Overview

Through questions such as ‘What is power?’, ‘How are revolutions generated?’, ‘Does public opinion really exist?’, ‘What does terrorism mean?’ and ‘When are generations created?’, Words in Time scrutinizes the fundamental concepts by which we confer meaning to the historical and social world and what they actually signify, analysing their formation and use in modern thought within both history and the social sciences. In this volume, Francesco Benigno examines the origins and development of the words we use, critiquing the ways in which they have traditionally been employed in historical thinking and examining their potential usefulness today. Rather than being a general inventory or a specialized dictionary, this book analyses a selection of words particularly relevant not only in the idiom and jargon of the social sciences and history, but also in the discourse of ordinary people. Exploring new trends in the historical field of reflection and representing a call for a new, more conscious, historical approach to the social world, this is valuable reading for all students of historical theory and method.

Full Product Details

Author:   Francesco Benigno (Teramo University, Italy) ,  David Fairservice
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.380kg
ISBN:  

9781138943759

ISBN 10:   1138943754
Pages:   198
Publication Date:   27 April 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Acknowledgements Introduction: writing history at a time of memory 0.1 The distancing of modern 0.2 The challenge of memory 0.3 Traditional history vs memorial history? 0.4 Conclusion: a plea for critical history Part I Rethinking Early Modern Europe Chapter 1 Violence Rites of violence? Different from us Losing one’s head Conclusions: violence as judgement Chapter 2 Popular culture 2.1 The standard historiographical understanding of popular culture 2.2 A thousand Menocchio 2.3 The hermeneutical turn 2.4 Folklore and reflexive anthropology 2.5 Inventing the people 2.6 Conclusions: rethinking the concept of popular Chapter 3 Public opinion 3.1 Critique as the matrix of the crisis 3.2 An utopia of communication 3.3 A deformed ancien régime 3.4 Possible pluralisms 3.5 Conclusions: counterposed rhetorics Chapter 4 Revolutions 4.1 After the revisionisms 4.2 The mother of all revolutions 4.3 Revolutions before ""the Revolution"" 4.4 Conclusions: revolutions and public memory Part II Rethinking Modernity Chapter 5 Identity 5.1 There was once a thing called class 5.2 Between radical individualism and representations 5.3 The discovery of identity 5.4 New types of subjectivity 5.5 The modernity we have lost 5.6 The liquified world 5.7 Simul stabunt simul cadent: nation, class and identitary divisions 5.8 Conclusions: coming in terms with lost innocence Chapter 6 Power 6.1 The time of Grand Theories 6.2 The anti-positivistic reaction 6.3 Foucault 6.4 Power in social organizations 6.5 Power, institutions, identity 6.6 Conclusions: the communicative dimension of power Chapter 7 Generations 7.1 Wave on wave 7.2 Grounding the concept of generation 7.3 Historians and the concept of generation 7.4 Generational memory and constructing of an event 7.5 Conclusions: the generation call Chapter 8 Terrorism 8.1 Improbable definitions and unbelievable genealogies 8.2 Revolutionary terrorism 8.3 Insurgency and counter-insurgency 8.4 The evil scourge 8.5 Conclusions: terrorism on the stage Index"

Reviews

""Francesco Benigno offers a panoramic overview of methodological issues in contemporary historical writing. Like many historiographers in our times, he provides a perspective on the proposition that we have crossed from a modern into a postmodern age.[...]His message seems to be that historiography, when viewed from the perspective of actual historians at work, is a dynamic process that mimics the speed of communication in our times."" -Patrick Hutton, University of Vermont, Journal of Modern History

"""Francesco Benigno offers a panoramic overview of methodological issues in contemporary historical writing. Like many historiographers in our times, he provides a perspective on the proposition that we have crossed from a modern into a postmodern age.[...]His message seems to be that historiography, when viewed from the perspective of actual historians at work, is a dynamic process that mimics the speed of communication in our times."" -Patrick Hutton, University of Vermont, Journal of Modern History"

Author Information

Francesco Benigno is Professor of History at Teramo University, Italy, and the author of several books, including Mirrors of Revolution: Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern Europe (Brepols, 2010).

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