Kommentar: The Economic or the Economy? – Reflections on the Objects of Historical Epistemology

In the recent decade the perspectives of historical epistemology have turned economic practices into a novel object of study: the focus lies on how discourses, techniques of measurement and valuation produce economic facts. 1 The research on the historical epistemologies of economic facts belongs to a broader scholarly endeavor that takes place in cultural anthropology, social theory, literary studies, political theory and history. This interdisciplinary work brings to light how deeply economic issues are constituted by intermingling a set of cultural, political, technical and legal distinctions, which distinguish what counts as properly economic from what does not. 2 In this perspective, the very definition of economy becomes a hybrid and contentious affair. The central theoretical question for the historical epistemology and cultural anthropology of economy is currently how to conceptualize the link between epistemic practices and acts of ‘doing the economy’. This special issue on the Historical Episte mology of the Economic pushes us to think about this crucial link. Monika Dommann, Daniel Speich Chassé and Mischa Suter explore different modes of approaching the interlacing of epistemology and economy. These modes can be discussed under the following headings: 1) Pragmatics and Poetologies of Knowledge, 2) Economic Discourses and Epistemic Techniques, 3) Boundaries of Economy. On the basis of the richness of the historical material and the finely grained arguments that these papers bring forth, I will elaborate on the conceptualization of these linkages between epistemology and economy. My discussion culminates in the attempt to clarify an analytical distinction that is freely used in this special issue but that deserves further discussion: the distinction between the economic and the economy as an object of historical epistemology. My question is, does it matter if we write a historical epistemology of the economic or of the economy? What distinction do we wish to make by juxtaposing these two?     

再论欧阳修的正统论

宋代欧阳修的正统论在中国史学思想史上占有重要地位。欧阳修在不同文章中 ,对正统标准的阐释也不一致。有时批判前人于对峙分裂历史时期强立一国为正统的做法 ,从而将曹魏与五代各国排除于正统秩序之外 ,有时又承认二者的正统地位。欧阳修的论述实际上构成了正统二重标准 ,即史学 (史书纪实 )的标准与政治 (德义 )的标准。其矛盾既暴露出史家正统理论与修史实践之间的悖离 ,又体现了“封建史学的二重性”。     

Histoire embrouillée: Making material histories in Southern Africa

This article examines how historical knowledge about Southern African chiefdoms was produced in D.F. Ellenberger's research archive (c. 1860–1913) and archaeology drawing on his scholarship. I describe a historiographic approach detailing how Ellenberger's work co-opted the material world to create historical facts, obscuring diverse meanings of home, movement, and authority.     

国民革命时期安徽若干历史问题辨正

国民革命时期,安徽政象复杂,许多史实扑朔迷离,不易厘清。现存史著在重构此段历史时,存在不少史实上的错误,亟待纠正。     

实事求是是唯物史观的基本原则——以“五种社会形态理论”为中心的探讨

是否遵循实事求是的方法论原则,是判定唯物史观还是唯心史观的根本标志,也是二者判然有别的分水岭。唯物史观不以任何先验的东西为前提,唯心史观则相反。凡是不遵循实事求是方法论原则乃至有意违反这一原则的历史观,毫无疑问一定是唯心史观,而绝非唯物史观。根据实事求是原则去考察历史,符合过去人们所理解的五种社会形态理论本来所规定的意义和内涵,因生产力不断发展而导致五种社会形态依次演进更替的例子,在人类历史上并不存在。     

一场农战史论争所折射出的研究方法问题

方之光、毛晓玲与潘旭澜商榷的文章不仅有不少漏洞,而且所采用的商榷及研究方法背离了历史学的实事求是和求真的原则。潘文从史实出发,对太平天国提出了较全面的批评意见,这些意见与史学界的普遍看法基本一致。方文则无视史实,也无视史学界的公论,认为太平天国推动了历史的前进。方文坚持几十年不变的传统理论,沿用陈旧的解释话语,反映出传统农战史专题封闭性和保守性的特征。方文与潘文的这场论争,对于在当前史学转型中如何改造农战史专题以及改进历史学的研究方法,有着重要的借鉴意义。     

