DOCSLIB.ORG

The Annales in Global Context

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Annales in Global Context SUGGESTIONS AND DEBATES Peter Burke THE ANNALES IN GLOBAL CONTEXT Fernand Braudel liked to say that historians ought to take a 'global' ap- proach to their work, in other words to see the historical problems on which they were working as part of a larger whole. "La globalite, ce n'est pas la prevention d'ecrire une histoire totale du monde [. .] C'est simplement le desir, quand on a aborde un probleme, d'en depasser systematiquement les limites."1 Braudel himself gave one of the most remarkable examples of this global approach by refusing to limit himself even to the Mediterranean and by placing the history of that sea between the Atlantic and the Sahara.2 Today, sixty years after the foundation of Annales, it is time to see the historical movement - if not "school" - centred on the journal as itself a part of history. In that case we might do well to follow Braudel's example and try to place this movement in a global context. In recent years, it has become customary - in some circles at least - to describe the Annales approach as "the new history".3 In this article I should like to ask the question 'How new is the new history?' and to try to define the contribution of the journal and the movement (which has lasted three generations now) by means of compari- son and contrast. The area chosen for comparison will be Europe and America. The first generation of Annales was marked by the desire for a broader and more interdisciplinary history, breaking the dominance of political history and allowing economic history, social history, and the history of mentalities a place in the sun. The second generation of Annales, that of Braudel, Labrousse, and their followers, was the generation in which French historians made their quantitative turn, towards the study of price and population trends over the long term (I'histoire sirielle), as well as to a serious, analytical history of social structures. The obvious place to begin this sketch is with the third generation of Annales, and to examine its practice over the last twenty or thirty years. 1 F. Braudel, "En guise de conclusion", Review, 1 (1978), p. 245. 2 F. Braudel, La Mediterranee (Paris, 1949). 3 J. Le Goff (ed.), La nouvelle histoire (Paris, 1978). International Review of Social History, XXXV (1990). pp. 421-432 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 02 Oct 2021 at 17:46:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000010063 422 PETER BURKE This practice has been summed up in the volumes cited in notes 3 and 4, with their references to "new objects" and "new methods".4 The French have indeed discovered new objects of historical attention. Thirty years ago, most of us did not imagine the possibility of a history of climate, of childhood, of madness, of death, of dreams, of gestures, or of memory. Today, however, most of these topics have become well-estab- lished objects of research.5 There have also been new approaches, notably the anthropological approach associated with Le Goff and Le Roy Ladurie. However, these topics and approaches are no monopoly of Annales. Not even in France. The "Sunday historian" Philippe Aries was only on the edge of the group.6 Michel Foucault was not part of the Annales circle; his historical inspiration came above all from the history of science, as prac- tised by his teacher Georges Canguilhem and by Gaston Bachelard.7 In any case, new approaches to history - and these new approaches in particular - are not confined to France. Historical anthropology appeals to anthropologists and archaeologists as well as historians. It has been prac- tised widely, from the United States to the USSR. Its inspiration has come from other intellectual traditions besides the French. Aaron Gurevich, for example, has acknowledged a debt to Malinowski, Keith Thomas to Evans- Pritchard, Kirsten Hastrup to Ardener, Anton Blok to Elias, while Orvar Lofgren belongs, despite his innovations, to a Swedish ethnographic tradition.8 Historical anthropologists in many parts of the world, France included, have learned much from the American example, notably that of Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner. It seems fair to say that this particular new approach is polycentric. So is the associated approach commonly known as "micro-history", practised with great panache by Le Roy Ladurie in his Montaillou (1975) but also by Italian, American and other historians.9 4 Faire de I'histoire, J. Le Goff and P. Nora (eds), 3 vols (Paris, 1974). 5 Among the pioneering studies: E. Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire du climat depuis Van mil (Paris, 1967); P. Aries, L'enfance et la vie familiale sous Vancien regime (Paris, 1961); M. Foucault, Histoire de la folie (Paris, 1961); P. Aries, L'homme devant la mort (Paris, 1977); J. Le Goff, "Les reves dans la culture de l'occident medieval", in his Pour un autre Moyen Age (Paris, 1977); J.