The Journal Korall and Hungarian Social History: Between International and National Contexts

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 327-353
Author(s):  
Anders Blomqvist

This review essay evaluates the evolution of the Hungarian journal of social history, Korall társadalomtörténeti folyóirat (Coral: A journal of social history), founded in 1999 as a new forum of social history research. Korall promoted two distinct understandings of social history, stated only implicitly in the first years of the journal, but later elaborated more explicitely by the editors, as core definitions of their research programme. A first, narrow acceptation places social history within the field of (historical) sociology and favours structural approaches and concepts specific to the social sciences rather than the actual historical context. A second definition is wider, including a variety of topics such as environmental history, cultural history, economic, and demographic history, being meant to function as a powerful counter-discourse against positivistic, traditional and political-orientated history, still dominant in contemporary Hungarian historiography. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative content analysis, the review essay argues that, during its eight years of existance to date, Korall has undergone a process of internationalization. Although most articles published in the journal continue to focus on topics pertaining to the history of Hungary—especially during the “dualist period,” 1867-1918—references to international events, authors, and theories have lately acquired a greater importance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Alexis D. Litvine

Abstract This article is a reminder that the concept of ‘annihilation of space’ or ‘spatial compression’, often used as a shorthand for referring to the cultural or economic consequences of industrial mobility, has a long intellectual history. The concept thus comes loaded with a specific outlook on the experience of modernity, which is – I argue – unsuitable for any cultural or social history of space. This article outlines the etymology of the concept and shows: first, that the historical phenomena it pretends to describe are too complex for such a simplistic signpost; and, second, that the term is never a neutral descriptor but always an engagement with a form of historical and cultural mediation on the nature of modernity in relation to space. In both cases this term obfuscates more than it reveals. As a counter-example, I look at the effect of the railways on popular representations of space and conclude that postmodern geography is a relative dead end for historians interested in the social and cultural history of space.



HISTOREIN ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Costas Gaganakis

<p>This article attempts to chart the “paradigm shift” from social history, dominant until the early 1980s, to new cultural history and the various interpretive trends it engendered in the 1990s and 2000s. The privileged field of investigation is the history of the Protestant Reformation, particularly in its urban aspect. The discussion starts with the publication of Bernd Moeller’s pivotal <em>Reichsstadt und Reformation </em>in the early 1960s – which paved the way for the triumphant invasion of social history in a field previously dominated by ecclesiastical or political historians, and profoundly imbued with doctrinal prerogatives – and culminates in the critical presentation of interpretive trends that appear to dominate in the 2010s, particularly the view and investigation of the Reformation as communication process.</p>



1982 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
John V. Pickstone

I know the historical sociology of religion only as an outsider; as an historian of medicine helped by that literature to a better understanding of early industrial society and perhaps to a clearer vision of what the social history of medicine ought to be. To read a recent review of the social history of religion, such as A. D. Gilbert’s Religion and Society in Industrial England, Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740-1914, is to recognise how underdeveloped by comparison is the social history of medicine. Historians of medicine have the equivalent of church histories, of histories of theology and, of course, biographies of divines, but we lack the quantitative and comprehensive surveys of the chronological and geographical patterns in lay attendance and membership, and in professional recruitment and modes of work. For as long as medicine was generally only a transaction between an individual and his medical attendant, few statistics were produced and there is little national data. Yet there are very few local studies of how diseases were handled and how the various kinds of practitioner interacted with each other and with their various publics, so it will be some time before we shall be able to generalise on such matters.



Author(s):  
Paul Warde

This chapter takes seriously the notion of the ‘Anthropocene’—the concept of the period of history from which human activities have had global effects on the environment—and looks at it historically, across the longue durée, noting that the environment is itself a concept with a history of its own. The chapter argues that environmental history is very largely entwined with social history and that this poses a challenge for historians. Should we think of ‘the social’ and ‘the environmental’ as two different (albeit connected) spheres, or should we reconceptualize what ‘society’ and ‘environment’ might mean, both historically and for the future?



2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 369-381
Author(s):  
Radina Vučetić ◽  
Olga Manojlović Pintar

This review essay provides a brief overview of the research and publication activity of the Udruženje za društvenu istoriju/Association for Social History, an innovative scholarly organization established in 1998 in Belgrade, Serbia. The association promotes research on social history in modern South-Eastern Europe, with a focus on former Yugoslavia, and publishes scientific works and historical documents. The driving force behind the activity of the association is a group of young social historians gathered around Professor Andrej Mitrović, at the University of Belgrade. Prof. Mitrović’s work on the “social history of culture” has provided a scholarly framework for a variety of new works dealing with issues of modernization, history of elites, history of ideas, and the diffuse relationship between history and memory. Special attention is given to the Association’s journal, Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju/Annual for Social History, which published studies on economic history, social groups, gender issue, cultural history, modernization, and the history of everyday life in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Methodologically routed in social history, these research projects are interdisciplinary, being a joint endeavor of sociologists, art historians, and scholars of visual culture.



2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Smith

This chapter defines the scope of the problem, and the central research question: Are there consistent patterns of political intent and impact in diverse public dance movements throughout the social history of the Americas? It surveys the existing literature from the fields of dance studies, anthropology, musicology, and cultural history. It lays out the argument, methodology, and disciplinary sources and explains the criteria for the selection of the specific case studies, linking the diversity of those case studies to the diversity of methodological tools necessary for their analysis and comparison.



2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Schmelzer

AbstractThis article re-examines a contested chapter in the international and environmental history of the 1970s. Even though largely neglected by historical research and in the public memory, the Club of Rome – widely remembered for its 1972 report The limits to growth – was not only born within the OECD, but was also in its early period strongly influenced by debates within this think tank of the industrialized countries. Using previously overlooked sources, this article analyses this highly unlikely OECD–Club of Rome nexus. It not only offers a privileged view into the social history of international policy-making and the related personal entanglements and ideological transfers at a key moment of post-war history. It also demonstrates that the social, intellectual, and economic turmoil of the late 1960s prompted a rethinking of the economic growth paradigm, even within those technocratic institutions that had aspired to guide the post-war industrial growth regime. The article argues that these links are not only vital for our understanding of the relationship between acquisitive growth capitalism and environmentalism, but also enable a more profound understanding of the role of transnational networks in global history and the appreciation of the place of the 1970s in world history.



2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1140-1141
Author(s):  
Peter A. Coclanis

Over the past quarter century, no scholar has done more to document the social history of the colonial Chesapeake than Lorena Walsh. In so doing, she has made important scholarly contributions in a variety of areas, most notably, in agricultural history, demographic history, African American history, and women's history. Along with such scholars as Lois Green Carr, Allan Kulikoff, Darrett and Anita Rutman, and Russell Menard among others in the so-called Chesapeake School, Walsh has helped to create a powerful framework for understanding the evolution of Virginia and Maryland and for interpreting the behavior of the populations residing therein. Two of the hallmarks of the work of scholars associated with the “School” are innovative methodologies and meticulous, painstaking research, both of which characteristics are readily apparent in the volume under review.



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