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Historisk tidskrift 122:2 • 2002

Innehåll (Contents) 2002:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Historiekultur, politik och historievetenskap i Norden

Peter Aronsson

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

The Culture of History, Politics and Disciplines of History in Scandinavia

Developments within science and contemporary history have led to an increased interest in how history is created in other arenas than the scientific. This article suggest that such concepts as culture of history, the uses of history and historical consciousness are just as potentially important concepts in historiography as are the social, culture, mentality, and gender in terms of their potential for changing the perspective of research.

The culture of history consists of the artefacts, rituals, customs and assertions with references to the past, which allow us to link the relationship between the past, present and future. Occ asionally they are direct and explicit interpretations of this link. The Uses of History consists of the processes where parts of the culture of history are activated to form definite opinions and action-oriented totalities. Historical consciousness consists of those views of the link between the past, present and future which steer the use of history and which are established and are reproduced in its use. A certain selection of the culture of history is activated as communities of memory in the use of history and forms an historical consciousness. The concept of the historical categories space of experiences and horizon of expectations fit well into this framework. Knowledge of and descriptions of the past create opportunities for certain assumptions of the future. The hopes and fears created by images of the future in the present influence the way the relationship between memory and that which is forgotten is organised in the spaces of experience. The uses of history occur in the dynamic process that links the spaces of experience and horizon of expectations in a specific situation.

Some strategic research considerations are also discussed:

1. The contemporary division of labour between scientific disciplines, private and commercial interests, institutions of education, and authorities responsible for promoting culture are restructured at the turn of the twentieth century in a way similar to the changes at the turn of the nineteenth century.

2. The need for comparative and non-national perspectives is necessary to counter the subject’s inherent national bias.

3. We know more about public practices than we do about private ones, more about the producer’s intentions than the users reception and reuse, more about the cognitive aspects than the existential functions where the aesthetic and affective values are added.

4. A well defined classification of the function of the uses of history should be used with care since the strongest aspect of the communities of memory is the combination of simplified stereotypes, narrative trope, metaphors, and ideals of taste that make it possible to link several uses with open or associative techniques.