This lecture continues to explore methods and practices of history writing in ‘postmodern’ times (i.e. post WWII, roughly from the 1960s). This week we shall discuss two methodological strands which were to contribute to the rise of ‘cultural history’ from the 1980s: Italian microhistory and ‘ethnographic’ history writing in the US. Common to both was the move away from ‘society’ and sociological towards ‘culture’ and anthropological method as reference points of historical thinking and writing.

The Italian microhistorians, most of them initially harboured strong Marxist affinities, aimed to break away from the domineering ‘total history’ paradigm of the Annales school that ruled Italian history writing in the 1950s and 1960s. They also struggled with Italy’s fascist and colonial past and a history writing that had supported both ideologies. They hoped to provide new leftist and liberal perspectives that were also able to offer an alternative to another looming threat: the destruction of local culture and custom by a fast-growing global post WWII consumer capitalism ‘American style’. Microhistorians, such as Carlo Ginzburg or Giovanni Levi, suggested a ‘microscopic’ investigation of small local units of research that traced the everyday experiences of individuals and diversity of local cultures. Their histories celebrated the lives, feelings, and intellectual worlds of a village, a family or even a single person.

Historians in the US of the 1980s lived in a different political world. They experienced the beginnings of economic and political neoliberalism. However, they too, moved away from the practices, values and norms of modern history writing. They too turned their backs on the modernist dream of ‘total history’ and embraced the methods of another neighbouring science: anthropology. The writings of ‘symbolic anthropologists’ such as the American Clifford Geertz and his method of ‘thick description’, enthused an entire generation of young American historians and moved the anthropological concept of ‘culture’ (instead of ‘society’) firmly to the core of the academic historical enterprise.

While differing in their methodological approaches and politics, Italian microhistorians and American ethno-historians shared the enthusiasm for the early modern period. As the historian Robert Darnton famously claimed, the early modern world with its strange religious rituals, bizarre practices and world views had nothing in common with that one’s own. It was a ‘foreign land’, he claimed. The historians task was to resurrect its secrets and ‘meanings’.

 

Some READINGS CAN ALSO BE FOUND HERELink opens in a new window

Texts/Documents/Arguments/Sources

Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller ([Italian original, 1976]; London, 1980; e-book 2013)
Extracts from online edition 2013; prefaces (pp. 13-20) plus sections 1-19 (pp. 23-50) and 58-62 (pp. 106-116)
[same passages on pdfs scanned from 1980 edition: prefacesLink opens in a new window plus pp. 1-41Link opens in a new window, 112-128Link opens in a new window]

Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes of Cultural History ([1984] London, 2009), introduction (pp. 3-8) and 'Workers Revolt' (pp. 75-104).

 

Seminar Readings

Watch videoLink opens in a new window of Ginzburg on microhistory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFh1DdXToyE)

'Microhistory Today: A Roundtable', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 47, 1 (2017): 7-51.

 

Seminar Questions

What exactly is microhistory? Can we detect distinct perspectives, methods and sources?

Why did microstoria come to the fore in the 1970s /1980s Italy and why did anthropology become important to historians between the 1970s-1990s (and sociology less so)?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing history at such small scale / in the ‘ethnographic grain’?

'Anthropological history is limited to synchronic analysis.' Discuss.

Why were US historians like Darnton interested in past rituals that appear foreign to us?

‘Microhistory is dead in our global times.’ Discuss.

 

Significant Quotations

‘As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”
(Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms)

 

'The unifying principle of all microhistorical research is the belief that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved [...]. Phenomena previously considered to be sufficiently described and understood assume completely new meanings by altering the scale of observation. It is then possible to use these results to draw far wider generalizations although the initial observations were made within relatively narrow dimensions and as experiments rather than examples.’ (Giovanni Levi, 'On Microhistory,' in: Peter Burke ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 93-113, 97-98.

 

‘It might simply be called cultural history; for it treats our own civilization in the same way that anthropologists study alien cultures. It is history in the ethnographic grain. … This book investigates ways of thinking in eighteenth-century France. It attempts to show not merely what people thought but how they thought—how they construed the world, invested it with meaning, and infused it with emotion.’ (Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, p. 3)

 

Further Readings

Magnusson, S.G., et al., What Is Microhistory? Theory And Practice (2021)

Brewer, J., ‘Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life’, Cultural and Social History, 7:1 (2010): 87-109.

