Concept Of Historical Time Research Articles

Time in Abu’l Faz.l’s Historiography

History writing in medieval India was predominantly set within the framework of Islam without becoming a branch of theology. The temporal parameters were almost invariably drawn from the hijrī era, which sharply divided time into the age of jahaliyat, ignorance, and one lit up by Islam. It was also primarily centred on the history of the ruling Muslim dynasties whose political lineage was delineated through, and was confined to, the world of Islam. Abu’l Faẓl, courtier, historian and friend of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), deploys an alternative conception of historical time which flows uninterrupted from Adam down to Akbar, disengaging history writing from its Islamic axis. Indeed, he is rather contemptuous of the hijrī era. His Akbar Nama projects a worldview premised upon a universal religiosity in lieu of a sectarian religion. This constitutes his ‘rationality’ which connects it to the ethos evolving at the base of Indian society

The Althusserian moment and the concept of historical time

The period running from the late 1960s through to the 1980s is often seen as one in which theory assumed a particular importance in many areas of the humanities and social sciences. This paper focuses on the Althusserian component of this moment of theory in Britain, but it also reflects on the emergence of the form of historical understanding, and of the understanding of historical time in particular, in which such objects as ‘the moment of theory’, ‘the spirit of the age’ or ‘England in 1819’ can appear as objects of historical enquiry. The first section sketches some of the links between the Althusserian component of the British moment of theory and this broader issue, and I return to the latter in my final section. The intervening sections examine the Althusserian component more directly. After presenting Althusser's account of the concept of historical time I consider the ramifications of two features of his intervention in the realm of theory. One is that his distinction between Marxist science and the theoretical ideologies which threaten its existence cannot be sustained, and the other that, in spite of its manifest iconoclasm in certain respects, this intervention has a distinctly defensive character.

From Revolution to Krizis: The Transcending Revolutions of 1989-91

There are four conceptions of historical time in the modern era. In naturalistic cyclicity, traditional circular definitions of the rise and fall of nations predominate. Enlightenment rationalism is based on a more linear view of ineluctable political progress. In emancipatory revolution a social element is added to Enlightenment progressivism, accompanied by a denigration of the political. Finally, the antirevolutions of 1989–91 inaugurated a postrevolutionary phase characterized by the politics of krizis. These antirevolutions represented a conscious repudiation of the revolutionary style of politics. They made possible a return to naturalistic cyclicity. Krizis is a reflexive form of political action derived not from the epochal conceptualization of time characteristic of revolutionism but from solutions within politics itself.

Vernacular futures

The article explores how a new concept of historical time entered discourses on language in nineteenth-century south India. Particularly, I look at the work of C.P. Brown, a prominent scholar of Telugu in the nineteenth century, who through his philological intervention—his Telugu grammar, dictionary and definitive editions of Telugu literary classics—worked arduously to preserve the language. I argue that because colonial philology saw language as having a progressive history, i.e., the unfolding of language in progressive stages towards constant improvement, it instigated a profound intervention in language practices and thought, foreshadowing the great debates at the turn of the twentieth century on ‘modernising’ languages.

Maturation and the Assimilation of the Concepts of Historical Time: A Symbiotic Relationship or Uneasy Bedfellows? An Examination of the Birth-date Effect on Educational Performance in Primary History

Maturation and the Assimilation of the Concepts of Historical Time: A Symbiotic Relationship or Uneasy Bedfellows? An Examination of the Birth-date Effect on Educational Performance in Primary History

Does the English Curriculum for History and its Schemes of Work effectively promote primary-aged children’s assimilation of the concepts of historical time? Some observations based on current research

This paper critically examines the English National Curriculum (NC) for History and its Schemes of Work’s development of temporal cognition within the primary school. In addition, it outlines the findings of a longitudinal research study into Year 4 pupils’ assimilation of historical time. The paper contends that the development of historical time concepts within the NC and the Schemes of Work is confused and would seem to be based upon little, if any, empirical findings. It is concluded, based upon the findings from this research study, that the NC and its Schemes of Work do not offer an effective approach to the development of temporal cognition.

‘Presenting’ the past: perspectives on time for accounting and management history

Concepts of time in accounting and management historiography have only previously been considered as partial subsets of other methodological issues. This paper investigates our concepts of historical time with a view to offering alternative foundations to the unidirectional linear concept of chronological time employed in historical research project design and execution. Its analytical approach is pluralist in that it draws upon the historiographic writings of historians and historical theorists of traditional and post-modern persuasions, both within and beyond the accounting and management history fields. It addresses teleological, historicist and narrativist temporal underpinnings and considers historical practice in relation to assumptions about and interpretations of continuity and discontinuity. Time is extended beyond its conventional accounting and management chronology to include consideration of co-present, cyclical, relativist, structuralist and spatial time. Intrinsic and reflexive relationships between past, present and future are explored. The paper argues for a postmodern pluralisation of our historiographic approaches to time and their informing revisitations of historical accounting and management subjects with a view to better understanding that which we thought we already knew.

