Africana Library

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Author: search.filters.author.Dagut, SimonHas files: Yes

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    We can run, but we can't hide: The need for psychological explanation in social history
    (2000-04-17) Dagut, Simon
    There have been many occasions in my experience when the explanatory techniques normally used by social historians have seemed inadequate to deal with some particular process or event. No doubt this happens to every historian, but I sometimes suspect that the social world of British colonialism in nineteenth century South Africa - my particular interest - provides these moments more often than some other areas. This feeling is, no doubt, largely the result of not knowing as much about the peculiarities of other places and times, but I do think it is at least arguable that colonial encounters created more extraordinarily odd situations than many other social environments. In past work, have taken two approaches to these kinds of explanatory challenges. In the case of really bizarre material, I have simply avoided discussing it in writing and have rationalised my omissions on the grounds that this sort of thing is too atypical to be helpful in building up a broad general picture of British settlers' attitudes and experiences. In the case of more frequently occurring oddities, I have attempted to argue that they were the result of the construction of settlers' attitudes by the prevalent discourses concerning class identity and colonialism, which combined to create so great a social distance between settlers and African people that what would otherwise have seemed socially impossible became everyday and natural. Although I do, in general, stand by this analysis, I have increasingly come to feel that it needs to be supplemented. Firstly, really peculiar circumstances deserve some time in the historical spotlight by way of an adjunct to those which an historian has decided were 'normal'. Extreme cases can be very useful in revealing the limits of the normal. Secondly, explaining even the 'normal' seems to me to require the use of psychological terms and techniques, however much historians may wish that this weren't the case.
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    Domestic racial interaction in later nineteenth century
    (1996-02-26) Dagut, Simon
    This paper is primarily concerned with the ways in which white men and women - mainly the latter - interacted with their African, coloured and Indian domestic servants in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its second concern is to argue that the study of this (and related) topics is of considerable, importance in the causation of the oppressive forms which South African states and social orders have taken. The topic of this paper is situated at the intersection of two areas which have been largely neglected in South African historiography. While the attitudes and experiences of "ordinary" African people in nineteenth and twentieth century South Africa have received considerable (and distinguished) attention in the last twenty years, comparatively little "history from below" has been written about whites, whether "Boer" or "Briton." Equally, while nineteenth century European, American and British empire domestic service has been fairly extensively examined, this is a relatively neglected area of South African historiography.