-C. Schmitt (ed.), Gestures: History and Anthropology, 1 (1984), and P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de memoire (Paris, 1984-, in progress). 6 P. Aries, Un historien de dimanche (Paris, 1980). 7 J. G. Merquior, Foucault (London, 1985), pp39f., and M. Jay, "In the Empire of the Gaze", in D. C. Hoy (ed.), Foucault: a Critical Reader (Oxford, 1986), pp. 181f. 8 A. Gurevich, "Wealth and Gift-Bestowal among the ancient Scandinavians", Scandi- navia, 7 (1968), pp. 126-138; K. V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971); K. Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland (Oxford, 1985); A. Blok, The Mafia of an Italian Village (Oxford, 1974), and J. Frykman and O. Lofgren, Culture Builders (New Brunswick, 1987). 9 C. Cipolla, Cristofano and the Plague (London, 1973), an early contribution which seems to have gone unappreciated from this point of view; C. Ginzburg, Ilformaggio e i Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 02 Oct 2021 at 17:46:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000010063 THE ANNALES IN GLOBAL CONTEXT 423 Historical anthropology, microhistory and the revived history of mental- ities have been receiving a great deal of attention in the last few years, partly in reaction against the quantitative history of the 1950s and 1960s, now viewed by many as determinist and reductionist. In the development of this quantitative or "serial" history the French have played an important part: the historical demographer Louis Henry, the historical economist Jean Marczewski, the historian Pierre Chaunu, and many others.10 They have been particularly prominent in the exploration of "the quantitative at the third level" (as Pierre Chaunu called it), in other words at the level of culture, from literacy to attitudes to death.11 All the same, from a global point of view it would be difficult to deny the USA the title of the capital of "Cliometrics" as the Americans call it, particularly in the field of the so-called "new economic history" associated with Robert Fogel and his colleagues.12 The same goes for Freudian "psy- chohistory" as opposed to the history of collective mentalities. Febvre's interest in psychology did not extend to Freud, perhaps because his adviser on psychological matters, Charles Blondel, was a severe critic of psycho- analysis. He also seems to have missed the work of Jean Piaget, despite its potential relevance to the interpretation of mentalities.13 Two topics which have been attracting increasing historical interest are the history of the everyday and the history of material culture. In both cases the inspiration of Fernand Braudel has been important - above all that of the volume originally entitled Civilisation materielle et capitalisme (1967) and in its revised version, Les structures du quotidien (1979). All the same it is only fair to say that the construction of these historical topics has been a cooperative venture, international and interdisciplinary. The phrase "the history of the everyday" is best known in its German version, Alltagsgeschichte, and important contributions to the development of this history and to the analysis of the problems it raises have been made by scholars as diverse as Norbert Elias, Henri Lefebvre, and Juri Lotman.14 vermi (Torino, 1976). The term "micro-history (microstoria) seems to have been an Italian coinage of the 1970s, when it was used to introduce a series published by Einaudi. 10 L. Henry, Anciennesfamiliesgenevoises (Paris, 1956); J. V. Marczewski,Introduction a I'histoire quantitative (Geneva, 1965), and P. Chaunu, Seville et I'Atlantique, 12 vols (Paris, 1955-1960). 11 P. Chaunu, "L'histoire quantitatif au troisieme niveau", in Hommage a Fernand Braudel (Toulouse, 1973); M. Vovelle, PUte baroque et dechristianisation (Paris, 1973), and F. Furet and J. Ozouf, Lire et icrire (Paris, 1977). 12 R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engermann, Time on the Cross (Boston, 1974). 13 C. Blondel, La psychanalyse (Paris, 1924). For the American approach, E. Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York, 1958); B. Mazlish (ed.), Psychoanalysis and History (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), and P. Gay, Freud for Historians (New York, 1985). 14 N. Elias, "Zum Begriff des Alltags", in Hammerich and Klein (eds), Materialien zur Soziologie des Alltags, (but cf. his Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation), 2 vols (Basel, Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 02 Oct 2021 at 17:46:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000010063 424 PETER BURKE As for material culture, this has long been the concern of archaeologists, who refuse to confine themselves to what historians call "pre-history".
