Microhistory Dr Charles Walton The development of microhistory

Microhistory Dr Charles Walton

The development of microhistory • Einaudi “microstorie” and Quaderni Storici (1966) • Ginzburg, Giovanni Levi, Edoardo Grendi, Carlo Poni et al • history from below • history of mentalities • Alltagsgeschichte - history of everyday life

The development of microhistory • dissatisfaction with large-scale analysis • quantitative analysis (Annales) • disillusion with grand narratives • “…struggling to eliminate the distortions produced by the gigantification of historical scale, which has crushed all individuals to insignificance under the weight of vast impersonal structures and forces” [Edward Muir]

The development of microhistory Dissatisfaction with • Cost of research! • Lack of individual agency

The development of microhistory Aspects • Microscope rather than telescope • Inductive, small clues • History from below, but with individuals • Lived experience, not group determinism • Marxist paradigm tainted by growing awareness of Soviet authoritarianism

Carlo Ginzburg • born 1939 in Turin • Professor at Universities in Bologne, Los Angeles and Pisa

• use of court records • The Cheese and the Worms (Il formaggio e i vermi; Einaudi, 1976; English trans. 1980) • Night Battles (I Benandanti; 1966) • Domenico Scandella aka Menocchio • Inquisition trials 1582 -6 and 1599

The cheese and the worms • “in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. . . ”

Aims • Desire to capture popular culture (counter-culture) through the records of elites • Popular vs. Elite culture VS Mass culture controlled by elites • Reflection of ethos of 1960 s and 1970 s, which the events of 1968 would also mirror

• “Microhistory as a practice is essentially based on the reduction of the scale of observation, on a microscopic analysis and an intensive study of the documentary material” • “microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved. . . Phenomena previously considered to be sufficiently described and understood assume completely new meanings by altering the scale of observation. It is then possible to use these results to draw far wider generalizations. . . ” [Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory”, pp. 101 -2]

Scale • individuals or small groups eg. Montaillou and Carnival at Romans (Le Roy Ladurie) • Return of Martin Guerre (Zemon-Davis) • primary sources • tiny details • jeux d‘échelles (Jacques Revel)

Evidence • The “evidential paradigm” (Ginzburg) • anomalies • the “exceptional normal” (E. Grendi) • clues, traces, hints

Social vs. Cultural Microhistory • Parachutists (social) vs. truffle hunters (cultural) • Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exocist (1988) • Examined a family of ‘mediators’ (podesta) whose story of demise offers a window into the past • ‘Window’ onto socio-economic relations

Social vs. Cultural Microhistory • Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exocist • Property prices don’t obey normal supply-and-demand logic – no homo oeconomicus visible • Buying land = aid to kin (explains why sale prices are so oddly high)

Microhistory and Postmodernism • Connection has been asserted BUT there are good reasons to doubt this • Microhistorians search for stable cultural backdrop to make sense of evidence • Begins with facts then works up to theory (unlike much poststructuralist approaches)

• The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis (1983) “That it is an unusual case serves me well, for a remarkable dispute can sometimes uncover motivations and values that are lost in the welter of the everyday. My hope is to show that the adventures of three young villagers are not too many steps beyond the more common experience of their neighbours, that an imposter’s fabrication has links with more ordinary ways of creating personal identity” [p. 4]

Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) • anthropology/ ethnography • “thick description” (Clifford Geertz)

Sources • trials as sources • highlighting the gaps • distortion, partiality, process of research • the historian as hunter • truth, not relativism

Criticisms • (too? ) compelling stories • relationship of margins to centre? • relationship of micro to macro? • causes of historical change? • Are these stories even true?

Responses to Criticism and Evolution • Multiscopal Analysis (macro and micro) [Bernard Lepetit] • Must work from empirical up to broader interpretations • We must reject the 19 century ‘hardsciences’ criteria to assess what historians do. We must embrace intuition and partial answers. th

Responses to Criticism and • Causal processes happen on the micro. Evolution level • Carr: the historian is ‘not really interested in the unique but in what is general in the unique’ • Perhaps truth of the event is less important than narrative strategies as windows into past mentalities