History, Agency, and Political Change Author(S): Victoria Hattam Source: Polity, Vol

Northeastern Political Science Association

History, Agency, and Political Change Author(s): Victoria Hattam Source: Polity, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Spring, 2000), pp. 333-338 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3235354 . Accessed: 31/10/2013 17:29

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History, Agency, and Political Change Victoria Hattam New School for Social Research

Agency Through History Manypolitical scientists have turned to historicalresearch as meansof clarifying the constraintsshaping contemporary political action. Polsky'sself-identified pes- simismin this forumcaptures this view of politicalhistory elegantly when he identifies notions of "pathdependence" and "policylegacies" as key contributionsof historicalresearch. The focus for many historicallyoriented political scientists has been on identifyingthe ways in which politicalinstitutions and policieshave provideda distinctiveset of incentivesand constraints that have, in turn,structured sub- sequent politicalchoice.' Although I agreewith much in this line of argument,my own interestin history,and in historicallygrounded political research, stems froma quitedifferent impulse. I turnto historyprecisely to gaina sense of politicalagency by expandingthe set of politicalpossibilities available in contemporarypolitical debate. History,from this perspective,serves as an agent for, ratherthan a con- strainton, politicalchange. If political actors and activistswere to read"our" work, I hope they would leave it with an extendedsense of politicalpossibilities as the verybest politicalhistory, as I see it, oughtto broadenthe culturaland politicalhori- zons we use to framecontemporary political debate. Thereare at least threeways in which historyacts as a source of agency and change;first history denaturalizes the present;second it is a source of alternative visionsand practices;and finally,it helpsto specifycontemporary political topography.All three dimensions of agencycan be foundin most politicalhistories. Unfor- tunatelythere is no room hereto surveythe field,thus a few instancesof each will have to suffice.Let me brieflyoutline and illustrateeach of these mechanismsfor expandingour sense of agencyand politicalchange through historical research and concludewith some remarkson questionsof presentismin politicalhistory. One of the most importantimpulses and effectsof politicalhistory has been to denaturalizethe present.That is to unmask the taken for granted,or common sense, natureof our currentpolitical institutions and practices.2Historical research

1. See JamesG. March and Johan Olsen, "The New Institutionalism:Organizational Factors in Political Life,"APSR 78 (1984):734-49; Peter B. Evans,Dietrich Reuschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the StateBack In (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Paul Pierson, "When Effect Becomes Cause: PolicyFeedback and Political Change," World Politics 45, 4 (July1993): 595-628; Margaret Weir, Politics and Jobs: TheBoundaries of EmploymentPolicy in the UnitedStates (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1992);and Polskyin thisforum. 2. Fora fascinatingaccount of common sense, see CliffordGeertz, "Common Sense," in his Local Knowledge:Further Essays in InterpretativeAnthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983): 73-93.

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quicklyputs our everyday assumptions about politics into question as we encounter verydifferent understandings and assumptionsin earliereras. The sense of differ- ence providedby historyoften has opened up questionsof social and political organizationthat may not have seemed in need of interpretationwithout the his- toricalcontrast. Historical research has been especiallyimportant, I believe,in the sub-fieldof Americanpolitics where, giventhe culturalfamiliarity of the objectsof study,it is all too easy to take our currentpolitical practices for granted.Historical researchhas broughtmany of us face to face with very differentpolitical orders, therebyunderscoring the contingentstatus of a whole varietyof contemporary politicalarrangements. Historical comparison, thus, provides a pointof contrastthat helpsto problematizeaspects of Americanculture and politicsthat otherwise might have been left unexamined.Scholars working in the subfieldof comparativepoli- tics often can obtaina sense of analyticdifference geographically by comparing a rangeof politicaloutcomes across national boundaries at a single point in time. Americanists,by contrast,rarely have such an opportunityand thus many have sought this point of differencetemporarily, by turningto historyfor a point of comparison.In short, history has provideda much neededcomparative dimension to Americanpolitics which has, in turn,opened up contemporarypolitical arrange- ments for furtheranalysis.3 Stephen Skowronek's conceptualization of the early Americanstate as a "stateof courtsand parties"has playedsuch a role in opening up questionsof the natureand limitsof state capacityin the U.S.Similarly, Karen Orren'swork on the persistenceof Feudalisminto the earlytwentieth century has turnedour notionsof liberalismand labor'srelation to it upsidedown, therebycall- ing into questionmany assumptions about the natureof Americanpolitics past and present.4 Second, many scholars have gained an increasedsense of politicalagency throughthe recoveryof alternativepolitical visions and modes of organization uncoveredthrough detailed historical research. History, for these politicalscientists, has been a processof recoveringthe counterculturesembedded within the domi- nantculture that have been obscuredby all too Whiggishan understandingof the past. Reconstructingthese lost alternativeshas expandedthe rangeof social and

