History and Theory · 2001 · 200 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesHistorySociologyEconomic HistoryHistoriographySocial HistoryEconomic HistoriographyModernityHistorical Sociology
The article situates the new microhistory of the 1970s–80s within broader debates, contrasting its focus on the notion of exceptional typical with earlier microhistory’s reliance on exceptionality and typicality, and noting that mid‑1970s social‑science work on micro‑macro links also struggled with these concepts. The essay investigates the meaning of the notion of exceptional typical, a concept historians use to transcend earlier micro‑macro definitions. The analysis draws on Ginzburg’s method of clues, Benjamin’s monads, and de Certeau’s margins to illuminate the micro‑macro link.
This article discusses the new microhistory of the 1970s and 1980s in terms of the concept of exceptional typical, and contrasts the new microhistory to old microhistory, in which the relationship between micro and macro levels of phenomena was defined by means of the concepts of exceptionality and typicality. The focus of the essay is on Carlo Ginzburg’s method of clues, Walter Benjamin’s idea of monads, and Michel de Certeau’s concept of margins. The new microhistory is also compared with methodological discussions in the social sciences. In the mid‐1970s concepts like the micro–macro link or the microfoundations of macrotheory were introduced in sociology and economics. But these largely worked in terms of the concepts of typicality or exceptionality, and this has proved to be problematic. Only historians have developed concepts that escape these and the older definitions of the micro–macro relationship; indeed, the “new microhistory” can best be described in terms of the notion of “exceptional typical.” The essay explores the meaning of this notion.