Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, & Narrative in Microhistory (School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar Series) - Softcover

Brooks, James F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1930618948 ISBN 13: 9781930618947

Publisher: SAR Press, 2009

Synopsis

Growing unease with grand theories of modernization and global integration brought twelve scholars from four disciplines to the School for Advanced Research for an experiment with the research genre known as microhistory. These authors now call for a return to narrative, detailed analysis on a small scale, and the search for unforeseen meanings embedded in cases. The essential feature of this perspective is a search for significance in the microcosm, the large lessons discovered in small worlds. Urging the recognition of potential commonalities among archaeology, history, sociology, and anthropology, the authors propose that historical interpretation should move freely across disciplines, historical study should be held up to the present, and individual lives should be understood as the intersection of biography and history. The authors develop these themes in a kaleidoscope of places and periods-West Africa, the Yucatan peninsula, Italy, Argentina, California, Brazil, Virginia, and Boston, among others. They illuminate discrete places, people, and processes through which both the intimacy of lived experience and the more distant forces that shaped their days can be viewed simultaneously.

About this title

About the Author

Ethnohistorian James F. Brooks served as the president and chief executive officer at the School for Advanced Research and is currently a professor of anthropology and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His many publications include Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAR Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1930618948
• ISBN 13: 9781930618947
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 346
• Editor: DeCorse Christopher R. N., Walton John