History 332

Introduction:  Historical Visions and Sociological Models of Community

  • Thomas Bender, Ch. 1, “Introduction: The Meanings of Community,” Ch. 1, “Social Theory and the Problem of Community,” 3-43, in Bender, Community and Social Change in America (1978).  e-Reserve
  • David J. Russo, “Introduction,” “The Little Community: Towns (and Rural Areas Too?),” in Russo, Families and Communities: A New View of American History (1974), 1-51.  e-Reserve
  • Darrett Rutman, “Assessing the Little Communities of Early America,” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. XLIII (1986), 163-178.  JSTOR

Document:


Further reading:  additional documents:

Questions:

The three essays present and consider some of the questions, definitions, and perspectives that we will explore during the semester.  Bender and Russo wrote their essays as the field of community history became established within the historical profession.  In 1986, Rutman offered a retrospective assessment of the evolution of the field.

  • Which definitions, descriptions, and concepts of community resonate for you?
  • Which theories or models of change most compel you? confuse you?
  • What common threads and concerns do you find in the three articles?
  • What do these scholars view as the main flaws in previous, often long-standing theories of “historical” change in community? What do they mean when they describe a theory, a model, or an assessment as “ahistorical”?
  • What can historians bring to the discussion and analysis of community?

John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, delivered his sermon in 1630 on board the ship Arabella:

  • Consider his sermon as offering a model or vision of community that he hoped his company of fellow Puritans would implement in Massachusetts Bay.  What expectations did he have for the community? What was he trying to ensure and/or protect?  What did he think would hold community together?
  • What problems or concerns did he anticipate, and what anxieties did he state less clearly? Why did Winthrop’s model emphasize religion (although not the church) and administration?
  • Within his community, whose values, beliefs, and assumptions did he represent? For whom did he speak?

Further discussion:

Questions: present-day perspective

  • What is your experience of community? What perspectives about community do you bring to this discussion?
  • What insight does your experience of community give you toward an understanding of the “fabric” of historical, “horizontally-oriented” communities—face-to-face interaction; extended family oriented; and ancestrally imbedded? What experiences and assumptions do you need to let go of in order to understand the historical experience of community?
  • What messages about community—and community values—do we hear today? To what extent can these help us understand historical communities?

Questions: definitions

  • What is “community”? What constitutes community (what is required of community)?
  • What do the inhabitants of a community—in a particular place, at a particular time (era)—expect and understand?
  • What determines the particular values, sets of associations, systems of hierarchy within a community, and how do these shape the experience of community?
  • What causes values, expectations, and structures to change over time?

Questions: historical perspective

  • Why study community?
  • What interests you about this topic (or what do you hope will interest you)?
  • Reflect on your experience as historians (or apprentice historians): what are the advantages—and disadvantages—of a community perspective for examining history? as a way of looking at the past? What community studies have you read? What did you think of those?
  • What measures do scholars (historians, sociologists, anthropologists) use to gain an understanding of community?
  • What can historians bring to the discussion and analysis of community?

General questions to consider as you do the readings for the course:

  • How did the author construct the account, and why?
  • What research design did the author follow (why are present-day historians generally so explicit about this)?
  • What primary sources did the author(s) use? what questions did the author ask about the sources? Why?
  • What is the author's agenda? What is the author trying to show?
  • What did you learn from the study? how did it change your understanding—of an event, a process, the process of historical inquiry?