Artikel

Sociale geschiedenis en de crisis van het socialisme: verschuivingen in het debat over collectieve actie

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Abstract

Social history and the crisis of socialism. Shifts in the debate about collective action - This article deals with some recent problems of social history. The rejection of the so-called métarécits in history, above all historical materialism, goes hand in hand with postmodern uncertainty and relativism. The belief in the scientific character of quantitative history is replaced by a revival of narrative, in which the subject, the concrete and qualitative aspects are primordial. The pendulum swings from numbers to language. Historians leave the ’hard’ quantitative methodologies for a return to the hermeneutic and empathic approach. But all theoretical debates notwithstanding, the practice of social history shows that ’the more things change, the more they stay the same’. It is for instance argued that conceptually there are several important interfaces between postmodern thinking and the questions of 'history from below’, an important research agenda dating from the sixties. Methodologically, as a consequence of chaos theory, the natural sciences lose their appeal as ’the’ model of knowledge for the social sciences. Collective action is an important subject in the recent debates on social history. A brief survey is given of the questions that are under discussion. The emphasis is on the shifts, which are significant in the light of the crisis of socialism.

How to Cite:

Deneckere, G., (1995) “Sociale geschiedenis en de crisis van het socialisme: verschuivingen in het debat over collectieve actie”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 40(2), 123–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95199