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History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet
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History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet

A special issue of Histories (ISSN 2409-9252).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 32398

Special Issue Editor

Prof. em. Dr. Jon Mathieu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, University of Lucerne, 6002 Lucerne, Switzerland
Interests: mountain history; family and kinship history; agrarian history
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

 

We would like to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue “History from Scratch – Voices Across the Planet“, published as one of the first issues of the newly launched open access journal Histories, published by MDPI (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/histories).

 

Summary

‘Rethinking’ was a great intellectual trend of the 1990s: History, and the humanities and social sciences in general, were expected to be self-reflective and distrustful of conventions, continually breaking new ground. In our field, in 1997, this debate resulted in the launching of the journal “Rethinking History”. The journal was assigned to a small group of historians in the United Kingdom and the United States. Ever since they have made an effort to produce a conventional (subscription) journal with non-conventional (postmodern) objectives.

The starting point is rather different with Histories, launched in 2020 by MDPI. The journal was born digital and open access, as our age has certainly become more global (as tragically shown by the coronavirus pandemic). A true effort can be made to go beyond the UK–US research communities. This Special Issue will collect voices from all continents except the Antarctic. In the meantime, postmodernity has dissolved and we are back to modernity (or heading towards post-post-modernity, as some say). There is no imperative of ‘rethinking’ history at every corner and end. Instead, we can—in this particular occasion with the launch of a journal—invent it from scratch, and imagine the field as we would wish it to be, or precisely not wish it to be. Therefore, as a contributor, you are invited to choose aspects and points of the historical field and profession that catch your attention and that you would highlight for a larger audience.

 

Possible aspects and points

  • Purpose of doing history: response to (particular) social, environmental or political concerns, creating historical consciousness for a group or in general, personal curiosity, or self-affirmation, etc.
  • Role of (particular) models, theories, philosophies, ideologies, or avant-garde provocations for historical practice; the importance of historical methods (source criticism, discourse analysis, data mining, etc.).
  • Role of academic conventions and restrictions of the historical field, usefulness or uselessness of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches.
  • Particular subjects, social groups, chronological periods, or geographical areas historically under-researched or over-researched.
  • Role of (various forms of) writing or presenting history: in journals, social media and internet platforms, museums, with reenactments, films and videos, video games, etc.
  • Professional situation and career prospects of historians, the position of the historical discipline in universities, academia, and/or the public sphere.
  • Particular wishes for the development of the new open access journal Histories.
  • Combination of mentioned points or other aspects not mentioned.

Prof. em. Dr. Jon Mathieu
Editor-in-Chief


Manuscript Submission Information


Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Histories is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). For published papers in this Special Issue, the APC will be fully subsidized by MDPI. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 

Keywords

  • History
  • Historical methods
  • Historical consciousness
  • Social concerns
  • Environmental concerns
  • Political concerns
  • Chronological periods

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

4 pages, 176 KiB  
Editorial
History from Scratch: Introduction to the Special Issue
by Jon Mathieu
Histories 2021, 1(4), 297-300; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1040025 - 9 Dec 2021
Viewed by 2325
Abstract
This is the first Special Issue of the online journal “histories”, launched in 2020 [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

