Hello everyone,
I am working on research in preparation for my dissertation and I'm putting this question out to everyone to get some feedback, critique, or advice about the value and potential problems of drawing parallels between contemporary and historic events.
My project focuses on a current epidemiological study. I'm looking at how its framework is being applied across disciplines in research, how it is proliferating through policy, lobbying and legislation, and how it is translating into institutional practice in social & health services, and education. I have read a substantial body of literature across several discourses, and I am seeing that many of the same logics, rationales, justifications, and outcomes that are driving this movement parallel those of the early American eugenics movement from approximately 1910-1920-ish. There are of course a number of major differences--the most significant being that while the eugenics movement emphasized heredity alone as being the cause of feeblemindedness, the study I am examining places the cause on factors that are both environmental and genetic.
My question probably doesn't require going into a great deal of depth about my research. I'm asking more generally what are common critiques about drawing parallels between contemporary and historic events? Of course there is frequently the problem of oversimplification, different social complexities, motivations, knowledge-power structures...but what else might I consider as I prepare to share my work and put it up for critique.
Any thoughts on people's misapplications of historical events in contemporary work would be much appreciated.
My opinion here, so others are absolutely free to voice their own:
Parallels, as a kind of limited comparative, should be avoided except in cases of strengthening AND clarifying. Unfortunately, they are most often used when an author finds their position or interpretation enhanced by the use of positive comparison (one of similarity). However, the often unconsidered factor is that this opens their argument to all those that can be made against the interpretation of the compared event, figure, or account. Further, ALL of the discursive meaning of the compared history is transposed, whether appropriate or not, onto your account unless. Even the notation of exceptions cannot cover every problem here.
What does this leave us with? Negative comparisons (one of dissimilarity). In this use, a comparison clarifies the argument by giving it an understanding (usually a standard or accepted position for that event) which it is then cast against. This most often occurs when two figures, accounts, or events seem similar or have become linked in historical memory. One is clarified by casting its features as other.
The difficulty here, then, is in using it to strengthen the argument. This occurs naturally because by breaking with "standard" or "easy" interpretations, you are able to demonstrate how your research is important and innovative.
The example I generally give is "Working toward the Fuhrer," by Ian Kershaw. He discusses both the idea of comparatives and then does a brief one of Hitler and Stalin to emphasize his point that Hitler's dictatorship varied widely from the general understanding of how a totalitarian dictatorships functioned.