New Nation: New History. The History Workshop in South Africa 1979-1994¶
P.L. Bonner (1994). New Nation: New History. The History Workshop in South Africa 1979-1994.
| Type | other |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1977–1994 |
| Regions | Witwatersrand, South Africa |
| Themes | methods data sources, resistance social movements, unions strikes, comparative theory, education human capital |
| Citation key | bonner1994 |
Argument¶
Bonner appraises how far the Wits History Workshop shaped South African historical writing and popular understandings of the past. He argues that it provided a major local focus for a radical social history 'from below'. The Workshop grew out of the 1976 Soweto uprising, the post-1973 labour education movement, the exiled revisionist historians in England and the Ruskin History Workshop. Its influence on the profession is hard to separate from other local and international currents, and its popular impact is hard to measure. The article concedes limits: too little synthesis, weak reach among African historians and historically black universities, and a tendency to become predictable.
Evidence and method¶
The author's personal observation and personal communications with colleagues. Workshop Triennial Reports, conference volumes and popular publications. Reviews of the Workshop's work (Freund, Worger, Saunders). Circulation, attendance and enrolment figures for the New Nation newspaper, Open Days and university courses.
Place in the debates¶
- Liberal vs radical/revisionist historiography of South Africa (see Historiographical approaches). Treats the radical critique, led from England from the late 1960s, as having produced a revolution in historical writing. The Workshop is presented as the local home of that revolution.
- Structuralist Marxism vs social history 'from below' (see Historiographical approaches). Favours social history, with its attention to human agency and consciousness, over the earlier instrumentalist, structuralist Marxism, in which agency 'barely figured'.
- Politically committed vs detached scholarship (see Historiographical approaches). Acknowledges that activists sometimes tried to dictate research priorities for 'the struggle', but judges that the benefits far outweighed the losses.
Findings¶
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The Workshop was founded in 1977 by an interdisciplinary group of Wits academics, in the context of the Soweto upheaval. (p. 2)
The History Workshop was founded in 1977 by a group of academics drawn from a number of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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The 1973 Durban strikes prompted radical academics to help create labour education for the new union movement, which fed early labour-history research. (p. 3)
Following the 1973 strikes of black workers in Durban, a group of white radical academics and students and black political and worker leaders had formed the Institute for Industrial Education
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Early labour-history work was thin, mechanical and institutionally focused, and Soweto widened the focus to the whole life of the oppressed. (p. 3)
The dearth of written resources on African labour history led some to pursue research in this field, mostly of a rather mechanical reductionist sort and generally with an institutional trade union bias
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Before 1976 the dominant radical history was structuralist Marxism, which left out agency; the Workshop turned toward social history. (p. 4)
the dominant intellectual current in radical South African history was an instrumentalist, structuralist Marxism, in which human activity and agency barely figured at all.
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The 1980s saw a major expansion of oral history and of studies of culture, gender and ethnicity, with race largely absent. (p. 5)
Oral testimonies were collected on an unprecedented scale, and issues of culture, gender and ethnicity began to figure prominently in the studies that emerged
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Political commitment brought costs as well as benefits to scholarship. (p. 6)
politically motivated practitioners sometimes attempted to determine research priorities in the short-term interest of 'the struggle' or to dictate politically acceptable lines.
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The New Nation article series reached a large, mainly African readership. (p. 7)
The circulation of the New Nation at the time that these articles appeared was 80 000, while its estimated readership was five times that figure
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The Open Days/Festivals of Popular Culture drew growing crowds, including trade unionists and township students. (p. 8)
attendances swelled from 1000 in 1981 to 3000 in 1987 and 4000 plus in 1990
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Critics say the Workshop produced too little synthesis, so its work is used mainly in advanced teaching. (p. 9)
insufficient synthetic work has been undertaken by the History Workshop, so that the History Workshop's publications figure mostly in the final year undergraduate and post-graduate teaching.
