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: 170.106.202.226, on 27 Sep 2021 at 10:34:49, 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: 170.106.202.226, on 27 Sep 2021 at 10:34:49, 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: 170.106.202.226, on 27 Sep 2021 at 10:34:49, 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
  • Life Among Good Women: the Social and Religious Impact of the Cathar Perfectae in the Thirteenth-Century Lauragais
    Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Master's Theses Graduate College 12-2017 Life among Good Women: The Social and Religious Impact of the Cathar Perfectae in the Thirteenth-Century Lauragais Derek Robert Benson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses Part of the European History Commons, and the History of Gender Commons Recommended Citation Benson, Derek Robert, "Life among Good Women: The Social and Religious Impact of the Cathar Perfectae in the Thirteenth-Century Lauragais" (2017). Master's Theses. 2008. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/2008 This Masters Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LIFE AMONG GOOD WOMEN: THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS IMPACT OF THE CATHAR PERFECTAE IN THE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY LAURAGAIS by Derek Robert Benson A thesis submitted to the Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts History Western Michigan University December 2017 Thesis Committee: Robert Berkhofer III, Ph.D., Chair Larry Simon, Ph.D. James Palmitessa, Ph.D. LIFE AMONG GOOD WOMEN: THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS IMPACT OF THE CATHAR PERFECTAE IN THE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY LAURAGAIS Derek Robert Benson, M.A. Western Michigan University, 2017 This Master’s Thesis builds on the work of previous historians, such as Anne Brenon and John Arnold. It is primarily a study of gendered aspects in the Cathar heresy.
    [Show full text]
  • 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]
  • History and Theory (His2c01)
    HISTORY AND THEORY (HIS2C01) STUDY MATERIAL II SEMESTER CORE COURSE M.A. HISTORY (2019 Admission onwards) UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION CALICUT UNIVERSITY P.O. MALAPPURAM - 673 635, KERALA 190505 School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 1 School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 2 HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT STUDY MATERIAL SECOND SEMESTER M.A. HISTORY (2019 Admission onwards) CORE COURSE: HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY Prepared by: Dr. MYTHRI P U Assistant Professor (on contract) Department of History University of Calicut Scrutinized by: Sri. MUJEEB RAHIMAN K.G. Assistant Professor Department of History Govt. Arts & Science College Calicut School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 3 HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 4 HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY CONTENTS Module I Enlightenment and the Perception of Historical Past 7 Module II History and Classical Social theory 35 Module III The Annales 63 Module IV Methodological Debates and Contemporary Trends 84 School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 5 HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY School of Distance Education, University of Calicut 6 HIS2C01 : HISTORY AND THEORY Module 1 Enlightenment and the Perception of Historical Past Vico Giovanni Battista Vico (1668–1744) spent most of his professional life as Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples. He was trained in jurisprudence, but read widely in Classics, philology, and philosophy, all of which informed his highly original views on history, historiography, and culture. His thought is most fully expressed in his mature work, the Scienza Nuova or The New Science.
    [Show full text]
  • Vitorino Magalhães Godinho1
    Vitorino Magalhães Godinho1 Luís Adão da Fonseca2 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho was born in Lisbon, in June 1918, into a family with republican traditions, and he died in April 2011. Early in his life, he made frequent contact in Lisbon with leading figures from the Portuguese culture of that time, such as Newton de Macedo, Delfim Santos, António Sérgio and the staff of the journal Seara Nova (Magalhães, 1988: 2). As a student, he attended the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, although he did not really fit in there, such that, intellectually speaking, he can be considered to have been largely self-taught, as has already been noted (Magalhães, 1988: 2). This author considered this circumstance to be the starting point for Godinho’s own self- education, which (and I quote) obliged him to read the “great masters - Henri Pirenne, Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Vidal de la Blanche, Gordon Childe, Léon Brunschvicg, Edmond Goblot, Pierre Janet, Jean Piaget, Paul Guillaume, [and the Portuguese] Jaime Cortesão, António Sérgio, Duarte Leite and Veiga Simões” (Magalhães, 1988: 2). Having graduated in Philosophy and History, his first work of major importance was entitled Reason and History [Razão e história (introdução a um problema) (1940)]. Years later, shortly before he died, he spoke about this first book in an interview, saying, “I still think that history is a science, or a scientifically conducted activity, but it is important that it should be further complemented by philosophical reflection, and indeed by the study of all the humanities. Philosophical reflection enlightens us and guides us; it shows us the deeper meaning of things” (GODINHO, 2011).
