{"id":12258,"date":"2025-01-13T12:27:16","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/?p=12258"},"modified":"2025-01-13T12:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:27:18","slug":"slow-digest-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/slow-digest-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow Digest: A Lukewarm Defense of Slow History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week\u2019s edition of\u00a0<\/em>Slow Digest\u00a0was written by C21 Graduate Fellow Russell Star-Lack.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We usually think about history as a series of events. These events, such as births, deaths, war, famine, or revolution, can affect the lives of people in a given society, perhaps right up to the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if we\u2019re wrong? The idea that historical events have very little impact in aggregate on society, and therefore on history, is the foundation for an entire sub-field of historical study. Central to this approach, called the Annales<\/em> School, is the concept of the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em>, which theorizes human life and society as relatively unchanging. According to this idea, when society does evolve, these shifts are best measured over centuries rather than years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Annales<\/em> School, most influential in the mid-twentieth century, is the closest thing we have to \u201cslow history.\u201d But today, its adherents are few and far between in history departments, and I would not count myself among their number. The truth is I have a longstanding dislike of this tradition. This may be mostly because my undergraduate historiography class happened to cover the Annales<\/em> School during Yom Kippur, requiring me to read a 60-page article on grain production and consumption in early modern Europe on an empty stomach. But there are more legitimate reasons to critique this approach as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being grounded in Marxist theory emphasizing the role of the physical environment in producing social relations, the Annales<\/em> approach makes little affordance for the role of culture and politics in society. In other words, it assumes that a given human society is almost solely a product of that society\u2019s environment. But historical and social scientific research has refuted this assumption, showing how much human activity has impacted the environment throughout time and space. Furthermore, the diversity of the societies that have arisen throughout history, even in similar physical environments, seem to tell us that our physical surroundings are not the only force at work in shaping our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was this critique that led to the Annales<\/em> School becoming one of the primary foils for the work of postmodern philosophers like Foucault and Derrida. Their emphasis on subjective cultural production as the most powerful shaper of society has proven much more impactful on academic history in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, does this mean we should confine slow history to the dustbin of historical methodologies? Maybe not. As much as I hate to admit it, my views on the Annales<\/em> tradition have softened since my junior year of college. One of the biggest contributions of this approach was to direct historians away from the single-minded study of \u201cgreat men.\u201d Annales<\/em> historians also championed interdisciplinary methodologies, and the school has arguably had a much greater impact on certain sub-fields of sociology, geography, and economics than in history (and that is not even counting contemporary archaeology). The Annales<\/em> School\u2019s vision of looking beyond the archive in order to reconstruct the past is one that historians have gradually been reviving as we contend with a \u201cdigital dark age.\u201d While I do not predict a field-wide resurgence of interest in the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em> anytime soon, I think there can be great value when constructing a historical narrative in zooming out and taking things slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all that said, here are a few resources relating to understanding the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jo Guldi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The first chapter of this monograph gives an overview of the concept of the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em> and how it could be useful today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guldi, Jo and David Armitage. The History Manifesto<\/em>. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/history-manifesto\/going-forward-by-looking-back-the-rise-of-the-longue-duree\/E70B0C77DCD0535AB75477C8B6024DD5<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nLearn more<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Cynical Historian, \u201cFernand Braudel, the Mediterranean, and the Annales School\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Here is a short video by The Cynical Historian, one of my favorite history YouTube (or history-tube) video essayist, on prominent Annales<\/em> historian Fernand Braudel (the guy who wrote that grain article I was forced to read on Yom Kippur).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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