Postmodern Theory of History: a Critique
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A Historiography of Musical Historicism: the Case Of
A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MUSICAL HISTORICISM: THE CASE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of Texas State University-San Marcos in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of MUSIC by Shao Ying Ho, B.M. San Marcos, Texas May 2013 A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MUSICAL HISTORICISM: THE CASE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS Committee Members Approved: _____________________________ Kevin E. Mooney, Chair _____________________________ Nico Schüler _____________________________ John C. Schmidt Approved: ___________________________ J. Michael Willoughby Dean of the Graduate College COPYRIGHT by Shao Ying Ho 2013 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work, I, Shao Ying Ho, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first and foremost gratitude is to Dr. Kevin Mooney, my committee chair and advisor. His invaluable guidance, stimulating comments, constructive criticism, and even the occasional chats, have played a huge part in the construction of this thesis. His selfless dedication, patience, and erudite knowledge continue to inspire and motivate me. I am immensely thankful to him for what I have become in these two years, both intellectually and as an individual. I am also very grateful to my committee members, Dr. -
Disraeli and the Early Victorian ‘History Wars’ – Daniel Laurie-Fletcher
Disraeli and the Early Victorian ‘History Wars’ – Daniel Laurie-Fletcher FJHP Volume 25 (2008 ) Disraeli and the Early Victorian ‘History Wars’ Daniel Laurie-Fletcher Flinders University The American historian, Gertrude Himmelfarb, once put the question: ‘Who now reads Macaulay?’ Her own reply to the rhetorical question was: Who, that is, except those who have a professional interest in him–and professional in a special sense: not historians who might be expected to take pride in one of their most illustrious ancestors, but only those who happen to be writing treatises about him. In fact, most professional historians have long since given up reading Macaulay, as they have given up writing the kind of history he wrote and thinking about it as he did. i The kind of history and thinking Himmelfarb was referring to is the ‘Whig interpretation of history’ which is one based on a grand narrative that demonstrated a path of inevitable political and economic progress, a view made famous by the Whig politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). ii In his History of England: From the Accession of James II (1848-1860), Macaulay maintained that the development of political institutions of the nation had brought increased liberties accompanied by the growth of economic prosperity. Macaulay’s study was begun when the educated classes of early Victorian Britain held a widespread fear of a French-style revolution during a time of extensive social, economic and political change. Many, in order to cope with such changes, looked to British history to yield role models as well as cautionary tales of what to avoid in creating a better society. -
Postmodernist Theory and Practice of History Also Found Its Way to High Schools and Universities in the Design of the History Curriculum
Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi (14) 2007 / 2 : 176-188 Postmodernist Approach to the Discipline of History Kaya Yılmaz∗ Abstract: The postmodernist approach to history is one of the least known modes of historical writing among historians and history educators. Aiming to enhance his- torians’ and history educators’ understanding of the postmodern challenge to the discipline of history, this article first presents an overview of the basic features of history and its historical trajectory as a discipline. It then explains postmodernist historiography’s conceptual underpinnings, methods, principal concepts, and ideologi- cal positions. It also maps out the key debates, criticisms, and arguments that histo- rians of different historical orientations engaged in. Key Words: Historiography, Philosophy of History, History Education, Postmodernism. 1. Introduction Historians and history educators need to know the nature of history to effectively plan, implement and assess historical research. The importance of an adequate un- derstanding of the nature of a given discipline in the teaching and learning process has been recognized in science education. A sophisticated understanding of the na- ture of science is deemed to be a major goal in science education and a central com- ponent of scientific literacy. Science education organizations and science educators stress the role that a nuanced understanding of the nature of science plays in foster- ing higher levels of scientific literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1993; Bell, Lederman, and Abd-El-Khalick, 2000; National Re- search Council (NRC), 1996). The same emphasis on the importance of the nature of subject matter has not been realized in history education yet. -
Theory and Method in Historical Sociology Soc 6401H
