14 research outputs found
Effects of Genre and Content Knowledge on Historical Thinking With Academically Diverse High School Students
History, Action and Identity: Revisiting the âSecondâ Great Debate and Assessing its Importance for Social Theory
This article raises the issue about the nature of knowledge in practical matters. Traditionally this question has been answered by pointing to âtheory-buildingâ and to field independent epistemological criteria that are supposed to provide the knowledge warrants for the assertions made within a theoretical framework. In this context universality, i.e. generality and trans-historical reliability of the âdataâ, are particularly powerful criteria that establish the âtruthâ of theoretical propositions through âtestsâ and thus contribute to cumulative âknowledgeâ. But this ideal of âtheoreticalâ knowledge significantly misunderstands both the type of knowledge we need when we make practical choices and that of âhistoryâ in constituting us as agents. In using Bullâs argument in the second debate as a foil, and in revisiting also the controversies concerning the democratic peace and the role of macro-historical studies I first elaborate on the nature of the âhistoricityâ and situatedness of all practical knowledge. In a second step, I attempt to clarify how the knowledge of the past relates to practical choices in that âhistoryâ is not simply a storehouse of fixed data, but a product of memory, which in turn is deeply involved in our constructions of identity and of the political projects we pursue. In a third step I adumbrate the criteria for knowledge generation that are more appropriate when we face practical problem