Historiography and spatiality reproduce excellent article published on the blog "To understand history," Fábio Pestana Ramos. Fabio holds a Ph.D. in History Social USP and university teacher:
Historiography and spatiality The approach to spatiality in the context of historiography, has two distinct forms of analysis.
First and most obvious point, one that encompasses the concept of history as a study of man in time and space, territoriality geographical addressed by historians.
Then a more comprehensive and relevant theme to the historiography, the division of historical knowledge in areas Theoretical diversified, within which the geographic question is also present as a small part of its wide wingspan.
Thinking conceptually, the story refers to "always certain processes of human life in a diachronic - that is, during the passage of time - or that relate in other ways, but always very intensely, with an idea of temporality. "
As established to linguistics, also the successive terms in history not replace each other over time, making the historicity of a succession of events, studied by means of sync, the understanding of the structures.
A perspective that refers to the geographical and political context, the social space that ends entering the imagery, iconography, literature, and finally the virtual spaces, while penetrating the local and regional levels.
approach until the 1950s, most commonly carried by geographers, sociologists and anthropologists, in a sense, linked with the Oral History individual reports written by unregistered, restricted to the memory of certain people.
Thus, these studies are just a small piece of the great theoretical web that has formed around the professionalized historiography since the nineteenth century.
From the pursuit of scientific, there is now a wealth of historical knowledge shared by the fields, for example, Social History, Economic History, History Cultural, Demographic History, History Politics, History Serial, Micro-History and History Quantitative.
All of them, notions that refer to dimensions or factors that help define the political, social, economic and cultural reference to classifications that relate to the type sources with which historians deal, or the approaches used to address these sources.
In fact, ratings that bring internally subdivisions regarding the environments, subjects and objects, resulting historiographical other looks like the History of Women, Children's Story, a History of Marginal, History of Cities, Rural History, History of Sexuality and hysteria ; Art laughed.
Spatiality tambéma territories belonging historiographical theorists have determined that the narratives, forming schools of thought such as positivism, the methodical German school, Marxism and Annales.
Not to mention the regions that the story borders on other areas of human knowledge, which would pass on the history and philosophies of the various concepts involved.
Although geographical spatiality and concerning the division of historical knowledge in fields, at first glance may seem distinct, are closely related, are interdependent.
As the story a science that studies the past, analyzing the changes, to understand the present; this attempt to rescue the last study of man in time and space, always a bias for theoretical concepts that complement and blend together to build historical knowledge.
Therefore, to analyze the composition of contemporary historiography, raises this dual debate, because the very concept of interdisciplinarity, which brought the story to the issue of geographical spaces Charts, took a look formally belonging to another form of spatiality: the theoretical.
The History and Geography before Annales History and geography are the social sciences that differ from the natural sciences, biological or accurate.
While the story examines the historical processes, seeking the development of social organization, economic, political, administrative and cultural.
Geography studies the territories and its transformation, seeks to analyze the human being within the context nature, its relationship with the changes it causes.
apparently distinct as to subject matter and approach, are areas that complement and complete.
A reflection that was conceived by geographers and anthropologists long before the historians glimpse.
Until the eighteenth century, geography has not yet considered a science, tried to work with general themes, cosmographic, placing the Earth in the universe and know it and trying to decipher it; work was descriptive, empirical, using an approach that mirrored the dichotomy methodological mathematized.
However, as Milton said Santos in the late nineteenth century, geography was reborn committed to imperialist ideology dominant at the time.
passed to establish a science and philosophy that theorized and justified colonialism, with new territorial conquests, political and economic, making wide use of history to theorize and justify European domination , went to Africa and Asia. The
anthropological view, even before the appearance of this area of human knowledge and science, texts of philosophers, chroniclers, travelers and soldiers portrayed the human experience, linking it to geographical issues specific circumstances, to explain the development of civilizations, religions and cultures.
In the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment anthropology rationalized, discussing the relationships between people, again using auxiliary tools such as history and geography.
Although these works were restricted to individual narratives that pass, in the nineteenth century, also serve to justify Eurocentric theories that inferior peoples dominated by colonialism, as the natives of America.
In history, geography was present only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when ideas developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the late nineteenth century were incorporated into the theory of history. Anxious to demonstrate that capitalism would be a transient event, before the emergence of a revolutionary class, the emergence of a communal society; finished transposing concepts important to the theoretical context of historical knowledge, creating a new school of historiography.
Marx created a rational system of interpreting reality, conceived in terms of movement and change, marked by economic determinism, combining philosophical reflection with political practice.
originated such a wide range of interpretations and developments that Marx himself, before dying, said to make sure he does not was a Marxist.
