Through a telling of my trajectories as a social historian interested in the histories of whites under apartheid, I assert the value of distance from authorizing effects of major intellectual and historiographic currents and history from the provinces. I draw on theory, methodological, and critical traditions not often employed by South Africanists, Black critical perspectives on racist society, German Alltagsgeschichte, and the historical trend within subaltern studies. This allows notions of ‘the ordinary’ in white society, questioning complicity and addressing these through various methodological and evidentiary entry points. Such historiography can disturb or energize histories of race, specifically whites, helping us to rethink the values, possibilities, and limitations of social history within the broader discipline. While the history of the provinces can be nimble and innovative, it can also become parochial and complacent. To prevent the latter, ‘the provinces’ can neither be a refuge for disengagement nor an excuse for isolation. Rather, they should be seen as a place from which one ventures regularly back to ideally multiple centres, a kind of provincial cosmopolitanism.