CHAPTER 1

In the early nineteenth century, history was transformed into a professional discipline, with
German universities focusing on the learned side of history while freeing learning from narrow
antiquarianism. This shift was driven by public needs and political aims, making it crucial to
communicate the results of research to the public. The University of Berlin, founded in 1810,
embodied this fusion of Wissenschaft and Bildung. Leopold Ranke, a young teacher at the
Gymnasium, sought to turn history into a rigorous science practiced by professionally trained
historians, combining a trustworthy reconstruction of the past with literary elegance. History
was to be both a scientific discipline and a source of culture.

The tension between objective research and implicit philosophic and political assumptions
marks Ranke's conception of history as a rigorous science. He believed that scholarly research
was intimately connected with critical methods and that thorough training in philological
criticism was necessary. Ranke introduced seminars for future historians to be trained in the
critical examination of medieval documents, which was adopted by all German-speaking
universities by 1848. His understanding of rigorous scholarship presupposed strict abstinence
from value judgments and rejected positivism. Ranke believed that history reflected a world of
meaning and values, replacing philosophy as the science that provided insights into the
meaning of the human world. He became the model for professionalized historical scholarship
in the nineteenth century, with historians in France being less professionalized and less cut off
from the general educated public than in Germany.

After 1848 in Germany, historical studies underwent professionalization in most European

countries, the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. The German model was
followed by the introduction of Ph.D. programs in the United States and the foundation of the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. Journals like the Historische Zeitschrift and the
American Historical Association were founded to propagate new scientific scholarship methods.
The shift to the German model led to a retreat from broader cultural history to one more
narrowly focused on politics. The dominant consensus in Germany and France was deeply
rooted in the values of the bourgeoisie, with liberal positions espoused in both countries. The
new historical outlook, later known as historicism, was hailed as an intellectual advance,
involving a total philosophy of life and a conception of the political and social order. However, it
both widened and restricted the historical perspective.

Ernst Troeltsch argued that historical studies demonstrated the relativity of values and the
meaninglessness of existence. This led to a "crisis of historicism" in Germany, where the
idealism of classical culture and the ideal of Bildung were threatened.

CHAPTER 2
In the late 19th century, historical studies faced a crisis of classical historicism, with a growing
belief that the subject matter should be expanded and given more space to society, economy,
and culture. This led to a demand for history to be linked more closely to empirical social
sciences. In Germany, the controversy surrounding Karl Lamprecht's Deutsche Geschichte
(German History) questioned the central role of the state and the concentration on persons and
events. The work was received positively by the public but faced opposition from professional
historians due to its numerous mistakes and speculative conception of collective psychology.
Political motives also played a role in the opposition, with Dietrich Schafer and Eberhard
Gothein arguing for the expansion of history to include economic, social, and cultural aspects.

The rejection of Lamprecht and cultural and social history in Germany was largely due to the
homogeneity of the German historical profession, which required a lengthy second dissertation.
This made it difficult for political and ideological nonconformists to obtain university positions,
resulting in Lamprecht's isolation and hindering social history introduction. In France and
America, historians were more open to establishing a closer relationship between
historiography and social sciences. The "New Historians" in the United States aimed to write a
history for a modern democratic society, focusing on interdisciplinarity. Despite differences, the
New Historians shared basic assumptions with older scholarly orientations, such as the
importance of rigorous critical examination and evaluation of sources.

CHAPTER 3

The "Younger Historical School of National Economy" in Germany, led by Gustav von Schmoller,
aimed to address the problems caused by industrialization by examining economics within the
framework of people's values and institutions. The school emphasized the central role of the
state and the importance of studying historical sources. However, it failed to consider the
theoretical and methodological presuppositions of its investigations, leading to the
development of the human or cultural sciences. Neo-Kantian philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey,
Wilhelm Windelband, and Heinrich Rickert sought a clearer methodology for human or cultural
sciences, contrasting it with natural sciences. This intuitive approach was challenged by thinkers
like Carl Menger, Otto Hintze, and Max Weber, who argued for more rigorous methods and a
more rational approach to understanding society and culture.

