Microhistory

Definition

Microhistory is the historical method of intensive study of small units — "case studies, that is, investigations of individual biographies, or, more often, individual local contexts (villages, city neighborhoods)" — that Alf Lüdtke makes central to Alltagsgeschichte (Lüdtke, p. 14). It is not a retreat into the particular: the "delimiting [of] the scope locally and regionally is indispensable," but "to illuminate conditions 'on the spot' means that the purview must be extended beyond the compass of 'ordinary, everyday people'" (p. 20). The preferred form of representation is the miniature, which renders "the 'density' of life situations and contexts of action" vivid "in the form of the miniature" and "demonstratively renounce[s] any claim that they are trying to deal exhaustively with the multilayered structure of historical processes" (p. 21). Lüdtke explicitly rejects the "microhistorical broom cupboard" attributed to the field by H.-U. Wehler: microhistory is "an important and fundamental point of departure," not the destination (p. 21; Medick p. 54).

Key Thinkers

• Alf Lüdtke — the "systematic decentralization of analysis and interpretation" through historical "miniatures."
• Hans Medick — microhistory as the reconstruction of "the 'inner side' of processes of change and transformation affecting the total society" (no author page yet — see log).
• Carlo Ginzburg — The Cheese and the Worms and "microhistory" as the Italian pendant.
• Wolfgang Kaschuba — calls for "a microhistory in the field of working-class politics" through "little traditions" and "the 'language of the street.'"
• Lutz Niethammer — group-biographical and case-based oral history.

Related Concepts

• Alltagsgeschichte — the field whose method microhistory is.
• Thick Description — the interpretive technique of the microhistorical case.
• Historical Experience — what microhistory recovers.
• Organized Complexity — Jacobs's "unaverage clues": an architectural-urban analogue of microhistorical diagnosis.
• Everyday Life — the sphere at micro scale.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The History of Everyday Life (Lüdtke ed. 1995) — Lüdtke's account of microhistorical method and "miniatures" (pp. 14, 20–21); the Ginzburg/Poni reference to "microhistory" and "prosopographies of the masses"; Medick's defence of microhistorical procedures as a "point of departure" against the "microhistorical broom cupboard" charge (pp. 53–54); Kaschuba on "little traditions" (pp. 188–189).

Open Questions

• How does the microhistorical case relate to the "grand lines" of historical development without either dissolving into the particular or smuggling in macro-theory?
• Is the "miniature" a form of representation (a genre) or a claim about historical knowledge? Lüdtke seems to want both.