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New Contributions to the Philosophy of History

:	Daniel Little
:	New Contributions to the Philosophy of History
:	Springer-Verlag
:	9789048194100
:	1
:	CHF 89.70
:

:	Methoden der empirischen und qualitativen Sozialforschung
:	English

:	240
:	Wasserzeichen/DRM
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	PDF

Insights developed in the past two decades by philosophers of the social sciences can serve to enrich the challenging intellectual tasks of conceptualizing, investigating, and representing the human past. Likewise, intimate engagement with the writings of historians can deepen philosophers' understanding of the task of knowing the past. This volume brings these perspectives together and considers fundamental questions, such as: What is historical causation? What is a large historical structure? How can we best conceptualize 'mentalities' and 'identities'? What is involved in understanding the subjectivity of historical actors? What is involved in arriving at an economic history of a large region? How are actions and outcomes related? The arguments touch upon a wide range of historical topics -- the Chinese and French Revolutions, the extension of railroads in the nineteenth century, and the development of agriculture in medieval China.

	Contents	6
	1 Introduction: Historys Pathways	9
	1.1 The Historians Tasks	13
	1.2 History of the Present	14
	1.3 Metaphors for History	16
	2 History and Narrative	19
	2.1 Philosophy and the Historians	19
	2.2 What Is History	22
	2.2.1 Micro, Meso, Macro	23
	2.2.2 Longue Durée	25
	2.2.3 Marc Bloch's History	27
	2.2.4 Comparative History	31
	2.2.5 New Understandings of China's Cultural Revolution	34
	2.3 Narratives of History	36
	2.3.1 Selectivity: China at War	39
	2.3.2 Narrative and Bias	40
	2.3.3 History, Memory, and Narrative---Recent China	42
	2.3.4 Age Cohorts and Historical Experience	44
	2.3.5 Maps and Narratives	45
	3 Historical Concepts and Social Ontology	48
	3.1 Ontology and Explanation	48
	3.1.1 Things	49
	3.1.2 Events	51
	3.2 Concepts and Kinds	53
	3.2.1 Historical Ontology of the French Revolution	54
	3.2.2 A Tabulation of Historical Ontology	59
	3.2.3 Do Historical Categories Capture Social Kinds?	59
	3.3 Methodological Localism	64
	3.4 The Heterogeneous Social	69
	3.4.1 Variation	71
	3.4.2 The Heterogeneous Social Whole	73
	3.4.3 What Cities Have in Common	76
	3.5 Conclusions	78
	4 Large Structures	80
	4.1 Is France a Nation	83
	4.2 A Modern World System	85
	4.3 Revolutions of 1848	88
	4.4 Explaining Fascism	90
	4.5 Generalizations	92
	4.5.1 Similarity and Difference	94
	4.6 Predictions	96
	4.7 The New Meso-History	99
	5 Causal Mechanisms	103
	5.1 A Range of Causal Questions	104
	5.2 Causal Realism	107
	5.3 Examples of Social Mechanisms	113
	5.3.1 Transportation as a Large-Scale Historical Factor	114
	5.4 Many Small Causes	118
	5.4.1 Causes of the Chinese Revolution	119
	5.5 General and Specific Causal Hypotheses	123
	5.6 Causal Reasoning in Meso-History	125
	6 History of Technology	127
	6.1 History of Electric Power	128
	6.2 Alternative Forms of Industrial Organization	131
	6.3 Railroads as a Historical Cause	133
	6.4 Water Transport in China	137
	6.5 Agriculture and the Natural Environment	138
	6.6 Warfare: The Franco-Prussian War	139
	6.7 Technology and Culture	142
	6.8 Observations from the Examples	144
	7 Economic History	147
	7.1 What Is Economic History	147
	7.1.1 Explanation in Economic History	149
	7.1.2 Problems of Evidence	152
	7.2 Aspects of Chinas Rural Economy	153
	7.2.1 Agricultural History	154
	7.2.2 Assessment of Available Sources of Data	157
	7.3 Population History	159
	7.3.1 The Eurasia Project on Population and Family History	161
	7.4 Comparative Economic History	165
	7.4.1 Scale and Scope of Comparison	167
	7.4.2 Alternative Pathways of Development in Europe and Asia	168
	7.4.3 Agricultural Revolution and Stagnation Within Europe	170
	7.5 Contingency and Alternative Pathways of Development	174
	8 The Involution Debate	177
	8.1 Chinas Early Modern Rural Economy	177
	8.2 Involution or Revolution in the Early Qing	179
	8.2.1 Population Trends	182
	8.2.2 Productivity	182
	8.2.3 Real Wage Comparisons	184
	8.2.4 Institutional Settings	184
	8.2.5 Environmental Exhaustion	185
	8.2.6 Conclusions on the Involution Debate	187
	8.3 Immiseration or Gradual Improvement in Republican China	188
	8.3.1 The Received View	189
	8.3.2 Revision	190
	8.3.3 Price Integration	192
	8.3.4 Output	192
	8.3.5 Real Wages	193
	8.3.6 Productivity	195
	8.3.7 Distributive Consequences	196
	8.3.8 Conclusion on Brandt	197
	8.4 A Puzzle	197
	8.5 Import for Chinese Studies	198
	9 Mentalits	201
	9.1 Mentalits in Historical Inquiry	202
	9.2 Components of a Mentalit	204
	9.2.1 Interpretation of Historical Actors and Behaviors	205
	9.2.2 Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre	209
	9.3 How Is a Social Identity Created and Reproduced	211
	9.3.1 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class	214
	9.4 Are Mentalits Stable Over Time	217
	9.5 Are Mentalits Historical Causes	219
	9.5.1 Charles Tilly and Contentious Politics	220
	9.6 Assessment	221
	Conclusion	223
	References	227
	Index	239