THE MISSING NARRATIVIST TURN IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE

The narrativist turn of the 1970s and 1980s transformed the discussion of general history. With the rejection of Rankean historical realism, the focus shifted to the historian as a narrator and on narratives as literary products. Oddly, the historiography of science took a turn in the opposite direction at the same time. The social turn in the historiography of science emphasized studying science as a material and practical activity with traceable and documentable traits. This empirization of the field has led to an understanding that history of science could be directly describable from scientific practice alone without acknowledging the role of the historian as a constructor of narratives about these practices. Contemporary historians of science tend to be critical of science's ability to describe its object—nature, as it is—but they often are not similarly skeptical of their own abilities to describe their object: past science, as it is. I will argue that historiography of science can only gain from a belated narrativist turn.     

Kaisum Village IN THE NEW CENTURY

Kaisum was where the Kaisum Manor, one of the six major manors in the Shannan area, was located. Wangqen Geleg, the manorial lord, followed the 14th Dalai Lama to India after the suppression of the armed rebellion in 1959. The manor-turned village, however, began to see urbanization two years earlier. Its 800-plus villagers now hold urban residence cards, and the former Village Committee has evolved into the Neighborhood Committee under Qamzhub Town. Located some eight km south of Zetang…     

Tibet University IN THE NEW CENTURY

Spacious lawns andblossoming flowers;shady trees;zigzaggingfootpaths;small bridgesspanning streams......In the face of such a beautifulview,who can imagine the pastdesolation of this site?     

TIBET'S DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEW CENTURY

From June 25-27, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council held their Fourth National Conference on Work in Tibet and General Secretary Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji both spoke at the meeting. CPPCC Chairman Li Ruihuan made a summing up speech. The National Conference, in which leaders of various provinces, municipalities directly under the Central Government also participated, was held when the CPC was celebrating the 80th anniversary of its founding and the 50th anniv…     

NIETZSCHE'S RELATION TO HISTORICAL METHODS AND NINETEENTH‐CENTURY GERMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Nietzsche is generally regarded as a severe critic of historical method and scholarship; this view has influenced much of contemporary discussions about the role and nature of historical scholarship. In this article I argue that this view is seriously mistaken (to a large degree because of the somewhat misleading nature of Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben). I do so by examining what he actually says about understanding history and historical method, as well as his relation to the founders of modern German historiography (Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen). I show, contrary to most expectations, that Nietzsche knew these historians well and that he fundamentally affirmed their view of historical method. What he primarily objected to among his contemporaries was that historical scholarship was often regarded as a goal in itself, rather than as a means, and consequently that history was placed above philosophy. In fact, a historical approach was essential for Nietzsche's whole understanding of philosophy, and his own philosophical project.     

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY: ON THE APPLICATION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC CATEGORIES IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

The long-held conviction of a mutually exclusive relationship between psychoanalysis, which allegedly proceeds purely in terms of individual psychology, and historical social science, which is interested primarily in the analysis of collectives, has significantly hindered dialogue between the disciplines. Norbert Elias's “figurational” sociology, which has been strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and group therapy, has the potential to indicate a way in which social science-oriented historical research might investigate the network of relations between individual and “collective” psychic processes without relying on artificial dichotomies. Elias's figurational theory, for its part, does not sufficiently take into account the question of a collective or social unconscious, so this article examines approaches that attempt to explore and conceptually define a supra-individual unconscious.     

TEMPORALITIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

The challenge of globalizing historical theory requires that theorization be grounded in material from all parts of the world. Southeast Asia is a world region that is somewhat underrepresented in the theorization of history. The distinctive historical traditions of Southeast Asia present an opportunity to bring new insights to existing theories of history. In this article, I offer a theoretical approach to historical temporality that is grounded in close readings of texts from this region by focusing on how these texts construe temporality through choices of narrative organization. I develop a toolkit for analyzing the temporalities in historical texts from equatorial Southeast Asia (the region covering present-day Indonesia and Malaysia), which includes a precise analytical vocabulary to fully account for their diversity. This approach leads to a theoretical stance that supersedes the conceptual dichotomies of linear/cyclical time and empty/full time, in favor of a more pluralistic understanding of temporalities. The grounded theory presented in this article is not only better suited to working with Southeast Asian materials, but it can also be placed in useful dialogue with existing theories, such as the narrativist approach of Hayden White and recent theorizations of the medieval historiography of Western Europe.     

