Microhistory

Microhistory

Microhistory is the intensive historical investigation of a well defined smaller unit of research (most often a single event, the community of a village, a family or a person). In its ambition, however, microhistory can be distinguished from a simple case study insofar microhistory aspires to "search for answers to large questions in small places", to use the definition given by Charles Joyner.

The original idea of writing microhistory came from Italy in the 1970s. Microstoria had a social history (Giovanni Levi: L’eredita immateriale. Carriere di un esorcista nel Piemonte del seicento. Einaudi: Torino, 1985.) and a cultural history (Carlo Ginzburg: Il formaggio e i vermi. Einaudi: Torino, 1975.) wing. It had a significant impact on French and German historians in the 1980s and 1990s. Microhistory became then a popular approach and it produced classics in several languages (e.g., Natalie Zemon Davis: The Return of Martin Guerre. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1983.). It can be seen as part of cultural history together with the histoire des mentalités of the French Annales School, the German Alltagsgeschichte, or historical anthropology. It is especially close to the latter, with the important difference that it, especially its original Italian version, puts a great stress on the agency of historical actors and is therefore unwilling to see culture as a determining force.

List of microhistorians

See also

External links


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