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Its impact was limited at conservative historically black universities. (p. 9)
history departments have been under the sway of more conservative African academics who have been impervious to social history
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triennial Report of the History Workshop, 1 October 1984 - 31 July 1987 | company records or reports | 1984-1987 | Cited for the cooperation with the American Social History Project in the mid to late 1980s. |
| New Nation newspaper circulation and readership estimates (via Bozzoli, 'Intellectuals, Audiences' and Apartheid's Genesis pp ix-x) | newspapers periodicals | late 1980s | Supplies the circulation (80,000) and estimated readership figures used to gauge the reach of the New Nation history series. |
| Letters page of the New Nation and print-run sales of New Nation, New History | newspapers periodicals | late 1980s | Anecdotal evidence of the popularity of the history series. |
| Open Days/Festivals of Popular Culture attendance figures | union or movement records | 1981-1990 | Attendance numbers used to show the growing popular reach of the Workshop's festivals. |
| University of the Western Cape 'Write Your Own History' project enrolment data (via Callinicos and Witz in Radical History Review 46-7) | secondary literature compilation | 1980s | Shows use of Workshop materials in undergraduate teaching (1200 students in one year). |
| Informal canvassing of fellow historians and social scientists, plus personal communications | interviews oral history | c. 1993-1994 | Source of the criticisms of the Workshop's output and of the claim that its publications are used in first-year teaching. |
| Published reviews of the History Workshop (Freund, Worger, Saunders, South African Historical Journal 24, 1991) | newspapers periodicals | 1991 | Used as the basis for criticisms of the Workshop's academic output. |
| Author's personal observations | author survey or fieldwork | 1976-1977 | Supports the account of the alienation of African students from school history after 1976. |
| Counts of History Workshop-associated contributors to Marks and Rathbone (1982) and Marks and Trapido (1987) | secondary literature compilation | 1982-1987 | Quantifies the interaction between Workshop and UK-based scholars. |
Inference¶
Quantification: Illustrative figures.
Narrative institutional appraisal combining the author's participant knowledge, a few reported audience and attendance figures, secondary reviews and informal canvassing of colleagues; there is no systematic measurement of impact.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| A revolution in South African history writing occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, but the Workshop's separate role cannot be isolated from other influences. (p. 2) | Author's judgement and secondary literature; no source data. | Asserted |
| The Workshop was formed in response to the 1976 Soweto uprising and drew on British revisionist and Oxford History Workshop traditions. (p. 3) | Author's personal observation and secondary historiographical articles. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| The Triennial Conferences grew in scale and scope, with contributions rising from 30-40 to around 100. (p. 4) | Conference volumes and the author's counts of contributions. | Partial data |
| The New Nation history series was well received by a mainly African readership. (p. 7) | Circulation and estimated readership figures, letters to the editor and sold-out print runs. | Partial data |
| Workshop popular histories are widely used in undergraduate teaching at UWC and UNISA, including by large numbers of coloured and African students. (p. 7) | Reports by Callinicos and Witz, and the author's own knowledge; no enrolment or sales data are provided. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Open Days/Festivals became the principal popular cultural events of the 1980s, attracting thousands. (p. 9) | Attendance figures from the Workshop's own records. | Partial data |
| The Workshop has had minimal impact on historically black and Afrikaans universities and has few African postgraduates. (p. 9) | Informal canvassing of colleagues, published reviews and the author's judgement. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
The author's caveats¶
The author concedes that there is almost no data or appropriate measures for assessing the Workshop's impact on popular understandings of history, and that the impact of its publications is difficult to gauge. He also says the response to the television series is not yet known.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument lacks systematic measures of impact, such as sales and print-run figures, library holdings, syllabus and curriculum analyses, citation counts, or reader and audience surveys. Publisher records, university enrolment data and course outlines, and the Workshop's own archive could test the claims; these probably existed then and survive now. A systematic bibliometric or citation analysis of South African history output would also test the claim that the Workshop shaped the profession.
Replicability: Data poorly documented.