Small Is Beautiful

In scholarship on the Middle East, as on other regions of the world, the sort of social history that climaxed from the 1960s through the 1980s, and in Middle East history through the 1990s-that is, studies of categories such as "class" or "peasant"-has been declining for some time. The cultural history that replaced social history has peaked, too. In the 21st century, the trend, set by non-Middle East historians, has been to combine an updated social-historical focus on structure and groups with a cultural-historical focus on meaning making. Defining society against culture and policing their boundaries is out. In is picking a theme-consumption or travel, say-then studying it from distinct yet linked social and cultural or political/economic angles. This trend has spawned new journals like Cultural and Social History, established in 2004, and has been debated in established journals and memoirs by leading historians of the United States and Europe.