FROM REVOLUTION TO MODERNIZATION: THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE REFORM ERA

Chinese historiography of modern China in the 1980s and 1990s underwent a paradigmatic transition: in place of the traditional revolutionary historiography that bases its analyses on Marxist methodologies and highlights rebellions and revolutions as the overarching themes in modern Chinese history, the emerging modernization paradigm builds its conceptual framework on borrowed modernization theory and foregrounds top‐down, incremental reforms as the main force propelling China's evolution to modernity. This article scrutinizes the origins of the new paradigm in the context of a burgeoning modernization discourse in reform‐era China. It further examines the fundamental divides between the two types of historiography in their respective constructions of master narratives and their different approaches to representing historical events in modern China. Behind the prevalence of the modernization paradigm in Chinese historiography is Chinese historians' unchanged commitment to serving present political needs by interpreting the past.     

REVISING THE PAST / REVISITING THE PRESENT: HOW CHANGE HAPPENS IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

This article investigates the various forces that may help to explain the ongoing historio‐graphical phenomenon of revision. It takes as its point of departure Michel de Certeau's understanding of the writing of history as a process consisting of an unstable and constantly changing triangulated relationship among a place (a recruitment, a milieu, a profession), analytical procedures (a discipline), and the construction of a text (or discourse). For de Certeau, revision is the formal prerequisite for writing history because the very distance between past and present requires continuous innovation simply to produce the objects of historical knowledge, which have no existence apart from the historian's identification of them. The specific nature of revision at a given moment is determined by the specificities of the process as a whole, that is, by the characteristics of place, procedure, and text and their contemporary relational configuration. Taking the rise of “linguistic‐turn” historiography as exemplary of the process of historical revision in its broadest possible meaning, the article seeks to discover the possible “causes” for that turn. It begins with an analysis of the psychological roots of poststructuralism as a response to the holocaust and its aftermath, and then proceeds to explore the possible economic and social transformations in the postwar world that might account for its reception, both in Europe but also, more counterintuitively, in the United States, where postmodernism proved to have an especially strong appeal. Added to this mix are the new patterns of social recruitment into the historical profession in the “sixties.” the essay suggests that, to the extent that revision is understood as the result of the combined effect of psychological, social, and professional determinations, it is unlikely that there will ever be genuine consensus about the sources of revision in history, since all historians bring to their work differing congeries of psychological preoccupations, social positions, and professional commitments.     

ON LAWFULNESS IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

The use of general and universal laws in historiography has been the subject of debate ever since the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s there has been a growing consensus that general laws such as those in the natural sciences are not applicable in the scientific writing of history. We will argue against this consensus view, not by claiming that the underlying conception of what historiography is—or should be—is wrong, but by contending that it is based on a misconception of what general laws such as those of the natural sciences are. We will show that a revised notion of law, one inspired by the work of Sandra D. Mitchell, in tandem with Jim Woodward's notion of “invariance,” is indeed applicable to historiography, much in the same way as it is to most other scientific disciplines. Having developed a more adequate account of general laws, we then show, by means of three examples, that what are called “pragmatic laws” and “invariance” do in fact play a role in history in several interesting ways. These examples—from cultural history, economic history, and the history of religion—have been selected on the basis of their diversity in order to illustrate the widespread use of pragmatic laws in history.     

THE ROMAN VILLA AT BIGNOR IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

Summary. The plan of the Bignor villa is reassessed in the light of recent excavations by Frere. Changes of plan are recognized and discussed. The farm buildings are considered in detail modifying Applebaum's original interpretations.