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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
Roger E. Backhouse  and
Philippe Fontaine
Edited by
Roger E. Backhouse  and
Philippe Fontaine
Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Philippe Fontaine
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Philippe Fontaine
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
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Summary

The literature on historiography is large and diverse. From characterizing the main stages in historical research to picking out “great men,” from identifying leading schools and main ideas to clarifying the differences between professional and lay historians, from describing what historians write about to explaining their methods, from noting the significance of history for the social sciences to pointing out the usefulness of the social sciences to historians, from writing about what historians actually do to deliberating about what they should do, historiographers carry out an impressive range of activities.

Within a field spanning several millennia and covering numerous geographical areas, it is not unusual to distinguish various forms of historiography according to “temporal and spatial characteristics” (Lorenz 2011, p. 14). As it concerns Western societies since the Second World War, this book remains within that tradition. It offers an illustration of what historians regard as more “particular and concrete” forms of historiography. At the same time, it flirts with more “general and abstract” forms of historiography (Lorenz 1999) in arguing that, because of the commonality of problems facing social scientists after the Second World War, it makes sense to go beyond disciplinary boundaries to contemplate a history of the social sciences as a whole. It also argues that something can be learned about the way the history of history is written from considering the historiographies of the different social sciences within a comparative interdisciplinary framework. The chapters that follow represent the first steps in that direction.

Keywords

Second World Warsocial sciencesproblem-oriented approachanthropologycross-disciplinary engagementsinterdisciplinary historiography
Type
Chapter
Information
A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences , pp. 1 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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