Categories, Classes and Identities in Time. Escaping Chronocentric Modernity

Authors

  • Javier Fernández-Sebástian Universidad del País Vasco

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48487/pdh.2018.n7.22473

Keywords:

Categories, classes, identitites, modernity

Abstract

In this article I will mainly explore some questions related to the ways in which historians and other social scientists usually identify, distinguish and classify people from the past, grouping them according to different criteria: economic-social, political, ethnic, territorial, etc. Typical historians, far from creating the classificatory systems with which they operate, generally make do with the large frameworks provided by the historiographic tradition within which they evolved. Precisely for this reason, we are well advised to pause now and then in order to reflect upon these underlying structures, which we have inherited by way of a valuable legacy from our masters and which profoundly shape our work without our being conscious of it.

Author Biography

Javier Fernández-Sebástian, Universidad del País Vasco

Javier Fernández Sebastián is Professor of History of Political Thought at the Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao) and PI of the Research Group on Intellectual History of Modern Politics.

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Published

2021-01-21

How to Cite

Fernández-Sebástian, J. (2021). Categories, Classes and Identities in Time. Escaping Chronocentric Modernity. Práticas Da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past, (7), 197–223. https://doi.org/10.48487/pdh.2018.n7.22473

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