Transcript CH 11: Looking at the Past and Across Cultures

CH 11: Looking at the
Past and Across
Cultures
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WHAT IS HISTORICALCOMPARATIVE RESEARCH (HCR)?
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HCR places historical time and/or crosscultural variation at the center of analysis
HCR looks at how a specific mix of diverse
factors come together in time and place to
produce a specific outcome (e.g., war,
social movement, migration, etc.)
HCR makes “big” comparisons, of units
like nation-states, societies, cultures, to
see how they are similar and different
HCR examines social processes across
several cultural or historical settings
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What research questions are
suitable for HCR?
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“Big questions” about macro-level change over
time (across historical eras) or in two or more
sociocultural contexts
When the goal is to understand/explain macrolevel events
• e.g., a terrorist attack, a nation going to war, sources of
racism, large-scale immigration, religious conflict, urban
decay, etc.
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Do people who immigrate form attachments to
their new country or stay connected across
international borders?
What about the questions that drive the article,
“Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New
Economy”?
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CONCEPTUALIZATION
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Write down all the concepts you can
recall from “Nannies, Maids, and Sex
Workers in the New Economy”
• Sort concepts into groups, classify them
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Concepts can be grouped in
various ways, for example:
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social structures
social processes
social relations
social actors
activities
events
social contexts/locations/populations
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Concepts can also be arranged on a
continuum, from specific to universal
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universal concepts apply across
social settings, historical time, and
culture
specific concepts apply only to
particular social settings, historical
eras, or cultures
Many concepts fall between these
extremes
(Neumann, pp. 299-300)
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H-C research uses a blend of
research techniques
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traditional history, field research,
interviews, content analysis, existing
statistics, etc.
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“Nannies, Maids, and Sex
Workers in the New
Economy”
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie
Russell Hochschild, in Rothenberg,
Ed., Beyond Borders: Thinking
Critically About Global Issues,
2006.
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With globalization, women are on
the move as never before
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There’s growing migration of millions
of women from poor countries to rich
ones, where they serve as nannies,
maids and sex workers
Lacking help from male partners,
many women have succeeded in
“male world” careers only by turning
over care of children, elderly
parents, and homes to women from
the Third World
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The female underside of
globalization
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Millions of women from poor
countries in the south migrate to do
the “women’s work” of the north –
work that affluent women are no
longer able or willing to do
Migrant women often leave their own
children back home, in the care of
grandmothers, sisters, and sistersin-law
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The pattern of female migration reflects
a “worldwide gender revolution”
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In both rich and poor countries,
fewer families can rely solely on a
male breadwinner
In the U.S., the earning power of
most men has declined since 1970,
and many women have gone to work
to make up the difference
 So who will take care of the
children, the sick, the elderly?
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Hypothesis:
The lifestyles of the First World are
made possible by a global transfer
of the services associated with a
wife’s traditional role—child care,
homemaking, and sex—from poor
countries to rich ones.
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To generalize and perhaps
oversimplify:
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In an earlier phase of imperialism,
northern countries extracted natural
resources and agricultural products from
lands they colonized
Today, while still relying on Third World
countries for agricultural and industrial
labor, the wealthy countries also seek to
extract something harder to measure and
quantify, that can look very much like
love.
