1999, English, Book edition:The houses of history : a critical reader in twentieth-

century history and theory / selected and introduced by Anna Green & Kathleen
Troup, 338 p Published New York : New York University Press, 1999.

(review by Marco Alvarez)

Anna Green and Kathleen Troup wrote their book The Houses of History for a
limited audience, serious history majors. The book looks at twelve houses, the
theoretical methods that historians use to examine and evaluate the historical
record. The authors write a short history of each house and explain in plain
English the focus of each houses dialogue. Each explanation is followed by a
well-chosen example from each school of thought. They are very well chosen,
Green and Troups explanation of postmodernism is, like all descriptions I have
seen, slightly off focus, but the text they picked as an example illuminates and
clarifies their dialogue.

The book was helpful for me to understand the thought processes used by
authors of other works I have read and I wish I had found this book before my
senior year. It demonstrated several methods of evaluating evidence that will be
helpful in my studies. The additional readings listed at the end of each section
included titles I had already been introduced to in class discussions as founding
texts for that school of thought and other titles intended to further illustrate that
house.

CHAPTERS:

1. The empiricists

2. Marxist historians

3. Freud and psychohistory

4. The Annales

5. Historical sociology

6. Quantitative history

7. Anthropology and ethnohistorians

8. The question of narrative

9. Oral history

10. Gender and history

11. Postcolonial perspectives

12. The challenge of poststructuralism/postmodernism.

Transcription: Houses of History: Chapter 7

Anthropology focus on everyday life anthropology was to become immensely

influential in redirecting historians' attention away from the public, political
sphere of human action towards private everyday life Anthropology and
Ethnohistorians In the second half of the 19th century there were many parallels
between the disciplines of history and anthropology Both employed an
empiricist methodology Historians charted the rise of nations Anthropologists
traced the cultural and social evolution of mankind (p. 172).

Early Anthropology From the 1860s there was a specific framework for
anthropology: the evolutionary trajectory of human progress (p. 172)
Edward Burnett Tylor- 'the founder of academic anthropology in the English-
speaking world' "Culture... taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex
whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (p. 172)
Social Anthropology Sought evidence in human culture of social patterns
Cultural Anthropology Interprets culture at the level of ideas learned by
individuals.

Franz Boas In the US, he led the way in establishing that race, culture, and
language were separate aspects of human existence. Denoted that biological
and cultural evolution were part of a single process.

Emile Durkheim devoted his life to establishing a science of society as the basis
for the discipline of sociology (p. 173) believed that human behavior is
fundamentally shaped by the moral, religious and social society in which the
individual lives Functionalism all aspects of society are interrelated and
therefore society should be studied as a whole anthropologists began to adopt a
holistic approach and interpret history with culture in mind and less focus on
political history.

Ethnohistory by the end of the 20th century, anthropologists and historians

came together to combine the strengths of both disciplines - ethnohistory
ehtnohistory encompasses archeology, ethnology, history and linguistics, and
the source materials available to the ethnohistorian include folklore, oral
tradition, maps, paintings, and artifacts, as well as written sources.
1999, English, Book edition:The houses of history : a critical reader in twentieth-
century history and theory / selected and introduced by Anna Green & Kathleen
Troup, 338 p Published New York : New York University Press, 1999.

(resea por Marco Alvarez)