北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列
Lecture 6
Approach to Comparative-Historical Method (3):
Constructionism in Historical Perspective
Michael Stanford’s The Nature of Historical
Knowledge: The Predicament of the Historians
Unseen
Seen
Past events & Historical
field
Historical evidence
The construction in the
historian’s mind
Historical communication
(book, lecture or article)
The public mind
Historical action (which
become part of historical
events)
3
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study: In
comparison with the objectivity attained or claimed
to have attained in natural science, Ricoeur
underlines that historical objectivity is “an
incomplete objectivity” (1965, p.26) Their
incompleteness can be featured in four counts
4
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study:..
a. Judgment of importance: Choices made by historian in
their process of investigations are based mainly on
judgment of importance rather than empirically and
objectively derived criteria, which natural scientists
claimed to have used. Historian’s judgments of importance
(in Weber’s words ‘cultural significance’) will not only
affect historian’s choice of topics and/or problem of
investigation, but will play essential parts in choice of data
(i.e. historical documents or any other forms of historical
artifact), in constructing causal sequences (i.e. narrative),
in selecting contextual factors, against which the data and
causal explanations are set against.
6
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study:
b. Conception of causality:
 According to Ernest Nagel’s classification explanation can be
differentiated into: deductive model, probabilistic explanation,
functional explanation and genetic explanation. He characterizes
that “historical inquiries frequently undertake to explain why it is
that a given subject has certain characteristics, by describing how
the subject has evolved out of some earlier one. Such explanations
are commonly called ‘genetic’.” (Nagel, 1961, p. 25)
 In this kind of explanations, what historians seek to attain is not
determinations but conditions or “fields of influence,
opportunities, etc.” (Ricoeur, 1965, p. 27)
7
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study:
b. Conception of causality:
 Accordingly, there are at least of three tiers of causality to be
explored in historical studies (Ricoeur, 1965, p. 26)
a) The geo-political, socio-economic, and cultural conditions/ contexts
b) The temporal and/or epochal conditions/contexts
c) The flow of events.
8
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study:
c. Temporal distance:
 In historical investigation, historians encounter one objective
difficulty, i.e. to understand their objects of inquiry in remote
distance. They basically experience the “phenomenon of selfalienation, of drawing out, of distension, in a word, of original
‘otherness’.” (Ricoeur, 1965, p. 27)
 To overcome this kind of distance and otherness, historians have to
project them into “another present” to be exact past. These efforts
of projecting into the past, which has been characterized by
Riceour as “temporal imagination”, require a kind of “subjectivity,
which is never approached by the science of space, matter, and
life.” (ibid, p. 28)
9
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
1. The incomplete objectivity in historical study:
d. Human distance
 “ What history ultimately tries to explain and understand are men.
The past from which we are removed is human past. In addition to
temporal, therefore, there is that specific distance which stems from
the fact that the other is different man.” (ibid, p. 28)
 To overcome it, historians are expected to be able to wage a kind of
“sympathetic efforts” in their investigation. That is, it “is not
merely an imaginative projection into another present but a real
projection into another human life.” (ibid, p. 28)
10
Paul Ricoeur’s
Objectivity and Subjectivity in History
2. Objectivity in historian’s subjectivity: In view of these
features of incomplete objectivity in historical
investigation, historians can guard against the trap of
absolute relativism or subjectivism by
a. Objectification and reflection on historian’s subjectivity
b. Historical criticism among historians
11
The Nature of Historical Research: Debate
between Modernist and Postmodernist
1. Past events & historical field: Can they be fully recovered?
2. Historical evidence: Objective fact, theoretically mediated
facts/ interpretation, or socially constructed reality
3. The role of the historical researcher: Objective
reconstructionist, theoretically guided constructionist,
interpreter of text within text within contextes
4. Research output of historical study: Authentic
correspondence of the past, culturally significant
representations of the past from selective perspectives, or
retrieval of suppressed representations of the past
12
The Nature of Historical Research: Debate
between Modernist and Postmodernist
Past events
Historical evidences
Role of researchers
Outputs of historical
research
Reconstructionist
Fully Retrievable
Objective facts
Objective and impartial History as authentic
Reconstructionists
correspondence of the
past
Constructionist
Partly
retrievable
Structurally and
theoretically mediated
interpretations
Theoretically and
structurally guided
constructionist
History as
representations of the
past from selective
perspectives
Deconstructionist
Irretrievable
Socially constructed
and/or systemic
distorted
representations
Interpreters of text
within text within
context
History as retrieval of
suppressed
representations of the
past
14
The Nature of Historical Research: Debate
between Modernist and Postmodernist
Reconstructionist: Traditional Historigraphy
e.g. Leopold von Ranke, Geoffrey Elton, C.B. McCullagh...
Constructionist: Historical Sociology
e.g. Karl Marx, Max Weber, Reinhard Bendix, Charles Tilly,
Theda Skocpol, Margaret Somers, ..
Deconstructionist: Narrative, Trop, and Discourse
e.g. Hyden White, Michel Foucault, …
15
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
1. From the philosophy of history to the historical
science: Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) has been
respected by Western historians as the founding
father of modern profession of historical science. He
begins his project of building the profession of
historical science by first of all criticizing “the pitfalls
of a philosophy of history” (Ranke, 1973, Chapter 4)
16
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
2. Ranke rejects the philosophy of history laid down by
philosophers notably Hegel by criticizing Hegel’s
“assertion that reason rules the world.” (Ranke,
1973, P. 49) And this reason, which has been
characterized by Hegel as “The Spirit”, will set the
path in which “mankind is on an uninterrupted road
to progress, in a steady development toward
perfection.” (Ranke, 1973, P. 29)
18
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
3. Accordingly, Ranke asserts that the subject of study in
history is not the spirit or the universal destiny of
human progress. Instead “our subject is mankind as it
is, explicable or inexplicable, the life of the individual,
of the generations, of the people.” (Ranke, 1973, P. 138)
Furthermore, Ranke also refrains the mission that “to
history has been given the function of judging the past,
of instructing men for the profit of future years.”
Instead he asserts that “the present attempt does not
aspire to such lofty undertaking. It merely wants to show
how, essentially, things happened.” (Ranke, 1973, P. 137
19
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
4. The research strategies leading to the revelation of what
actually happened, according to Ranke’s
recommendations as well as illustrations in his
historical research works, is to go directly to the firsthanded sources, such as “memoirs, diaries, letters,
reports from embassies, and original narratives of
eyewitnesses.” (Ranke, 1973, P. 137) Hence, “strict
presentation of facts…is undoubtedly the supreme law”
(ibid) in Ranke’s method of historiography..
20
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
5. In general, accordingly to Iggers, “the scientific
orientation” of the reconstructionists “since Leopold
von Ranke shared three basic assumptions…
a. They accepted a correspondence theory truth
holding that history portrays people who really
existed and actions that really took place.
b. The presupposed that human actions mirror the
intentions of the actors and that it is the task of the
historian to comprehend these intentions in order to
construct a coherent history story.
21
Leopold von Ranke and Modern Historicism:
The Reconstructionist Project
…shared three basic assumptions…
…
c. They operated with one-dimensional, diachronical
conception of time, in which later events follow early
ones in a coherent sequence.
The assumptions of the reality, intentionality, and temporal
sequence determined the structure of writing …from Ranke
well into the twentieth century.” (Iggers, 1995, P. 3) This
school in historiography has therefore been characterized
as the Reconstructions” by Alun Munslow (1997), while
Iggers called the Classical Historicism. (1995)
22
In Search of the Theory of History: The
Constructionists’ Project
1. Most of the constructionists in historical researches
share the presupposition of mediating the past with a
preconceived theoretical framework. As E.H. Carr, one
of the key member of the camp, stresses the historical
evidences appear before us are already in the form of
selectively interpreted facts of the historians. They are
what Carr called the “historian’s facts”. Therefore, the
social called historical facts are practically inseparable
with their interpretations.
24
In Search of the Theory of History: The
Constructionists’ Project
1. …In Carr’s own words, “the facts of history never come
to us ‘pure’ since they do not and cannot exist in a pure
form: they are always refracted through the mind of the
recorder. It follows that we take up a work of history,
our first concern should not be with the fact which it
contains but with the historian who wrote it.” (Carr,
Quoted in Munslow, 1997, Pp.44-45)
25
In Search of the Theory of History: The
Constructionists’ Project
2. Alex Callinicos, another constructionist according to
Munslow, suggests that one may read the work of
historians by tracing their theory of history with the
following constituents
a. A theory of structure: An account of the fundamental
relationship constitutive of a particular kind of society
b. A theory of transformation: An account of the mechanism or
mechanisms responsible for social changes and fundamental
transformation of the social structure
c. A theory of directionality