THEORY AND METHOD IN HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY SOC 6401H Instructor: Joseph M. Bryant Time: Thursdays, 4-6, Room 240 Email: [email protected] Office: Department of Sociology, 725 Spadina, Rm. 346 Phone: 946-5901 We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. Marx & Engels (1845) Every social science—or better, every well-considered social study—requires an historical scope of conception and a full use of historical materials. C. Wright Mills (1959) SYNOPSIS: Can the major constraining dichotomies and polarities that have skewed the history of the social sciences over the past two centuries—voluntarism/determinism, agency/structure, nominalism/realism, micro/macro, objectivism/subjectivism, nomothetic/idiographic, maximizing rationality/cultural specificity—be resolved and transcended through use of a contextual-sequential logic of explanation, as offered in Historical Sociology? In an effort to answer that question, we will examine the central ontological and epistemological issues and controversies raised by recent efforts to develop a fully historical social science, a fully sociological historiography. We will open with a review of the celebrated Methodenstreite that shaped the formation of the social science disciplines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—disputes that turned heavily on disagreements regarding the proper relationship between historical inquiry and sociological theorizing. The program of positivism—to model social science after the nomological natural sciences—gained institutional ascendancy, and history was driven to an “external” and largely “auxiliary” status within disciplines such as sociology and economics. -
Freshest Advices on What to Do with the Historical Method in Philosophy When Using It to Study a Little Bit of Philosophy That Has Been Lost to History
1 Freshest Advices on What To Do With the Historical Method in Philosophy When Using It to Study a Little Bit of Philosophy That Has Been Lost to History Bennett Gilbert Portland Oregon December the 10th, 2011. www.porlockspensum.com The historical method in philosophy is the study of the history of philosophy as a means of thinking about philosophical issues for the sake of the practice of original philosophical work. Formerly it was widely thought that the historical method was indispensable to the practice of philosophy. Those opposed to this view, whom I’ll call “presentists”1 in this paper, hold that, whatever notions the historical method and original philosophical work might have in common as rational rigorous and honest inquiries, the subject matter of the two studies is at heart different, on various accounts, and therefore that the history of philosophy is of little benefit, if not positively harmful, to the 1This use of the word “presentist” is to be rigidly distinguished from “presentism” as a position in the metaphysics of time. 2 practice of philosophical inquiry. Those whom I’ll here call the “traditionalist” view the historical method as indispensable, claiming that philosophical practice that does not include the history of philosophy and its problems misses some things (variously described by various writers) that are of the essence in philosophy. I shall not here directly evaluate these claims as to the critique one makes of the other. My attitude is irenic. I see only harm in arguing that any method is essential to the practice of philosophy in any sense such that work done without it is to be disparaged or dismissed on this sole ground or by any clever reasoning from this ground directly for the exclusion of work made by other methods of philosophical inquiry. -
Introduction 1
HIS ¤HINKING ABOUT TO|y SA|aH MAZA The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London CONTENTS Introduction 1 1 the history of whom? 10 History from Above: “Great Men” and a Few Women 10 Social History and Quantification 14 E. P. Thompson’s Historical Revolution 23 Resistance and Agency 28 Power and the Private Sphere 34 2 the history of where? 45 How National History Became Unnatural 45 Oceans, Middle Grounds, Borderlands 57 The Rise of Global History 71 Displacing Euro- America 77 3 the history of what? 83 From Ideas to Things 83 The Changing History of Ideas 86 Thomas Kuhn’s Scientific Revolution 91 Science in Historical Context 96 The New History of Things 101 Nature and Other Nonhuman Actors 108 4 how is history produced? 118 From Chroniclers to Academics 118 Popular and Public History 124 Orthodoxy and Revisionism: How Debate Shapes History 137 Do Sources and Archives Make History? 146 5 causes or meanings? 157 Causality and History 157 In Search of Laws and Patterns: Social Science History and Comparison 161 Marxism and the Annales School 166 Multicausal History and the Return of the Event 171 In Search of Meaning: Microhistory 178 Clifford Geertz, Michel Foucault, and the “New Cultural History” 185 6 facts or fictions? 199 The Rise and Fall of Objectivity 199 Postmodernism and History: Radical Skepticism and New Methods 209 Everything Is Constructed 216 Barbarians at the Gate 220 Distortion or Imagination: Where Do We Draw the Line? 225 Conclusion 235 Acknowledgments 239 Index 241 INT|oDUCTION What historians do, while it may seem obvious, proves surprisingly hard to define once you start thinking about it. -
The Rise of Fast Historiography in Latin and Vernacular (12Th-13Th Cent.)