Weber and Hintze viewed sociology and history differently, with sociology often operating with
historical typologies and history preferring narrative discourse. They rejected the notion of the
state as a moral or spiritual entity and emphasized a "value-free" science. Weber believed in
the validity of scientific inquiry and its methods, which transcended the limitations of a
particular society or culture. Despite his pessimism and skepticism, Weber maintains key
nineteenth-century notions about the coherence of history and the possibility of objective
scientific inquiry.

CHAPTER 4

In the early 20th century, American historians and social scientists began to expand their focus
from political history to a broader history of society. This shift was influenced by the idea that
American society was a country of immigrants, with economics, sociology, and psychology
being the main disciplines. This shift was influenced by the Cold War when American historians
saw America as a classless society free of ideological divisions. They believed that an expansive
capitalistic market economy had eliminated the final elements of class conflict.
The use of quantitative methods in historical research, such as electoral behavior and historical
demography, helped to strengthen the claims of social sciences as scientific disciplines. In
France and England, parish records were analyzed with the help of computers, providing
insights into family constitution, births, marriages, deaths, and property. This led to the
examination of various aspects of society, such as morality, attitudes, and patterns of behavior.
This shift in focus and approach to social history has had significant implications for the field of
history and social sciences.

Quantitative studies became a dominant aspect of economic history in the 1970s, with Marx
and Weber focusing on the uniqueness and comparability of societies. They recognized that
natural sciences are products of human culture and can only be understood indirectly through
socially determined categories. The highly quantitative research in historical studies in the
1970s often presupposed a concept of science that historical studies could only satisfy if they
formulated their findings in quantifiable language. This view gained importance with the
improvements in computer technology and the transformation of the economy. The "New
Economic History" in the United States, led by Robert Fogel and Douglass North, worked with
models of economic growth isolated from politics and society. They argued that the
quantifiable method can be applied not only to economic but also to social processes. Fogel and
Engerman's computer-based study of slavery in the American South was criticized for its
reliance on technical language and its inability to translate qualitative evidence into
quantitative statements.

CHAPTER 5

The French Annales school of historians, centered around the journal Annales, has significantly
changed the understanding of history over the past eight decades. They emphasize the
relativity and multilayering of time, a departure from most historians in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Despite not being a school, the Annales have maintained a firm
institutional basis since the end of World War II. Their early works, such as Lucien Febvre's book
about the Franche-Comte, signaled a shift towards a new kind of historical science, integrating
entities into an all-encompassing culture. The Annales historians' approach to history is
influenced by the close links between geography, economics, and anthropology, as well as the
importance of anonymous structures and collective consciousness in historical anthropology.

The Annales, founded by Pierre Febvre and Marc Bloch, was an interdisciplinary journal that
focused on the history of the French and English kings in the Middle Ages. The journal was
initially named Annales d'histoire economique et sociale, but later changed its title to Annales.
Economies. Societies. Civilizations, emphasizing its interdisciplinary character. The Annales
historians aimed to provide a forum for various directions and new approaches, and they did
not formulate a theory of history or historiography. The journal's founders were largely French
patriots and publicans but were less ideological than the majority of German historians. The
Annales received a firm institutional basis in 1946, and it was reorganized in 1972 as the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). The journal's works have had much in
common, with no central institution serving as a guiding thread in historical narratives.
However, the role of politics is not ignored, as in Bloch's examination of feudal society, it is
anthropologically viewed as a complex of interpersonal relations.

