Peter Burke

The first history of the western polymath, from the fifteenth century to the present day From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the Scientific Revolution. It is only more recently that the further acceleration of knowledge has led to increased specialisation and to an environment that is less supportive of wide-ranging scholars and scientists. Spanning the Renaissance to the present day, Burke changes our understanding of this remarkable intellectual species.

A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag

The Polymath

In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach to examine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe from the invention of printing to the publication of the French Encyclopedie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies of knowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on to discuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions (especially universities and academies) which encouraged or discouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separate chapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics and economics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies, states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying, spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chapters deal with knowledge from the point of view of the individual reader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of the reliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenth century. One of the most original features of this book is its discussion of knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge, especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of the knowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing and the discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchange or negotiation between different knowledges, such as male and female, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, and European and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social or socio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest to historians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers and others in another age of information explosion.

From Gutenberg to Diderot

A Social History of Knowledge

Asa Briggs

Written by two leading social and cultural historians, the first edition of A Social History of the Media has become a classic textbook, providing a masterful overview of communication media and of the social and cultural contexts within which they emerged and evolved over time. In this new and revised edition, Asa Briggs and Peter Burke have updated their classic study to cover the exciting media developments of the early 21st Century. In addition to the classic material exploring the continuing importance of oral and manuscript communication, the rise of print and the relationship between physical transportation and social communication, a new chapter on multimedia now extends the far-reaching scope of this book. New media technologies are treated in new depth throughout the latter sections and the book concludes with an account of the convergences associated with digital communication technology, the rise of the internet and the phenomenon of globalization. Avoiding technological determinism and rejecting assumptions of straightforward evolutionary progress, this book brings out the rich and varied histories of communication media. It will be an ideal text for students in history, media and cultural studies and journalism, but it will also appeal to a wide general readership. It has already been translated into more than ten languages.

From Gutenberg to the Internet

A Social History of the Media

Zentren und Peripherien

Die europäische Renaissance

This exciting introductory text offers an accessible guide to the past, present and future of cultural history, as it has been practised not only in the English-speaking world but in Continental Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere. Burke begins by providing a discussion of the 'classic' phase of cultural history, associated with Jacob Burckhardt and Johan Huizinga, and of the Marxist reaction, from Frederick Antal to Edward Thompson. He then charts the rise of cultural history in more recent times, concentrating on the work of the last generation, often described as the 'New Cultural History'. He places cultural history in its own cultural context, noting links between new approaches to historical thought and writing and the rise of feminism, postcolonial studies and an everyday discourse in which the idea of culture plays an increasingly important part. What is Cultural History? will be an essential textbook for all students of history as well as those taking courses in cultural, anthropological and literary studies.

What is Cultural History

This revised reprint contains a new preface looking at developments in recent years in the study of popular culture and the difficulty in fixing these two terms. A supplementary bibliography also adds to the information about recent research in the area.

Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe

La Cultura Popular En La Europa Moderna

Una rivoluzione storiografica. La scuola delle «Annales» (1929-1989)

Identity theory

A remarkable amount of the most innovative, significant, and lasting historical writing of the twentieth century has been produced in France, much of it the work of a group of historians associated with the journal Annales. Founded in 1929, Annales promoted a new kind of history based on three central aims: to substitute a problem-orientated analytical history for a traditional narrative of events; to embrace the history of the whole range of human activities rather than concentrate on political history; and, in order to achieve the first two aims, to collaborate fully with other disciplines - notably geography, sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, and anthropology. The critical history describes, analyzes, and evaluates the achievements of the Annales school, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and subverse, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted until about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and methods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement, which continues today, is marked by fragmentation. Its influence in France had become so great that it lost much of its distinctiveness, and no strong figures appeared to give the movement the inspiration and direction that Febvre, Bloch, and Braudel had provided. Some members of the group even returned to political history and to the narrative of events. The cycle was complete - the rebels became the establishment and were in turn rebelled against.

The Annales School, 1929-89

The French Historical Revolution

Mehmet Küçük

Fransız tarih devrimi:Annales okulu

In this collection of essays, of which four are published here for the first time, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called "new cultural history." He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and Johan Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology. After discussing the origins and identity of cultural history, Burke explores the social history of dreams and the relation between history and social memory. He presents five case studies addressing topics in the history of early modern Italy. Each is located on the frontiers of cultural history--between learned and popular culture, between the public and the private spheres, and between the serious and the comic. Burke then turns to the encounter between Europe and the New World and to the phenomenon of cultural translation in the etymological, literal, and metaphorical senses of the term. He concludes with two theoretical investigations: one on the history of mentalities and one which asks why cultural history seems doomed to fragmentation.

