The Problem with Periodization | The Diatribe

Periodization in the history profession brings up a lot of issues. A period, era, age, time, timeframe, event, or whatever cannot so easily be quantified. It impacts how we tell historical stories. There are four types: progression, declension, origin, and theme that all have their own problems. So let's explore that a little ------------------------------------------------------------ Connected videos: 4:40 - The History of California: /playlist/PLjnwpaclU4wUD7y8912ViyAtGfraKi9ru 7:12 - 12 Annoyance for Historians: /watch/omYkEhPI6J4Ik 7:38 - Nothing New Under the Sun: /watch/EYYu0DuxgPsxu 9:45 - Agency: /watch/o4EZBLdLI78LZ 11:22 - When does History Begin?: /watch/0MJyZelbYpdby ------------------------------------------------------------ Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, 2nd ed. (1991; Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2011). https://amzn.to/2SxaeJD David Christian, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity (Great Barrington, Mass.: Bershire Publishing Group, 2008). https://amzn.to/3boZaqu ------------------------------------------------------------ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOS: /user/CynicalCypher88 Support the channel through PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian LET'S CONNECT: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cynicalcypher88 Discord: https://discord.gg/Ukthk4U Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cynical_History Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CynicalHistory/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Wiki: Periodization is the process or study of categorizing the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time.[1] This is usually done in order to facilitate the study and analysis of history, understanding current and historical processes, and causality that might have linked those events. This results in descriptive abstractions that provide convenient terms for periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. However, determining the precise beginning and ending to any "period" is often arbitrary, since it has changed over time over the course of history. To the extent that history is continuous and ungeneralizable, all systems of periodization are more or less arbitrary. Yet without named periods, however clumsy or imprecise, past time would be nothing more than scattered events without a framework to help us understand them. Nations, cultures, families, and even individuals, each with their different remembered histories, are constantly engaged in imposing overlapping, often unsystematized, schemes of temporal periodization; periodizing labels are continually challenged and redefined, but once established, a period "brand" is so convenient that many are very hard to change or shake off. ------------------------------------------------------------ Hashtags: #history #historiography #periodization

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