Historiography

1. How knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted; simply put, historiography is the history of history • Annales School • Big history • Cliometrics • Comparative history • Counterfactual history • Critical historiography • Cultural history • Deconstruction • Diplomatic history • Economic history • Family history • Gender history • Great man history • Historical materialism • History from below • History of ideas • Marxist historiography • Metahistory • Microhistory • Military history • Numismatics • Oral history • Paleography • Political history • Poststructural • Prosopography • Quantitative history • Revisionism • Social history • Universal history • Whig history • Women's history • World history Historiography How historians DO history

2. Many historians view the conquest of Native Americans by Europeans using the idea of cultural relativity.

3. Cultural Relativism • Cultural relativity is an attempt to understand the cultural development of social groups using their own terms; without trying to impose absolute ideas of moral value • Under specific circumstances, any form of human behavior can appear to be good or bad. • An example is our attitude to the killing of another human being: • In peace time this may be considered to be murder  “bad” • In war time this may be considered a duty  “good” • As this example suggests, what is significant is not the act itself (taking the life of another person) but the social context of the act

4. The Hsilgne. "The Hsilnge were an interesting people who inhabited a small island in the Northern hemisphere. Traditionally, they clothed themselves in the skins of dead animals - mainly cows and sheep which were also reared for their meat. As the society evolved, however, shortages of these animal skins lead to the development of a variety of alternative, cheaper, forms of clothing which seemed to have the unfortunate side-effect of retaining and even magnifying natural body odours. These odours appeared to be so great that an interesting cultural development was an almost obsessive preoccupation with coating the body in a wide variety of pastes and sprays kept for the purpose in specially constructed cabinets within the home. These cabinets also contained a wide variety of pills and potions that the Hsilgne used to ward-off all manner of ills and evil spirits. From an early age - normally 11 or 12 - the female Hsilnge were given to face painting, with the colour red seeming to have a special significance, especially for the lips. Hsilgne females applied a thick red paste to their lips each morning using specially prepared colouring sticks. Red powder was also applied to the cheeks, although this seems to have been much finer than the mouth colourings. Special powders were also used to shade the area around the eyes, although somewhat confusingly these colours were traditionally blues and browns, rather than red. Hsilgne women were also much given to body piercing. Higher status females, for example, adorned their faces, in particular, with gold and diamond studs and rings. Male Hsilgne do not seem to have been involved in this daily ritual of body painting, although evidence has been found of a male practice that seems to have been performed each morning. This involved the ritual scraping away of the previous day's facial hair with a sharpened blade specially created for this purpose. In addition, many of the lower class males (and some females) seem to have adorned their body with permanent pictures engraved using needles and inks. This seemingly repugnant process involved a skilled practitioner puncturing the skin with the needle and allowing ink to flow under the skin. Many intricate designs could be created by the most skilled of these skin artists.

5. The Hsilgne The English To judge actions by people in a culture, we must really understand that culture.

6. Difficulty with Cultural Relativism • If we apply cultural relativity, we have to accept any form of behavior as acceptable as long as it conforms to the cultural expectations of the society in which it takes place • We must understand the culture before judging an action by a member of that culture

7. Moral Relativism • Cultural Relativity should not be confused with moral relativism • Moral relativists believe no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth (no moral absolutism) • An extreme relativist position might suggest that judging the moral or ethical judgments or acts of another person or group has no meaning

8. Zinn: Revisionist Historian • Historical revisionism • the reexamination of the accepted "facts" and interpretations of history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and less biased information • It is a skeptical approach • That history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate, and perhaps a completely accurate history is unobtainable Traditional History Elite people Thomas Jefferson Henry Ford John Smith John Adams Slaves Workers Indians Abigail Adams Ordinary people Revisionist History

9. Considering cultural relativism, has Howard Zinn created a fair history of Christopher Columbus?

10. Common Criticisms of Zinn • No attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived • Too sentimental and romantic about movements in which he is involved

11. Howard Zinn, a revisionist historian, presents a much more reactionary view. Compare and contrast Zinn’s work to that of the theory of cultural relativity.