The Annales historians introduced a new concept of historical time, abandoning the idea of a
linear, directional history. They saw a plurality of coexisting times, not only among different
civilizations but also within each civilization. This idea is most clearly developed in Braudel's
Mediterranean book, which distinguishes three different times, each with its speed. The
historiography of the Annales is either regional or supranational, with regions often assumed a
certain unity. The focus is not on change but on the longue duree, the persistence of a peasant
culture and mentality into the twentieth century. The Annales historiography reflects the most
important transformations in the historical thinking of the twentieth century, but they have
given these their character. Geography is an important segment of Annale historiography, but it
is always a "human geography" aware of the interaction of culture and physical space. The
materialism of Febvre and Bloch is far removed from that of Marx, who shares the speculative
aspects of much of nineteenth-century philosophy of history.

Braudel's work emphasizes the external world's limitations on human ability, with a focus on
material culture and material subsistence. He paved the way for quantitative history in the
1960s and 1970s, focusing on recurrent cycles determining economic activity. In the 1960s, the
Annales became more interested in quantification, with historians focusing on mass
demographic data and analyzing social systems through attitudes and outlooks. The Peasants of
Languedoc, a significant quantitative study, marked a departure from a "history without
people" and shifted towards a history of consciousness. Annales historians took a place in
historical social science research, focusing on the material basis of culture and the existential
aspects of life. The Peasants of Languedoc was a high point in quantitative history, employing
theoretical models and a dramatic narrative reconstruction of the Carnival of Romans massacre.

The Annales historiography has evolved, with the third generation now approaching retirement
and focusing on historical anthropology. The fourth generation, including Jacques Revel, Andre
Burguiere, and Bernard Lepetit, has noted the dissolution of a specific Annales orientation into
a historiography going in various directions. The Annales have never entirely neglected the
modern period, focusing on culture and symbols to make modern political traditions
comprehensible. Their influence extends to socialist countries, where historians realized the
Annales offered better access to material culture and everyday life than dogmatic Marxism. The
Annales' complex and pluralistic approaches have led to contradictions in their practice, with
many historians fascinated by social science approaches that promised firm, objective
knowledge. However, their strongly anthropological note prevented the main currents of
Annale historiography from succumbing to scientism.

CHAPTER 6

In the 1960s, historical studies in Germany shifted towards social science models but were
largely concerned with culture rather than economic models. This difference was due to
Germany's intellectual heritage of social science thought and the catastrophic course of
German politics in the first half of the twentieth century. German historians resisted innovation,
focusing on the centrality of the state and international affairs at the expense of a history of
society. This opposition persisted in the Weimar Republic, where historians nostalgically looked
back to the Hohenzollern monarchy. The intense interest in social sciences in the West
Germans in the 1960s was linked to their commitment to a democratic society and the question
of how the Nazi dictatorship was possible.

Fritz Fischer's 1961 book, Germany's War Aims in the First War, marked a significant shift in the
understanding of German history. Fischer concluded that the Imperial government had
consciously risked a preventive war, based on government sources. He questioned the
continuity of German expansionist policies from the Wilhelminian to the Nazi period and the
extent of German imperialism within the framework of German institutions. Historians like
Arthur Rosenberg, Hans Rosenberg, and Hajo Holborn also raised these questions. Hans Ulrich
Wehler, a younger generation of historians, developed a "Historical Social Science" that viewed
modernization positively and hoped for a society of legally free and politically responsible
citizens. However, Wehler's conception of modernization has been criticized for oversimplifying
the political and social development of the West and failing to recognize that there is no one
path to modernity.

Wehler's research in the "Bielefeld School" focuses on the form of historical social science,
encompassing social, political, economic, sociocultural, and intellectual phenomena. He
believes that historians have a political responsibility and must examine past and present
societies. Wehler's idea of modernization is based on the idea that history must become a
critical social science, focusing on the processes of transformation in modern industrial
societies. The focus of his work is on the interrelationship of politics and society, and he
emphasizes hermeneutic approaches as either necessary or integral to empirical analyses.
Critics argue that Wehler's social history neglects the cultural side of history, as individuals
disappear within overarching structures, and culture is discussed exclusively in institutionalized
forms such as churches, schools, universities, and other formal organizations. Critics argue that
Wehler's approach neglects the forms of daily life, such as women's legal and economic status,
and that his work is more focused on narrative political history than on daily life, including
gender.

