Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians
Angus Hawkins’s Modernity and the Victorians diagnoses a disorder in the scholarship on Victorian Britain, and proposes an interpretative remedy. It explores how twentieth-century social scientists invented a condition labelled ‘modernity’; examines how this scheme came to infect the study of Victor...
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| Format: | Book section |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2022
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| _version_ | 1826313669397446656 |
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| author | Middleton, A |
| author2 | Hawkins, A |
| author_facet | Hawkins, A Middleton, A |
| author_sort | Middleton, A |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Angus Hawkins’s Modernity and the Victorians diagnoses a disorder in the scholarship on Victorian Britain, and proposes an interpretative remedy. It explores how twentieth-century social scientists invented a condition labelled ‘modernity’; examines how this scheme came to infect the study of Victorian political and social history; and discusses its influence within successive rounds of historiographical debate about the nature of the period. The book insists that the ‘modernization theory’ beloved of twentieth-century sociologists cannot be made to fit the facts of nineteenth-century British history, and that a satisfactory grasp of the dynamics of the period must rely on alternative conceptual frameworks.1 Angus intended the volume to be bracing, realised his approach was partial, anticipated that it might attract criticism, and hoped that it would motivate debate.
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In producing this short study, Angus was targeting an audience beyond the modern British historians towards whom his previous scholarship had mainly been addressed. He aspired to reach students of historiography, historically minded social scientists, and perhaps even a wider popular constituency interested in how present preoccupations can distort readings of the past. All these groups will have their own responses to the arguments presented in the book, and it is easy to imagine them disagreeing about it. But making sense of the text requires us to set it in context with Angus’s wider agenda as an interpreter of Victorian political and intellectual life, and with his broader contributions to the history of modern Britain over a long career. Modernity and the Victorians is in some ways a departure from his earlier work, not least in adopting the extended essay form, and it certainly reveals new dimensions to his historical interests and thinking. But it also engages with, and expands on, many of the same fundamental questions with which he had been concerned for decades. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:51:39Z |
| format | Book section |
| id | oxford-uuid:4724d93c-6c97-42be-89e9-10c3ae6f7d8b |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:18:39Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:4724d93c-6c97-42be-89e9-10c3ae6f7d8b2024-08-01T10:12:36ZPreface: Angus Hawkins and the VictoriansBook sectionhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_1843uuid:4724d93c-6c97-42be-89e9-10c3ae6f7d8bEnglishSymplectic ElementsOxford University Press2022Middleton, AHawkins, AAngus Hawkins’s Modernity and the Victorians diagnoses a disorder in the scholarship on Victorian Britain, and proposes an interpretative remedy. It explores how twentieth-century social scientists invented a condition labelled ‘modernity’; examines how this scheme came to infect the study of Victorian political and social history; and discusses its influence within successive rounds of historiographical debate about the nature of the period. The book insists that the ‘modernization theory’ beloved of twentieth-century sociologists cannot be made to fit the facts of nineteenth-century British history, and that a satisfactory grasp of the dynamics of the period must rely on alternative conceptual frameworks.1 Angus intended the volume to be bracing, realised his approach was partial, anticipated that it might attract criticism, and hoped that it would motivate debate. <br> In producing this short study, Angus was targeting an audience beyond the modern British historians towards whom his previous scholarship had mainly been addressed. He aspired to reach students of historiography, historically minded social scientists, and perhaps even a wider popular constituency interested in how present preoccupations can distort readings of the past. All these groups will have their own responses to the arguments presented in the book, and it is easy to imagine them disagreeing about it. But making sense of the text requires us to set it in context with Angus’s wider agenda as an interpreter of Victorian political and intellectual life, and with his broader contributions to the history of modern Britain over a long career. Modernity and the Victorians is in some ways a departure from his earlier work, not least in adopting the extended essay form, and it certainly reveals new dimensions to his historical interests and thinking. But it also engages with, and expands on, many of the same fundamental questions with which he had been concerned for decades. |
| spellingShingle | Middleton, A Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title | Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title_full | Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title_fullStr | Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title_full_unstemmed | Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title_short | Preface: Angus Hawkins and the Victorians |
| title_sort | preface angus hawkins and the victorians |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT middletona prefaceangushawkinsandthevictorians |