From Cold War battleground to a footnote to history? Labour history in divided and unified Germany

History of labor and industrial relations was a well-established and mutually contested subdiscipline in both parts of Germany during the Cold War. Though it did not stand in the center of the overall settling of accounts with the communist past in unified Germany the swift opening of all relevant archival sources made sure that these themes established themselves as relevant topics on the research agenda about the history of the GDR. Profiting both from an advanced state of art in West Germany and a handful of original innovators in East Germany the GDR was explored and increasingly understood as an essentially ‘work-centered society’ governed by a panoptic ‘welfare dictatorship’. When it came to interpreting the multifold and heterogeneous findings one line of reasoning gained peculiar attractiveness, namely to read the East German ‘case’ as a variant of Fordist modernization in the middle of the twentieth century which unable to face the challenges of globalization.     

Professionals’ and amateurs’ pasts: a decolonizing reading of post-war Romanian histories of gendered interwar activism

This article provides an illustration of a decolonial and gendered approach that can shape ‘new global labour histories’ by re-reading histories of Communist women’s interwar activism produced in state-socialist Romania with attention to the power context in which they were created and the clues about the work of social reproduction during the interwar that these histories provide. After discussing the main concepts and rationale in the first section, in the second section the author shows that women’s history and women historians were marginalized in Romania after 1958 despite promising post-war beginnings. She shows that this evolution was made possible by the symbiosis between nationalist historians and autochthonist politicians in search of a break with Stalinist policies. She then hones in, in the third part of the paper, on the content of the Revue des Etudés Sud-Est Européenes (RESEE) and two women’s history volumes, as publications issuing from the conditions described in the second part. With regard to the standalone volumes, the author shows that in this body of work, the interwar period is described as one of women’s increased activism within the social-democratic or Communist movements. On the other hand, the period is also described as one of worsening living conditions for proletarians. The intersection of these two narratives creates in this rather limited historiographical body the surprising effect of granting high visibility to reproductive labour.     

Hungarian feminist geography in a curved space?

Abstract

The history of feminist geography in Hungary coincides with the 25?year-long history of Gender, Place and Culture. Authorities denied the existence of gender inequality in the era of state socialism, which was the primary obstacle to the spread of gender studies. The political changes that had occurred after 1989 had removed most obstacles, but feminist geography emerged with a delay relative to other disciplines. Its first two decades was characterised by struggles and compromises within and against the geographical discipline in order for it to win recognition. The 25?year-long history of feminist studies has, however, been completely broken by legislation proposed by the current government suggesting a ban on masters programs in gender studies. In this article, I trace the situation of feminist geography in Hungary by applying the concept ?curved space?. This concept adapted from modern physics claims that mass creates a gravitational field, i.e. it bends 4-dimensional ?spacetime?. My argument is that the situation of feminist geography in Hungary can be interpreted as an embodiment of ?curved space?. Using this analogy, I argue that the current Hungarian government has amassed such a huge amount of power that has enabled it to curve the space of feminist geographical knowledge production. It has established a quasi-dictatorship that resembles the one that impeded the evolution of gender/feminist geography in the state socialist era. Therefore, only broad-based solidarity can help create opposition to the current government’s attacks against gender studies.     

Experimental history: the appeal of postmodemism in historiography

Use, truth and time constitute the basic elements of the epistemological structure of history. That structure went through three stages: pre-modern (from ancient times to the late eighteenth century, before the professionalization of history took place), modern (the period of professional history, from the late eighteenth century to the 1970s), and post modern (post 1970s). In these three stages, use, truth, and time successively occupied the core of the epistemological structure of history. Postmodernist history, which puts time at the core of its epistemology, is an extreme form of historicism. Even more than historicism, it has emphasized the determining effect of time and change on historical truth and historical consciousness. The privatization of historical narrative and reading has prodded history to become experimental. Experimental history no longer proclaims the truth about the past. Instead, under specific historical circumstances, it strives to produce texts that will be recognized by individual historians and provides these texts to readers, who will make their own judgments. Whether these texts are true will be decided through the uses they produce. In this way, any historiographical practice will be an experiment conducted by an historian in the present and that will consist in searching for the truth about the past. The success of this experiment will depend entirely on the experimental environment, that is, on the conditions provided by the reading environment. __________ Translated from: Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao 北京师范大学学报 (Journal of Beijing Normal University), Vol. 5, 2004     

HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY FROM A SLIGHTLY COSMOPOLITAN POINT OF VIEW

Under review here are three works of different formats and scopes, each addressing questions of theory of history and the history of historiography. First, the mature work of Ignacio Olábarri Gortázar, published by the University Press of Salamanca, where he is now an emeritus professor, collects pieces written over a period of fifteen years that deal with matters related to his field of research in social labor history and other methodological and historiographical issues. Second, Fernando Sánchez Marcos seeks to offer an introductory book on the most noteworthy theoretical and historiographical issues of the twentieth century. Third, the volume from Jaume Aurell (Spain), Peter Burke (England), Catalina Balmaceda, and Felipe Soza (both from Chile) is a general handbook of historiography addressed primarily to students. All have their strengths and weaknesses. The most striking weakness is a persistent limitation of the field of vision, which is restricted to a European/Western (Francophone, Anglophone) cultural universe.     

孔子的历史思想和史学意识

春秋之时,史学作为学科远未形诸事实,然孔子历史思想与史学意识则多有表现。孔子伦理观念中蕴含着对人类社会共同体的认识;其以天人、古今、有道无道、文质等相对概念分析概括历史的变化;认同礼乐制度的不断完善,视其为人文的核心;重视君主及其道德在历史上的作用;敬鬼神而远之,以考量历史及其过程的途径去体贴天命,透散出历史理性;以文化传承者自任,整理、保存并阐发典籍;总结历史,以为救弊方案,体现出明道经世的史学价值取向。     

变动中的西方史学

在西方学术发展史上,19世纪被称为“历史学的世纪”。进入20世纪,西方史学在“新史学”的旗帜下,取得了新的成就。科学地认识20世纪的西方史学,借鉴其有益的内容,对当代中国史学的建设具有积极作用。第二次世界大战后西方史学发展的特点和趋势之一是随着史学家历史视野的开拓,研究领域迅速扩大,传统史学同其他哲学社会科学各学科的界限变得越来越模糊,在广泛采用新的史学方法的基础上,出现了一系列历史学新的史学方法和分支学科;第二次世界大战后西方史学发展的特点和趋势之二是关注社会生活中的现实问题,强调现实决定了历史研究要研究什么和怎样研究。中国世界史研究的真正动力,在于独立地对世界历史进行认识和思考。     

近20年来关于远古传说与史学产生关系的研究

远古传说对中国史学的产生具有十分重要的推动作用。近20年来,学术界对这一问题的研究,在综合研究、专题研究、比较研究等方面,都取得了突出成就。但这一课题研究仍存在一些薄弱环节。如远古传说内容对史学产生的重要影响,远古传说的表述形式．其原始历史意识对史学产生的推动作用,远古传说的传播状况,远古传说影响史学产生和发展的方式与途径等,都还有待于作更深入地探讨。     

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.     

Italian welfare as seen from the standpoint of the International Labour Organization (1944–68)

The evolution of Italian welfare cannot be properly understood unless it is viewed within a scenario that goes beyond the national one and accounts for both the different state experiences and geopolitical and supranational conditioning. By adopting a supranational standpoint, the aim of this article is to offer some new sources of reflection on the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in conditioning and assessing the Italian welfare model starting from the end of the Second World War to the 1960s. I intend to linger both on the ILO’s role in urging the development of modern social security systems and the adoption of certain welfare measures and on the representation and assessments carried out by the ILO regarding the actual development of the Italian welfare state.     