One of these developments was the emergence of the Marxist school of historiography, deeply concerned with theoretical issues, as Marx to a theory could not be thought without correspondence with the historical context and should find their roots in reality to transform it.
This feature, in specific, also created splits within the Marxist school of historiography, making it somewhat confusing, in spite of two common characteristics in all directions: the adoption of dialectical and historical materialism as the central focus of analysis, focused, obviously, to achieve the Marxist principles.
Marx had borrowed the concept of Hegel's dialectic, the examination of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, forming a sort of dialogue with himself, which should foster revolutionary practice; appropriating the concept of historical materialism of Feuerbach, a trend that started from the economic basis to explain other levels reality such as religion or politics.
This bias has turned the story into a theoretical concept aimed at transforming society, a revolutionary practice of science through the study of the past.
concept that needed the context of territoriality to manifest itself as a method of analysis embedded in historiography, as historical materialism was one of the issues geographical determinants economic conditions and, consequently, political, social and cultural rights.
However, the true interdisciplinarity between history and geography began to be built only with geographical school of Paul Vidal de la Blache, a geographer who has worked together with historians from 1905 by establishing relations between the notion of "space" and "region."
The geographic model La Blache was opposed to the school of German geographical Ratzel.
While the latter was frankly deterministic, giving an almost linear influence of environment on human destiny, La Blache worked with the idea of a geographical possibilities.
This means that, even putting the geographical environment in the center of the analysis of human life, La Blache sought to emphasize the various possible responses that could be raised by humans face the challenges of the medium.
Later, Lucien Febvre, and later Braudel, would adopt this model, inspiring further work that would become classics of historiography conceived around the spatiality.
The geographical spatiality in Annales The rise of the Annales School in 1929, a critical reaction to historical conceptions of the nineteenth century, notably rejecting positivist and methodical emphasis on politics, diplomacy and wars, as well as the economistic approach of Marxism, brought the question of spatiality in the final for the story, ie in a double sense, both geographical am as theoretical.
Annales wanted to adopt a sociological approach, combining the study of geography sociology and history to understand the facts and historical changes, paying special attention to everyday life.
Breaking with the old methods, started at the same time, a new approach to analyze the facts in time and space, revisiting the concept of history.
This is purposed to discuss the history, against the collection of facts perpetrated by previous trends.
Circumscribed to academics, conceptualizing the story broadly, encompassing the study of human production alive; Annales unfolded in various theoretical lines and fields of research, notably serving as basis for creating departments of both economic and social history by fostering debate about the theoretical nature of historical knowledge, now incorporated into the historiographical landscape.
However, the earlier presentations of this new way of thinking about history, and applications of concepts derived from spatial geographical school of Paul Vidal de la Blache, appeared in the work history with Earth and Human Evolution, published in 1922 by Lucien Febvre Therefore, even from before the foundation of the journal Annales: economics, society and civilization.
Febvre pioneered the modern concept of spatiality historical, describing the relationship between the physical environment and society, seen as necessary elements to study the macro-issues. Within this context
, represented the second generation of Annales, Fernand Braudel revolutionized in fact the approach of territorial spatiality, uniting assumptions of history and geography, with the publication of The Mediterra ; neo and the Mediterranean world at the time of Philip II in 1949.
At work, he showed how it was possible to decompose the time the story unfolded plans: the individual time, social time and time geography.
individual would be fixed in time history not as a collectivity of man, but of man as an individual, with rapid and dynamic changes, allowing the historian to observe events.
Exactly the kind of approach that would concentrate most of the historiography, and the short duration of time, all that changes very quickly, therefore, more easily seen.
Social time would be the plan by which we can observe the social history of groups and clusters, belonging to a slowly paced story, which is limited to population growth and the economy, elements belonging to long duration.
would, therefore, the time of the structures that change very slowly, making those who experience it is not aware of these changes, in this sense, resembling more to that then it was called the average duration.
time represent a geographic history almost motionless, which satisfies man's relationship with its environment.
A story that is slowly and suffers few changes.
mountainous regions and population who live there, provide a good example of temporality, showing how, in this dimension, customs, linked to geographic features, change little, since their environment does not change, what Braudel called the very long duration.
For him, historians concentrated their attention only on processes of short duration, leaving aside the other temporalities, offering only a glimpse of history, without reaching any elucidaçã Others What
involved, therefore also leave spatialities geographical background.
To achieve the goal of reading the starting of this month, would be needed macroabordagens, penetrating the three modes, entering in fact the geographical spatiality and their specificities, realizing, for example, both the questions is es of regional and wider spaces.
Only then could make the writing of history a real tool for unraveling the past, clearing the night like a firefly.
