krls204 2. what is history?

what is history?

two ideas:

1. The Past

• everything that happened at an earlier time

• occurred and over

2. Historiography

• Writing about the past

• How historians see, read, & write about the past, i.e. interpretation

• Representations of the past based on fragments

• Dynamic & changing because we can never regain the past but we can recollect the past through different people

Three ways or more to define sport:

•  inclusive designation of activities as sport

• distinguish recreation from sport based on modernization theory model

• see sport (broadly defined) as part of larger economic and cultural production

historiography

‘the writing of history.”

• It is an active debate about past experience, argued by successive

• generations of writers.

• It is dynamic & open to changes in re- interpretation, evidence, and methods.

• It is influenced by the writer as well as interdisciplinary crosscurrents of thinking.

• It offers multiple perspectives, recognizing more than one way to see the past.

• How we understand the past is also shaped by present day circumstances and changing times.

different “buckets” of history

• traditional history: “major events over daily life”

• social history; “the study of the everyday lives, experiences, and social structures of ordinary people rather than just political or military elites”

• cultural history: “examines the past by interpreting the shared beliefs, values, rituals, and everyday practices of a group rather than focusing solely on political or economic events.”

traditional western history

• Western European tradition

• History of great men & politics:

  • written by elite men (kings, emperors, popes, generals, etc., highlighting political status and history. women were not focused on, as men were seen as superior)

  • top down approach focused on social elites

• Style: chronological narratives (stories)

• Function:

  • commemoration

  • ancestor worship

  • nation building

  • moral lessons for future

Where can we find leisure, sport, and health in traditional western history?

hunting, parties, celebrations, tapestries

early european trends toward social history

• circa 1900 academic historians began expanding beyond “great men & politics”

• Critical of traditional history

  • they wanted to open the doors wider and see the lives of everyday people, not just the greats

• German & French scholars

  • –e.g. Marc Bloch & Lucien Febvre, c. 1920s; The French “Annalistes”

    • editors of Les Annales d'histoire économique et sociales, a peer- reviewed journal for scholarship

    • their doing was quite radical at the time

social history

“A wider & more human history”

• Including all human activities, not just politics & great men

• Everyday life & all people

• Influenced by social sciences & quantitative methodologies

  • e.g. analysis of census population data (historians looked to consensus data too look at things, like the pandemic of 1818-1819)

  • applications

• Developed in Canada c. late 1960s…

  • Social movements, political climate, intellectual change shifted how history was written

  • Questioning whose history are we writing?

  • E.G. Sport History sub discipline emerged in Canadian history (Morrow & Wamsley)

cultural history

• Since 1970s, looks at popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience

• Understanding a practice in popular culture and its symbolic meanings in people’s lives in earlier times

  • e.g. what did rural curling bonspiels or early snowboarding mean to them?

• Influenced by qualitative methods from anthropology and history

  • e.g. analysis of a group’s stories, records, and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, ceremonies, and arts.

canadian history

1. Traditional Canadian History

• Politics, economy, military

2. New Social & Cultural history: focus on “the forgotten majority”

Working class history (Bryan Palmer)

• Women’s history

  • Children, family, elderly, gender

• Urban history, Ethno history (diff contexts and backgrounds)

• Sport history (Maxwell Howell)

• Critiques: Bruce Kidd

  • opened doors to also think about leisure, sport and health on a more serious note!

  • allows these topics to be more known and be more understood.

  • howell was one of the first profs to write more about leisure history and its events.

  • kidd said howell was taking sport out of context (ignoring class, sex, gender, ethnicity, political, economic, and social life)

• Other Historical Subfields: Science,

• Medicine, Environment, Indigenous, etc.

information literacy

a set of abilities to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." Abilities to identify need for information and find, evaluate, and use it effectively