Making Sense of Social History Author(s): Mark M. Smith Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Issue (Autumn, 2003), pp. 165-186 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3790322 . Accessed: 08/10/2014 13:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Social History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 210.212.93.44 on Wed, 8 Oct 2014 13:51:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MAKING SENSE OF SOCIAL HISTORY By Mark M. Smith University of South Carolina [M]an is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, but with all his senses_The forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present. Karl Marx1 I Eric Hobsbawm was in ebullient mood in 1970. "It is a good moment to be a social historian," he concluded his influential essay, "From Social History to the History of Society." For reasons he'd understand but because of developments in the writing of the history of the senses that he probably didn't anticipate, Hobsbawm might well sound a similar note of optimism were he to write the essay today.2 I'd like to suggest why Hobsbawm's understanding of social history seems to have been important to relatively recent work on the history of the senses? most of which is on the history of aurality?even if that influence is not always acknowledged explicitly by some ofthe authors concerned.