The usage of subjective temporal phrases within the national curriculum for history and its schemes of work

This article critically considers the National Curriculum for History and its Schemes of Work's usage of subjective and conventional temporal phrases. In light of the findings from a current research study it examines whether the employment ofsubjective temporal phrases as a replacement for conventional dating systems misses a valuable opportunity to develop primary aged children's concepts of historical time.

Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Aberdeen, 1985-95: Cultural History and the Thomas Reid Institute

In the early 1980s the University Senatus was preoccupied with UGC reductions in funding. Faculties and Departments engaged in an unprecedented self-scrutiny, devised research schemes, projected early retirements. Together with a concern for student numbers, these menaced the academic status quo and undermined individual self respect. Conversely, they challenged the community to a positive course of action. The Principal and Senate drafted Institutional Plans and established the Development Trust. Innovation became a keyword for policy and interdisciplinarity promised a rich and increasing harvest of research. On 8 June 1988 the Senate was told that all the research councils were actively organising bids for 'Interdisciplinary Research Centres' and that 'it was essential that the University secure an award for at least one IRC in the near future'. Among those staff who were already committed to the possibilities of interdisciplinary cooperation was Dr Judith Hook who had aired the possibility of a degree in Intellectual History similar to that being taught in the University of Sussex. Judith died tragically and suddenly on 28 July 1984. In spring 1985 Dr Roy Porter of the Wellcome Institute lectured to the History Department and at a meeting afterwards discussed with staff from various departments the possibility of launching a new interdisciplinary degree course. From that came the suggestion that a Group be formed. I was asked to convene the first meeting on 1 May 1985. Judith's colleagues, Jennifer Carter, Paul Dukes and Bill Scott all had interdisciplinary interests. At that time the writings of the French annalistes and historians of mentalites were exploring different concepts of historical time. Theories of discourse enabling fresh analytical structures as well as a new historicism were developing in the literary theory taught in the English Department by Michael Spiller and myself. The contemporary influences of anthropological, structuralist and linguistic thought in the work of Saussure and Levi-Strauss, of Barthes, Elias, Foucault, Goldmann, and many more demonstrated the narrowness of existing categories which our thinking and research interests had already proved inadequate. Gramsci, Williams and Thompson had explored the hegemonies of culture and canon. Traditional teaching programmes had become too selective under pressure of term and degree or were bursting at the seams. Certain disciplines, Linguistics and Philosophy, for example, had a broader pedagogic depth and lent themselves flexibly to the exploration of different modes of feeling and perception, of describing problems and asking questions. These brought together David Cram from Linguistics, and Melvin Dalgarno, Eric Matthews, and later Nigel Dower from

Time Out of Mind: Anthropological Reflections on Temporality

AbstractOur conception of historical time is biased towards the present and the immediate. We relegate ninety-nine percent of human history to 'pre-history.'This temporal obsession with the present emerged, along with consciousness, in social systems inherently cyclical. Kinship systems evolved from those with alternating generation terms through those with linear terms. Conceptions of time likewise altered from the cyclical to the linear.Time eventually came to be seen as progressive and cumulative. Theories of historical time however remain stubbornly cyclical, biased towards the post-Neolithic, and determined to set limits to time. This hierarchy of preferences in temporal thinking seems a basic feature of human nature.

'Medieval India': An Alien Conceptual Hegemony?

The notion of a 'Muslim' period of Indian history inhered in the numerous court chronicles of "medieval' India, written in the Persian language. This derived from the assumption of the rise of Islam as the dividing line in 'world history', going back to Arab and Iranian historiographical tradi tions. Abul Fazl, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, posited an alternative conception of historical time as continuous and teleological. James Mills formalised the periodisation into the tripartite 'Hindu, Mohammedan and British India' in 1818. The 'British' period, with a heavy emphasis on its secular, modern and modernising identity was deliberately asymmetrical to the denominational determinants of the first two periods. The tripartite nomenclature was to be translated at the turn of the twentieth century into Ancient, Medieval and Modern India though the two remained interchangeable. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the growing influence of Marxism redefined the boundaries of the tripartite division through a shift of focus from dynastic history to socio-economic problematics, though the division itself remained in place. The 1990s are witness to still newer problematics which by their nature tend to erode these boundaries.

