PS390 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Critical Historiography, Social Constructionism
Practicing critical historiography involves particular approaches to historical sources,
methodological attitude, and reflexivity:
1) Primary vs secondary sources:
-critical historians privilege studying the original material (primary) and archival material
-all textbooks in our discipline are secondary if not tertiary sources
2) Methodological attitude: four methodological attitudes located along a continuum
•pure historical objectivism: unachievable ideal, cannot eradicate current horizons from
research
•critical historical objectivism: doing justice fully to historical perspectives while being
aware that present horizons infiltrate historical studies
•sophisticated presentism: enables historians to do justice to the past but also discuss
contemporary significance of past discourses. Using historical material to elucidate current
perspectives, presentism is problematic but can be theoretically useful
•naive presentism: opposite extreme, describing and evaluating the past in terms of present
perspectives. Scholars are not aware of the problem of time-centrism. Commonly adopted
by directors of Hollywood “historical” movies and is unacceptable academically
-sophisticated presentism and critical historical objectivism are the most appropriate
methodological attitudes for studying history and philosophy of psychology
-the challenge is (1) to strike a balance between telling accurate story of the past with accessible,
modern language, and (2) inadvertantly creating misleading impression about the past bc of the
language one employs to describe that past
3) Reflexivity: acknowledging openly how personal biases and social locations shape
Document Summary
Practicing critical historiography involves particular approaches to historical sources, methodological attitude, and reflexivity: primary vs secondary sources: Critical historians privilege studying the original material (primary) and archival material. Using historical material to elucidate current perspectives, presentism is problematic but can be theoretically useful naive presentism: opposite extreme, describing and evaluating the past in terms of present perspectives. Scholars are not aware of the problem of time-centrism. Commonly adopted by directors of hollywood historical movies and is unacceptable academically. Sophisticated presentism and critical historical objectivism are the most appropriate methodological attitudes for studying history and philosophy of psychology. Reality is represented differently at diffeent times/in different contexts. Theories of psychological phenomena are human constructions that occur in historically changing cultural contexts. However, certain approaches may be better than others, certain ideas are false or wrong, and some theories do harm: linearity: textbook takes empirical stance, skeptical of a priori assumption that history of psych is a continuous evolution.
