C.F.G. Lorenz

'If you're so smart, why are you under surveillance?: Universities, Neoliberalism and New Public Management'

Although universities have undergone changes since the dawn of their existence, the speed of change started to accelerate remarkably in the 1960s. Spectacular growth in the number of students and faculty was immediately followed by administrative reforms aimed at managing this growth and managing the demands of students for democratic reform and societal relevance. Since the 1980s, however, an entirely different wind has been blowing along the academic corridors. The fiscal crisis of the welfare states and the neoliberal course of the Reagan and Thatcher governments made the battle against budget deficits and against government spending into a political priority. Education, together with social security and health care, were targeted directly. As the eighties went on, the neoliberal agenda became more radical—smaller state and bigger market—attacking the public sector itself through efforts to systematically reduce public expenditure by privatizing public services and introducing market incentives. At the

Comparative historiography: problems and perspectives

Just like history, historiography is usually written and analyzed within one spatio-temporal setting, traditionally that of a particular nation-state. As a consequence, historiography tends to localize explanations for historiographical developments within national contexts and to neglect international dimensions. As long as that is the case, it is impossible to assess the general and specific aspects of historiographical case studies. This forum, therefore, represents a sustained argument for comparative approaches to historiography. First, my introduction takes a recent study in Canadian historiography as a point of departure in order to illustrate the problems of non-comparative historiography. These problems point to strong arguments in favor of comparative approaches. Second, I place comparative historiography as a genre in relation to a typology that orders theories of historiography on a continuum ranging from general and philosophical to particular and empirical. Third, I put recent debates on the “fragmentation” of historiography in a comparative perspective. Worries among historians about this fragmentation—usually associated with the fragmentation of the nation and the advent of multiculturalism and/or postmodernism—are legitimate when they concern the epistemological foundations of history as a discipline. As soon as the “fragmentation” of historiography leads to—and is legitimated by—epistemological skepticism, a healthy pluralism has given way to an unhealthy relativism. As comparison puts relativism in perspective by revealing its socio-historical foundations, at the same time it creates its rational antidote. Fourth, I summarize the contributions to this forum; all deal—directly or indirectly—with the historiography of the Second World War. Jurgen Kockas “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg” examines the so-called “special path” of Germanys history. Daniel Levys “The Future of the Past: Historiographical Disputes and Competing Memories in Germany and Israel” offers a comparative analysis of recent historiographical debates in Germany and Israel. Sebastian Conrads “What Time is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography” analyzes the conceptual linkage between Japanese historiography and specific interpretations of European history. Richard Bosworths “Explaining ‘Auschwitz’ after the End of History: The Case of Italy” charts in a comparative perspective the changes since 1989 in Italian historiography concerning fascism. All four articles support the conclusion that next to the method of historical comparison is the politics of comparison, which is hidden in the choice of the parameters. Analyses of both method and politics are essential for an understanding of (comparative) historiography.

History, theories and methods

Since the institutionalization of history as a distinct academic discipline in the nineteenth century, the truth claim of history has basically been founded on some idea of the historical method. What was considered to constitute this ‘method’ of history, however, has varied considerably over competing conceptions of history and over time. The various conceptions have been connected to different theories about what constituted history itself (as an object) and what was considered as reliable knowledge of this object (if possible at all). Therefore, the debates about the methods of history have always been embedded in debates about theories of history – and vice versa. As natural science was often considered to be the methodological opposite of history, images of natural science have also influenced the debate about historical method and theory. This article traces the main course of these debates since the nineteenth century and offers some ways to classify them.

Won’t you tell me where have all the good times gone? On the advantages and disadvantages of modernization theory for history

The German brand of ‘history of society’—Gesellschaftsgeschichte—has been known from its beginning in the 1970s for its application of sociological and politological modernization theories to (German) history. Modernization theory was presented by Hans-Ulrich Wehler in particular as the way to transform ‘traditional’ German history, that is: national political history, centred on a few ‘great men’, into an integrated and comparative history of German society, that is: encompassing societal structures outside politics. The catastrophic German politics between 1914 and 1945—Germanys ‘special path’, alias its Sonderweg—was interpreted in terms of a ‘delayed modernization’ of its political structures. Simultaneously, social scientific theories and methods, capable of explaining societal structures and processes, were presented to German historians as promising alternatives for ‘traditional’ methods of emphatic understanding of individual persons. In the 1970s and early 1980s German historians of society gained dominance in Germany by applying both modernization theories and social science methods to German history. From the 1980s onwards, however, they were increasingly criticized by proponents of the ‘cultural turn’ for not incorporating culture in the history of society, for reducing politics to society, and for reducing individuals to structures. This article not only argues that this criticism was basically correct but—more importantly—argues that the problems associated with the history of society are the consequence of conceptual inversion. What historians of society basically did was invert the ‘traditional’ positions they criticized (on the model of Marxs inversion of Hegel). As a result, the problems pertaining to the positions criticized were not resolved but only turned on their head. The ‘traditional’ focus on individuals was inverted into a ‘modern’ focus on structures, the ‘traditional’ focus on culture was inverted into a ‘modern’ focus on structures, and ‘traditional’ emphatic understanding was inverted into ‘modern’ causal explanation. It is argued that in order to escape from the conceptual trap of inversion new theoretical labour by historians of society will be necessary.