    [Show full text]
  • Exploring Historical Anthropology Jacques Le Goff and Aaron J
    Exploring Historical Anthropology Jacques Le Goff and Aaron J. Gurevich Leonore Scholze-Irrlit z Scholze-Irrlitz, Leonore 1994 : Exploring Historical Anthropology. Jacques Le Goff and Aaron J. Gurevich . - Ethnologia Europaea 24: 119-132. The different styles of research of two historians - Jacques Le Goff and Aaron J . Gurevich - are analysed and compared. Both understand anthropology as th e basis of a new all-encompassing attempt at synthesising historical studies, and produce ind ependent results by taking into consideration lit erary-hermeneut­ ical, ethnological and structuralistic methods, thus forming two different co­ existing "styles of relationship" of medieval mentality. Le Goff and Gurevich contribute to historical anthropology and to a publicly effective renewal of the science of history through explanatory, deterministic and contemporary exam­ ination. An interview with A. J. Gurevich on the relationship between social history and the history of mentality is published as an append ix. Dr. phil. Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz, Eichbergstr. 23, D-12589 Berlin-Wilhelmsha­ gen. This paper deals with the styles of research and space (Le Goff 1970: 215 and 1977: 25, Le and the methods of Jacques Le Goff and Aaron Goff & Chartier 1990: 13). Significant for the J. Gurevich - two historians from very differ­ "Annales" school and also for Le Goff are fur­ ent scientific traditions. The contribution both ther the comparative methods of historical in­ of these medieval specialists have made to his­ terpretation and the concept of "histoire to­ torical anthropology reveals new dimensions tale" (Le Goff 1983 : XI, Honegger 1977: 13-14, in the science of history. Burke 1991: 29). The "Annales" went through three stages of development, the last of which is characterized by J.
    [Show full text]
  • La Vie, La Mort, Le Temps. Mélanges Offerts À Pierre Chaunu
    La vie, la mort, la foi, le temps © S. Brassouls/Sygma La vie, la mort, la foi, le temps MÉLANGES OFFERTS A PIERRE CHAUNU TEXTES RÉUNIS ET PUBLIÉS PAR JEAN-PIERRE BARDET ET MADELEINE FOISIL Presses Universitaires de France ISBN 2 13 045153 5 Dépôt légal — 1 édition: 1993, février © Presses Universitaires de France, 1993 108, boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris COMITÉ D'HONNEUR HENRI AMOUROUX R.P. JEAN-ROBERT ARMOGATHE R.P. PIERRE BLET JEAN DELUMEAU MICHÈLE ESCAMILLA COLIN FRANÇOIS FURET HERMANN KUSTERER JÉRÔME LEJEUNE EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE ANNIE MOLINIÉ BERTRAND ROLAND MOUSNIER DIDIER OZANAM RESPONSABLES DE LA PUBLICATION JEAN-PIERRE BARDET MADELEINE FOISIL Liste des auteurs MICHEL ANTOINE JEAN-ROBERT ARMOGATHE JEAN-PIERRE BARDET MICHEL BÉE YVES-MARIE BERCÉ JEAN BÉRENGER JACQUES BERTIN PIERRE BLET JACQUES BOMPAIRE PHILIPPE BONNICHON DOMINIQUE BOUREL JEAN-LOUIS BOURGEON LOUIS CHATELLIER JEAN-MARIE CONSTANT ANDRÉ CORVISIER DENIS CROUZET FRANÇOIS CROUZET PIERRE COURTHIAL HERVÉ COUTAU-BÉGARIE PIERRE DARMON JEAN- PIERRE DEDIEU JEAN DELUMEAU JACQUES DEPAUW DOMINIQUE DINET GÉRARD-FRANÇOIS DUMONT YVES DURAND JACQUELINE DE DURAND-FOREST MICHÈLE ESCAMILLA ANNE FILLON MADELEINE FOISIL FRANÇOIS FURET BERNARD GARNIER JEAN-MARIE GOUESSE PIERRE GOUHIER SERGE GRUZINSKI CHRISTIAN HERMANN JEAN IMBERT HERMANN KUSTERER FRANÇOIS LAPLANCHE MADELEINE LAURAIN PORTEMER FRANÇOIS LEBRUN JEAN-PAUL LE FLEM JÉRÔME LEJEUNE GUY LEMEUNIER EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE MICHÈLE MÉNARD JEAN MEYER ANNIE MOLINIÉ-BERTRAND DIDIER OZANAM JEAN-MARIE PAUPERT JEAN-PAUL POISSON JEAN-PIERRE POUSSOU CLAUDE QUÉTEL ÉRIC ROUSSEL THIERRY SAIGNES t RAYMOND SALA H A Ï M VIDAL SEPHIHA ALFRED SOMAN JEAN-MARIE VALLEZ MICHEL VEISSIÈRE BERNARD VOGLER Une malencontreuse confusion a abouti à omettre de joindre à ce recueil la contri- bution de notre collègue Bartolomé Bennassar.