Jiirgen Kocka, a leading practitioner of the critical, theoretical approach to social history,
applied theoretical models to analyze social change, focusing on the emergence of white-collar
employees in the private sector. Kocka's work on class formation in the nineteenth century
(iQQo) explained the development of the modern working class as a result of wage labor as part
of a process of industrialization under capitalistic conditions. Other German social historians,
such as Dieter Langewiesche, Franz-Josef Briiggemeier, and Klaus Tenfelde, focused on the
social conditions that accompanied industrialization in the German political context. These
studies differed from Thompson's culturalist approach to the working class and more
anthropological perspectives, focusing on hard empirical data and the transformation of
working conditions in the mines, recruitment of a working class, the relationship between
workers and employers, and social and economic conflict. The focus was on reconstructing the
hopes and dreams of miners, rather than reconstructing what was, and how they reflected how
these men and women experienced their pasts.

The shift from the history of the working class to the social history of labor focuses on the life
experiences of individuals, reflecting trends in social history in the West and socialist countries.
In East Germany, labor history has tended to be elitist, but by the mid-1970s, historians began
to focus on the everyday lives of working-class people. Austrian scholars like Michael
Mitterauer and his associates combine the study of social structures, social processes, culture,
and life patterns, focusing on family, sexuality, and adolescence. The history of women also
began as a history of the organized women's movement, with more attention given to
existential aspects of women's lives. Dorothee Wierling's study of housemaids in German
middle-class households at the turn of the century combines the concepts and methods of
historical social sciences with the analysis of individual women's experiences.

CHAPTER 7

Marxist historical science has lost credibility and prestige due to the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Eastern European client states. However, Marxism's contribution to modern
historical science is not underestimated. Marx's doctrine is full of ambivalences and
ambiguities, and he operates with two different conceptions of science. The first view was
essentially positivistic, believing that objective scientific knowledge is possible and that
scientific knowledge expresses itself in general statements about the lawful behavior of
phenomena. This view was deeply embedded in Western thought in the nineteenth century,
differing only in its revolutionary aims.

Marx also had a different conception of reality and knowledge, the dialectic, which repudiates
the positivistic notion of the primacy of the phenomenal world for science. This dialectic view
demands that all visible manifestations be understood within the broader context of conflicting
forces, rejecting political economy and placing capital demands ahead of human needs. The
dialectic method becomes the basis for a critical theory that looks at the irrationalities
contained in every social formation.

The official Marxist-Leninist doctrine of Communist parties in the Soviet Union and the Soviet
Bloc was based on a positivistic perception of the dialectic. Leninism introduced a new note to
Marxist doctrine, stating that revolutions occurred only after historical development had
prepared the way. The official doctrine was Marxism-Leninism, with a central part being
historical and dialectical materialism. The Central Committee of the Party and the Party
Congresses set guidelines for historical studies in all countries of the Soviet Bloc. However,
within this framework, there was considerable diversity. Historiography was far removed from
Marx's conception of society and history, serving the political interests of the party. The Soviet
Union and East Germany had strict control and docility on the part of historians, but serious
and imaginative work was done.
Marxist theory, despite its rigidity and sterility, could raise productive questions for social
history. Historians in the Soviet Bloc showed interest in material culture, such as the study of
the Magdeburg Plain during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, working-
class history in the Soviet Union and East Germany was primarily political history dealing with
the role of the proletariat in specific revolutionary situations. By the time the Soviet system
collapsed in 1989, many historians in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union realized the
inadequacies of orthodox Marxist-Leninist theory. A more serious reexamination of Marxist
tradition from a Marxist perspective took place outside the Soviet Union, in Western Europe.
Marxist discussions in the West took place within the framework of orthodox Marxist
conceptions of the historical process, questioning traditional event- and person-oriented
history and calling for greater attention to social context and change.

