Narration, Identity, and Historical Consciousness


Book Description

A generally acknowledged characteristic of modern life, namely the temporalization of experience, inextricable from our intensified experience of contingency and difference, has until now remained largely outside psychology's purview. Wherever questions about the development, structure, and function of the concept of time have been posed - for example by Piaget and other founders of genetic structuralism - they have been concerned predominantly with concepts of "physical", chronometrical time, and related concepts (e.g., "velocity"). All the contributions to the present volume attempt to close this gap. A larger number are especially interested in the narration of stories. Overviews of the relevant literature, as well as empirical case studies, appear alongside theoretical and methodological reflections. Most contributions refer to specifically historical phenomena and meaning-constructions. Some touch on the subjects of biographical memory and biographical constructions of reality. Of all the various affinities between the contributions collected here, the most important is their consistent attention to issues of the constitution and representation of temporal experience.




Beyond History for Historical Consciousness


Book Description

As issues of history, memory, and identity collide with increasing frequency and intensity in the classroom and society, the timing is ideal to investigate the impact of these forces on twenty-first-century students. Relying on the theory of historical consciousness, this book presents the results of a comprehensive study conducted with over 600 French Canadian students that examines their narrative views of the collective past. The authors offer new evidence on how young citizens from various regions and ethnocultural groups in Quebec and Ontario think about their national history and what impact education, historical culture, and the “real-life” curriculum of meaningful experiences have on the formation of narration, identity, and historical consciousness.




Theorizing Historical Consciousness


Book Description

Our understanding of the past shapes our sense of the present and the future: this is historical consciousness. While academic history, public history, and the study of collective memory are thriving enterprises, there has been only sparse investigation of historical consciousness itself, in a way that relates it to the policy questions it raises in the present. With Theorizing Historical Consciousness, Peter Seixas has brought together a diverse group of international scholars to address the problem of historical consciousness from the disciplinary perspectives of history, historiography, philosophy, collective memory, psychology, and history education. Historical consciousness has serious implications for international relations, reparations claims, fiscal initiatives, immigration, and indeed, almost every contentious arena of public policy, collective identity, and personal experience. Current policy debates are laced with mutually incompatible historical analogies, and identity politics generate conflicting historical accounts. Never has the idea of a straightforward 'one history that fits all' been less workable. Theorizing Historical Consciousness sets various theoretical approaches to the study of historical consciousness side-by-side, enabling us to chart the future study of how people understand the past.




The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning


Book Description

A comprehensive review of the research literature on history education with contributions from international experts The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning draws on contributions from an international panel of experts. Their writings explore the growth the field has experienced in the past three decades and offer observations on challenges and opportunities for the future. The contributors represent a wide range of pioneering, established, and promising new scholars with diverse perspectives on history education. Comprehensive in scope, the contributions cover major themes and issues in history education including: policy, research, and societal contexts; conceptual constructs of history education; ideologies, identities, and group experiences in history education; practices and learning; historical literacies: texts, media, and social spaces; and consensus and dissent. This vital resource: Contains original writings by more than 40 scholars from seven countries Identifies major themes and issues shaping history education today Highlights history education as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry and academic practice Presents an authoritative survey of where the field has been and offers a view of what the future may hold Written for scholars and students of education as well as history teachers with an interest in the current issues in their field, The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning is a comprehensive handbook that explores the increasingly global field of history education as it has evolved to the present day.




History


Book Description

Without denying the importance of the postmodernist approach to the narrative form and rhetorical strategies of historiography, the author, one of Germany's most prominent cultural historians, argues here in favor of reason and methodical rationality in history. He presents a broad variety of aspects, factors and developments of historical thinking from the 18th century to the present, thus continuing, in exemplary fashion, the tradition of critical self-reflection in the humanities and looking at historical studies as an important factor of cultural orientation in practical life. Jörn Rüsen was Professor of Modern History at Universities Bochum and Bielefeld for many years. From 1994 to 1997 he was Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld. Since 1997 he has been President of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut). He specialises in theory and methodology of historical sciences, the history of historiography, intercultural aspects of historical thinking, theory of historical learning, and the history of human rights.




Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality


Book Description

In the last two decades, interest in narrative conceptions of identity has grown exponentially, though there is little agreement about what a "life-narrative" might be. In connecting Kierkegaard with virtue ethics, several scholars have recently argued that narrative models of selves and MacIntyre's concept of the unity of a life help make sense of Kierkegaard's existential stages and, in particular, explain the transition from "aesthetic" to "ethical" modes of life. But others have recently raised difficult questions both for these readings of Kierkegaard and for narrative accounts of identity that draw on the work of MacIntyre in general. While some of these objections concern a strong kind of unity or "wholeheartedness" among an agent's long-term goals or cares, the fundamental objection raised by critics is that personal identity cannot be a narrative, since stories are artifacts made by persons. In this book, Davenport defends the narrative approach to practical identity and autonomy in general, and to Kierkegaard's stages in particular.




Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self


Book Description

Is each of us the main character in a story we tell about ourselves, or is this narrative understanding of selfhood misguided and possibly harmful? Are selves and persons the same thing? And what does the possibility of sudden death mean for our ability to understand the narrative of ourselves? These questions have been much discussed both in recent philosophy and by scholars grappling with the work of the enigmatic 19th-century thinker S,Kierkegaard. For the first time, this collection brings together figures in both contemporary philosophy and Kierkegaard studies to explore pressing issues in the philosophy of personal identity and moral psychology. It serves both to advance important ongoing discussions of selfhood and to explore the light that, 200 years after his birth, Kierkegaard is still able to shed on contemporary problems.




Western Historical Thinking


Book Description

Presents 17 contributions written by an international group of historians addressing the intercultural dimension of historical theory. The editor's introduction discusses historical thinking as intercultural discourse and presents ten hypotheses that aim to define Western historical thinking. Scholars from Asia and Africa comment on his position in light of their own ideas about the sense and meaning of historical thinking. The volume wraps up with comments on the questions and issues raised by the authors and suggestions for the future of intercultural communication. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Time and History


Book Description

This series aims at bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory as well as western and non-western concepts, for which this volume offers a particularly good example. It explores cultural differences in conceptualizing time and history in countries such as China, Japan, and India as well as pre-modern societies.




Historical Tales and National Identity


Book Description

Social psychologists argue that people’s past weighs on their present. Consistent with this view, Historical Tales and National Identity outlines a theory and a methodology which provide tools for better understanding the relation between the present psychological condition of a society and representations of its past. Author Janos Laszlo argues that various kinds of historical texts including historical textbooks, texts derived from public memory (e.g. media or oral history), novels, and folk narratives play a central part in constructing national identity. Consequently, with a proper methodology, it is possible to expose the characteristic features and contours of national identities. In this book Laszlo enhances our understanding of narrative psychology and further elaborates his narrative theory of history and identity. He offers a conceptual model that draws on diverse areas of psychology - social, political, cognitive and psychodynamics - and integrates them into a coherent whole. In addition to this conceptual contribution, he also provides a major methodological innovation: a content analytic framework and software package that can be used to analyse various kinds of historical texts and shed new light on national identity. In the second part of the book, the potential of this approach is empirically illustrated, using Hungarian national identity as the focus. The author also extends his scope to consider the potential generalizations of the approach employed. Historical Tales and National Identity will be of great interest to a broad range of student and academic readers across the social sciences and humanities: in psychology, history, cultural studies, literature, anthropology, political science, media studies, sociology and memory studies.