The Commonality of Fragmentation within Social Sciences

Townsend provides a thorough examination of history as a discipline that can only be appreciated by those that read this book. I honestly had no idea what to expect when I began to read this book, but what I found was a common thread that I feel runs through the history of most social science disciplines in that there are many competing spheres of professional identity and practice. So many lines have been redrawn and redefined in these fields since the late 19^th century. Townsend speaks of the fragmentation of the historical enterprise as something that has become too divided by documenting and illustrating the professional shift into separate professions: academic research, teaching, and public history. This is something that has also been seen in the anthropological and folkloric disciplines as well with some drawing similar conclusions that Townsend has himself. For example, Eric Wolf, an anthropologist, in his article “They Divide and Subdivide and Call it Anthropology” concluded that anthropology and its fragmentation into various sub-fields was causing it to fall apart as a discipline because anthropologists were increasingly pursuing their own specialized interests and as a result were losing contact with one another and the whole.

Echoing what Tony discussed in his post, I share similar feelings in that this fragmentation within a discipline that Townsend illustrates in History’s Babel is not necessarily a negative thing. I think of it more as a natural result of time in that history, anthropology, and folklore are dynamic fields that revolve around some constant that acts as something to build off of despite how lines within a field may be redefined. Overall though, I really enjoyed reading this book because of how clearly Townsend illustrates how history as a discipline has adapted and changed over time.