Marxist studies of political upheavals in modern history and the Industrial Revolution focused
on the forms these changes assumed in the consciousness of those who experienced them.
Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte marked a step forward beyond the
"Communist Manifesto" by recognizing sharp social and political divisions within the
bourgeoisie and the role played in political consciousness and behavior by noneconomic forces
such as patriotic memories and symbols. Marx's narrative left workers and peasants out, while
political personalities occupied the center of the stage. English and French Marxist studies of
political and economic upheavals in medieval and modern Europe began to give history a
human face, with works like The Great Fear of 1789, The Great Fear of 1789, and The Moral
Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth-Century. Edward P. Thompson's The Making of
the English Working Class (1963) was the most important work of history in this movement,
stressing the role of popular culture and rejecting the idea of a "prototypic" working class.

Thompson rejects three basic Marxist concepts: the privileging of economic forces, the
objectivity of the scientific method, and the idea of progress. He seeks to rescue the poor
stockinger, Luddite cropper, hand-loom weaver, and follower of Joanna Southcott from the
condescension of posterity. However, important elements of orthodox Marxism persist in
Thompson's approach, such as the notion of a single working class in England. This class,
marked by different ethnic, religious, and craft traditions, is seen as an aristocracy of labor.
Critics argue that Thompson's approach neglects other forms of conflict and exploitation,
including those involved in gender relations. History Workshop, founded as "a journal of
socialist historians," built on Thompson's approach but went beyond it, aiming to break out of
the narrow confines of professional history to reach a wide democratic audience.

History Workshop was a journal that focused on socialist history and labor history in an
industrial capitalist society. It was committed to a teleology that saw history as transforming
from feudalism to capitalism and overcoming capitalism in a socialist society. However, the
editors began to question the identity of industrialism and capitalism, recognizing the role of
non-mechanical labor and traditional crafts in the capitalist economy and capitalism in
nonindustrial sectors. The journal shifted its focus from the industrial workplace to the
domestic and private sphere, examining gender relations and differences in leisure activities.
The journal also devoted more space to the role of language in social experience, arguing that
language has been a site of political and ideological struggle. However, the journal's
commitment to a history that was close and understandable to the common woman and man
remained, as it freed itself from its Marxist assumptions and sought to confront all forms of
exploitation and domination embedded in society.

CHAPTER 8

In 1979, Lawrence Stone's essay "The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History"
highlighted a shift in the way history was viewed and written in the 1970s. This shift shifted
from the belief in a coherent scientific explanation of change in the past to a renewed interest
in human existence and the cultural and individual factors that contribute to change. This shift
led to a return to narrative forms of history and a critical reexamination of scientific rationality.
The student movement of the late 1960s in the United States turned against capitalism and the
Soviet form of Marxism, highlighting the importance of examining the existential aspects of
everyday life.

Stone questioned the understanding of history as a science, contrasting it with the older
tradition of critical historical research. This tradition emphasized the distinction between
human and natural sciences but still viewed history as a scientific discipline. However,
postmodernists questioned the distinction between fact and fiction, history and poetry.
Historians continued to work conscientiously and critically with sources while adopting
methods from social sciences to gain truthful insights into the past.

CHAPTER 9

In the 1970s and 1980s, historians in the West and Eastern European countries began
questioning the assumptions of social science history, which primarily believed in
modernization as a positive force. Critics like Francis Fukuyama and Jiirgen Kocka argued that
modernization would lead to a market economy, highly developed technology, and democratic
political institutions. Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni, representatives of microhistory in Italy,
argued that the decline of macrohistorical conceptions and social science approaches to history
was due to the loss of faith in the positive social and political fruits of technological progress.
They argued that the human cost of modernization has led to the disadvantage and exploitation
of the many, distinguishing this historiography from older romantic traditions of the history of
popular life. A new conceptual and methodological approach to history is called for that sees
history as a multifaceted flow with many individual centers, focusing on the experiences of the
many rather than the abstract.