Burke, P., ‘Talking Out the Cosmos [Review of Ginzburg, The Cheese & the Worms & of Falassi, Folklore by the Fireside’, History Today 31 (1981), 54-55.

Burke, P. ‘Introduction: Carlo Ginzburg, Detective’, in Carlo Ginzburg, The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca: The Baptism, The Arezzo Cycle, The Flagellation (London, 1985), 1-5

Chartier, R., ‘Text, Symbols and Frenchness: Historical Uses of Symbolic Anthropology’, in R. Chartier, Between Practice and Representation (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 95-112.

Chiappelli, F, ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Renaissance Quarterly, 34 (1981), 397-400

Cohn, S., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12 (1982), 523-5

Del Col, A., ‘Introduction’, in A. Del Col (ed.), Domenico Scandella, Known as Mennochio: His Trials Before the Inquisition (1583-1599), xi-cxii

Duffy, Eamon, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2001)

Elliott, J. H., ‘Rats or Cheese? [Review of Cipolla, Faith, Reason & Plague & of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, New York Review of Books 27:11 (26 June 1980).

Ginzburg, C., ‘Checking the Evidence: the Judge and the Historian’, Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 79-82 (online).

Geertz, C., ‘Thick Description: Towards an Interpretation of Culture’, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, Basic Books, 1973).

Ginzburg, C., & Gundersen, T. R., ‘On the Dark Side of History’, Eurozine (11 July, 2003)

Hunter, M., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, History 66 (1981), 296

Ginzburg, C., ‘The Inquisitor as Anthropologist’, in, ibid., Clues, Myth, and Historical Method, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1989), pp. 156-165.

Kelly, W. W., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1982), 119-21

Ginzburg, C., ‘The High and the Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Past & Present, 73 (1976), 28-41, reprinted in Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 60-76

Ginzburg, C., ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method’, History Workshop Journal, 9 (1980), 5-36, reprinted as ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 96-127

Gray, M., ‘Micro-history as Universal History’, Central European History 34:3 (2001): 419-31

Gregory, B. S., ‘Is Small Beautiful? Micro-history and the History of Everyday Life’, History and Theory, 38:1 (February 1999), 100-110

Kuehn, T., ‘Reading Micro-history: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna’, Journal of Modern History, 61:3 (1989), 512-34

LaCapra, D., ‘The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian’, in LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, 1980), 45-70

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324 (1978)

Luria, K., ‘The Paradoxical Carlo Ginzburg’, Radical History Review 35 (1986), 80-87

Luria, K. & Gandolfo, R., ‘Carlo Ginzburg: An Interview’, Radical History Review, 35 (1986): 89-111.

Magnusson, S. G., ‘The Singularisation of History: Social History and Micro-history within the Postmodern State of Knowledge’, Journal of Social History, 36 (2003): 701-35.

Magnusson, S. G., ‘Social History as “Sites of Memory”? The Institutionalisation of History: Micro-history and the Grand Narrative’, Journal of Social History 39:3 (2006): 891-913.

Magnússon, S. G., and I. M. Szijártó, What is Microhistory? (London, 2013) E-book

Martin, J., ‘Journey to the World of the Dead: The Work of Carlo Ginzburg’, Journal of Social History, 25 (1992), 613-26.

Midelfort, H., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Catholic Historical Review 68 (1982).

Molho, T., ‘Carlo Ginzburg: Reflections on the Intellectual Cosmos of a 20th Century Historian’, History of European Ideas, 30 (2004), 121-148.

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), History from Crime: Selections from Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, 1994).

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe: Selections from Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, 1991).

Muir, E., & Ruggiero, G. (eds), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective: Selections from Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, 1990).

Peltonen, M., ‘Clues, Margins and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research’, History and Theory 40 (2001), 347-59

Ruggiero, G., Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1993)

Schutte, A. J., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Church History, 51 (1982).

Schutte, A. J., ‘Review Article: Carlo Ginzburg’, Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976), 296-315.

Scribner, R. W., ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, History of European Ideas, 10 (1989): 175-91.

Scribner, R., ‘The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia & R. W. Scribner (eds), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 11-34.

Szijarto, I., ‘Four Arguments for Micro-history’, Rethinking History 6:2 (2002), 209-15

Valeri, V., ‘Review [of Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms]’, Journal of Modern History, 54 (1982): 139-43.