15 pages, 283 KiB  
Article
How to Write a Positivist Legal History: Lessons from the 18th and 19th Centuries English Jurists William Blackstone and James Fitzjames Stephen
by Susanna Menis
Histories 2021, 1(3), 169-183; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1030017 - 12 Aug 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3433
Abstract
This paper is about the shaping of the law understood as a positivist enterprise. Positivist law has been the object of contentious debate. Since the 1960s, and with the surfacing of revisionist histories, it has been suggested that the abstraction of the doctrine [...] Read more.
This paper is about the shaping of the law understood as a positivist enterprise. Positivist law has been the object of contentious debate. Since the 1960s, and with the surfacing of revisionist histories, it has been suggested that the abstraction of the doctrine of criminal law is due to its categorisation in early histories. However, it is argued here that positivism was hardly an intentional master plan of autocratic social control. Rather, it is important to recognise that historians do not provide a value-free recount of history. This paper examines this assertion by drawing on the writings of the English jurists William Blackstone and his work Commentaries on the Law of England (1765), and James Fitzjames Stephen’s A History of the Criminal Law of England (1883). Taking these scholars not as mere a-historical writers but reflecting on the fact that they inevitably ‘functioned’ as conduits of their own social practise opens an inquiry into the social response to a social need, which was already under way long before their time. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
23 pages, 400 KiB  
Article
Histories of Technology and the Environment in Post/Colonial Africa: Reflections on the Field
by Ute Hasenöhrl
Histories 2021, 1(3), 122-144; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1030015 - 10 Aug 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 6995
Abstract
Much has happened since Dipesh Chakrabarty, at the turn of the millennium, paradigmatically called for a “provincialization of Europe”. The paper connects with three major trends in current history of technology, exploring these threads with regards to the Global South in general and [...] Read more.
Much has happened since Dipesh Chakrabarty, at the turn of the millennium, paradigmatically called for a “provincialization of Europe”. The paper connects with three major trends in current history of technology, exploring these threads with regards to the Global South in general and post/colonial Africa in particular: (1) exemplifying and (later) disentangling transnational connections; (2) rethinking (colonial) infrastructures; and (3) exploring technologies-in-use, everyday practices and perceptions. Unpacking established Science and Technology concepts such as Thomas P. Hughes “Large (Socio)Technical Systems” (LTS) approach for post/colonial contexts, the paper argues that we need to move beyond the much-invoked “key figures” and drivers of global technological (ex)change and scrutinize place- and time-specific landscapes of technology instead. In particular, we need to pay closer attention to seemingly peripheral actors and actants as well as to the manifold interrelations between the human and the “natural” world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
14 pages, 300 KiB  
Article
“Industrious Revolution” Revisited: A Variety of Diligence Derived from a Long-Term Local History of Kuta in Kyô-Otagi, a Former County in Japan
by Satoshi Murayama and Hiroko Nakamura
Histories 2021, 1(3), 108-121; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1030014 - 9 Jul 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4793
Abstract
Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward [...] Read more.
Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward an “Industrial Revolution.” However, Japanese villages followed a different path from the Western trajectory of the “Industrious Revolution,” which is recognized as the first step to industrialization. This article will explore how a different form of “industriousness” developed in Japan, covering medieval, early modern, and modern times. It will first describe why the communal village system was established in Japan and how this unique institution, the self-reliance system of a village, affected commercialization and industrialization and was sustained until modern times. Then, the local history of Kuta Village in Kyô-Otagi, a former county located close to Kyoto, is considered over the long term, from medieval through modern times. Kuta was not directly affected by the siting of new industrial production bases and the changes brought to villages located nearer to Kyoto. A variety of diligent interactions with living spaces is introduced to demonstrate that the industriousness of local women was characterized by conscience-driven perseverance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
8 pages, 208 KiB  
Article
The Archive’s Moment
by Lila Caimari
Histories 2021, 1(3), 100-107; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1030013 - 4 Jul 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2868
Abstract
This article summarizes observations on the “archive question” as it manifests itself in Argentina at the present moment. Based on a presentation delivered in Buenos Aires, it opens with a general appraisal of the multiple dynamics (political, disciplinary, technological) converging on this issue. [...] Read more.
This article summarizes observations on the “archive question” as it manifests itself in Argentina at the present moment. Based on a presentation delivered in Buenos Aires, it opens with a general appraisal of the multiple dynamics (political, disciplinary, technological) converging on this issue. Then, it focuses on a particular dimension of this process—namely, the impact of the digital archive on the reconstruction of the Argentine past. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
18 pages, 350 KiB  
Article
In Search of the Origins of the Western Mind: McGilchrist and the Axial Age
by Susanna Rizzo and Greg Melleuish
Histories 2021, 1(1), 24-41; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1010007 - 25 Jan 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5062
Abstract
This paper considers and analyses the idea propounded by Iain McGilchrist that the foundation of Western rationalism is the dominance of the left side of the brain and that this occurred first in ancient Greece. It argues that the transformation that occurred in [...] Read more.
This paper considers and analyses the idea propounded by Iain McGilchrist that the foundation of Western rationalism is the dominance of the left side of the brain and that this occurred first in ancient Greece. It argues that the transformation that occurred in Greece, as part of a more widespread transformation that is sometimes termed the Axial Age, was, at least in part, connected to the emergence of literacy which transformed the workings of the human brain. This transformation was not uniform and took different forms in different civilisations, including China and India. The emergence of what Donald terms a “theoretic” culture or what can also be called “rationalism” is best understood in terms of transformations in language, including the transition from poetry to prose and the separation of word and thing. Hence, the development of theoretic culture in Greece is best understood in terms of the particularity of Greek cultural development. This transition both created aporias, as exemplified by the opposition between the ontologies of “being” and “becoming”, and led to the eventual victory of theoretic culture that established the hegemony of the left side of the brain. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
10 pages, 220 KiB  
Article
Is Historical Temporality “Heterogeneous” and “Contingent”? William H. Sewell’s Cultural Turn
by Jon Mathieu
Histories 2021, 1(1), 12-21; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories1010005 - 18 Nov 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5480
Abstract
“Time” and “temporality” are difficult and central notions for historical scholarship. They exist in many varieties, which renders generalizations challenging. An interesting attempt has been made by US-scholar William H. Sewell in his Logics of History. Social Theory and Social Transformation (2005). [...] Read more.
“Time” and “temporality” are difficult and central notions for historical scholarship. They exist in many varieties, which renders generalizations challenging. An interesting attempt has been made by US-scholar William H. Sewell in his Logics of History. Social Theory and Social Transformation (2005). He qualifies historical temporality as fateful, contingent, complex, eventful, and heterogeneous. It is rare for a historian to be so explicit. Sewell was inspired by discussions with sociologists and anthropologists during his transition from social to cultural history in the 1980 and 1990s. This article examines the question whether and how the change of the intellectual environment impacted the theoretical outcome. Are Sewell’s attributes to historical temporality plausible for historical scholarship in general, or do they reflect the boundary work of a particular group? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History from Scratch – Voices across the Planet)
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