Abstract
It is thought provoking that it was the West’s modern project in the 20th century that almost eliminated history in much of education and the social sciences while at the same time political and cultural development in the last decade in Europe has strongly emphasized the necessity of a historical perspective. The conscious and unconscious mythologising of the past, which powers of state, organisations and minority groups often practice in order to further their own interests, can only be revealed, if researchers are able to work both synchronically and diachronically. To work historically with the concept of cultural complexity calls for different forms of historical analysis than we find in the traditional historicism od the 19th century until today. One of the challenges we are confronted with lies in developing a form of new cultural history of historical cultural analysis.
How to Cite
Christiansen, P. O., (1996) “Culture and Politics in a Historical Europe”, Ethnologia Europaea 26(2), 137-146. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.856
Publisher Notes
- This article was previously published by Museum Tusculanum Press.