CONFUSING HISTORY

This compendium of fifty essays by international philosophers examines history from the point of view of its cognate disciplines, historiography and the philosophy of history. The authors often use the terms history, the past, and historiography interchangeably. Essays are grouped in four broad categories: basic problems, major fields, philosophy and sub‐fields of historiography, and classical schools and philosophers of history. The book provides useful insights, some dated by the fashion of postmodernism. The essays are largely independent of one another, and may be read in any order. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, historians, and social scientists with a theoretical bent.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

The Study of Chinese Historiography from the Perspective of Intellectual History

To promote historical research today, one needs to create a vigorous environment for historiographic criticism, to summarize the progress and state of all fields and topics of history, and to enhance the study of historiography. All these three aspects, which share similar characteristics, can be called “historiography.” Their essence is the basic method for deepening the study of historiography as a whole and refining its branches from the perspective of intellectual history. They can help us to form a healthy scholarly mechanism to review historical achievements, which would be crucial to the development of academic research. Translated from Nankai Journal (Philosophy, Literature and Social Science Edition), No. 2, 2004     

Debating Some Past and Present Research Frameworks and Methodologies in History on Places and their Peoples in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Histories regarding places and their peoples in South Africa can be traced to the early days of History being practised as an academic discipline. However, practising this form of history under (and outside) the flag of regional history was formalised only in the mid seventies, while informalised research practices in the field continued as methods complementing various schools of thought. Narrowly perceived local histories were considered as inclusive of the formalised and informalised regional history practices as knowledge contributing towards a broader understanding of a (geographically defined/ politically demarcated) region. Of interest is not only the historiography in this field (of which a few pointers are shared in this discussion) but some of the frameworks and methods to research and to record regional histories that have been used in the past. Equally of interest are the ways in which these frameworks and methods are still applied and thought of as dynamic and progressive to assist the historian to progress towards producing and packaging research as part of a comprehensive, all inclusive approach in creating knowledge as regional history studies. In South Africa, an extensive debate on how regional history studies should be broadly defined and understood when undertaking research, still falls short. This is due to the variety, diversity and complexity of knowledge contributing to the pool of information that should be packaged as regional history studies. To contibute towards a framework of understanding and packaging knowledge in this field of meaning to regional history studies, the reader is further exposed to an extended structure of perhaps understanding and doing research in this field: a field that has always been regarded as having the potential to be both integrative and multidisciplinary by nature. Yet its integrative analytical abilities also rest on the outcome of narrow-defined histories done on spaces and places before it is possible to embark on bigger research analyses in, for example, the spirit of modern social history applications to regional history studies. This discussion on ways to understand the limited past and present of regional studies (historiographically and methodologically) in South Africa is offered to encourage further debate.     

近年来西方汉学清史研究若干范式

西方汉学界近半个世纪的清代历史研究受到三大理论即现代化理论、全球史观和后现代主义的强烈影响,社会学、人类学和政治学等社会科学的概念方法也影响西方汉学家研究清代历史时的选题和解释路数。西方清史研究先后兴起了五种重要历史编撰范式:现代化理论视野下的晚清史编撰、世界历史与清社会转型研究、以中国为中心的清史、清季国家与社会关系研究、后现代式的清史研究等等。了解西方汉学界的清史研究近年来发展的脉络有助于我们自己的清史研究。     

Halil İnalcık (1916–2016): a preliminary anatomy of a legacy

Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was the pre-eminent historian of the Ottoman Empire in the world from his establishment as a published scholar in the 1950s until the time of death. This article is an initial examination of his legacy to the study of Ottoman history broadly. His goal was to create an empirically-based narrative of Ottoman history from beginning to end, based on exploitation of the vast resources of the Ottoman archives as well as the extensive library of Ottoman narrative chronicles, together with non-Ottoman sources. In addition, he invested extensive energies in training several generations of Ottoman historians. Overall, his impact on scholarly and public perceptions of the Ottoman Empire has been unmatched to the present day.     

当代中国口述史学透视

1948年哥伦比亚大学口述历史研究室的建立 ,正式标志着现代口述史学的诞生。经过 50多年的发展 ,口述史学成为历史学中一支举足轻重的分支学科。但是 ,到底中国有没有口述史学 ?这个问题很少被人问及 ,也很少有人做出明确的回答。口述史学在中国的发展和普遍流行将是一个必然的趋势 ,甚至在随后的几年内会有一个发展高潮。那么未来中国口述史学将如何发展 ,以一个怎样的高度作为起点呢 ?要解决这个问题 ,笔者觉得应该了解中国口述史学的渊源和现状。本文集中探讨当代中国口述史学的发展状况。