Abstract
The problem of establishing important causes could also be called the problem of establishing major or significant causes. It commonly occurs when we are trying to explain such problems as why a collectivity or category changed or how it came to acquire a certain attribute and our research of the documents suggests the phenomenon was driven not just by a few but umpteen different causes. How do we establish which of all these causes were the major or important ones? We cannot assume they are equally important; therefore how do we find out which were the major ones and which were the minor? Are there any reliable and defensible criteria we can use in arriving at a decision or can the issue only be decided on a purely subjective basis?
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Notes, References and Further Reading
E.H. Carr, What is History?, Harmondsworth, 1964, pp. 104–5.
For excellent summaries and discussions of the major comparative studies by these figures see Skocpol, ed., Vision and Method in Historical Sociology.
T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge, 1979.
See her Introduction and concluding chapter, ‘Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology’, in Skocpol, ed., Vision and Method; and Skocpol and Somers, ‘Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Enquiry’, pp. 174–97.
States and Social Revolutions, pp. 37, 18. In her article, ‘Emerging Agendas’, she also implies the book was dealing with causal regularities by citing it as an example in a section headed, ‘Analyzing causal regularities in history’, pp. 374ff.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 173.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 40.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 37.
She is less clear about what the decisive external crisis was for China, but in States and Social Revolutions, p. 77, she strongly implies it was the war of 1895–6.
States and Social Revolutions, pp. 149–50.
On Paris see e.g. G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, Oxford, 1959.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 113.
States and Social Revolutions, pp. 149, also p. 154.
States and Social Revolutions, pp. 151, 153.
States and Social Revolutions, pp. 153, 154.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 290, my emphasis.
States and Social Revolutions, p. 288.
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© 1999 Miles Fairburn
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Fairburn, M. (1999). The Problem of Establishing Important Causes. In: Social History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27517-5_5
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