Comparing and Connecting: The Rise of Fast Historiography in Latin and Vernacular (12th-13th cent.) Lars Boje Mortensen* This contribution proposes to compare, but also to connect, the rise of a new type of un- learned historical report, ›fast historiography‹, in Latin and vernacular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Connections are suggested by combining the characteristics of such writing with book and library history as well with social history. New roles of book writing coincided with a larger social spread among authors as well as with a new library horizon – books now began to circulate at higher speed, in greater numbers and in less solemn circum- stances. These possibilities were exploited and pushed forward both in Latin and vernacular historiography. This connection has been overlooked for several reasons, primarily because Latin and vernacular literatures are often considered each on their own terms, compartmen- talized into two ›traditions‹ in which Latin seems to bear an automatic tag as learned and ecclesiastical. But this is not the case with Gesta Francorum, Galbert of Bruges, Raol (on the conquest of Lisbon), Caffaro, Henry of Livonia etc. – they all resemble the simple account in French of Robert de Clari and others. Related to this argument, the article opens with reflections on canons and paradigms of European medieval historiography (in papal Europe) and suggests that comparisons and connections always spring from certain strong national canons and that the questions they are devised to answer are to a large degree determined by such canonical series. Indirectly the article is therefore also an experiment with comparisons outside the dominant national canons and between non-canonical pieces. -
Studies on Collingwood, History and Civilization
Studies on Collingwood, History and Civilization Jan van der Dussen Studies on Collingwood, History and Civilization Jan van der Dussen Heerlen , The Netherlands ISBN 978-3-319-20671-4 ISBN 978-3-319-20672-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20672-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951386 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www. springer.com) Acknowledgements The following four essays are reproduced from their original publication. -
Big Data in Computational Social Science and Humanities Computational Social Sciences
Computational Social Sciences Shu-Heng Chen Editor Big Data in Computational Social Science and Humanities Computational Social Sciences [email protected] Computational Social Sciences A series of authored and edited monographs that utilize quantitative and computational methods to model, analyze and interpret large-scale social phenomena. Titles within the series contain methods and practices that test and develop theories of complex social processes through bottom-up modeling of social interactions. Of particular interest is the study of the co-evolution of modern communication technology and social behavior and norms, in connection with emerging issues such as trust, risk, security and privacy in novel socio-technical environments. Computational Social Sciences is explicitly transdisciplinary: quantitative methods from fields such as dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, network theory, agentbased modeling, and statistical mechanics are invoked and combined with state-of-theart mining and analysis of large data sets to help us understand social agents, their interactions on and offline, and the effect of these interactions at the macro level. Topics include, but are not limited to social networks and media, dynamics of opinions, cultures and conflicts, socio-technical co-evolution and social psychology. Computational Social Sciences will also publish monographs and selected edited contributions from specialized conferences and workshops specifically aimed at communicating new findings to a large transdisciplinary audience. A fundamental goal of the series is to provide a single forum within which commonalities and differences in the workings of this field may be discerned, hence leading to deeper insight and understanding. Series Editors Elisa Bertino Larry S. Liebovitch Purdue University, West Lafayette, Queens College, City University of IN, USA New York, Flushing, NY, USA Claudio Cioffi-Revilla Sorin A. -
History in Twentieth-Century Ethiopia: the 'Great Tradition'