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Currently Only Available in a PDF Version
    www.pims.ca 010-fafara-text-complete 19/01/2018 4:47 PM Page i Etienne Gilson: Formation and Accomplishment | i the etienne gilson series 36 Etienne Gilson Formation and Accomplishment RICHARD J. FAFARA 5 April 2017 Translatedwith the collaborati by hugh of mcdonald the author pontifical institute of mediaeval studies 010-fafara-text-complete 19/01/2018 4:47 PM Page ii ii | richard j. fafara In memory of Msgr Joseph J. Przezdziecki who introduced me to Gilson’s thought THE ETIENNE GILSON SERIES 36 ISSN 0708-319X ISBN 978-0-88844-736-4 © 2018 Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 59 Queen’s Park Crescent East Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2C4 www.pims.ca MANUFACTURED IN CANADA 010-fafara-text-complete 19/01/2018 4:47 PM Page 1 Preface | 1 ixty years ago, Gilson’s outstanding pupil and colleague Dr Anton Pegis published A Gilson Reader. Understandably, Pro- Sfessor Pegis expressed trepidation in attempting to reduce a person of Gilson’s stature to a single volume. Gilson’s wide variety of interests and astonishing body of academic works (at the time 648 titles, including thirty-five books) underscored the difficulty Pegis faced. As he observed, “If it has taken Etienne Gilson so many books to say what he had to say and to discuss what interested him, how can anyone present him in a book?”1 Although Gilson had already reached the age of seventy-three when Dr Pegis’s volume was pub- lished, he lived another twenty-one years, during which he remained intellectually active and published even more books, articles, and reviews.2 One can therefore appreciate my predicament in attempt- ing to capture Gilson in a single lecture.
    [Show full text]
  • Jacques Le Goff's Round the World Tour 39
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert JACQUES LE GOFF’S ROUND THE WORLD TOUR DANIELA ROMAGNOLI UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI PARMA ITALY Date of receipt: 2nd of June, 2014 Final date of acceptance: 10th of September, 2014 ABSTRACT This paper investigates the dissemination of the work of Jacques Le Goff in an international perspective, through the presence of his works in university and national libraries chosen as samples in all continents. In addition, and perhaps more than the original editions, translations into the languages of the various countries are interesting, as obviously reaching an audience both broader and less specifically trained than the “insiders”. Another impSortant point is the time of diffusion, not only of Le Goff’s work, but also of 20th century French historical thought —the so- called “Annales school”— and the overcoming of barriers between historiography and other human sciences, such as anthropology and ethnology; the differences between diverse cultures are evident and relevant. KEY WORDS Historiography, Middle Ages, Annales, Diffusion, Translation. CAPITALIA VERBA Historiographia, Medium Aevum, Annales, Diffusio, Traductio. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, VIII (2014) 37-60. ISSN 1888-3931 37 38 DANIELA ROMAGNOLI Jacques Le Goff celebrated his 90th birthday on the 1st of January 2014. This essay is certainly a tribute to this great medievalist but not in any celebratory sense. My intention is rather to supply a few more elements for understanding the meaning and popularity of the work of a historian who never shut himself up in a so-called ivory tower or closed himself off from the contemporary world around him.
    [Show full text]
  • “Em Busca Do Sui Generis”: Aproximações E Divergências Entre As Trajetórias E Os Pensamentos De Paul Vidal De La Blache E Émile Durkheim
    UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS INSTITUTO DE GEOCIÊNCIAS “Em busca do sui generis”: aproximações e divergências entre as trajetórias e os pensamentos de Paul Vidal de La Blache e Émile Durkheim Álvaro Santo Donegá Júnior Orientador: Prof. Dr. Renato José Pinto Ortiz Campinas, 2019 UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS INSTITUTO DE GEOCIÊNCIAS “Em busca do sui generis”: aproximações e divergências entre as trajetórias e os pensamentos de Paul Vidal de La Blache e Émile Durkheim Álvaro Santo Donegá Júnior Orientador: Prof. Dr. Renato José Pinto Ortiz Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Álvaro Santo Donegá Júnior, elaborado sob a orientação do Prof. Dr. Renato José Pinto Ortiz, como um dos requisitos para obtenção do título de bacharel em Geografia Campinas, 2019 À minha mãe, de quem herdei, dentre tantas outras coisas, o gosto pela escrita. AGRADECIMENTOS Agradeço à minha mãe, Cristiane, por todo o apoio e carinho em todos os momentos de minha vida, e por ter batalhado todos os dias para me dar a oportunidade de estudar. Agradeço ao meu pai, Álvaro (in memorian), que, há dez anos nos deixou, mas que foi o primeiro a acreditar no meu potencial desde os primeiros anos de minha juventude. Agradeço às minhas irmãs, Ana Laura e Beatriz, por todo o amor fraterno, todo o companheirismo e todo o incentivo durante os períodos de minha caminhada escolar. Agradeço aos meus avós, às minhas primas e a todos da minha família, por todos os momentos de lazer e de alegria que compartilhei ao lado deles. Agradeço a todos os meus amigos que convivi durante anos no IG e no IFCH da Unicamp, em especial aos moradores da RepNeu, aos membros da UnicamPorco e aos atletas do IG e do IFCH, por todos os momentos de diversão e de amizade que tive com eles durante vários anos em Barão Geraldo.