3. Ofcourse, many comparativists have engaged in extensivehistorical research. What I am arguingis thathistorical research has a particularmethodological import in the subfieldof Americanpolitics, not that it does not existelsewhere. For fine examples of comparativehistorical institutionalist research, see Theda Skocpol,States and SocialRevolutions; Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and FrankLongstreth, eds., Struc- turingPolitics: Historical Institutionalism in ComparativeAnalysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992);Peter A. Hall,Governing the Economy:The Politics of StateIntervention in Britainand France(New York:Oxford University Press, 1986); Colleen Dunlavy, Politics and Industrialization:Early Railroads in the UnitedStates and Prussia(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and EllenImmergut, Health Poli- tics:Interests and Institutionsin WesternEurope (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 4. See StephenSkowronek, Building a New AmericanState: The Expansion of NationalAdministrative Capacities,1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and KarrenOrren, Belated Feudalism: Labor,the Law, and Liberal Development in theUnited States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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politicaloutcomes that might be consideredin contemporarypolitical debates. Accountingfor the alternatives'demise is criticalif we areto assessthe relevanceand politicalviability of such alternativesfor contemporary political debate. Gerald Berk and GaryHerrigel's accounts of the competingforms of corporateorganization duringAmerican and Germanindustrialization are fine examples of such work; GretchenRitter's and my own work mightbe seen as instancesof recoveringalter- nativevisions of economicorganization and politicson the laborside, while Anne Nortonhas exploredalternative forms of cultureand politicsin the AmericanSouth.5 Third,political history might be used to empowerrather than constrain political choice much as Smithargues in this forum. I thinkof this as the topographical accountof historyin which we lay bare past politicalsettlements not so much to establishthe set of currentpolitical choices, but ratherso thatwe mightknow the terrainon which we are operatingand therebywage the most effectivecampaign to bringour various political visions to fruition.Put simply, in orderto be politically effectivewe must know where the bodies are buriedand politicalhistory is one of the key means of identifyingtheir location. Mapping the politicalterrain will not, of course,predict the outcome;nor will it, or shouldit, lead to agreementover what our course of actionought to be. Ratherit simplymakes apparentthe conditions underwhich we seek to specifyand work towardour respectivesocial visions. Ira Katznelson'sCity Trenches seems a classicwork in thisvein, in which he identifies a centralpolitical fault line runningthrough American politics after the onset of industrializationin which Americanworkers identify and mobilizepolitically on the basisof residencerather than employment. Understanding the natureand origins of this divisionis essentialfor any politicalactor who would wage an effectiveurban politicalcampaign.6 Rogers Smith's recent work on Americancivic idealsand the multipletraditions which informthem also exemplifiesthis approach,as Smith arguesthat the particularweight given to the competingtraditions shaping our citi- zenshiprequirements ultimately is determinedby the balanceof politicalforces at any given historicalmoment. The outcome can neversimply be read off of past politicalsettlements; rather, the historicalrecord ought to alertus to the forcesto be reckonedwith in our own time.7

5. See GeraldBerk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of AmericanIndustrial Order, 1865-1916 (Bal- timore:Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1993);Gary Herrigel, Industrial Constructions: The Sourcesof GermanIndustrial Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Richard Locke, Remaking the Ital- ian Economy(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks:The Anti- monopolyTradition and the Politicsof Finance,1865-1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); VictoriaHattam, Labor Visions and StatePower: The Origins of BusinessUnionism in the UnitedStates (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1993); Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum PoliticalCulture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). 6. See IraKatznelson, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterningof Classin the UnitedStates (Chicago:University of ChicagoPress, 1982). 7. See RogersSmith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenshipin U.S.History (New Haven:Yale UniversityPress, 1997).

