Social History: On the Way to Becoming a Historical Culture Science

Abstract

The reception of concepts and notions as perceived by those involved in sociology of knowledge, cultural anthropology and modern sociology, has triggered the critical responses of the first generation of social historians in the 1980s. The labels such as “history of everyday life”, “history of knowledge” and “historical anthropology” which had been by then put into force, were scrutinized. On the other hand the label “social history” surfaced as all-embracing Passepartout. Instead of inventing all over again new fashionable labels that cause more confusion than clarity, the author proposes to stick to social history and to broaden it to cultural history or historical cultural science. Instead of laying stress on structures we should finally emphasize “meaning” or sense, which accompanies the activity of historical actors. This approach mainly anticipates the use of the relevant methods of textual analysis within the methodological repertoire of “historical social science”.