III Congreso Internacional
Historia a Debate
Santiago de Compostela, 14-18 de julio de
2004
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Historia Mixta como historia global |
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TEMA III.2. HISTORIA MIXTA COMO HISTORIA GLOBAL
Sociedad y cultura: comparación y confronto historiográfico Society and culture in historical paradigms competing or complementary notions?
+++++++ This conference attempts to clarify the contents and
relations between two concepts ‘culture’ and ‘society’ as
notions related to historical paradigms generated during the twentieth
century. These notions compete nowadays with each other due to the fact
that each was chosen in turn as core for an unified vision for human
matters historically considered. So, for instance, many historians spoke
of a social history as an approach for historical synthesis in the 1960’s,
but of a cultural history as a centre of interest in the 1990’s. We
treat ‘culture’ more carefully because, as a concept, it is more
fraught with ambiguities and pitfalls than is ‘society’. So, the
history of ‘culture’ as a concept is summarized since its beginnings
during the eighteenth century, and the different senses and contexts of
its use are discussed. The author’s opinion is that ‘culture’
could never usefully evict ‘society’ as a core concept for
historians. In fact, it is his conviction that it would be useful to
abandon ‘culture’ altogether as an obstacle concept. Since this is
not coming to pass, nevertheless, the best course of action could be,
perhaps, to use both concepts, society and culture, as complementary to
each other along some guidelines that this conference attempts to
suggest.
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