Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic TurnGabrielle M. Spiegel This essential collection of key articles offers a re-evaluation of the practice of history in light of current debates. Critical thinkers and practicing historians present their writings, along with clear and thorough editorial material, to examine the complex ideas at the forefront of historical practice. This volume gives a synoptic overview of the last twenty-five years’ theoretical analysis of historical writing, with a critical examination of the central concepts and positions that have been in debate. The collection delineates the emergence of "practice theory" as a possible paradigm for future historical interpretation concerned with questions of agency, experience and the subject. These complex ideas are introduced to students in this accessible reader, and for teachers and historians too, this survey is an indispensable and timely read. |
Contents
Is all the world text? From social history to the history of society two decades later | 35 |
The determinist fix Some obstacles to the further development of the linguistic approach to history in the 1990s | 62 |
The concepts of culture | 76 |
Self and agency | 97 |
Agency in the discursive condition | 99 |
Individual experience and cultural order | 111 |
The constitution of society outline of the theory of structuration elements of the theory of structuration | 121 |
A theory of structure duality agency and transformation | 143 |
Experience and practice | 177 |
Outline of the theory of practice structures and the habitus | 179 |
The evidence of experience | 199 |
The practice of everyday life making do uses and tactics | 217 |
Language and the shift from signs to pratices in cultural inquiry | 228 |
Toward a theory of social practices a development in culturalist theorizing | 245 |
Bibliography | 264 |
| 269 | |