Yes, I am in fact still here. All my blogging time and energy has been taken up by Vulpes Libris recently, but I will try to resurrect this poor ailing blog too.
For now, a shameless plug.
Writing this one raised a swarm of prickly but extremely interesting questions. What makes a historian? Should we hold popular history books to a set of standards? What’s in a BA, an award, a celebrity endorsement? I would dearly love to carry on the discussion that started over in VL, so if anyone is listening, chime in…
kirsty I’m tagging you. You don’t have to do it but if you do the post about it and what to do is here:
http://rosyb.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/spreading-the-word-tag/
I kind of had an idea after talking about the spread the word initiative on my site. I thought – goddam surely this is what blogs are good at – word of mouth. So it’s a tag to spread word of mouth about books you think deserve it.
Rosyx
By: rosyb on October 26, 2008
at 12:16 pm
I just wonder exactly what extra research techniques you learn in a research degree? I have a BA in history and I’m just wondering what I might have missed out on.
By: Jodie on October 31, 2008
at 12:16 pm
Well, to risk stating the obvious, in a research degree you… do an extended piece of research under supervision, generally with accompanying research training. You will inevitably get to know the relevant libraries and archives inside out, as well as learning how to structure a large research project. No BA I am aware of allows you to undertake supervised research on this scale.
Rosy: I shall get onto that today!
By: kirstyjane on October 31, 2008
at 12:20 pm
So you’re talking more about a lack of research knowledge rather than analytical techniques. Yes I agree that while a BA does have the dissertation element due to time constraints it just skims the surface of where to go and how to find articles while an MA has a much more extensive research element.
I think this lack of knowledge is something someone with a BA (especially someone who wants to write a book on their chosen subject) should and could rectify if they applied themselves. Although they’d have to be willing to sacrafice their unborn children to the library gods as it’s extremly difficult to get access to many university libraries if you’re not studying with them:)
Popular history is really about writing books to inform people who are less informed or who are interested in exapanding their knowledge. If the book is not carefully researched and well thought out it is useless to the general public as it doesn’t expand their knowledge. People who do not have access to the supporting documents or who have not had much formal history training don’t really have any way to check the facts and opinions in a popular history book, many rely on popular history books being, well, reliable. They form their opinions around the suppoused ‘facts’ they find in these books. Popular history has to be held to the same standards of accuracy, throughness and insightful analysis as academic papers, otherwise they spread misunderstanding and odd opinion as the whole truth.
Having said that many historians operate with some sort of bias. How useful is a popular history book in expanding people’s knowledge and helping them form opinions when it is informed by a bias that the general public may be unaware of?
By: Jodie on November 3, 2008
at 11:58 am
I am talking about that, but I am also talking about the further analytical training research degrees entail. MPhil/MA degrees tend to be a vast and sudden step up from the BA in terms of what you are expected to take on board.
There are exceptions – Isaac Deutscher is a very notable one – but in general it would be extremely hard to acquire this on your own . (Now I think of it, Deutscher was writing about current affairs to a large extent). The problem is that too much of popular history lacks both the rigour and the methodology that research training should convey. Look at Young Stalin – there is a lot of research there in terms of collecting and reading documents, but the material is not used in any coherent way.
The issue of bias exists in academic history too. It is up to the reader to look at any form of written history with a questioning eye.
By: kirstyjane on November 3, 2008
at 12:09 pm
Bias is present in academic history but people reading academic history are more likely to be aware they should keep the author’s bias in mind. They’ve been trained to look for things like that by their education. They’re also more likely to have background knowledge that will allow them to ‘quality check’ the author’s facts and opinions, allowing them to identify what are concrete facts and what is interpretation of these facts. I think often readers, with no background in history or textual criticism, who just fancy picking up a work of popular non-fiction believe that what authors of popular history are telling them is all undeniable ‘truth’ rather than an interpretation.
I’m getting well off track of your original discussion now though.
By: Jodie on November 4, 2008
at 10:04 am
Jodie,
I have a BS in Biology and I’ve been researching surgical techniques a lot. I’m pretty sure I can do just as well as a trained surgeon. Want to be my volunteer?
By: Michelle on November 29, 2008
at 6:36 pm
It is an interesting point, that of a BA in History being sufficient to do research and one that always presents difficulties when someone with a BA claims to be a ‘historian’ versus someone with a PhD who may make the same claim. This is not to say that someone with a BA is not able to do history but I find that, often, someone without an MA/MPhil (at the minimum) is not able to write good history since they know enough to look for materials and to amass sources but not enough to actually analyse, understand, and comprehend what they have done and how it fits.
This is something not difficult to do, actually. Having access to good libraries (often difficult if one is not an academic or researcher) is a requisite of being a researcher but it is the research training which matters most. The BA teaches basic skills in how to read history and to understand history but it does not prepare one to write history well or to set said history into the context of the overall history. To reference a rather popular series of Roman history books on Roman legions, I do not doubt that the author has amassed many facts and books. However, his books reveal he doesn’t actually understand the world in which these Roman soldiers actually existed.
I think, in the final analysis, it isn’t that people without PhDs can’t write good history or be historians. However, this is a daunting task to perform without the research training in methodology, interaction with other professionals in the field, and immersion in guided research (a body of independent and original research) by an authority on the topic. It is not something one can easily learn on one’s own and having access to libraries won’t make up for that lack of guidance.
By: Michael on December 4, 2008
at 7:06 am