[This was a letter dated 18 April 1991 that I sent my dissertation advisor, Darrett B. Rutman, over the issues raised in the Harris paper. Darrett told me later that he was as often frustrated with me as I was with him and thought about telling me to find another advisor. But his wife Anita would calm him down and convince him that I was worth all the headaches!]
April 18, 1991
Dear Darrett,
Attached is another unpublishable “note to myself” which I would like you to read. It’s a paper I did for Marvin Harris on the feasibility of doing a scientific history. I related strongly to his agenda for a “science of history” (what he calls anthropology in his Rise of Anthropological Theory and what you laughed at when I first repeated the phrase to you), although I think he does not necessarily practice what he preaches. He has too many intradisciplinary battles of his own to really champion a paradigmatic, historical, interdisciplinary approach to society and I feel that he, like you, believes his discipline can really do everything by itself.
Although I did the paper in the throes of “Harrisonian” purism, the deeper I pursue my own research and critique the present historiography, the more fervently I believe what I said. My “notes to myself” always seem to come around again. I think this is because I have a very strong intuitive sense of what I think even before I have well thought out the problem. Thinking the problem through brings me right back to those early incipient thoughts, whether it be central place or Von Thunen theory or peasant studies. I recently took a look at the first paper I did for Oliver-Smith on peasants and was shocked how many insights I developed that after dwelving deeper into the historiography and theory I have come to strongly believe. That paper is a seminal paper in my thought process but the only response I received from you last spring was “This confirms my opinion that anthropologists’ use of the peasant has nothing to offer history.” My response to this statement was shock and disbelief and I told you that simple dismissal would not do if you wanted to convince me and have some impact on the development of my own framework for doing history. But you have always begged out of that process, pointing to your published work as all that you have to say on whatever subject. Unfortunately, that’s not the way I learn. Thus, left to my own intuition and scanning through a diverse literature, my approach to doing history has steadily diverged from yours as well as the mainstream historical discipline.
For you the “word” comes first and foremost; for me it’s the “idea.” I know you would say an idea is no good unless you can communicate it. I would retort that there is far too many good words and too few good ideas. Unfortunately for me, the present university system rewards words not ideas. I have nothing to say unless I feel my lonely idea is worth saying. I can’t write a “potentially publishable” piece until I’m ready to tell the world something I consider important. For me, this means a thorough search of the literature to find out what people have said in the past. I can’t help it; I hate reinventing wheels. This is time consuming but not endlessly so. With diminishing returns, I eventually tire of searching and release my idea, often a very synthetic idea since I find in my searching that someone has almost always already said what I want to say. For you, reinventing wheels may not be a big problem, but to me it strongly inhibits a scientific history by discouraging the building process so central to scientific knowledge. History is quite happy to toss out historiography twenty years or older as irrelevant to the ephemeral political present but I am not. The same goes for the use of social science theory. If the process has to start somewhere, it will start with me.
I guess the agenda I set for myself will be a hard road to follow. I hope you can help me. I know that you share some of my criticisms of history but you also believe that history can be both art and science. I have come to the conclusion that that is not a good goal, although an exceptional person could I suppose alternate between these two radically different modes of thinking. My feeling is that someone has to do holistic scientific history the way I am describing. I realize this is very difficult within the present disciplinary structure of universities (which everybody accepts as a given). However, I feel there are tiny interdisciplinary niches where the type of work I am trying to do can thrive. This may not make me popular and famous as you might hope for the greater glory of you, the department,the university, as well as myself, but it will allow me to survive which is all that I really ask (reflecting the strong peasant instinct in me). Although I had hoped with time that I would be more willing to compromise on my work to do what was necessary to become successful, I find that is the one thing I can not compromise on, at least not to the degree that you might want. Grammar, structure, etc., all these things are highly correctable and I feel no problem and improving these and am enthusiastic to have your and Nie’s help in making me a better communicator. But on the substance of what I want to say I draw the line unless you are willing to work with me to further develop my own thoughts which are moving closer and closer each day to the point where I am ready to tell them to the world. (I am no ten‑year Ph.D. student!) The “population pressure” paper was definitely not another “note to myself”; it was my first highly ill-structured attempt to blurt out these ideas. I am certain the framework that you dismiss is there but I am not at all sure why you do not see it. You say I am already well beyond you on this score and maybe that is the part that frustrates you because you don’t know how to help me communicate what you don’t understand. Perhaps that means we should sit down and discuss these ideas on a more informal basis. That’s the way I work best. Let me teach you what I know so that you can teach me what you know. But if you do not want to try to understand me, then I don’t think you can help me. My intuitive sense is that you wish I would put all of this theoretical garbage behind me. You are the great empiricist and my work attacks empiricism as strongly as the competing theoretical approaches that you hope would be my main target. But you would never tell me to abandon theory just like you would never tell a student what to think, even though you make perfectly clear that any approach or thesis other than yours is open to severe criticism. I am not so easily swayed and am ready to fight to defend my intellectual turf.
All of this may frustrate the hell out of you and make you want to throw up your hands in defeat. I need to know where you stand to help me plan my future. Or perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill, that your frustration with me is truly only over the way I write rather than what I write. If so, I just don’t think we have a problem. All it takes is a willingness on your part to sit down with me to outline a structure followed my numerous editings. The MA thesis went through several rewrites under the editorship of Will Hausman and Lorena Walsh and I’m sure you and Nie would have made me rewrite it several more times. I don’t think I had structural problems with the MA thesis because the structure was not highly original; it was representative of the better “new economic history” studies framed by McCusker and Menard’s outline of the debate. Although I am continuing some of this approach into the dissertation, I am trying to move well beyond econometric history to a more holistic approach to scientific history for which I have no precedent. But again I think you could easily help me develop a suitable structure. I am including an outline of the structure of the dissertation as I see it at present.
I believe there is a niche for me somewhere but it might not be the niche you had in mind. I believe that we should use my dissertation as an experiment in how to do scientific history, as a model for both historians and social scientists. I know I have enthusiastic support from historically‑minded social scientists for this type of history, so the battle will be mostly with historians. Perhaps the dissertation will prove unpublishable, although I have read too many dry social science monographs to believe that anything is unpublishable if directed to the right market (perhaps the anthropoligical rather than historical market reversing Netting and Wallace). Maybe the dissertation will become an “underground classic” that will be picked up on by another generation of historians in the next wave of enthusiasm for a more scientific history. Since the price is mine to pay, let me pay it. I still feel I can do a dissertation in two parts with the second part directed to a more traditional historical audience ala A Place in Time. Or else I can simply do the scientific history for a dissertation and let me worry about writing a more popular book on my own. I really don’t feel that we need to compromise at the dissertation stage unless you feel that we simply could not convince a dissertation committee to accept such a monster. But I think you have to divorce yourself from the type of dissertation that you wanted to get from me. I think I know what that is (history as both art and science), but I don’t think I can or want to do that type of history at this stage. Let me do what I think I can do better than anybody that I know of: a synthetic interdisciplinary social science history.
Bruce