The history of everyday life and social science history can coexist and complement each other.
However, a debate in Germany in 1980 led to the debate between advocates of social science
history and champions of everyday history. Hans Medick sought to establish the basic positions
of everyday history, using cultural anthropology as a model. However, Medick criticized this
approach as neo-historicism, leading to methodological irrationalism and the trivialization of
history. Medick argued that history should move from central institutions to the margins, where
individuals who do not conform to established norms are found. The protoindustrialization
project launched in 1970, focused on the interplay of economic forces and regenerative
practices in peasant households. This project focused on the development of domestic industry
in the countryside before the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the family as the key unit in the
productive process.

In the 1980s, participants in the protoindustrialization project at the Max Planck Institute for
History, Hans Medick and Jiirgen Schlumbohm, analyzed the process in specific localities over
two centuries. They focused on hard material and societal data, interpreting it to understand
culture. They were closer to traditional social science history and further removed from
historical anthropology. Microstoria historians in Germany and Italy share similarities in political
outlook but come from different traditions. Italian practitioners, like Carlo Ginzburg, Poni, Levi,
and Grendi, began as Marxists and reacted against Marxist doctrines. They believed in social
inequality, production, and reproduction, and the importance of rigorous methods and
empirical analysis in historical study. They also criticized traditional social science approaches
for generalizations that did not hold up when tested against the concrete reality of small-scale
life. In Germany, Geschichte and Gesellschaft played a role, but with a stronger social science
orientation. The founding of Historische Anthropologie in 1993 marked the beginning of micro-
history and historical anthropology in Germany.

Microstoria, a methodological approach to studying culture, shares similarities with Foucault

and Geertz but also has significant differences. Both aim to show how hegemonic institutions
have excluded certain ways of thinking, and they focus on an interpretive study of culture
through single, seemingly insignificant signs rather than applying laws derived from repeatable
and quantifiable observations. Microstoria introduces a narrative in which the historian
transmits their findings and their procedure, allowing for the presentation of elements that
cannot be conveyed in abstract form. Despite limitations on objectivity, microstoria shares
several basic assumptions with older social science, such as testing constructs against existing
reality on a small scale and examining the multiplicity of social representations produced. Two
representative works of the microstoria tradition are Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the
Worms and Giovanni Levi's Inheriting Power. Both books share the general characteristics of
microstoria but differ in their conceptual and narrative approaches.

Microhistorians, such as Italian researchers Levi and the Gottingen group, focus on the
rediscovery of culture and the individuality of persons and small groups as agents of historical
change. However, their research and writing often have spatial and temporal limits, and they
often operate with a negative evaluation of modernization. They often turn to microhistorical
communities due to their sources and dislike for the modern world. Critics argue that their
methods reduce history to anecdotal antiquarianism, romanticize past cultures, and are
incapable of dealing with modern and contemporary worlds marked by rapid change. However,
there have been attempts to use microhistorical approaches to deal with political conflicts in
the twentieth century. Oral history can also contribute to understanding the lives of people
who have been neglected in traditional sources, such as Holocaust victims and Stalinist
perpetrators.
Traditional political and social analysis methods have struggled to answer questions about the
historical catastrophes of the Germans in the twentieth century. Traditional categories of class
require scrutiny and modification, and oral history projects like Lutz Niethammer and
Christopher Browning have provided valuable insights into the complex political and social
attitudes of workers. Oral history, like Browning's account of the Reserve Police Battalion 101
and the Final Solution in Poland, offers a new perspective on the Holocaust, revealing the deep
embeddedness of mass murder in the lives of German personnel stationed in occupied eastern
Europe. However, the "thick description" of Clifford Geertz's cultural anthropology poses
methodological questions, as it deprived the past of its qualitative aspects and left it without a
human face.
CHAPTER 10

Postmodern theories of history and language have challenged the possibility of historical
knowledge and the forms of historical writing in a postmodern age. These theories deny that
historical writing refers to an actual historical past, arguing that there are no criteria for truth in
historical narratives. Historians have limited rhetorical possibilities that predetermine the form
and content of their accounts, making them verbal fiction. This differs from traditional historical
thought that recognized the literary aspects of historical accounts and the role of imagination in
constructing them. Contemporary theorists of science, such as radical skeptics like Gaston
Bachelard and Paul Feyerabend, and historical relativists like Thomas Kuhn, have challenged the
notion that scientific inquiry leads to a progressive understanding of reality.