Changes (increase/decrease) in some culturally significant property
Teleological or non-teleological change: debate on predetermined
trajectory and outcomes of changes
26
Marxist Constructionist Framework of
Historical Research
1. The theory of structure: Theory of class exploitation
2. The theory of transformation: The historical
materialism
a. Primary thesis on the relation between force of production
and relation of production
b. The thesis between the base/infrastructure and
superstructure
3. The theory of directionality:
a. The theory of development of force of production and class
struggle
b. Teleological theory of change towards communism, i.e.
classless society
27
Framework of HistoricMax Weber's
Constructionist al Research
1. The theory of structure: Theory of domination
a. "Domination refers to a meaningful
interrelationship between those giving orders and
those obeying, to the effect that the expectations
toward which action is oriented on both sides can
be reckon upon." (1968/78, p. 1378)
28
Max Weber's Constructionist Framework of
Historical Research
1. The theory of structure: Theory of domination…
b. Weber’s two bases of domination:
“(T)here are two diametrically contrasting type of
domination, viz., domination by virtue of
constellation of interest (in particular: by virtue of a
position of a monopoly), and domination by virtue
of authority, i.e. power to command and duty to
obey. The purest type of the former is monopolistic
domination in the market; of the latter, patriarchal,
magisterial, or princely power.” (Weber, 1978,
p.942).
29
Max Weber's Constructionist Framework of
Historical Research
1. The theory of structure: Theory of domination…
b. Weber’s two bases of domination:…
 Monopoly of interest in market sphere
 Legitimation and authority in political sphere
30
Max Weber's Constructionist Framework of
Historical Research
2. The theory of transformation: The multi-causal
framework of social carriers, intensity of actions,
conflicts among dominant and assertive groups, forces
of historical events, technology and geography.
3. The theory of directionality perspective
a. Theory of rationalization of the Occident and the iron cage
of instrumental rationality
b. Non-teleological
31
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
32
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
1. The ontological framework of sociocultural
phenomena
a. Essential roles of social carriers in particular social fabric
and epoch