Regional History and spatiality. The historiographical renewal made in the twentieth century, fostered by Annales, expanded the fields and territories of the historian, among which a theoretical spatiality that was largely inspired by reflections Braudelian which occupies twice the space of meaning: a Regional History.
Despite a history dating back to at least a decade earlier, emerged in 1970 as a response to the phenomenon of globalization that would increase from next decade.
The trend was not just small portions of a geographic territory or country, but could also address physical spatiality; before he could see through the whitespace ; it's the historical dynamics, forcing the historian to deal with the processes of differentiation of areas.
Thus, when designing a new conception of history and should have a more adequate understanding of the concerns identities linked to the Regional History was another piece of theoretical spatiality in historiography.
Simultaneously, the physical elements included in the regions to understand the demography, economy, politics, culture, after all the experiences of social groups historically linked with a territorial base in many cases geographically constituted. What
not allow history to be confused with the Regional Micro-history, since, while studying the first cut by the reality itself, the the second is a reduction of scale of observation to observe things that could not be perceived in the macro analysis. Even
because, unlike the call history to smithereens, the scale of Regional History can be a macro-analysis, both theoretically and geographically. Paradoxically, the concept encompasses other methodologies and approaches auxiliaries, such as, for example, or the cultural history of mentalities, or the concept of representations.
This is because the regional historiography tests the validity of theories developed from other parameters.
a rule, a whole country or a region, in general, the hegemony of dominant groups, tends to distort the reading of the past, forcing the historian to confront realities particular and concrete, the which often show inadequate or incomplete when analyzed by a single theoretical perspective.
Moreover, the Regional History understands itself as part of a system of relations that includes a region which should be defined by reference system that provides its principle of identity, ranging from the international system, or within one of the units of a political system, and a region whose boundaries do not coincide with the legally defined political imitate .
What has implications not only from the standpoint of the object, but also the sources.
By working with the Regional History, the historian finished studying the collective memory, built not only of particularized visions of the past, represented by orality, but also based on documents.
These provide living testimony of the past, perpetuating recordaçãoa such a point of elaboration, as Lefebvre noted, what was not recorded ends up losing, having transformed themselves into something that already is no more.
In most cases, the documents are not held in public archives and made available for research.
The historian must locate the material that may be held by families or institutions which make it difficult for several reasons.
making it easier and usual recourse to oral sources, which in this context, end up becoming an important and often the only source available and requires an attention to that research is not compromised with the interests of the interviewee or distorted responses.
This observation brings another spatiality that is theoretical at this point with the Regional History ie, the Oral History.
Requiring a historian's attempt to remain impartial, which is almost never possible in view of the professional history has, too, entered into a time and space.
Subject, therefore, the various influences, among which the theoretical spatiality, belonging or passing, in several cases, many of them walking through porous borders.
Spatiality and Territories theoretical much history as the Regional Oral History are just one of many areas of theoretical history, born at front and methodological discussions surrounding the definition of history, debates that are part also of Quest ; the spatiality of the historiographical and technical definition of territories.
this sense, whether the craft of the historian is merely the domain of these methods and techniques, limited to a theoretical set, or even a year imagination, to construct a plausible narrative, among other possible, one can not deny that the rise of the Annales School has opened a different theoretical stance and methodological .
The chain is purposed to discuss the history, against the collection of facts perpetrated by past trends, attempting to exempt themselves from ideology, although this attempt is subject to numerous criticisms, already , the historian, is the fruit of your time, you'll never draw an impartial analysis.
Upon questioning, the School was divided into several theoretical lines, inspiring even the curious and amateur historians, notably serving as a base to create departments and lines of research in the most diverse academic realm.
Similar to what happened when the University of São Paulo was founded in 1933 when, among the waves of imported foreign teachers to meet the demand for a highly qualified faculty, was present Fernand Braudel, one of the most notorious Rivers representatives Annales, and perhaps its greatest promoter.
is true that, before the theoretical thinking of the twentieth century, we had concepts that directly interfered in the concept of history, including changing the relationship between historical knowledge and other areas, such as the Enlightenment, positivism, the methodical German school or Marxism.
However, the spaces historiographical today are much more complex, comprising a major difficulty: the determination of boundaries between areas, since the concepts of entanglement and communicate continuously, hidden amid the problems, hypotheses, responses and storylines. According
Joseph D'Assunção Barros, a Brazilian historians that has been noted by numerous and illuminating work on theory of history, "one of the most interesting phenomena of historiography in the twentieth century refers to the multitude of areas where knowledge is shared today historiography. "
For the author, contemporaneously, the spaces in theoretical fits historiography, could be divided into dimensions, approaches and domains corresponding, respectively, the classical division in approaches, methods and themes . By
dimensions or approaches, he believes one way of looking at history and its role within society, foregrounding a sphere of human life over others, where we could frame the major historiographical schools until the appearance of Annales.
