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It surprises me how opinion can be written off as fact. Emma Griffin speculates about how social customs come about and just states them as fact. I was looking

by vain 12y ago

It surprises me how opinion can be written off as fact. Emma Griffin speculates about how social customs come about and just states them as fact. I was looking for citations to references/studies. There are none. At best there are anecdotes. I googled up Emma Griffin, and she seems to be a celebrated historian http://emmagriffin.info/ http://emmagriffin.info/ . I do not know what to make of this otherwise interesting write up. Or is it just science that requires any rigor in what is said?

shenanigoat 12y ago
She hints at the fact that the info was gleaned from diaries and other writings from the working class. Well...it isn't explicitly stated that she used these so I guess some assumptions need to be made. I would say, for an article like this with a lay audience in mind, maybe it's not so important that everything is cited as it would be in a research paper or an article in a history journal. "Not only are there the usual problems in uncovering evidence about the lives of the poor and often unlettered men and women who made up the bulk of the population, but sex is also a topic about which all levels of society were generally reticent. Yet, if evidence about the sexual behaviour of ordinary people is hard to find, it certainly exists. Working-class diaries and autobiographies shed a unique and important light on the lives of the poor. While many autobiographical writers steered well clear of revealing anything about their intimate experiences, others found they were unable to write their life history without touching upon matters of a sexual nature. As a result such sources can help us to understand not only the social customs that controlled sexual activity in the pre-industrial era, but also the weakening of these controls during the turbulent years of the Industrial Revolution."
icegreentea 12y ago
Uh, a couple things to consider: a) This is an article in a magazine, not a research journal. The standards are inherently different. This is similar to the lower level of 'rigour' demanded out of scientific magazine articles, as opposed to research journals. b) Huge chunks of history consists of interpreting evidence. In so much as interpreting is a matter of opinion, this is pretty much an opinion piece. Historians really don't have any offer a citation to back up their interpretations. Certainly, it helps, but the point is that they offer up evidence (in the form of selections of contemporary journal entries), and then interpret that evidence, and present it to you. You're suppose to accept or reject (or wherever on the spectrum) this interpretation based on your critical faculties and own background knowledge. c) Since we actually do lack 'objective' measurements for huge amounts of things that we really are curious about in the past, all we have are anecdotes. We cannot perform experiments on the past. Archeology is limited. Conclusions drawn from normal historical methods are certainly limited, and heavily influenced by biases, but that's pretty much all we have to work with.

by vain 12y ago

shenanigoat 12y ago

She hints at the fact that the info was gleaned from diaries and other writings from the working class. Well...it isn't explicitly stated that she used these so I guess some assumptions need to be made. I would say, for an article like this with a lay audience in mind, maybe it's not so important that everything is cited as it would be in a research paper or an article in a history journal. "Not only are there the usual problems in uncovering evidence about the lives of the poor and often unlettered men and women who made up the bulk of the population, but sex is also a topic about which all levels of society were generally reticent. Yet, if evidence about the sexual behaviour of ordinary people is hard to find, it certainly exists. Working-class diaries and autobiographies shed a unique and important light on the lives of the poor. While many autobiographical writers steered well clear of revealing anything about their intimate experiences, others found they were unable to write their life history without touching upon matters of a sexual nature. As a result such sources can help us to understand not only the social customs that controlled sexual activity in the pre-industrial era, but also the weakening of these controls during the turbulent years of the Industrial Revolution."

icegreentea 12y ago

Uh, a couple things to consider: a) This is an article in a magazine, not a research journal. The standards are inherently different. This is similar to the lower level of 'rigour' demanded out of scientific magazine articles, as opposed to research journals. b) Huge chunks of history consists of interpreting evidence. In so much as interpreting is a matter of opinion, this is pretty much an opinion piece. Historians really don't have any offer a citation to back up their interpretations. Certainly, it helps, but the point is that they offer up evidence (in the form of selections of contemporary journal entries), and then interpret that evidence, and present it to you. You're suppose to accept or reject (or wherever on the spectrum) this interpretation based on your critical faculties and own background knowledge. c) Since we actually do lack 'objective' measurements for huge amounts of things that we really are curious about in the past, all we have are anecdotes. We cannot perform experiments on the past. Archeology is limited. Conclusions drawn from normal historical methods are certainly limited, and heavily influenced by biases, but that's pretty much all we have to work with.