Zambelli, P., ‘From Menocchio to Piero della Francesca: The Work of Carlo Ginzburg’, Historical Journal 28 (1985): 983-99.

 

History and Anthropology

Biersack, A., Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond, in L. Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 72-96.

Burke, P., History and Social Theory (Cambridge, 1992), esp. chs.1 & 4

Ibid., What is Cultural History, 2nd ed. (London, 2008).

Ibid., Varieties of Cultural History (Cambridge, 1997).

Cohn, B. S., 'History and Anthropology: The State of Play', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22 (1980), 198-221

Christie, N. J, ‘From Intellectual to Cultural History: The Comparative Catalyst’, Journal of History and Politics, 6 (1988-89), 79-100.

Comaroff, John and Jean, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, 1992.

Geertz, C., ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture’, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), pp. 3-30, 412-53. Geertz, C., ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cookfight’, in ibid.,The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 412-453. (online: http://uwch-4.humanities.washington.edu/~WG/~DCIII/120F%20Course%20Reader/CR5_Geertz_Deep%20Play.pdf

Geertz, H., & Thomas, K. V. ‘An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I & II’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975), 71-109

Darnton, R. ‘The Symbolic Element in History’, Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 218-234.

Handler, R., ‘Cultural Theory in History Today’, American Historical Review 107 (2002):

Hunt, L. (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989), Intro.

Hutton, P. H., ‘The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History’, History & Theory, 20 (1981), 237-259, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), II, 381-403

Jones, C., ‘A Fine “Romance” with No Sisters?’, French Historical Studies, 19 (1995), 277-87 (also response by L. Hunt, ‘Reading the French Revolution: A Reply’, French Historical Studies, 19 (1995), pp. 289-98.

Lorenz, C., ‘Some Afterthoughts on Culture and Explanation in Historical Inquiry’, History and Theory, 39 (2000):?

LaCapra, D., ‘Is Everyone a Mentalité Case? Transference and the “Culture” Concept’, History & Theory 23 (1984), 296-311, & reprinted in LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 71-94.

LaCapra, D. & Kaplan, S. L. (eds), Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives (Ithaca, 1982).

LaCapra, D., ‘Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre," Journal of Modern History 60, 1 (1988).

Licht, W., ‘Cultural History/Social History: A Review Essay’, Historical Methods 25 (1992): 37-41.

Mandler, P. ‘The Problem with Cultural History’, Cultural and Social History 1 (2004), 94-117 [& see the replies in Cultural and Social History 1 (2004) by C. Hesse, ‘The New Empiricism’, 201-07; C. Jones, ‘Peter Mandler’s “The Problem with Cultural History, or: Is Playtime Over?”, 209-15; & C. Watts, ‘Thinking About the X Factor, or: What’s the Cultural History of Cultural History?’, 217-24; and the rejoinder in P. Mandler ‘Problems in Cultural History: A Reply’, Cultural and Social History (2004), 326-32

Mah, H., ‘Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre", History Workshop 31 (1991): 1–20.

Nussdorfer, L., ‘The New Cultural History’, History & Theory, 32 (1993): 74-83.

Pittock, J. H., & Wear, A. (eds), Interpretation and Cultural History (Basingstoke, 1991).

Ortner, Sherry B., The Fate of Culture: Geertz and Behond (Berkely, 1999).

Poster, M., Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges (New York, 1997).

Rabinow, ‘Representations are Social Facts: Modernity and Postmodernity in Anthropology’, in J. Clifford and G. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Writing Culture (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 234-261.

Sewell, W. 'History, Synchony and Culture: Reflections on the Work of Clifford Geertz', chapter 6 of ibid., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago, 2005), pp. 175-196.

Stewart, P. (Winter 1985–1986). ‘The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 19, 2, 1985-86: 260–264.

Shalins, M., ‘Individual Experience and Cultural Order’, in Cultural Practice: Selected Essays (New York 2000): 277-291.

Thompson, E. P., ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’, Indian Historical Review, 3 (1977), 247-66 & reprinted as a Studies in Labour History Pamphlet (1979), copy available in library.

Turner, C., Bruner, E.M., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana, 1986).

Walton, Charles, Introduction, ibid. (ed.), Into Print. Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (University Park, 2011), pp. vii-xviii. (overview of Darnton's work).