READING THE EXCURSUS ON WOMEN AS A MODEL OF MODERN TEMPORALITY IN GOTTFRIED'S TRISTAN

This paper's central argument is that the temporal structure of the Frauen-excursus in Tristan is compatible with an understanding of history that was emerging around 1200. The structure of the excursus is essentially dialectical, and as such has broader implications for an understanding of Gottfried's views of human relationships as well as of the specific historical moment in which he composed the work. Gottfried's presentation of a linear-sequential view of time relies on Judeo-Christian typology, as various analyses of the excursus have established. However, this linear-sequential view is consistently undermined by a questioning and relativizing of that typological version of the past. This questioning occurs within a narrative structure derived from Latin rhetoric, the partes oratoriae. Gottfried's dependence on and experimentation with this structure, and the excursus's self-reflexive content, reveal history as processual and prefigure later concepts of historical time. The love relationships that occur within this processual time are, in Gottfried's presentation, characterized by the lovers' ability to learn from the exempla that represent the past and to use the reconstructed past in the service of their own earthy futures.

F. Braudel: tempo histórico e civilização material. um ensaio bibliográfico

A publicação recente da tradução brasileira da obra de Fernand Braudel, Civi/isation matérielle et capita/isme, oferece uma boa oportunidade para o reexame de alguns aspectos deste livro. O presente ensaio pretende destacar a importãncia dada por Braudel às questões teóricas - principalmente sua concepção de tempo histórico e seu esforço para criar a unidade das ciências do homem - e o papel que desempenham na delimitação do objeto do livro.

小学生の「身近な地域」に関する歴史的時間概念の研究

小学生の「身近な地域」に関する歴史的時間概念の研究

Reading Althusser: Time and the Social Whole

The works of Louis Althusser have influenced political and theoretical debates in Europe for several decades but have remained comparatively untouched by American political philosophers and historians. Perhaps because their style is polemical and frequently obscure, or perhaps because they present a political as well as an intellectual challenge, his views have not been as widely nor as deeply discussed as they deserve to be. This essay is a preliminary response to that problem. I shall try to reconstruct elements of Althusser's writings to capture the force of his arguments regarding the Marxist view of the social whole and the concept of historical time with which it is allied. Accordingly, this paper is both an exposition of Althusser's point of view and an Althusserian account of Marx. In it I hope to show some of the political and theoretical implications of his position. According to Althusser the Marxist conception of society did not arise out of a vacuum but developed from a critique of and break from all previous conceptions of the social whole. His analysis of Marx's conception therefore demands an elaboration of the specific difference between Marx and his predecessors, the most important of whom was Hegel. I This demand is what first requires our attention.

Concerning the "Historical" and the "Local" Legends and Their Relatives

IT IS EASY TO ASSERT that a particular text is a legend while another is not. The decision is frequently based on experience; one feels that a tale is or is not a legend. But when it comes to producing an exact definition-one which would enable us to decide with certainty whether a given text is or is not a legend-the field is found wanting. The definitions offered thus far have serious flaws. Since, however, the old definition of the Grimm Brothers constitutes the basis of subsequent thinking in the field, it will be useful to reexamine this definition, noting its components and their interrelationships, and the merits it may possess. It is hoped that such an examination will yield new insights. As we have noted, the best known definition of the legend, and the one on which all other definitions are based, is that of the Grimm Brothers: a legend is a story that is believed and that is told about a definite (real or fabulous) person, event, or place. The definition includes three main factors: I. the legend fits within the narrator's concept of historical time; a. the legend is connected with a definite historical (real or fabulous) event, b. the legend is connected with a definite person, that is, a named historical (real or fabulous) figure; 2. the legend fits the narrator's concept of geographical space, that is, it is con

Concepts of time in secondary school children of above average I.Q.

Summary. Previous research tends to equate the concept of time with the concept of historical time so that the concept has not been fully explored. It was proposed that an integral concept of time exists and a test was devised to measure it. This test, together with a test of the historical concept, was presented to four consecutive age groups in the academic streams of a mixed comprehensive school. Analysed for variance, the scores on the test of the integral concept showed an improvement, significant at the .01 level, between the second and third groups, whose average ages were 13.6 and 14.6, respectively. An improvement on the test of the historical concept, significant at the .05 level, took place between the first and second groups, whose average ages were 12.6 and 13.6, respectively. The inference drawn was that mastery of the historical concept does not imply mastery of the integral concept and that a clear distinction may be made between the two.Boys proved significantly (.01 level) superior to girls on the test of the integral concept, a fact which may relate to the apparent superiority of boys in the mastery of abstract ideas in general.