The relationship between knowledge and reality is central to linguistic theory, as modern
science has understood language as a vehicle for transmitting meaningful knowledge. Logical
positivism aimed for a language cleansed of contradictions and cultural ambiguities, while
structuralism questioned the referential function of language. Language theory, formulated by
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, posits that language forms a closed autonomous system
with a syntactic structure and that meaning is a function of language. This concept played a
significant role in literary theory, leading to the deconstructionist method of Jacques Derrida.
Foucault and Derrida's criticism argues that history loses its significance and must be liberated
from its author. However, historical writing, even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
still retains its rhetorical and literary qualities. Rhetoric plays an important role in documents
used by historians and statistical data.

Historical thought today recognizes the importance of language and textuality in the societal
constitution, with the French input affecting literary criticism and theory in the United States.
The concept of a "linguistic turn" was invented, emphasizing the role of language in analyzing
social structures and processes. Clifford Geertz, a cultural anthropologist, provides a semiotic
approach to culture, focusing on the "web of significance" and the methodology of social
sciences. This approach rejects the positivist method and emphasizes objectivity in social
scientific inquiry. Geertz's approach is based on a semiotic conception of culture, allowing for
confrontation with symbolic expressions without theory-guided questions. This approach
contrasts with classical historicism's hermeneutic approach, which assumes a common ground
between the observer and the observed.

Geertz's semiotic approach to cultural history presents challenges for critical history as he lacks
an understanding of history and does not consider social processes or divisions. This results in
methodological irrationalism and the reintroduction of the anthropologist's subjectivity or
imagination into the subject matter. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu offers a more
differentiated view of culture, emphasizing the economic and social context of culture but
recognizing the symbolic character of these relationships. Marshall Sahlin's essay on the death
of Captain Cook and Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacred both modify Geertz's approach,
but have few mechanisms of empirical control. Geertz has been of limited value to cultural
historians, contributing to the turn away from experimental science in search of law to an
interpretive one in search of meaning. Recent orientations in social and cultural history assign a
key place to language or discourse as a guide to social reality, focusing on discursive structures
that persisted over long periods.

Reinhart Koselleck, along with Werner Conze and Otto Brunner, uses discourse analysis to
reconstruct the history of political thought and social structures in Germany between 1750 and
1850. Koselleck's encyclopedia of "Basic Historical Concepts" examines the meaning and
transformation of key political and social concepts in Germany. Other scholars, such as Lynn
Hunt, Francois Furet, Maurice Agulhon, Mona Ozouf, and William Sewell, focus on the role of
symbols rather than concepts in political history. Hunt argues that the French Revolution was
not merely an expression of economic and social interests but rather a political culture with
ideas playing a significant role. Sewell also discusses the role of language in shaping the
revolutionary consciousness of workers, focusing on the movement that led to the 1848
uprisings in Marseilles. Gareth Stedman Jones and Thomas Childers focus more directly on
language, arguing that the rise and decline of Chartism were determined by the political
language with which supporters of Chartism interpreted their economic and social deprivation.

Thomas Childers's essay "The Social Language of Politics in Germany" examines the political
culture of the Weimar Republic, leading to the rise of the Nazis. Childers argues that economic
and social factors are not enough to explain Nazism, as they must be seen within the
framework of political language. He examines the vocabulary used by political parties, interest
groups, governmental authorities, and individuals to define the political consciousness of
contending sides. Joan Scott advocates a more radical position on the primacy of speech,
arguing that gender in a social and political sense is not given by nature but is "constituted" by
language. She criticizes Stedman Jones for treating language as a vehicle for communicating
ideas rather than as a system of meaning or a process of signification. Linguistic theory has
applications in historical thought and writing, as it emphasizes the political implications of
language and the hierarchical relations of power inherent in it. However, this philosophy of
language lends itself better to literary criticism than to historical writing.