Varieties of Cultural History

A new edition of this best-selling collection of essays by leading experts on historical methodology. Since its first publication in 1992, New Perspectives on Historical Writing has become a key reference work used by students and researchers interested in the most important developments in the methodology and practice of history. For this new edition, the book has been thoroughly revised and updated and includes an entirely new chapter on environmental history. Peter Burke is joined here by a distinguished group of internationally renowned historians, including Robert Darnton, Ivan Gaskell, Richard Grove, Giovanni Levi, Roy Porter, Gwyn Prins, Joan Scott, Jim Sharpe, Richard Tuck, and Henk Wesseling. The contributions examine a wide range of interdisciplinary areas of historical research, including women's history, history &"from below,&" the history of reading, oral history, the history of the body, microhistory, the history of events, the history of images, and political history.

New Perspectives on Historical Writing

What is the history of knowledge? This engaging and accessible introduction explains what is distinctive about the new field of the history of knowledge (or, as some scholars say, ‘knowledges in the plural’) and how it differs from the history of science, intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge or from cultural history. Leading cultural historian, Peter Burke, draws upon examples of this new kind of history from different periods and from the history of India, East Asia and the Islamic world as well as from Europe and the Americas. He discusses some of the main concepts used by scholars working in the field, among them ‘order of knowledge’, ‘situated knowledge’ and ‘knowledge society’. This book tells the story of the transformation of relatively raw ‘information’ into knowledge via processes of classification, verification and so on, the dissemination of this knowledge and finally its employment for different purposes, by governments, corporations or private individuals. A concluding chapter identifies central problems in the history of knowledge, from triumphalism to relativism, together with attempts to solve them. The only book of its kind yet to be published, What is the History of Knowledge? will be essential reading for all students of history and the humanities in general, as well as the interested general reader.

What is the History of Knowledge?

This is a fascinating account of the geography, chronology and sociology of one of the major cultural movements in European history.

Centers and Peripheries

The European Renaissance

In this newly revised edition of his widely acclaimed work, Peter Burke presents a social and cultural history of the Italian Renaissance. He discusses the social and political institutions that existed in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and he analyzes the ways of thinking and seeing that characterized this period of extraordinary artistic creativity. Developing a distinctive approach, the author is concerned not only with the finished works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and others, but also with the social background, patterns of recruitment, and means of subsistence of this "cultural elite." He thus makes a major contribution both to our understanding of the Italian Renaissance and to our comprehension of the complex relations between culture and society.

Culture and Society in Italy

The Italian Renaissance

What is the use of social theory to historians, and of history tosocial theorists? In clear and energetic prose, a pre-eminentcultural historian here offers a far-reaching response to thesedeceptively simple questions. In this classic text, now revised andupdated in its second edition, Peter Burke reviews afresh therelationship between the fields of history and the social sciencesand their tentative convergence in recent decades. Burke first examines what uses historians have made - or mightmake - of the models, methods, and concepts of the social sciences,and then analyzes some of the intellectual conflicts, such as theopposition between structure and human agency, which are at theheart of the tension between history and social theory. Throughout,he draws from a broad range of cultures and periods to illustratehow history, in turn, has been used to create and validate socialtheories. This new edition brings the book up to date with theaddition of examples and discussions of new topics such as socialcapital, globalization and post-colonialism. The second edition of History and Social Theory will continue tostimulate both students and scholars across a range of disciplineswith its challenging assessment of the roles of history and socialscience today.

History and Social Theory

"O 'povo', na Europa, é invenção do fim do século XVIII, e sua maior voga, em conexão com projetos nacionais, data do século XIX. Escrito no momento em que a esquerda, descobrindo Gramsci, redescobria uma 'cultura popular' - ligada, desta feita, a projetos socialistas -, o livro de Peter Burke sobre o início da Europa moderna é de uma atualidade surpreendente. Coloca com acuidade os problemas conceituais, o contexto político e as dificuldades metodológicas de qualquer estudo deste gênero, que tem de paliar a ausência de testemunhos diretos com abordagens oblíquas. Com erudição, exemplifica também sua feitura: explicita os valores e atitudes de artesãos e camponeses, revela seu conteúdo contestatário e os esforços doutrinadores da elite, que, paradoxalmente, resultaram na separação das culturas, no seio de uma mesma sociedade. Um livro exemplar." Manuela Carneiro da Cunha "Um livro esplêndido. O valor desta obra rica e abrangente está em fazer com que consideremos a Europa como um todo, libertando-nos de nossas tradições nacionais e de nossa miopia ocidental." Christopher Hill

Europa, 1500-1800

Cultura popular na Idade Moderna

In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach toexamine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe fromthe invention of printing to the publication of the FrenchEncyclopédie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies ofknowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on todiscuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions(especially universities and academies) which encouraged ordiscouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separatechapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics andeconomics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies,states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying,spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chaptersdeal with knowledge from the point of view of the individualreader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of thereliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenthcentury. One of the most original features of this book is its discussionof knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge,especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of theknowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing andthe discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchangeor negotiation between different knowledges, such as male andfemale, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, andEuropean and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social orsocio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest tohistorians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographersand others in another age of information explosion.

Peter Burke

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