The Strange Situation of Attachment Research: A Review of Three Books

Attachment theory currently plays an important role in both research and practice concerned with children's healthy development, yet there is mounting criticism of its core assumptions and methods of investigation. Three recent books bring together a number of these criticisms, based on cross-cultural studies of children in diverse environments as well as an historical analysis of how attachment theory was created and sustained over time. The two cross-cultural books (Attachment Reconsidered, edited by Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, and Different Faces of Attachment, edited by Hiltrud Otto and Heidi Keller) include ethnographic observations of how infants and young children are cared for in many non-Western societies, as well as research on children's behavior in attachment-related situations. Common themes include multiple caregiving, maternal responsiveness, and autonomy versus relatedness, viewed from evolutionary, cross-cultural, and developmental perspectives. Marga Vicedo's historical study (The Nature and Nurture of Love) offers a scholarly account of the creators of attachment theory and the social-historical context of its development. Based on detailed documentation of the intellectual careers of these people, those who influenced them and those who criticized them, Vicedo builds an argument that attachment theory is not as scientifically solid as has been claimed, and that its core ideas are ultimately damaging to mothers. Taken as a whole, these books suggest seven observations on the current “strange situation” of attachment theory, which are summarized at the conclusion of the review.     

Predicament and responses: Discussions of history education in early modern China

ABSTRACT

Since the early modern era, following the abolishment of the imperial civil service exam and the rise of modern schools, the subject of history was included in education at all levels, from primary to tertiary. However, in comparison with traditional society, the degree of attention devoted to historical knowledge has in fact declined rather than improved. In the 1920s, many contemporaries vocally criticized and pondered the low level of historical knowledge among primary and secondary school students, and occasionally voiced dissatisfaction with history education at the university level as well. Critics primarily focused their discussions on the insufficient attention for history classes, imperfect standards formulated for history classes, poor history teaching materials, and lack of qualified, specialized teachers, forming a universal consensus among contemporaries on the failure of history education. However, the widespread opprobrium attached to history education was closely tied to two facts: first, the historians of early modern China had as yet failed to compile a general history of China acceptable to the majority, greatly disappointing many educators; second, historical resources failed to exercise the mobilizing effect on early modern Chinese society that contemporaries had hoped for, and history thus often became the scapegoat paying the price for practical setbacks and failures in the political arena.     

改革开放以来晚清人物研究述评

改革开放以来,晚清人物研究呈现相当活跃的局面,在进行学术总结和反思的基础上,逐渐地进行范式的转换。在这个过程中,遵循实事求是的原则成为学界普遍的共识,但由于有关晚清人物的"实事"总和不易获得,而人物评价又受到各种因素的影响,学者们评价人物的具体方法也各不相同,因此,对晚清人物的评价出现了许多新的观点。对这些新观点不能笼统地以"翻案"说视之。     

FROM HISTORICAL STRUCTURES TO TEMPORAL LAYERS: HANS FREYER AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

This article assesses, for the first time, the significance for German conceptual history of the sociologist, philosopher, and conservative political theorist Hans Freyer. Freyer theorized historical structures as products of political activity, emphasized the presence of several historical layers in each moment, and underscored the need to read concepts with regard to accumulated structures. He thus significantly influenced not only German structural history but also conceptual history emerging from it in the work of Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and, most notably, Reinhart Koselleck, whose theories of temporal layers in history and concepts reworked the Freyerian starting points. Underscoring the openness and plurality of history, criticizing its false “plannability,” and reading world history as European history writ large, Freyer shaped the politically oriented theory of history behind Koselleckian Begriffsgeschichte. Further, Freyer theorized the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transition to industrial society as a historical rupture or “epochal threshold,” which bears close, and by no means coincidental, similarity to Koselleck's saddle-time thesis (Sattelzeit). Freyer's theory of history sheds light on the interrelations of many Koselleckian key ideas, including temporal layers, the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous, the plannability of history, and the Sattelzeit.     