CHAPTER 11
In 1979, Lawrence Stone criticized the social science model of historical studies and advocated
for a shift toward anthropology and semiotics. He feared a triple threat to history:
postmodernism, linguistics, cultural and symbolic anthropology, and New Historicism. British
historian Patrick Joyce challenged Stone's warnings, arguing that history is a discursive form and
there is no overarching coherence in polity, economy, or social systems. However, Joyce's
position was less convincing in the 1990s.

Between 19808 and 19905, revolutionary changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe led
to significant changes in historical thought and practice. These changes were largely unforeseen
and undermined the self-confidence of older social sciences and the new cultural history. The
collapse of communism confirmed Western predictions of capitalism leading to corporate
market economies and representative democracy. However, the unification of Germany and
the dissolution of the Soviet Union were unexpected, as were new forms of domestic and
ethnic violence. The persistence of cultural traditions became increasingly apparent, and the
failure of Communist regimes to keep up with structural changes contributed to their collapse.
This led to a broadening of the perspective and methods of historical inquiry. However, there is
also a retreat from the pronounced culturalism of the 19805 to new concerns with the modern
and contemporary world.

The Annales, a journal in history, underwent a significant reorientation in 1990, changing its
title from Economies. Societies. Civilisations to Histoire, Sciences Sociales. This change was a
result of discussions among its editors and a shift in political and social conditions. The journal
aimed to regain the position it had lost in the post-World War II Annales, but reestablish the
political context in which it occurred. The new title included politics and the role of
personalities in politics, aiming to pay greater attention to contemporary problems. The
journal's issues of 19905 reflected this reorientation, addressing diverse contemporary
concerns such as the opening of Soviet archives, labor organizations, and the modernization of
traditional societies. The journal also reaffirmed the postmodernist critique of historical reason,
challenging the coherence of history and the author and text. The shift towards an expanded
pluralism in history courses and the commemorations of the liberation of concentration camps
and the end of World War II emphasized the importance of the past.

CHAPTER 12

In recent years, the idea of a posthistorical age has been questioned, with the Enlightenment
secularizing the faith and placing the eschaton of history into human history. This led to a deep
uncertainty about the quality of modern culture, with thinkers questioning the notions of
scientific rationality, technical progress, and human rights. This pessimism led to two
contradictory directions in historical thought: consciously elitist and antidemocratic, and
thinkers after 1945 who rejected this elitist attitude but took over criticisms of science and
technology as part of their critique of capitalism. This led to the loss of credibility of several
ideas central to the modern conception of history.

The twentieth century saw the decline of the unity of history, leading to the expansion of focus
to include marginalized groups and the margins of society. This led to the rise of microhistory
and the notion of many histories. Despite the lack of a grand narrative, history continues to be a
powerful means for groups and individuals to define their identity. The concept of
modernization has lost its normative aspects, but it continues to denote processes in the
modern world. The present state of historical consciousness has led to increased sophistication
and a more cautious view of sources.

Historical studies have expanded in recent decades, focusing on themes and questions that
touch on existential aspects of life. This has led to new scholarly strategies emphasizing the
interpretation of meaningful relationships that lose their qualitative aspects when subjected to
impersonal analytical categories. Historians have argued that history is indistinguishable from
myth and that objectivity is unattainable in history. However, historians should recognize that
their discourse is metaphorical and that plausibility rests on rational strategies for determining
what is plausible. The end of the Enlightenment is a controversial topic, with postmodernist
thought building on anti-Enlightenment sentiment. Postmodernists argue that the
Enlightenment's distorted view of reason and its focus on quantitative formulations led to a
new myth that lost sight of the critical perspective that constitutes the core of true science.