This chapter aims to explore how specific groups broached new methods of historiography. These same groups continued to show the influences of positivism in their works and continued to bar philosophy ad theory from much of their work, even though they began focusing on under-attended areas of history.
In France, the journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale (Febvre and Bloch) worked to counter positivism in France. It used Ranke's technique, if not his theory, when writing history. The journal's influence reached far beyond France. Their goals included an attempt to present history as framed by the questions posed by the historian. Rather than "submit" to documents, Febvre put forth that there is no history, only a historian and her questions and hypotheses. History then becomes "a way of organizing the past."
The Annales also rejected the focus on events of history. Rather than focus on a series of events, they attempted to find ways of constructing a history of those affected by major events but not causing them. Their focus was often on those out of power rather than the "movers-and-shakers" of traditional history. This shifted focus from individual power brokers to institutional causes in a number of cases.
Another focus of the Annales was on analysis. The question/problem being studied must be identified before any other work can be done. Thus, the object of study for a historian is created by the question(s) she asks of the past (and present).
The tools used by the authors of the Annales were interdisciplinary. They pulled in a number of methods from numerous disciplines (especially social sciences) in an attempt to answer the questions they posed.
The latter members of the Annales shifted toward a history of ideas rather than structures. Structures were too tied to events, despite their clearly constructed nature. Thus, a number of mental constructs began to be studied.
A reaction grew against the Annales for its lack of addressing philosophical issues around history. Even here, history was conceived of as concept-driven, not event-driven.
Veyne begins working against a number of these theories. He takes a decidedly unique approach and deals with epistemology and other philosophical issues. Additionally, he pushes history toward literature rather than science, pointing out that literature share much more with history, the only real difference is that history is about the "interesting" and the "true," lacking any way to construct "Good" or "Evil."
Structuralism began to fall out of grace in the 70s as events caused by individual actions (say, the revolutions of '68 in France) began to cause problems for those writing the histories. Intertextuality begins to alter how texts are viewed.
Another movement of historians were the micro-historians. They rejected looking for over-arching structures or long periods of time, rather they focused on small areas, populations, and time frames. This focus was argued to present the "lived history" of a group of people and much more aligns with life experiences. Problems with this approach include turning history into fairy tales. These stories involve a good deal of invention on the part of the historian. Another problem is that the microhistorians often took their document sources at face value.
In Britain, Marxist historians favored attempts which paralleled the Annales in some respects. They endorsed view focusing on the lower classes, dealing with class issues and human agency. However, they did not address the philosophic issues of epistemology and language. Thompson and Althusser debated just how humanist Marx was: did Marx fill his revolutions with people or with structures of class?
Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.
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