History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography

by Wilson, Norman J.

• ISBN13: 9780139032059
• ISBN10: 0139032053
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-12-14
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This book explores historical study in the face of current trends, including postcolonialism, postmodernism, and deconstruction, among others. Organized around a central thesis that historical scholarship and consciousness are not in crisis, the book begins with a general overview of standard intellectual history, including the major schools, issues, and questions ranging from science to morality, philosophy to anthropology. It provides a comprehensive survey of historical writing and introduces the assumptions and orientation influencing the writing of history as well as the major figures and schools. It makes history accessible through relevant current issues such as recent controversies over museum exhibits and Ònational standardsÓ for history which are forcing a reconsideration of the focus and political nature of historical study. An important reference book for every reader interested in the study of history as well as those interested in the influence of recent political trends.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
What is History?	1	(23)
Historical Time and Teleology	6	(3)
A Brief History of History	9	(4)
Nineteenth-Century Historicism	13	(2)
History as a Form of Knowledge (Art or Science)	15	(9)
Notes	22	(2)
Problems of Historical Knowledge: Historicism, Presentism, and the Writing of History	24	(18)
Experiencing and Remembering the Past	26	(3)
The Indeterminancy of the Past	29	(3)
Reworking the Past	32	(10)
Notes	40	(2)
Cross-Pollination	42	(20)
Cliometrics: Quantification and History	44	(4)
Economics and History	48	(5)
Sociology and History	53	(4)
Anthropology and History	57	(5)
Notes	61	(1)
Varieties of History	62	(29)
Social History	63	(10)
Big History: Annales	63	(6)
Little History: History from the Bottom	69	(3)
Microhistory	72	(1)
Intellectual History	73	(4)
History of Ideas	73	(2)
The Contextualists	75	(1)
New Intellectual History	76	(1)
Cultural History	77	(4)
Materialists and Nonmaterialists	77	(2)
Subjects of Cultural History	79	(2)
Psychohistory and Its Discontents	81	(4)
Comparative History	85	(6)
Notes	88	(3)
Historical Actors	91	(20)
Rational Actors	92	(4)
Class	96	(4)
Gender	100	(5)
Structures of Perception	105	(6)
Notes	110	(1)
Postmodernist (Re) Visions	111	(12)
History and/as Language	112	(4)
Postmodernism	112	(2)
Deconstruction	114	(2)
Sociohistorical Pursuit and the Rise of the New Historicism	116	(7)
Notes	121	(2)
The Future of History	123	(18)
Postcolonialism	125	(10)
History of the Term ``Postcolonial''	126	(2)
Globalization and Wallerstein's World-System Model	128	(2)
Self/Other and In-Between Spaces: Hybridity, Diaspora, and Transculturation	130	(2)
Language, Postmodernism, and Politics	132	(2)
Postcolonialism and the Writing of History	134	(1)
History at Its Best?	135	(3)
Conclusion	138	(3)
Notes	139	(2)
Index	141