    [Show full text]
  • Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 2-2011 Reading Landscape: Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea Jeffrey David Blankenship University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Geochemistry Commons, Geology Commons, and the Geophysics and Seismology Commons Recommended Citation Blankenship, Jeffrey David, "Reading Landscape: Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea" (2011). Open Access Dissertations. 324. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/324 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. READING LANDSCAPE: MID-CENTURY MODERNISM AND THE LANDSCAPE IDEA A Dissertation Presented by JEFFREY D. BLANKENSHIP Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2011 Geosciences Geography © Copyright by Jeffrey D. Blankenship 2011 All Rights Reserved READING LANDSCAPE: MID-CENTURY MODERNISM AND THE LANDSCAPE IDEA A Dissertation Presented by JEFFREY D. BLANKENSHIP Approved as to style and content by: __________________________________________ Richard Wilkie, Chair __________________________________________ George
    [Show full text]
  • Continuidades Y Discontinuidades En Las Estrategias De Legitimación Científica De Las Comunidades De Geógrafos Y Sociólogos En El Umbral Del Siglo XX
    Artículo La disputa epistemológico-institucional entre la Geografía Humana y la 3 Morfología Social: continuidades y discontinuidades en las estrategias de legitimación científica de las comunidades de geógrafos y sociólogos en el umbral del siglo XX Gonzalo Ezequiel Lus Bietti1 Universidad de Buenos Aires @ [ [email protected] ] RECIBIDO: 14-01-2019 ACEPTADO: 20-03-2019 Cita sugerida: Gonzalo Ezequiel Lus Bietti (2019). La disputa epistemoló- gico-institucional entre la Geografía Humana y la Morfología Social: con- tinuidades y discontinuidades en las estrategias de legitimación científica de las comunidades de geógrafos y sociólogos en el umbral del siglo XX. Revista Huellas Volumen 23, Nº 1, Instituto de Geografía, EdUNLPam: San- ta Rosa. Recuperado a partir de: http://cerac.unlpam.edu.ar/index.php/ huellas DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.19137/huellas-2019-2304 Resumen En el umbral del siglo XX, la Geografía Humana de Paul Vidal de la Blache, se disputó con la Morfología Social de Emile Durkheim la apropiación del estudio de la relación Sociedad-Naturaleza. El trasfondo de este suceso estuvo teñido por cuestiones epistemológicas, con epicentro en las dife- rentes concepciones sobre el medio; como así también institucionales, ya que la Sociología pretendía integrar dentro de su dominio al campo de la Geografía Humana. Mientras las estrategias de Durkheim habían sido in- terpretar y criticar a la Geografía de Vidal a través de la Ratzel, La Blache optó por alejarse de la Geografía ratzeliana y así diferenciarse de la Morfo- 1 Doctorando en Geografía (UBA) sobre “El desarrollo de los estudios rurales en la Geografía Argentina.
