近十五年西方历史学的新发展

20世纪后期,历史研究的重点继续是从分析的社会科学转移到更加强调文化因素的方面来,但是面临着迅速变化的世界局面,却具有其更加繁富且已改变了的焦点。历史学家并未受到后现代主义太多的影响,但关于应该如何重铸过去的问题的确更趋复杂了。在历史学思想与实践的重新定向过程中,人们更为深入地反思和质疑了历史作为引向今日西方文明的一种单向历程的观念,政治领域和阶级的概念扩大或改变了,妇女与性别的历史日益被纳入到通史系统中来。而在迫切需要另行考察现代性以及撰写全球史的状况面前,我们对于广泛跨文化的方法仍然缺乏综合的认知,有待于未来的进一步规划。

New Developments of the Western Historiography in the Recent Fifteen Years

In the late 20th century, the emphasis of the historical studie s has remained the change from the analytic social sciences to the tendency of p utting more stress on the cultural factors. But be faced with the quickly change d world situation, its focus has also changed and becomes more complicated. The historians are not much affected by the postmodernism, yet the question of how t o recreate the past is actually tending to be more complex. In the process that the historical thought and practice resets its direction, people examine and que ry the idea of taking history as a kind of unidirectional course leading to the present western civilization more deeply, the field of politics and the concept of class are enlarged or changed, and the history of women and gender is brought into the system of general history increasingly. While in front of the conditio n that we urgently need to make further inspection toward the modernity and writ ing global history, the comprehensive cognition on the broad cross-cultural meth od is still lacked, and awaiting the further program.