    [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]
  • Historiography in French Theory
    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-25-2015 12:00 AM Historiography in French Theory Eric J. Guzzi The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Antonio Calcagno The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Eric J. Guzzi 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Guzzi, Eric J., "Historiography in French Theory" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3255. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3255 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HISTORIOGRAPHY IN FRENCH THEORY (Thesis Format: Monograph) By Eric Guzzi Graduate Program in Theory & Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Creative Commons 2015, Attribution License Abstract This thesis examines historical writing by drawing on the works of historians, philosophers, theorists and intellectuals, from antiquity to the contemporary moment. In order to answer the demand for scholarship that assembles insights of the Annales historians with other French intellectuals, I treat historians as theorists and theorists as historians. Through the course of my analysis, I examine issues of historical writing such as the scope of historical research and the historian’s task and place; I treat theoretical questions of constructivism, potentiality, agency, causality, teleology, and politics.
    [Show full text]
  • CRSO Working Paper No. 193 SOCIOLOGY, MEET HISTORY
    ........................... -. SOCIOLOGY, MEET HISTORY Charles Tilly University of Michigan February, 1979 CRSO Working Paper No. 193 Copies available through: Center for Research on Social Organization University of Michigan 330 Packard Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 CONTENTS As Sociology Meets History: Plan of the Book .............1 Mercurial Views of the Seventeenth Century ..............2 \fiat Sort of Book is This? ......................7 History'sPlace ............................9 The Historical Zoo ..........................13 Historical Practice as Social Structure ................17 Handling the Evidence ........................23 Reinterpretations and Theories ....................27 Stinchcombe's Challenge .......................30 SOCIOLOGY. MEET IIISTORY A Survey of Historians ........................38 History and Retrospective Ethnography .................45 . "Social Science History" ......................-56 How Do History and Social Science Coalesce? ..............60 Is Quantification the Essence? ....................67 Sociology Reaches for History .....................69 Historical Analyses of Structural Change and Collective Action ....76 Charles Tilly University of Michigan References 08 January 1979 .............................. Drnft of chapter 1 of Charles Tilly. As Sociology Meets History. The section on History and Retrospective Ethnography is a close adaptation of Charles Tilly . "Anthropology . History and the Annales. " Review . 1 (1978). 207-213 . The National Science Foundation supports the program
    [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]