Die begrip "people's history" en die betekenis en toepassing daarvan in die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks

English: People's history as part of radical social history is part of a movement known as the "new history". The "new history" is a reaction against traditional historical writing that deals particularly with the political aspects of the past and the lives of so called important persons. In reaction to traditional historical writing, people's history deals with the subjective life experience of ordinary people in the past. Who and what the ordinary people are, depends on the country and context in which people's history is written, but includes groups like workers, women and blacks. Ordinary people are usually those who have either little power or no power and who are frequently being exploited or oppressed. People's history is a rather vague term, but this vagueness brings about freedom in the writing of history. Influences on the development of "people's history" include: the rise of the mass political movements especially sine the nineteenth century, radical-liberal and Fabian interest in the livelihood of ordinary people, and the French "Annales"-school's emphasis on total history. In spite of influences from many countries, people's history developed to its full potential in Britain, under the guidance of Marxist inspired historians. From 1966 with the establishment of the first History Workshop in Britain, people's history spread to countries like the USA, Germany, where "people's history" is called "Alltagsgeschicte", and to South Africa. In all of these countries people's history shows a distinctive character. A debate over the role of structuralism versus human agency divided Marxist historians in various countries into two groups. The structuralists were of the opinion that the real life experience of ordinary people in the past is of no importance to the study of history. People's history accuse structuralists of placing too much emphasis on abstract impersonal factors. Writers of people's history advocate an empirical method through which human agency will be acknowledged. In South Africa, people's history developed, in the late seventies, as on the one side a reaction against structuralist radical history and on the other side as a reaction against Liberal and Afrikanernationalist history writing. The revolutionary climate of the eighties helped to establish "people's history as a historiographical tradition in South Africa. People's history is of the opinion that historians are always influenced by their personal ideological beliefs and value systems and will therefore reflect wittingly or unwittingly on their work. The emancipation of ordinary people from exploitation and oppression is a political aim to which "people's history" would like to make a deliberate contribution. Presentism is often the result of people's history's involvement with contemporary political issues. Certain postmodernist tendencies like the rejection of the grand narratives and the modernization theory as well as the need to decentralise history, are all part of people's history. Particularly the rejection of the base-superstructure model, through the prominence given to n-on-class factors such as culture, ideology et cetera, is a rejection by people's history of rigid Marxism. Except for people's history's political motives within the broader society, it also aims at democratising the subject of History and its writing. The history workshops, attempts to decentralise knowledge of the past and the encouragement of different groups to write people's history, is an important contribution towards the democratisation of History. Creativity and imagination, for instance the use of oral history, is necessary for people's historians to discover sources on the past of ordinary people. People's history makes use of qualitative rather than quantitative sources and methods to show best what role the ordinary people played in the past. In essence people's history is a rejection of the idea of objectivity, and therefore rather advocates radical plurality in history as a starting point for a discourse on the complexity of the human past.