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Letme illustratethese dynamicsof historyas a sourceof agencyand changeby drawingon my currentresearch on ethnicityand American racial politics. The point is not to suggestits exemplarynature but ratherto providesome fleshfor the skele- tal argumentsadvanced above.

Ethnicity Then and Now We areliving through an historicera of immigrationinto the UnitedStates, the high levelsof whichhave only been matchedtwice before in Americanhistory, first during the 1850sand again at the turn of the centuryduring the Progressiveera. Many observersboth inside and outside the academyare asking how thesepost-1965 immi- grantswill align culturally and politically.Where, many want to know,will the princi- palsocial cleavages be drawnin the earlydecades of thetwenty-first century? My own sense of how immigrationpolitics will playin the decadesto come is principallyan argumentfor the relevanceof politicalhistory for contemporary politics. That is, my own sense of how contemporaryimmigrants will alignpolitically is shapedin crucial ways by the past.Only by recoveringthe Progressiveera settlement between second wave immigrantsand elites can we beginto decipherthe contoursof immigrantpol- iticstoday. But this much almost all can agreeon; the rubcomes when one beginsto specifymore precisely the particular ways in whichthe pastremains relevant to con- temporarypolitics. One quicklyfinds that several quite different arguments can be used to linkthe Progressiveera with the present.I findmyself, again, on the agency end of the pathdependence-agency continuum in which historical research becomes a meansof imagingand facilitatingpolitical change.8 One of the most strikingcomparisons between the Progressiveera and contem- poraryimmigration politics is the very differentlanguages used for the respective debates.During the Progressiveera, the languageof ethnicitywas only justbeing "invented"and had not yet become the principaldiscourse for describingimmi- grants'experience.9 Rather, a quitedifferent discourse dominated discussions of dif- ferenceduring the nineteenthcentury in which the principalclassificatory scheme compared"the natural" and "historicraces."'0 The nineteenth-centurylanguage of "historicraces" drew heavilyon Lamarckiannotion of the heritabilityof acquired characteristicsin which climate,geography, and even social arrangementswere

8. Thissection draws on my currentresearch on ethnicityand American racial politics. For a preview of the largerargument, see VictoriaHattam, "Ethnicity, Racial Discourse, and Coalition Politics," paper pre- paredfor delivery at the APSAmeetings in Atlanta,GA, September 1-5, 1999. 9. Forthe inventionof ethnicity,see WernerSollors, ed., TheInvention of Ethnicity(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1989), intro. 10. Forfascinating discussions of eighteenthand nineteenthcentury racial discourse, see GeorgeW. Stocking,"Lamarckianism in American Social Science, 1890-1915," in his Race, Culture,and Evolution: Essaysin the Historyof Anthropology(New York: Free Press, 1968); and NicholasHudson, "From 'Nation' to 'Race':The Originof RacialClassification in Eighteenth-CenturyThought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, 3 (1996):247-64.