Status groups, classes, “universal organizations” (primary
associations), e.g. households, clan, neighborhood
“External structure” (secondary association), e.g. the states, sects or
churches, enterprises, and political parties
33
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
1. The ontological framework …
b. The variable intensity of patterned/typical action
(Weber’s conception of four types of social action: meansend rational, value-rational, affectual, and traditional
action)
c. Forces of historical events, technology, and geography in
shaping cultural phenomena and changes
d. Power of the social carriers and conflict and competition
among them
34
Technology
Historical Events
Geography
External structure
Social carriers
Typical actions
Intensity
Social carriers
Typical actions
Intensity
Social carriers
Typical actions
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
2. Weber's Conception of Causal Analysis
a. Adequate causation of concrete phenomenon vs.
nomological causation of universal phenomena
b. Degree of causality: distinction among facilitating and
necessary orientations of actions
c. Counterfactual comparison as means to test degree of
causality of a given set of antecedent conditions "favoring"
a given effect
36
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
2. Weber's Conception of Causal Analysis…
d. Synchronic and diachronic interactions in causal model
•
•
Syncricahronic (within the present) interaction among societal
domains
Diachronic (between present and past) interaction in causal mode


•
Distinction between legacy and antecedent conditions
Distinction between inter-domain and intra-domain diachronic
interaction
Contextual effects on conjunctural interaction
e. Theoretical framework as ideal type in causal mode
37
Technology
Historical Events
Geography
External structure
Social carriers
Typical actions
Intensity
Synchronic
Social carriers
Intensity
Typical actions
Intensity
Interaction
Social carriers
Diachronic Interaction
Synchronic
Interaction
Typical actions
Intensity
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
3. Max Weber's Conception of Ideal Type as Heuristic
Instrument in Comparative-Historical Research
a. The nature of ideal type



Ideal type is a one-sided accentuation of reality and not a schema
which can be completely exhaust the infinite richness of a cultural
phenomenon
Ideal type is value-relevant point of view to reality and not an
objective and complete vantage-point to cultural phenomenon
Ideal type is dialectic mediator between the finite human mind and
the infinite reality
39
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
3. Max Weber's Conception of Ideal Type …
b. The Usage of Ideal Type

Ideal type is used as yardstick to measure and compare the
specificity of cultural phenomenon
•
Single ideal type, e.g. means-end rational action, bureaucracy, etc.
•
Compound ideal type, e.g. patrimonial bureaucracy
40
Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Method
3. Max Weber's Conception of Ideal Type …
b. The Usage of Ideal Type ….

Ideal type is used as hypothesis-forming model
• Ideal type as dynamic model, e.g. bureaucracy, patrimonialism,
rationalized education, etc.
• Ideal type as contextual model, e.g. the impact of calculable law on the
rise of capitalism in Western Europe, the contextual effect of
“stratification principles on education, etc.
• Ideal type as affinity and antagonism model



intra-domain model of antagonistic relationship, e.g. antagonistic
relationship among bases of legitimacy, esp. between legal-rational and
charismatic authority
inter-domain antagonistic relationship, e.g. antagonistic relationship
between charismatic rulership and rational economy, between traditional
religious identity and rational identity with nation-state, etc.
inter-domain affinity, e.g. affinity between calculable law and rational
capitalism, between Calvinist doctrine and spirit of capitalism
41
Technology
Historical Events
Geography
±
External structure
+
Social carriers
Typical actions
Intensity
±
Social carriers
Synchronic
Typical actions
Intensity
Interaction
-
Social carriers
±
Diachronic Interaction
±
Synchronic
Interaction
Typical actions
Lecture 6
Approach to Comparative-Historical Method (3):
Constructionism in Historical Perspective
END