I would like to examine two aspects of German scholarly emigration to the Western democracies, especially the United States and Great Britain. I do not necessarily seek to offer a full explanation of this complex historical and ideological issue, but rather an analysis that attempts to avoid the maze of sociological generalizing that has grown up around the politically inspired migration of scholars.

Let me state quite frankly that I am neither a devotee of the history of ideas approach nor an apologist for any particular group of exiles or their ideology. Rather, I seek to understand the common denominators, or better, the root elements that recently led René König (1984) to locate the source of the German sociological exodus in the virulent nationalism of the 1920s, and to argue that the fusion of conservative and radical elements in post-1933 rational socialism was a culmination rather than a cause of social scientific breakdown. As Otto Neurath put this plight: “We are like sailors who must rebuild their ships on the open sea without benefit of a dock, or an opportunity to select the best replacement parts” (Blum, 1985).

As Dykstra and Silag (1985) have noted, the analysis of American frontier towns continues to yield a plethora of local histories that might provide an empirical basis for generalization, if a theoretical basis for comparative analysis might be offered. The development of a rigorous methodology for historiographie and statistical analysis has facilitated the accumulation of empirical evidence, but the analysis of local history has not advanced far beyond the initial debate regarding the basis for democratic governance (Taylor, 1956). Instead, two research traditions have developed—one seeking to identify the socio-cultural basis for community solidarity, the other focusing on the partisan struggles that shape democratic governance.

Economic Historians in the United States have begun to take up the study of tenant agriculture in that country from the perspective first of describing the characteristics of tenant farmers and their contracts, and second, of explaining the changes in tenancy over time and the spatial distribution of tenant farms at one specific point in time (e.g., Reid, 1973, 1976, 1979; Alston, 1981; Alston & Higgs, 1982; and Higgs, 1973).

This effort continues the work of earlier generations of historians and agricultural economists. In contrast, almost nothing has been done on tenant farming in Canada even though in Ontario in 1871 about 16% of all farms were tenant occupied with some census districts such as York having approximately 30% of their farms in the control of tenants (Canada, 1870-1871). For example R. L. Jones’s book (1946), which represents the most thorough study of Ontario’s agriculture before the 1880s, contains almost no reference to tenant agriculture.

Canadian Political Analysts generally agree that nonvoters have played a decisive role in determining the outcome of elections in the twentieth century. Political scientists have identified categories of nonvoters with some degree of precision. They tell us that in twentieth-century Canada nonvoting is often related to such socioeconomic factors as education, occupation, and income. These ‘class’ indicators are, in turn, often associated with a low level of political information and a low sense of political efficacy. Age and sex have also been associated with nonvoting in the twentieth century. The very young and the very old are less likely to vote. And women are slightly less likely to vote than men. Some Canadian analysts have argued that Catholics, and, more specifically, French Canadian Catholics, vote less often than Protestants, and that farmers vote more consistently than do urban dwellers.

SSHA was formed in the hope that if enough historians and social scientists could be brought together, they might fall in love and in due course produce offspring having the best features of both parents. Whether the issues that have come forth exemplify the best or the worst features of the parents is a matter of some disagreement into which I will not enter. It may be granted that a great deal of quantitative work has been done, most of which is uninspired, but inspiration is a rare thing, and at this stage perhaps it is enough of an achievement that quantitative work is being done at all. It seems to me, however, that we ought to be exploring other approaches in addition to the quantitative ones, and in particular that interesting work has been done in symbolic analysis. It is with the faint hope of clarifying some of the notions in this domain and of suggesting some topics for exploration that the following contribution is offered.

The Committee on Historical Studies was established in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1984. The Graduate Faculty has long emphasized the contribution of history to the social sciences. Committee on Historical Studies (CHS) courses offer students the opportunity to utilize social scientific concepts and theories in the study of the past. The program is based on the conviction that the world changes constantly but changes systematically, with each historical moment setting the opportunities and limiting the potentialities of the next. Systematic historical analysis, however, is not merely a diverting luxury. Nor is it simply a means of assembling cases for present-oriented models of human behavior. It is a prerequisite to any sound understanding of processes of change and of structures large or small.