This is the accepted version of a forthcoming article that will be published by Cambridge University Press in The Journal of African History: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/all-issues Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24350/ History in twentieth-century Ethiopia: The ‘Great Tradition’ and the counter-histories of national failure SARA MARZAGORA, SOAS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ABSTRACT Drawing from both fictional and non-fictional sources, this article traces the way history was conceptualised in twentieth century Ethiopia by secular educated elites, charting out the changing power relations between Ethiopia‘s hegemonic historiographical paradigm, and the alternative historical visions that challenged this ‗Great Tradition‘ over the course of the century. While the Great Tradition extols Ethiopia‘s past and future glories, the counter-histories focused instead on the country‘s failure to develop and democratise. Against the interpretation that the counter-histories supplanted the Great Tradition in the late 1960s, the article examines them in terms of complementarity. The intellectual interventions of young student radicals in the late 1960s constitute a break, but not a drastic paradigm shift, from the past. The Great Tradition had already been put into question by older generations of intellectuals, even if they proved unable or unwilling to translate their disillusionment in political action. INTRODUCTION1 The interpretation of the Ethiopian past has been largely dominated, from the nineteenth century to the present, by a specific historiographical framework, variably called the ‗Great tradition‘, ‗Grand tradition‘, ‗Ethiopianist tradition‘, ‗Ethiopianist nationalism‘, ‗Church and State tradition‘, 1 There are no surnames in Ethiopian naming conventions and individuals are identified by their first name. -
The Problem of Moral Statements in Historical Writing
Montclair State University Montclair State University Digital Commons Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects 5-2012 The rP oblem of Moral Statements in Historical Writing Alexandra Katherine Perry Montclair State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd Part of the Education Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Perry, Alexandra Katherine, "The rP oblem of Moral Statements in Historical Writing" (2012). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 20. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/20 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Montclair State University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects by an authorized administrator of Montclair State University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PROBLEM OF MORAL STATEMENTS IN HISTORICAL WRITING A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Montclair State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education by ALEXANDRA KATHERINE PERRY Montclair State University Upper Montclair, NJ 2012 Dissertation Chair: Dr. Jaime Grinberg Copyright © 2012 by Alexandra Katherine Perry. All rights reserved. ABSTRACT THE PROBLEM OF MORAL STATEMENTS IN HISTORICAL WRITING by Alexandra Katherine Perry Bernard Williams (1985) begins his skeptical look at the history of ethical theory with a reminder of where it began, with Socrates’ question, "how should one live?" (pg. 1). This question is relevant to historians, who ask a similar question, “how did people live?” in their own work, To wonder “how one should live” or to make statements about the ways in which people have lived is to rely on the work of historians. -
The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009
PHILANTHROPY / EVENT TRANSCRIPT The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 By Irving Kristol Edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb February 2, 2011 Panel Discussion of The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 By Irving Kristol Edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb Wednesday, February 2, 2011 Table of Contents Ken Weinstein 1 Amy Kass 1 Charles Krauthammer 3 Irwin Stelzer 7 Leon Kass 11 William Kristol 15 Q&A 23 Gertrude Himmelfarb (“Bea Kristol”) 30 Speaker Biographies 31 © 2011 Hudson Institute Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization. Founded in 1961, Hudson is celebrating a half century of forging ideas that promote security, prosperity, and freedom. www.hudson.org Ken Weinstein Good afternoon. I’m Ken Weinstein, CEO of Hudson Institute. I’d like to welcome everyone to today’s Book Forum on the newly published The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays 1942- 2009, by Irving Kristol, which has been edited by the redoubtable Gertrude Himmelfarb. The book is available for sale in the back at the discounted price of $20, and I urge all of you to get one before you leave. This is a truly remarkable book, one that shows the breadth and the depth of Irving Kristol’s thought over some 67 years, which you’ll be hearing about shortly. My colleagues and I frankly feel privileged that Hudson Institute is the venue for today’s book forum, and I should thank the book’s editor, Gertrude Himmelfarb, for giving us this auspicious honor. (Applause.) We have a truly distinguished panel, who will offer their reflections shortly, but before we get underway I should note that this is Hudson Institute’s 50th anniversary year, and to mark this occasion, the Institute has begun a 50th anniversary seminar series, and today’s exceptional Book Forum is the second event in this series.