Interpreting and Explaining 1989
Appraising the attributed significance and meaning of 1989 in historiography and social and cultural science
The constitutive task of history as well as social and cultural studies is to anticipate, interpret and explain change and continuity. Yet, 1989 has been an embarrassment to the academy. Not only was the event not anticipated: Its possibility was not considered. Neither ‘now we know’ apologies nor exculpatory re-narrations of Soviet and world history have been remedies. Scholars rushed to the scene, but the bulk of literature on transition and transformation is uninspiring where not erroneous. Scholars in Germany, for example, buried millions of grant money by way of a commission charged with investigating the social and political change, which published a steady stream of books and papers that nobody reads.
The failure of the academy to anticipate the crescive change as well as understand the enacted change (Bell 1958) is to be attributed to the modernist breach between historiography and social and cultural studies, making the former a-theoretical and the latter a-historical (Iggers 1978, Raphael 1999, Wallerstein 2000). However, in contrast to the chorus calling for more institutional collaboration between historiography and cultural studies, economics, law, political science or sociology (Gulbenkian Commission 1996), we propose to attend to the realm of knowledge. We assume that any comparative appraisal of rationally reconstructed research programmes (Lakatos 1970) will expose the shortcomings of a historiography that is founded on only implicitly held theory as well as revealing the limitations of a social and cultural approach that is a-historical. Our wager is that while calls for more institutional collaboration will go unheeded, the embarrassment of exposed limitations and shortcomings, which impedes reputation, will be an incentive to integrate theory and history, model and historiography.
Any comparative appraisal (as methodology) relies on a rational reconstruction (as method) of research programmes: Their core theories and models, heuristics and protective belt of knowledge claims. Appraisals have been advocated and undertaken for:
- The theory and historiography of science: Lakatos emphasised that research programmes may be criticised for “the rational historical reconstructions to which they lead” (1977: 122). Kuhn concurred that historiography must aim for rational reconstruction (1970: 236);
- Theory in sociology: To ascertain logical validity and compare explanatory reach with the aim of selection, modification and synthesis (Hondrich/Matthes 1978);
- The neo-Walrassian research programme in economics (Backhouse 1998).
Earlier, Max Weber had advocated (1922) the method of rational reconstruction for a historical social science in which sociology was to build types and elaborate on rules while historiography maintained its focus on the specific and singular. Rational reconstruction is to lead the appraisal of
- Explanatory hypotheses for processes, events, artefacts, praxis and so on;
- Interpretive claims to understand actors’ motives and motivations.
A comparative appraisal of research programmes is rational, historical and empirical. The objective is to weigh and sequence factors relevant to explaining and understanding 1989. In reconstructing research programmes we seek to maximise their coherence and progressiveness to facilitate appraisal: Which explanatory understanding of 1989 is marked by excess content, resolves contradictions within or among other explanations and anticipates new and more evidence?
An annalistic approach is adopted (Hölscher 1998, with reference to Braudel and Rüsen). Collingwood remarked (1924) that “no one knows, no one ever has known, and no one ever will know what exactly it was that happened”. Yet, as we “know more and more”, we “reject with greater and greater confidence a number of mistaken accounts”. The events of 1989 acquired a meaning as they happened, as the expectations of actors turned into experience, giving rise to new expectations: disappointed or fulfilled as events took their course. The stories actors told themselves are intersecting, but already innumerable. Articulate participant observers, from political activists to television reporters, from economic advisors to writers, added a second layer of meaning by recording and reporting events throughout 1989. This resulted in a shift and re-settlement of the parameters of observation. The search for an explanation and understanding of 1989 adds a third layer of meaning, reflexively connected to actors’ experience and participant observers’ accounts. Scholarly investigation contributes towards an understanding of actors’ motives and decisions, and observers’ expectations and conclusions.
Working Goup Coordinatior
Chris Armbruster
Bibliography
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last modified: 2006-10-02