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thoughtto providethe basisof racialdifference over long periodsof time.Most nineteenth-centuryelites did not distinguishsharply between notions of raceand nation, norbetween notions of raceand ethnicity;rather the term"historic races" was used to referto all of the above. Confrontingthese quite differentlanguages of race quicklyhighlights the historicalspecificity of our own notionsof raceand ethnicity. I immediatelywant to know when the discursiveshift from "historic races" to eth- nicityoccurred? What was at stakein thischange in discourse?How did the different linguisticframings of differenceshape immigrants'interests and alliances? Answeringthese questionshas takenme back to the Progressiveera where I find myselfagain turning to historyas a sourceof agencyand change. Turningto the Progressiveera quickly denaturalizesour twentieth-century notionsof race and ethnicityand places questionsof social and politicalconstruc- tion centerstage. Our twentieth-century conceptions of raceand ethnicitynow are revealedas historicalparticularities rather than being seen as transhistoricalsystems of humanclassification. Recovering the differentlanguages of race thatdominated nineteenth-centurydiscourse, thus, serves to repoliticizenotions of race and eth- nicityin our own time. Moreover,tracing the shift in racialdiscourse from a lan- guage of "historicraces" to that of ethnicitynot only denaturalizesthe present,it also helpsto clarifythe particularmeaning of ourtwentieth-century racial discourse. Identifyingor mappingthe contemporarydiscursive topography, however, does not mean thatwe are destinedto repeatit; nor must our currentpolitical choices be determinedor limitedby this historicallyconstructed terrain. On the contrary,con- temporaryimmigrant politics, as I see it, is engagedin reworkingthe Progressiveera settlement.Narrowly conceived notions of raceand ethnicity, many have argued, no longercapture the full rangeand heterogeneityof the Americanpopulation, espe- ciallygiven the enormousdemographic change that has takenplace during the last threedecades." Distinctions between race and ethnicitythat were carvedout during the Progressiveera are currentlyunder attack from many quarters;whether, or in what ways, our languagesof differencewill be reconfiguredin the twenty-firstcen- turyis not yet clear.But both identifyingand articulatingthe Progressiveera legacy helpsto clarifythe terrainon which the currentstruggles are beingwaged. Again,I do not see, norwould I expect to find,agreement over how questionsof raceand ethnicityought to be reworked;many very differentvisions currentlyare being advocated.What I am suggesting,however, is thatall advocateswould do well to understandthe Progressiveera legacyso thatthey can more effectivelyidentify the variouschanges needed to realizetheir particular vision.'2

11. Manyhave pointedout the liminallocation of AsianAmericans, and Hispanicswithin American ethnicand racial classificatory schema. For example, see PeterSkerry, Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993);and ClaireJean Kim,"The Triangulation of Asian Americans,"Politics and Society27, 1 (March1999): 105-138. 12. Fora briefreview of contemporaryarguments over contemporary immigrants' cultural and political identification,see Hattam,"Ethnicity, Racial Discourse, and CoalitionPolitics," 5-10.

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Politics and Presentism

Studentsof historyoften are remindedof the dangersof presentistarguments aboutthe past.In orderto understandany historicalera, many claim, we mustsus- pend our presentday categoriesand assumptionsand recoverinstead the distinc- tivelanguages and world views of otherhistorical periods. Only after understanding the past on its own terms,so the argumentruns, will we be able to assess the his- toricaldynamics with anydegree of subtletyand without simply imposing our own valuesand assumptions onto the past.My view of historyas a sourceof agencyout- linedabove leaves me in an ambiguousposition in relationto the dangersinherent in presentism.On the one hand,the importanceof historyas a means of denatu- ralizingthe presenthinges on our abilityto rediscoverdifferent worlds in the past, and as such is verymuch in the anti-presentistcamp. Recoveringthe differentlan- guagesof class and ethnicitythat prevailed during the nineteenthcentury has been essentialin my own workand has been the keyvehicle through which I have iden- tifiedthe dynamicsof politicalhistory. Yet, my claimthat history provides a means of openingup contemporarypolitical choice pointsin a ratherdifferent direction. Namely,that historicalresearch is inevitablyshaped by our own contemporary politicalconcerns. Perhaps it is a mistake,especially for political scientists, to dimin- ish the linksbetween the presentand the past. Indeed,I thinka case can be made forhistorically oriented political science makinga virtueof theirpresentist concerns. This would requirethat we give a more explicitaccount of our contemporary assumptionsand concernsand thatwe readilyacknowledge their motivating force in our historicalwork. Framing historical research as a self consciousresponse to issues in own timeswould, I think,help foregroundquestions of agencyand politicalchange as key to even the most antiquarianprojects of historicalresearch and might help focus more sharplythe distinctiveproject embodied in the historical turnwithin political science.'3

13. Mythinking on presentismhas been influencedby threeessays: Joan Scott, "The Evidence of Expe- rience,"Critical Inquiry 17, 4 (Summer1991): 773-97; Ira Katznelson, "The State to the Rescue?Political Sci- ence and HistoryReconnect," Social Research 59, 4 (Winter1992): 719-37; and Anne Norton, "95 Theses on Politics,Culture, and Method,"manuscript.

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