方以智的史学思想

方以智是明清之际的思想家。在历史观上,他从易道变化之理入手来论证社会人事,认为从自然界到人类社会都是一大物理,因而都是人们认知的对象,历史研究是一门"以实事求实理"的实学;历史是不断发展变化的,历史的发展有"常"有"变",有"理"有"则";人是天地万物的主宰,古今以"智"相积,因而今必胜于古。他的史学思想的显著特征是实证精神,主张"待证乃决"、"扩信决疑";同时提倡寻委溯源、通相为用的通变意识,并以推理与归约为通变基本方法。     

Conceptions of Reinhart Koselleck's Theory of Historical Time in the Thinking of Michael Oakeshott

In recent years students of politics have begun to recognise Reinhart Koselleck's practice of Begriffsgeschichte, the study of conceptual history, as a useful approach for investigating key concepts in political ideologies and the history of ideas. But his theory of historical time—the temporal dimension to his semantic project and his broader theorising of the historical discipline—is often overlooked and underused as a heuristic device. By placing the thinking of Michael Oakeshott alongside Koselleck's theory of historical time, this article brings his thinking on temporality to the forefront, fashioning a conversation between the two thinkers about the place for history and the formal criteria necessary for ordering the past properly. In doing so, it juxtaposes Koselleck's reflections on historicity and his theory of historical time with Oakeshott's philosophical enquiry on the historical mode of understanding. It identifies important convergences and divergences between the two thinkers' theories, focusing in particular on questions regarding the potential for representing the past as multilayered and plural historical times. The article then suggests that their respective thoughts on the theory of history are in part a reaction to the modern politicisation of historical time and comprise a shared critique of radical political change.     

THE ONTOLOGY OF CAPITAL: ON THE SHARED METHODOLOGICAL LIMITS OF MODERNIZATION THEORY AND ITS CRITICS

This article argues that critical scholarship in historical studies has not overcome the methodological limits of modernization theory for failing to question the ontological principles that construct its object of analysis. I call these principles the “ontology of capital” and explicate them through Bourdieu's conceptualization of the field and capital. I argue that this ontology is established according to a distribution model in which social entities come into the analysis with the amount and value of the capital they hold. This model grasps all social relations in the form of competition, and actors and actions enter into the analysis only when they are involved in such relations. I then analyze Bernard Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey, which is written explicitly from a modernization perspective, to show how the principles of the “ontology of capital” operate in this text. The analysis focuses on how sociohistorical facts are constructed through selection and articulation of empirical evidence that become meaningful only on the basis of this ontology. The aim of this analysis is to show the ontology of capital that constructs the object of analysis in Lewis's text rather than the Eurocentric, teleological, and elitist character of his analysis of history that critics in recent decades have addressed as problems of the modernization paradigm. Based on this, I argue that for a productive critical approach, relational analysis, which characterizes critical scholarship in contrast to essentialism, also has to consider the ontological principles in a historical work to overcome methodological limits. The failure to interrogate this ontology leads to an analytical separation in critical scholarship between the analysis of historical reality and of alternatives to this reality. This separation not only produces a dehistoricized analysis of the present from a critical perspective, but also turns the alternatives into utopian models.     

Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Ur- und Frühgeschichte

During the past few years a history of special subjects and a history of science, being critical and historical as well as taking into account scientific theory and methodology, has established itself under the influence of philosophy in many domains of the sciences. Such a scientific history is now also required in the branch of the science of history. It demands the ability of re-evaluating historical sources and studies as well as the knowledge of the political aspect of a future scientific history. As a matter of fact a future scientific chronicle of prehistory has to examine not only the subject of historical research itself, but also its aim, method and the whole sociopolitical background. This is more important than a positivist study of individual and specific historical aspects, a thorough compilation of different approaches in historical research, scientists and institutions. It is also better than making an arbitrary selection of single biographies in order to have a political legitimation of the present state of research. Moreover, the danger of such a selection is the degradation of persons in history and the falsification of historical facts. Apart from a determination of the subject with regard to scientific and political aspects the search of historical clues as well as the re-evaluation of historical and archeological sources could both lead to a revision of prehistory.     

