grand Theorist of History from Below in Britain. His impact on studies on subordinates in India is well known to everyone. However, the composition of his impact on Middle East is conscious. With his book on working class in Britain in 60s brought new breath to Middle Eastern studies while it was carrying the burden of Orientalism and Cold War Modernization Theory being suffocated. A new breath that focused on “Class Consciousness“Public Culture”, “Movement”, “Ethic of Economics”, “Political Objection”, and obviously “Empirical Details”. These are concepts that young historians were seeking in darkness to define chaotic developments in their contemporary Middle East.

Instead of following old school styles, emergence and fall of dynasties, Thomson viewed the history from below trying to save the future generations from the burden. Instead of detailing the institutions from top to bottom, reviews them from the depth inside especially the lower levels of the society called the disadvantages which will be exposed to social history and habits of elites. He would view them as the customs and battles of ordinary people. He would consider it not a battle between rival elites but a controversy between the rich and weak classes. He doesn’t form the society as a sustainable and integrated hierarchy but analyzes it as a sustainable movement evolving all the time; a movement with resistance, associated with interruptions and events which is famous to believe that class is not an object and not a machine but a body of people which are gathered together with no solid ties and share benefits, social experiences, customs and system of values.

Thomson wouldn’t invest in economic inputs but emphasizes on “ethical economy”. He believed that people wouldn’t object over few pennies more for bread but when they think their sense of social justice is invaded. He would write in the style of cultural anthropology and considered society not static but chaotic. He would connect minor details with bigger ones and explain how the society reaches from point A to point B and provide analytical essays and description thick instead of historical ugly narratives and get deep into the information and raw resources to narrate it from the perspective of the real people and feel it and see it. He was trying to revive the voices eliminated in the history – the voice of opposition, protesters and disruptive population questioning the two schools serving the politicians and Thomson taught younger generation to tell the truth against power.
Moreover, he puts religion in the base of public culture to recognize the importance of beliefs. He knew that religion might be a tool for those in power but also a voice to the disadvantaged. Thomson was accused of Methodism in his European studies but Middle East studies of his were praised for religious thoughts. This thought gained importance because of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and emergence of Islamic politics. Modernism couldn’t explain this event since its assumption was that history is inevitable raise of secularism. Orientalists considered the event as an inevitable outburst and retrograde wince Islam stems back to Saudi Arabia and they believed it was stock in time and old ages and was incapable of change. However, historians influenced by Thomson in new Radical Islamic Concepts heard the voice of protesters and especially the disadvantaged and urban poor.

Thomson avoids micro theories and replicates extensive inputs and abstract scrutiny and seeks eager historians diving in the past and concludes when they have investigated all empirical information. In fact there is no need to thick abstract book based on macro theories of producing pre-capitalism. Thomson was an ideal historian with regards to past social conflicts and there is a strange humor. The thoughts of western intellectuals who considered themselves as international theorists didn’t have much reflection in Middle East studies, but Thomson stood out.

Thomson is very obvious in establishment of MERIP Association in late 60s. Although the association was focused on Palestine and still is many historians of this project were directly or indirectly influenced by worker class establishment book in England written by Thomson. This influence with obvious twists in historiography –from social history to cultural history, from cultural history to “semiotics” and “language”, from “dialogue” to “gender” and in recent years to “post structuralism”, “globalization”, “imperialism” and “global systems” – has survived. These evolutions have been an opportunity for some to return to non-political studies on elites, royal court, prominent figures and sacred articles. The Times literature section has the mission to use any opportunity to attach Edward Saeed; a sweet serenade for old orientalists influenced by Edward Palmer Thomson who look at history from below and use some historical events to enrich the approach that the professor had established.

Yervand Abrahamian

Persian Source:
http://oral-history.ir/show.php?page=article&id=650

 
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