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Historical precedents for the
globalization of traditional female
services
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In the ancient Middle East, the women of
populations defeated in war were routinely
enslaved and to serve as household workers and
concubines for the victors
Among the Africans brought to North America as
slaves in the 16th – 19th centuries, about 1/3
were women & children, and many became
concubines and domestic servants
19th century Irishwomen–and rural
Englishwomen-- migrated to English towns and
cities to work as domestics in homes of growing
upper middle class
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The feminization of migration
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From 1950 – 1970, men predominated in labor
migration to northern Europe from Turkey,
Greece, and North Africa
• Since then, women have been replacing men
• In 1946, women were fewer than 3% of the Algerians
and Moroccans living in France; by 1990, they were
more than 40%
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Overall, half of the world’s 120 million legal and
illegal migrants are now believed to be women
Patterns of international migration vary from
region to region, but women migrants from a
surprising # of sending countries actually
outnumber men, sometimes by a wide margin
(See pp. 533-534)
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Composition of household workforce in
US has changed with the life chances
of different ethnic groups
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In late 19th century, Irish and German
immigrants served the northern upper and
middle classes, then left for factories as soon as
they could
Black women replaced them, accounting for 60%
of all domestics in the late 1940s, and dominated
the field until other occupations opened up
West coast maids were disproportionately
Japanese American until that group found better
options
Today, ethnicity of workforce varies by region:
Chicanas in the Southwest, Caribbeans in New
York, native Hawaiians in Hawaii, whites, mostly
rural, in Maine
(Ehreneich, “Maid to Order: The Politics of Other Women’s Work”16
Harper's, 4/1/2000)
The globalization of women’s work is
NOT a simple synergy of needs among
women
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Fails to account for failure of First World
governments to meet the needs created
by women’s entry into workforce
• The American and—to a lesser degree—
European welfare state has become a
“deadbeat dad”
• US does not offer public child care, nor insure
paid family and medical leave
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Omits the role of men, who still do less
than their “fair share” of domestic work
• Often leaving working women with a “second
shift”
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Push factors not so simple either
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Female migrants are not the most
impoverished, so absolute poverty not a
push factor
• They are typically more affluent and better educated than
male migrants
• Such women are likely to be enterprising and adventurous
enough to resist the social pressures to stay home and accept
their lot in life
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Noneconomic factors also influence
decision to migrate
• To escape expectation to care for elderly family members, to
give paychecks to husband or father, to defer to an abusive
husband
• A practical response to divorce or need to raise children as
single mother
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Other factors may make men of poor countries less desirable as
husbands (e.g., unemployment and related social problems such
as alcoholism and gambling)
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Globalization of child care & housework brings
independent women of the world together
–but not as sisters & allies with common goals
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Instead they come together across a great divide
of privilege and opportunity
A global relationship has formed that in some
ways mirrors the traditional relationship between
the sexes
• The First World takes on a role like that of the
old-fashioned male in the family
• Poor countries take on a role like that of the
traditional woman within the family
A division of labor feminists critiqued when it
was “local” has now, metaphorically speaking,
gone global
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What is Unique about HCR?
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Builds on Limited and Indirect Evidence
Interprets the Meaning of Events in
Context
-Supracontext awareness
-Coherence imposition
-Capacity overestimation
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Integrates the Micro and Macro Levels
Uses Specific and Transcultural,
Transhistorical Concepts
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HOW TO DO A HCR RESEARCH
STUDY
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Acquire the necessary background
Conceptualize the issue
Locate and evaluate the evidence
Organize the evidence
Synthesize and develop concepts
Write the report
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RESEARCHING THE PAST
Historians and social researchers study the past in different ways
Historians:
 See collection of
historical evidence as
central goal in itself
 Interpret data in light
of other historical
events
 Are not overly
concerned about
developing theory
Social researchers:
 See collection of
historical evidence as
secondary
 Want to extend or
build theory or apply
social concepts to new
situations
 Use historical
evidence as a means
to an end – to
explain/understand
social relations
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Types of Historical Evidence
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Primary sources
Running records
Recollections
Secondary sources
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Primary sources and their limitations
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primary sources: sources created in the
past and that survived to the present
• presentism: the fallacy of looking at past
events from the point of view of today and
failing to adjust for a very different context
• ethnocentrism: as applied in comparative
research, the fallacy of looking at the
behaviors, customs, and practices of people in
other cultures narrowly from your culture’s
point of view
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Evaluating primary sources
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After locating documents, you must
evaluate them with external and
internal criticism
• external criticism: evaluating the
authenticity of primary source materials
• internal criticism: evaluating the
credibility of information in primary
source materials
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Running records and their limitations
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Running records: ongoing files or
statistical documents that an
organization such as a school,
business, hospital, or government
agency maintains over time
Limitations:
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organizations do not always maintain them
organizations do not record information
consistently over time
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Recollections and their limitations
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recollections: a person’s words or writings
about past experiences created by the
person some time after the experiences
took place
• oral history: interviews with a person about his
or her life and experiences in the past
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Limitation: because memory is imperfect,
recollections and oral histories can be
distorted pictures of the past in ways
primary sources are not
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Secondary sources and their limitations
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secondary sources: specific studies
conducted by specialist historians who
may have spent many years studying a
narrow topic. Other researchers use these
secondary data as sources.
Limitations:
• Holes or gaps in the historical record and few
studies on your topic
• Inaccurate historical accounts
• Biased interpretations
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