“历程”中的客观性——对柯林武德思想的再认识

柯林武德试图将历史学建立在一种新的客观性概念的基础上。他指出:历史中的客观性是在绵延不断的"历程"中得到体现的,在这一历程中,历史当事人的思想与后来的历史学家对它的反思不是"两个"思想而是"一个"思想,历史体系是历史与历史学家的统一。在历史体系中,历史学家即使不受纯粹历史"事实"的制约,也必然受整体"历程"的制约。柯林武德的这些观点使得一种新的史学"客观性"观念成为可能。     

清代太湖流域的环境与卫生——以外国人的游程与感觉为中心

太湖流域是一个独立的地文系统,自唐宋以来的经济开发和商业化发展,使这里的民生显得异样繁荣。地方史料中的绝大多数,谈论的都是这里的高额赋税负担和内部经济生活的多样化及地区差异,对于民众生活的环境与卫生问题,直接性的详细记载极少。清代中后期外国人在这一地域内的众多游记和日记,于这方面却有颇为细致的描述,侧重点大多在河流环境、建筑居住、城镇街道景观和饮食卫生等问题,负面性的评述占据了大多数。这一当中固然有太平天国战乱后的影响内容,也有中国人的许多常态生活习惯,更带有外国人的猎奇与鄙薄的眼光,但是在总体上都可反映出中国人长期并不真正重视的环境问题及相对淡漠的卫生观念。而所谓"近代化"的理论推导,大多仅限于1843年开埠后沿江滨海重要城市的一些证据,其实并不符合太湖流域广泛城乡的实际生活。     

STORY MAKES HISTORY,THEORY MAKES STORY: DEVELOPING RÜSEN'S HISTORIK IN LOGICAL AND SEMIOTIC DIRECTIONS

This essay will argue that the traditional opposition between narrative and theory in historical sciences is dissolved if we conceive of narratives as theoretical devices for understanding events in time through special concepts that abridge typical sequences of events. I shall stress, in the context of the Historical Knowledge Epistemological Square (HKES) that emerged with the scientization of history, that history is always narrative, story has a theoretical ground of itself, and scientific histories address the need for a conceptual progression in ever‐improved narratives. This will lead to identification of three major theoretical levels in historical stories: naming, plotting (or emplotment), and formalizing. We revisit Jörn Rüsen's theory of history as the best starting point, and explore to what extent it could be developed by (i) taking a deeper look into narratological knowledge, and (ii) reanalyzing logically the conceptual strata in order to bridge the overrated Forschung/Darstellung (research/exposition) divide. The corollary: we should consider (scientific) historical writing as the last step of historical research, not as the next step after research is over. This thesis will drive us to a reconsideration of the German Historik regarding the problem of interpretation and exposition. Far from alienating history from science, narrative links history positively to anthropology and biology. The crossing of our triad name‐plot‐model with Rüsen's four theoretical levels (categories‐types‐concepts‐names) points to the feasibility of expanding Rüsen's Historik in logical and semiotic directions. Story makes history, theory makes story, and historical reason may proceed.     

KOSELLECK,ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well‐known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti‐totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience.     

运用马克思主义立场、观点、方法研究和编纂当代中国史

研究和编纂史书,弄清史实很重要,但是,光有史实还不能成为史书。由史料成为史书,观点是不可缺少的。观点体现在史料的鉴别真伪和取舍主次上,体现在对史料的分析上。而这归根结底取决于站在什么立场上。这一点,古今中外,概莫能外。因此,研究和编纂国史,必须要站在马克思主义的立场上,遵循马克思主义的观点和方法。