Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
4 - Evolution, rupture, and periodization
from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
By
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter sets world historical study within a larger history of periodization, showing the relation between its methodological difficulties and its immense historiographical significance. It starts with the systemization of disciplinary practice in Ranke, who inherited from the eighteenth century a paradox concerning global time. Starting with Heidegger through postmodernism and to the present, the critique of historical thought has sought a basis in distinct horizons of meaning, and therefore rupture. The limits of both return to us today the antinomy of history. The nineteenth-century institutionalization of historical thought included as a matter of course Ranke's critique of philosophical generalization. For nearly a century, world history has commonly examined its topics with methods derived from evolutionary theory. Postcolonial history jolted powerfully at the discipline's nationalist, Eurocentric, and teleological defaults. As universal chronology, historiography dislodges the idealization of "primordial" community. Contrary to Heidegger's characterization, however, historiography also simultaneously localizes and differentiates.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History , pp. 84 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
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