    [Show full text]
  • Imago Mundi Emmanuel De Martonne and the Ethnographical Cartography of Central Europe (1917-1920)
    This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Marburg] On: 16 June 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 916854615] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Imago Mundi Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713703011 Emmanuel de Martonne and the ethnographical cartography of central Europe (1917-1920) Gilles Palskya a Université Paris-Val de Marne, Paris, France To cite this Article Palsky, Gilles(2002) 'Emmanuel de Martonne and the ethnographical cartography of central Europe (1917-1920)', Imago Mundi, 54: 1, 111 — 119 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/03085690208592961 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085690208592961 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
    [Show full text]
  • China and the Writing of World History in the West
    China and the Writing of World History in the West Paper prepared for the XIXth International Congress of Historical Sciences (Oslo, 6-13 August 2000) Gregory Blue Department of History University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada <[email protected]> 1 China and the Writing of World History in the West1 Paper prepared for the XIXth International Congress of Historical Sciences (Oslo, 6-13 August 2000) Gregory Blue University of Victoria Recent controversies over multicultural education in the West, particularly some of the heated exchanges about the possibility of introducing more globally oriented alternatives to the standard 'western civilisation' course, at times obscure the fact that world history is a long established genre that has occupied scholars for centuries and has had an enduring appeal for diverse types of readers for just as long. Whatever the current pedagogical concerns regarding it, the scholarly pedigree of world history is difficult to deny. Traditionalists within the historical profession who associate it solely with the grand schemes of Spengler and Toynbee, or who voice dismay because they identify with certain schools of social scientific thought, can be reminded that no less a figure than Leopold von Ranke crowned his career by devoting his last years to the writing of his own seven-volume Weltgeschichte (1881-1888). Leaving aside the faults of that work – and its convinced Eurocentrism may now be counted among the gravest – the significance Ranke attached to it and the fact that in undertaking it he put his own legitimising stamp on a genre conventionally recognised as having a lineage extending back in the West to Herodotus and the Bible suggests that world history cannot easily be dismissed as merely a trendy form of inquiry cultivated only on the margins of the discipline.2 A general theoretical justification for a global approach to history was already clearly formulated for mainstream historians at the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, by Henry Smith Williams in his monumental Historians' History of the World.
    [Show full text]
  • Marc Bloch and the Historian's Craft
    Marc Bloch and the Historian’s Craft1 Alan Macfarlane The French historian and co-founder of the Annales School of historiography, Marc Bloch (1886-1944) has been a source of inspiration ever since I first read and indexed his Feudal Society in 1971. One way to give some indication of my reaction to his work is to provide my thoughts in different decades to his work for, like Malthus, he meant something different to me in different phases of my work and my understanding of what he was saying has shifted considerably. In the 1970’s it was his Historian’s Craft, The Royal Touch and Feudal Society, which I read and enjoyed. In the 1980’s his French Rural History. In the 1990s I returned to Feudal Society and read Land and Work in Medieval Europe more fully. Marc Bloch and the craft of the historian In 1973 I read and indexed Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft, written in 1944 while Bloch was in a prisoner of war camp and before he was executed. For some years after that almost every talk or essay that I wrote used to start with ‘As Marc Bloch once said’. Bloch seemed to distil so much wisdom in this short book. Bloch explained simply many things about the historian’s craft which I half-recognized but had been unable to articulate. He helped to give me confidence in my attempts to bring together history and anthropology and to pursue the gruelling work of detailed reconstruction of lost worlds. Here are a just a few of the many wise observations which I found most helpful.
    [Show full text]
  • Le Roy Ladurie's "Total History" and Archives by TOM NESMITH
    TOTAL HISTORY 127 Le Roy Ladurie's "Total History" and Archives by TOM NESMITH The Territory of the Historian. EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE. Translated from the French by Ben and Sian Reynolds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. xviii, 34513. ISBN 0 226 47327 9 $15.00. Carnival in Romans. EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE. Translated from the French by Mary Feeney. New York: George Braziller, 1979. xvi, 42613. ISBN 0 8076 0928 5 $20.50. Since the publication of his Les Paysans de Languedoc (Paris, 1966) Emman- uel Le Roy Ladurie has been a leading exponent of the concept of "total his- tory" pioneered by the French "Annales" school. His work is central to the concerns of archivists because the Annales group has been a formative influ- ence on the "new" history since the end of the Second World War. For that reason alone, these two books will be required reading for anyone interested in the significance of the Annales variety of the new history for archival practices adopted in the heyday of an earlier historiography. Indeed, we may ask with Vital Chomel, a French archivist who worked closely with Le Roy Ladurie on Carnival in Romans, whether we now need "une autre archivistique pour une nouvelle histoire."' There will be no attempt in this review to provide the out- line for a new archivistique; although, any archival discussion of the new his- tory or total history will have to come to grips with the more familiar problem dealt with here: the relationship between specific perceptions of the past and the sources and research methods selected to express them.