Some Afterthoughts on Culture and Explanation in Historical Inquiry

I argue here that the articles in this forum contain basic agreements. All three reject naturalism, reductionism, and monism while retaining causality as an explanatory category, and all three emphasize the role of time and argue for a view in which culture is regarded as both structured and contingent. The differences among the explanatory proposals of Hall, Biernacki, and Kane are as important as the similarities: while Hall favors a Weberian approach, Biernacki argues for a primarily pragmatic explanation of culture, and Kane for a primarily semiotic explanation. I argue that all three positions face immanent problems in elucidating the exact nature of cultural explanation. While Hall leaves the problem of “extrinsic” ideal-typical explanation unsolved, Biernacki simply presupposes the superiority of pragmatic over other types of cultural explanation, and Kane does the same for semiotic explanation. Hints at cultural explanation in the form of narrative remain underargued and are built on old ideas of an opposition between “analysis” and “narrative.” This is also the case with the latest plea for “analytic narratves.” I conclude that a renewed reflection on this opposition is called for in order to come to grips with cultural explanation and to get beyond the old stereotypes regarding the relationship between historical and social-scientific approaches to the past.

‘The Times They Are a-Changin’. On Time, Space and Periodization in History

In this chapter, Lorenz analyzes recent evolutions in the study of historical time and highlights the relationship between history and modernity. First, he addresses Reinhart Koselleck’s idea that ‘exponential acceleration’ is the core of modernity and how this idea informs the ‘presentism’ of Francois Hartog and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht. Second, Lorenz focuses on the rise of modernity and history as a discipline and how ‘modern history’ as a period has created all other periods. Third, the connections between modern linear time and space are traced, including its ‘relativization’ since Einstein. Lorenz argues that postmodern and postcolonial ideas have led to a spatial ‘relativization’ of historical time. Fourth, the chapter returns to the issue of periodization in history and its interconnections with constructions of space and identity.

De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering en de universele mensenrechten

Dutch colonial memory and universal human rights. The case of ‘Rawagede’ This article asks what relationship exists between the Dutch ‘coping with the colonial past’ (‘omgang met het koloniale verleden’) and the German Vergangenheitsbewaltigung –which is focussed on the Holocaust. It asks especially what role human rights play in both the German and Dutch cases, connecting recent theories of German Vergangenheitsbewaltigung to the Dutch attempt at coping with the colonial past, particularly the Dutch massacre of the male population of the Indonesian village of Rawagede in 1947. The article focusses on the relationship between historical time and legal time and on the ways in which ‘the past’ and ‘the present’ are distinguished. Its conclusion is that the Dutch state subscribes to a variant of coping with the colonial past in which neither human rights nor historical truth play a role comparable to the German Vergangenheitsbewaltigung.

History: Representation Within and Functions of

History as a discipline is a continuation of extradisciplinary forms of dealing with the past and has therefore never enjoyed a monopoly on its representation. Moreover, within the discipline there has always been a plurality of representations competing with one another. This article traces the modern problem of the narrative representation of history to its origins in the Aristotelian and the rhetorical traditions. The same goes for the modern question whether historical narratives can be true.

Double Trouble. A Comparison of the Politics of National History in Germany ond Quebec

Ranke’s description of the task of the ‘scientific’ historian in 1837 had sounded so simple: just describe the past ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist],’ or in plain English: just describe the past ‘how it essentially was’. Ranke was no naive empiricist, as many later took him to be, but an idealist who thought that God’s ‘ideas’ (Ideen) were present in history and that history in its kernel was therefore a benign process, evident appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.1 Given the emphasis Ranke simultaneously put on the critical method, the relationship between the ‘scientific’ or epistemological aspects of history and its political aspects have been problematic ever since the beginning of ‘professional’ history in Europe.