Social history
Social history describes the program of a " historical social science " to consider the history of societies as a whole . After decades of history had broken down into more and more specialist areas: economic , social , political and intellectual or cultural history , the countermovement was the demand to integrate these partial analyzes of economy, political rule and culture into an overall social view.
From French historical studies, there are already works from the School of Annales ( Fernand Braudel and others) for certain regions; from the British, the universal historical representations by Eric Hobsbawm are comparable.
In Germany, Hans-Ulrich Wehler is one of the main representatives of this research program. All five volumes of his German history of society are now available. These describe the development of Germany from the feudalism of the old Reich (around 1700) to the end of the division of Germany in 1990 . The volumes follow a uniform scheme. An overview of demographics and population development is followed by an analysis of the economy, the structures of social inequality, the structures and developments of political rule and culture.
Wolfgang Schluchter had initially called Max Weber's project of a “problem-dependent analysis of the sequence of structural principles without claim to universal history” “social history”. Schluchter withdrew this designation from a new edition a few years later, because Weber used the concept of order instead of the concept of society . In the history of society, the economy , political domination, culture and inequality are at the center of interest; with Weber, however, the economy and political rule are partial orders that produce and reproduce inequality and must be culturally supported. Weber reconstructs action, order and culture as action orientation, action coordination and context in different areas of life.
literature
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler: What is social history . In the S. Learn from history? Munich, 1988. pp. 115-129.
Single receipts
- ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: History as historical social science. Frankfurt / Main 1974.
- ↑ Wolfgang Schluchter: The Development of Occidental Rationalism. An analysis of Max Weber's social history. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck): Tübingen 1979. ISBN 3-16-541532-3 . P. 13
- ↑ Wolfgang Schluchter: Foreword to the paperback edition . In: ders .: The emergence of modern rationalism. An analysis of Max Weber's history of the development of the Occident . 1st edition Frankfurt am Main 1988. ISBN 3-518-28947-0 . P. 16f.