    [Show full text]
  • Mimesis and Human Geography in Paul Vidal De La Blache's
    Mercator - Revista de Geografia da UFC ISSN: 1984-2201 [email protected] Universidade Federal do Ceará Brasil MIMESIS AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY IN PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE’S METHOD Ribeiro, Guilherme MIMESIS AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY IN PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE’S METHOD Mercator - Revista de Geografia da UFC, vol. 19, no. 3, 2020 Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brasil Available in: https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=273664287013 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4215/rm2020.e19029 PDF generated from XML JATS4R by Redalyc Project academic non-profit, developed under the open access initiative Guilherme Ribeiro. MIMESIS AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY IN PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE’S METHOD Artigos MIMESIS AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY IN PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE’S METHOD MÍMESIS E GEOGRAFIA HUMANA NO MÉTODO DE PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE MÍMESIS ET GÉOGRAPHIE HUMAINE DANS LA MÉTHODE DE PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE Guilherme Ribeiro DOI: https://doi.org/10.4215/rm2020.e19029 Professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro Redalyc: https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa? (UFRRJ), Brasil id=273664287013 [email protected] Received: 19 September 2020 Accepted: 25 November 2020 Abstract: Based on the concept of mimesis elaborated by the Brazilian literature theorist Luiz Costa Lima Brazilian scholar, this article aims to analyse the Vidalian human geography. Its particular use of description and its capacity of metamorphosing environmental elements into geographical categories able to revealing the French national identity under the long-run time show how complex and relevant its method is. Keywords: Vidal de la Blache, Human Geography, Mimesis, Environment, Geographical Method.
    [Show full text]
  • (Theory) [Draft of Paper Published in Groniek: Gronings Historisch Fijdschrift, No.76 (1981)]
    (theory) [Draft of paper published in Groniek: gronings historisch fijdschrift, no.76 (1981)] NOTES ON GENERAL THEORY AND PARTICULAR CASES Alan Macfarlane The necessity for general theory The following pages are rough ideas written down to encourage and stimulate discussion. It is argued that it is necessary to theorize, to use comparative models, and then to test these against specific historical or anthropological data. But such theory building contains various kinds of bias, some of which are described. A number of practical suggestions are then made to provide corrections to such bias. Finally two examples of theory-building combined with specific historical work are briefly described. There is no escape from the necessity to theorize. It may once have been believed that the historian or the anthropologist was merely an organizer of 'facts' which existed independently of him. If this were the case, he (or she) would require little imagination or intuition. Dr. Johnson, the eighteenth century English sage, described a historian thus: 'He has facts ready to his hand, so he has no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree...But what is described as the 'Copernican revolution' in historiography has occurred; 'the discovery that, so far from relying on an authority other than himself, to whose statements his thoughts must conform, the historian is his own authority...possessed of a criterion to which his so-called authorities must conform...He must himself judge, evaluate and interpret the past or other societies. In order to do this he must explicitly formulate theories about possible worlds and then test these against the observations of other societies.
    [Show full text]
  • Agustina Ramírez and María Zavala: Two Women and Two Wars in Mexico
    HISTORY Memory and Oblivion Agustina Ramírez and María Zavala: Two Women And Two Wars in Mexico Ana María Saloma Gutiérrez* n general, people think that in wars, women play only man Empire, read as almost fantastic tales. However, women secondary roles supporting the troops, cooking or wash­ have always participated in wars both in the rearguard and Iing clothes. In the best of cases, they are given technical on the front lines. tasks considered unimportant, reaffirming their traditional Historical narratives about women’s actions are scarce. roles: acting as nurses, obtaining and filtering information, As historian Michèlle Perrot has pointed out, to better un­ working as couriers or spies, doing propaganda, and acquir­ derstand historical processes, women and their activities vi­ ing sympathizers and resources. They are also imagined giv­ sible have to become visible.1 It is a complex task to recover ing soldiers food, clothing, and ammunition, and, of course, the memory of women, their relationships with men, and their satisfying emotional and biological needs either voluntarily participation in society, not as simple spectators or victims, or involuntarily, including entertaining the troops. but as active people who make decisions and contribute with Despite the fact that the importance of these tasks and their actions to the construction and transformation of their many others is underestimated, they have always been societies. stra tegic for any army to be able to function. Nevertheless, Until recently, it was uncommon for historians to con­ women leaving the sphere assigned to them by tradition, cern themselves with analyzing humanity’s past identifying that confined them to the world of the family and the home, the relationships among economic, social, political, and cul­ has always been noteworthy: very often they have filled in tural factors.
    [Show full text]