Ideas And Methodologies In Historical Research

This book explores the versatile nature of historical methodology and its use in interdisciplinary research. Based on the historical overview of the appearance of one sort of historical ideas and disappearance of another, the book aims to demonstrate a wide range of possibilities of research in the field and to show how the pursuit of historical truth may facilitate the formation of collective memory and how the application of research tools can explain events in the contemporary world.

Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence, including the evidence of archaeology, to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the philosophy of history as a question of epistemology. The study of historical method and of different ways of writing history is known as historiography. This book undertakes historical research and provides invaluable advice and support with methodological analysis. History Research: Theory and Methods presents a clear practical guide to the study research and writing of history. Each stage of historical research is covered from the selection of a topic and the organization and evaluation of source material through to the completion of a typescript. The book focuses on the study of history provides detailed guidance on research methods and includes comprehensive information on stylistic conventions for presenting historical work.

No discipline has been more praised or more criticized than the writing of history. Cioero claimed that history teaches men how to live. Aris totle denied it the very name of science and regwded poetry as the higher wisdom. At various times history has been assigned a command ing or a demeaning statIUs in the hierarchy of sciences. Today one can admire the increasing precision and sophistication of the methods used by historia:ns. On the other hand, Thucydides' History of the PeZo ponesian War still serves as the ideal model of how to reconstruct the historical past. Even those who deny the possibility of an objective reconstruction of the past would themselves likie to be recorded by historians, "objectively" or not. Dislike of history and fear of its verdict are not incompatible with reverence and awe for its practitioners, the historians. So man's attitude to history is ambiguous. The controversy about history continues. Widely differing issues are at stake. Historians themselves, however, are the least engaged in the struggle. Rarely does a historian decide to open the door of his study and join in the melee about the meaning of history. More often he slams it shut and returns to his studies, oblivious of the fact that with the passage of thne the gap between his scientific work and its audience might widen. The historian does not shun the battle, he merely chooses his own battleground.

This bright, engaging title provides a thorough and integrated review of comparative-historical methods. It sets out an intellectual history of comparative-historical analysis and presents the main methodological techniques employed by researchers, including: - comparative-historical analysis, - case-based methods, - comparative methods - data, case selection and theory. Matthew Lange has written a fresh, easy to follow introduction which showcases classic analyses, offers clear methodological examples and describes major methodological debates. It is a comprehensive, grounded book which understands the learning and research needs of students and researchers.

Historical Knowledge approaches the topic of historical knowledge in depth and from various angles. It seeks to offer theoretical and methodological building blocks for the use of anyone pursuing historical research. This book brings novel insights into classic and topical issues currently under debate: the importance of theory in historical thinking, the dialectic of “text” and “annotation”, the actor and observer levels, the relationship between the general and the individual, the issue of comparison, and the problem of sporadic sources and of understanding the singularity of each one. The overall theme of the book, the possibility of historical knowledge, reflects the very issue that makes historical research distinctive: the challenges of evidence and the problems, both concrete and conceptual, with deciphering and interpreting remnants of the past. This book refreshes the discussion about sources and proper evidence, two issues that the linguistic turn and the postmodern challenge pushed into the background. The book addresses these issues in an easily accessible way and serves as an introduction and guide to the role of theory, method and evidence in historical research not only for students and scholars of history, but also for anyone outside the field with an interest in the topic. Historical Knowledge is the first book to include texts by the three eminent historians, Professors Natalie Zemon Davis, Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi. The other contributors, Professors Risto Alapuro, Janken Myrdal and Matti Peltonen, are active debaters in current theoretical and methodo-logical discussion.

Most library post-graduate programs teach research methods using generic research methods textbooks. However, this ground-breaking textbook covers the basic research methodologies likely to be used by librarians with an orientation to library issues. It also includes basic instructions on writing the research proposal and the research report.

This book offers an in‐depth historiographical and comparative analysis of prominent theoretical and methodological debates in the field. Across each of the sections, contributors will draw on specific case studies to illustrate the origins, debates and tensions in the field and overview new trends, directions and developments. Each section includes an introduction that provides an overview of the theme and the overall emphasis within the section. In addition, each section has a concluding chapter that offers a critical and comparative analysis of the national case studies presented. As a Handbook, the emphasis is on deeper consideration of key issues rather than a more superficial and broader sweep. The book offers researchers, postgraduate and higher degree students as well as those teaching in this field a definitive text that identifies and debates key historiographical and methodological issues. The intent is to encourage comparative historiographical perspectives of the nominated issues that overview the main theoretical and methodological debates and to propose new directions for the field.

How does history relate to the past? According to leading historical theorists, the relation to the past in history is reducible to evidential, psychological, practical and retrospective concerns. In contrast, this volume claims that historical relations to the past are irreducible products of the logical commitments of history as method. Ahlskog argues that the method of history shapes and enables relations to the past in historical research by invoking past perspectives of meaning for rendering reality intelligible. The book provides a much-needed philosophical clarification of key concepts in one of the most fundamental debates within the humanities today.