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Have Marxian ideas been relevant or influential in the writing and interpretation of history? What are the Marxist legacies that are now re-emerging in present-day histories? This volume is an attempt at relearning what the “discipline” of history once knew – whether one considered oneself a Marxist, a non-Marxist or an anti-Marxist.
Eminent Italian historian Giovanni Levi once notably remarked that “no one is a Marxist anymore,” pointing to a paradox in Italian cultural history. While what is called "Marxism" was supposedly hegemonic over Italian culture, and especially history writing, for decades in the postwar period, it then seems to have suddenly disappeared. This study questions such a vision of a monolithic and hegemonic Marxism. It starts from the most effective anecdote to all ideologising narratives—that is, research into the texts themselves. It sees the Marxist historiography of the post-1945 period as a "history in the making," in which references to Marxian theory were a fundamental factor driving historiographical innovation. This allows the book to bring to light a highly original experience in the development of historiography, based on the long Italian tradition of reflection on historical knowledge.
Eight prominent historians and social scientists give their perspectives on the fate of Marxist approaches to history and the direction of the discipline in coming decades. The volume offers rigorous and approachable analysis from several political and intellectual positions and will be an important contribution to current historical debates.
This volume offers a collection of several of Professor Habib's essays, providing an insightful interpretation of the main currents in Indian history.
Marx's theory of history is often regarded as the most enduring and fruitful aspect of his intellectual legacy. His "historical materialism" has been the inspiration for some of the best historical writing in the works of scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P.Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Robert Brenner. S.H. Rigby establishes Marx's claims about social structure and historical change, discusses their use in his own and his followers' writings, and assesses the validity of his theories. He argues that Marx's social theories were profoundly contradictory and that Marxism has proved most useful when it is seen as a source of questions, concepts and hypotheses rather than as a philosophy of historical development.
This textbook examines Marxism’s enormous impact on the way historians approach their subject. Tackling current historiographical questions in an accessible way, the author offers a clear introduction to Marxist views of history, key Marxist historians and thinkers, and the relevance of Marxist theory and history to students’ own work. This is a concise, thorough overview of an important area of historiography. The second edition incorporates significant new developments in research, including Marxist contributions to the emergence of global, maritime and transnational history; the discovery of Marx’s ecologism and the historical critique of fossil capitalism as a source of environmental disaster; a reassessment of gender oppression through social reproduction theory; and the contribution of Marxism to debates on race, Eurocentrism and whiteness.
Marxist Historiographies is the first book to examine the ebb and flow of Marxist historiography from a global and cross-cultural perspective. Since the eighteenth century, few schools of historical thought have exerted a more lasting impact than Marxism, and this impact extends far beyond the Western world within which it is most commonly analysed. Edited by two highly respected authors in the field, this book deals with the effect of Marxism on historical writings not only in parts of Europe, where it originated, but also in countries and regions in Africa, Asia, North and South America and the Middle East. Rather than presenting the chapters geographically, it is structured with respect t...