Summary of the book 'What is Cultural History' by Peter Burke for the course 'Civilization, Culture and Society. Fundamentals of Cultural History' (Utrecht University'
- ‘Classic’ phase (1800-1950)
- Phase of the ‘social history of art’ (1930’s)
- Discovery of the history of popular culture (1960’s)
- ‘New cultural history’
Keeping in mind that the division between these phases were not as clear at the time as
people remember them after the event.
Classic period
- Cultural historians concentrated on the history of the classics, a ‘canon’ of
masterpieces of art, literature, philosophy, science etc.
- Concerned themselves with the connotations between the different arts, focused
on the whole rather than parts
o Spirit of the age, ‘zeitgeist’
- Hermeneutics: the art of interpretation
Burckhardt:
- The recurrent, the constant and the typical
Huizinga:
- The principal aim of the cultural historian is to portray patterns of culture, to
describe the characteristic thoughts and feelings of an age and their expressions
or embodiments in works of literature and art.
- Discovers these patterns by studying ‘themes’, ‘symbols’, ‘sentiments’ and ‘forms’.
The idea of ‘popular culture’ or volkskultur originated in the same place and time as
‘cultural history’: in Germany in the late 18th century.
- 1960’s: historians turned to the study of popular culture
Chapter II: problems of cultural history
- Serial history: the analysis of a chronological series of documents.
- Clapham: problem > subjective readings of texts (only ‘wretched Frenchman and
not other) > eigen mening bevestigen
o Alternative: content analysis.
o Discourse analysis: linguistic analysis of texts longer than a single
sentence
Marxist debates
- The main Marxist critique of the classic approach to culture is that it is ‘in the air’,
lacking contact with any economic or social base.
, - Second Marxist critique of the classic cultural historians is to accuse them of
overestimating cultural homogeneity and of ignoring cultural conflicts
- Cultural hegemony: the idea that the ruling classes rule not only directly, through
force and the threat of force, but because their ideas have come to be accepted by
the ‘subordinate classes’.
- Tradition changes: ‘what is handed down changes in the course of transmission
to a new generation’
Popular culture:
- ‘Who are the people? Everyone? Or just the non-elite?’
o Just the non elite: run the danger of homogeneity of the excluded
- Popular cultures (plural)
Chapter III: The moment of historical anthropology
- Use of the term ‘culture’ in the plural and in an increasing broad sense.
- An interest in culture, cultural history and in ‘cultural studies’ became
increasingly visible in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
- New cultural History
- grafted on tradition of Burckhardt and Huizinga > greater emphasis on ‘history
of every day life’
- Culture once used to mean ‘high culture’ now moved closer to the view of culture
held by anthropologists.
- Clifford Geertz: thick description
- 1970s: micro history
o Reaction against style of social history that followed the model of
economic history > quantative methods and describing general trends
without communicating much sense of the variety or the specificity of
local cultures
o Response to the encounter with anthropology
o Response to growing disillusionment with the so-called ‘grand narrative’
of progress, rise of western civilization etc.
Chapter IV: A New Paradigm?
- Phrase New Cultural History (NCH) came into use in the 80’s
o Dominant form of cultural history today
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