Explanation And Thought Experiments In History

Although interest in them is clearly growing, most professional historians do not accept thought experiments as appropriate tools. Advocates of the deliberate use of thought experiments in history argue that without counterfactuals, causal attributions in history do not make sense. Whereas such arguments play upon the meaning of causation in history, this article focuses on the reasoning processes by which historians arrive at causal explanations. First, we discuss the roles thought experiments play in arriving at explanations of both facts and contrasts. Then, we pinpoint the functions thought experiments fulfill in arriving at weighted explanations of contrasts.     

Anecdote And History

Although the term “anecdote” entered the modern European languages fairly recently and remains to this day ill‐defined, the short, freestanding accounts of particular events, true or invented, that are usually referred to as anecdotes have been around from time immemorial. They have also always stood in a close relation to the longer, more elaborate narratives of history, sometimes in a supportive role, as examples and illustrations, sometimes in a challenging role, as the repressed of history —“la petite histoire.” Historians' relation to them, in turn, varied from appreciative to dismissive in accordance with their own objectives in writing history. It appears that highly structured anecdotes of the kind that are remembered and find their way into anecdote collections depend on and tend to confirm established views of history, the world, and human nature. In contrast, loosely structured anecdotes akin to the modern fait divers have usually worked to undermine established views and stimulate new ones, either by presenting material known to few and excluded from officially authorized histories, or by reporting “odd” occurrences for which the established views of history, the world, and human nature do not easily account.     

Telling Times: History, Emplotment, And Truth

In Time, Narrative, and History , David Carr argues against the narrativist claim that our lived experience does not possess the formal attributes of a story; this conclusion can be reinforced from a semiotic perspective. Our experience is mediated through temporal signs that are used again in the construction of stories. Since signs are social entities from the start, this approach avoids a problem of individualism specific to phenomenology, one which Carr takes care to resolve. A semiotic framework is also explicit about a theme Carr handles implicitly: the status of representation. Representation is internal to signification, mediating our experience not just retrospectively but prospectively in the planning and execution of action.
A model is presented in which the temporal organization of experience and action is formally coordinated with the temporal organization of narrative. The model is then applied to a historical event: John Batman's attempt in 1835 to purchase land from some Aboriginal tribes around what is now Melbourne. The meaning of this event is not located only in historical writing about it but in the semiotic constitution of the event itself. Changes of meaning emerge from relations between events as new events–in this case the Australian High Court's Mabo decision–align with old ones. Finally, a number of contrasts are indicated between this model and proposals made by Arthur C. Danto, Hayden White, F. R. Ankersmit, Fernand Braudel, and Paul Ricoeur.     

Collaborating With Sex Workers in Oral History

It took several decades for sex workers to become true speakers,rather than testifiers to the speech of others. Tensions understandablyremain about sharing authority with oral historians. This articlereflects on attempts to share authority in setting up, funding,organizing, and publishing from a UK sex work project. It questionswhether commitment to share authority compromises scholarshipand theoretical development, and how an oral historian's roleis affected by a parallel advocacy role. It explores the formationand boundaries of collaborative relationships and briefly raisesthe issue of crossing legal boundaries in less orthodox projectwork and implications for ethical permissions.     

Messengers In Tibetan History

The year 1920 saw the establishment of a post office in Tibet. It was located in Daingyiling in Lhasa. Stamps were produced by the Zhaxi United Factory and postmen were called ＂Zhawa＂ in Tibetan. The major post road, with Lhasa as the center, reached Gongbogyangda in east, Yadong in south, and scores of post stations were set up along the road. The major work of the postmen was carrying private mail and remittances, etc. on foot; while official documents of the local government were mainly sent by professional postmen （Ngazong in Tibetan） hired by the government.     

＂莲花＂与＂妈姑＂：清代最大矿厂名实考辨

黔铅的采炼是清代矿业兴盛的主要表征之一,其在开采时间、规模、作用与影响方面堪比滇铜,但其研究却显得极其滞后。当前学术界对清代黔铅最大矿厂的认识仍然不清,大多数学者将威宁州属莲花、妈姑并列为两大铅厂。笔者经过对名称、厂址、产量的考证和两者之间关系的考察,发现二者实为一厂,而“一厂二名”现象表现出不同类型文献记载上的差异,这对于研究黔铅的产量与规模至关重要。     

从排斥政治到兼容政治——评《中国政治通史》

谈到20世纪西方史学的演变,人们都会毫无例外地注意到这一事实：政治史的中心地位业已动摇,被迅速发展起来的经济史、社会史、化史所淹没。传统史学与近代西方民族国家的建构密切相关,政治活动自然成为关注的焦点。另一方面,它大量依赖书档案为史料,这也将其研究对象固定在政治方面。但20世纪中期以后,随着年鉴学派的崛起,传统史学的政治史模式被颠覆了,社会经济史取而代之成为主流形态。社会史被定义为去掉了政治的历史,可见政治史地位的衰落和遭受排斥的程度。     

The Predicament Of Ideas In Culture: Translation And Historiography

Rather than a simple transfer of words or texts from one language to another, on the model of the bilingual dictionary, translation has become understood as a translingual act of transcoding cultural material — a complex act of communication. Much recent work on translation in history grows out of interest in the effects of European colonialism, especially within Asian studies, where interest has been driven by the contrast between the experiences of China and Japan, which were never formally colonized, and the alternative examples of peoples without strong, centralized states — those of the Indian subcontinent and the Tagalog in the Philippines — who were colonized by European powers. This essay reviews several books published in recent years, one group of which share the general interpretation that colonial powers forced their subjects to "translate" their local language, sociality, or culture into the terms of the dominant colonial power: because the colonial power controls representation and forces its subjects to use the colonial language, it is in a position to construct the forms of indigenous and subject identity. The other books under review here are less concerned with power in colonial situations than with the fact of different languages, cultures, or practices and the work of "translating" between the two — particularly the efforts of indigenous agents to introduce European ideas and institutions to their respective peoples.