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I Reculturalisation in economic and social history?

Source: www.neha.nl
Topic: Economic History

Sort Desciption: cross-fertilisation of economic history and art history. .... and old economic history were interdependent. In his view the effort to under- ...

Content Inside: I ‘Reculturalisation’ in economic and social history? PAUL M.M. KLEP 1. Introduction In September 2000 the Dutch Posthumus Institute invited Peer Vries (Leiden) Jack Goody (Cambridge) Arthur Wolf (Stanford) Ulrich Wengenroth (Munich) John F. Wilson (Belfast) and Willem Frijhoff (Free University of Amsterdam) to discuss ‘the cultural thing’ in economic and social history 1 . The task of obtaining a clear picture of the possible significance of culture cul- tural factors or (new) cultural history in the field of economic and social history is no easy matter. Lynn Hunt and other new cultural historians have expressed severe criticism about the whole historical endeavour of economic and social history. Culturalist approaches in history share some basic idealist positions: we should talk about people in history who are motivated by pictures or structures in their mind and who create their own reality. Thought and language have a power of their own and mediate encase and influence behaviour. Economic and social historians tend to concentrate on the observable behaviour of people and the historical evolution or structure of their practices. Pragmaticians that they are they would try to reduce or to avoid the problem of how we can ever know what people especially ordinary people were thinking. If led by social and economic theory they would use or try to develop rather simple black boxes about individual decision making the role of costs and social sanctions. Of course as Walter Licht remarks the culturalistic response is “What shaped reactions? What understandings values or visions affected decisions? That is critical.” 2 This small .1 The N.W. Posthumus Institute is an inter-university co-operative institute for econo- mic and social history in the Netherlands (http://www.kun.nl/posthumus). The Conferen- ce held at the University of Nijmegen was organised by Paul Klep and Loes Lemmens (nwp@let.kun.nl). The author ...

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