Social History and the Wits History Workshop

This article is a brief reflection on the History Workshop (HW)'s intellectual repertoire through the rubric of ‘social history’ – one that is widely associated with the Workshop's major innovations and accomplishments, even if it does not exhaustively capture its project and product over thirty years. Writing as an active member of the HW for thirteen years, the article is, in many ways, a tribute to the Workshop's intellectual vitality – which enriched my academic life. It is also a friendly challenge to the current HW to grapple more explicitly with the current character and place of social history in its oevre – an undertaking that would prompt a more theoretically reflexive turn than has been the Workshop's predilection for much of its past.