Although today, we could also include perspectives such as political, social, demographic, economical, anthropological, cultural as well as the history of mentalities, history the Imaginary, Geo-History, Material Culture, the History and Ethno-Psycho-History.
Despite these dimensions to mix and move as the historical context and the relationships established with approaches and policies after the advent of the claim of scientific history, the most common perspective in the nineteenth century was undoubtedly the political, intimately related to the positivism and Methodical German School.
At the end of this period, faced by the economic approach, supported by Marxism, emerged the History of Material Culture as one of its offshoots.
current that would be revitalized by the historiography in the 1970s and now gets a new breath, mingled with the New Cultural History of American historian Lynn Hunt, the latter reborn in 1989.
because, as noted Professor Thomas Elias Saliba, culture has become the key category for understanding the contemporary world, given that the social, economic, political and ideological ; magic are intertwined in their primary mode of representation.
However, the History of Culture was already present in the conceptions of Fernand Braudel, although more evident in studies of the imagination of Jacques Le Goff, was this field of study funded by least 100 years before.
emerged in the 1870s with the work of the Swiss Jacob Burckhardt, who fostered the tradition of concentration of works based on the classic story, the masterpieces of art, literature, philosophy and science.
Forging a historiography that investigates the connections between different areas and historical context of production, in order to understand what Hegel called the zeitgeist, so then already Linked to the History of Material Culture.
also opposed to political history, alongside the cultural and economic perspective, the beginning of the twentieth century built Social History, Annales and strengthened by later today in Brazil in the dominant media aca ; tamarins.
This new dimension has been crossed by other approaches, making the new arrangements suffer historiographical kaleidoscope, creating multiple fractions.
Among them, approaches or methods, conceptually defined as a way of narrating the story from certain fields of observation, resulting in different forms of treatment and choice of fonts. Where
fall Archaeology, the biographies, Micro-History, Oral History, and in a sense, even the Regional History. A theoretical spatiality
complemented by areas or themes, specific guidance between subjects and objects, with more precise definition of themes such as Gender, Sexuality, Art Ideas, Religion, Law, Daily Life, among many others.
spaces with boundaries not always clearly delineated, but that interfered in the conception of history and narrative of historians, including changing the very notion of geographical territory , resulting in multiple rows and historiographical trends.
conclusion Throughout the history of history, the very definition of the nature historical knowledge has undergone substantial changes, some more visible than others, but all engaged directly or indirectly, around the time and spatiality.
This, with respect to the last element in a double sense, both the territorial and theoretical bias. Noting
historiography, we can see clearly that each restructuring of the historical narrative was a critique of previous approaches. The
involving an intense debate confined to the scholarship of the universities represented for theses, dissertations and articles with a readership of specialized and restricted.
A stance opposing the journalistic narrative disclosure of the books written by non-specialists, in many cases whether by historians, for a wider audience.
Estas narrativas constituem um terreno fartamente explorado pelos jornalistas, historiadores do agora, o que não invalida a sua contribuição ao enriquecimento do conhecimento humano.
Since science-based, these texts represent only different views of the same reality, for this reason, some have even been incorporated into the historiography professionalized.
least because it also happens in the academic realm, where several theories offer different answers to the same problem, with some forgotten or put aside over time, while others become classic reference works.
this sense, like reading the past can never be molded into a final form, the discussion of historiography is always on the agenda of the day, always be an academic of intense discussion.
There could be different for the sake of history itself is healthy that we have different versions for the same facts, with many different narratives, so that the reader, he also subject of history, do not be at the mercy of answers, having available a framework that allows you to draw your own conclusions.
Thus, as Jacques Le Goff said, not There is no history society, which leads to the concept of historicity, the membership of each individual on their time and space, the commonalities that all people share a certain time and from which nobody can escape, whether or not professional historians.
So, if there is a paradigm in history as the concept formulated by Thomas Kuhn, confined to a referential basis upon which a theoretical set is constructed, this can only be regarded as the historical time in which the historian is limited, which ends in interfering territorial conception of spatiality and theoretical and that, paradoxically, it also interferes with the concept of temporality.
Since plural nature of historical knowledge, comprising a multiplicity of mutually contradictory theories and that plausibly explain the past, providing different views and angles that do not vanish; historiography can only be defined as a set of narratives to a limited time and space, turning and shuffling the spatiality geographical, territorial, with theoretical issues.
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