Is History a Process? Nonlinearity, Revitalization Theory, and the Central Metaphor of Social Science History

Abstract

Process is a ubiquitous word in social science history. It appears dozens of times in such fundamental texts as Wallace 1969, Hershberg 1969, and Wolf 1982. Social science historians generally use it, as Berkhofer (1969: 169-87, 243-44) observes, to characterize the causes of change and persistence in human communities as organic or mechanical phenomena that are intelligible, general, systematic, repetitive, orderly, and similar in sequence. The concept of process is pivotal to our understanding of the daily flux of human interaction, the workings of institutions, the character of collective action, and the course of social evolution (Turner 1977; Wallace 1970: 165-206).