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Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

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Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#11

Post by coldtea »

simbolit wrote: post #3

I think the authors confuses stories and /grand stories/ (sometimes called "meta-narratives"). I don't see how it is possible to do history without stories. That literally is what history is, telling stories about the past. Yes, the stories should have a factual basis, and some don't, but that's not a problem with stories as such. The problem lies with the desire for all stories to fit a /grand story/. Such a grand s…

>But it is seldom helpful as a tool for prediction and problem-solving.

I'm not that sure. Perhaps that is the prejudice of an age with lesser historical ambitions.

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#12

Post by 23B1 »

One thing this article doesn't address is the pressure that many academics are under in the process of their research, and the 'meta-narrative' of their careers writ large.

When you are competing for eyeballs, attention, grants, and tenure – when the community you work in is so small and so tightly networked – there can be a ton of pressure to make leaps of logic or narrative in order to paint a picture that resonates within that community.

I'm not excusing this behavior, but I understand it. It's the same reason UX designers build dark patterns they know will degrade the experience, it's the same reason we vote along party lines, it's the same reason trends are adopted and movies become mega-blockbusters.

In most cases – even in academia – the stakes are low and so it doesn't really matter. But the stakes are much greater when that academic research influences policy – especially in the medical and political fields. Supposedly peer review & professional codes of conduct are supposed to solve for much of this – but, to me anyway, doesn't seem sufficient these days for those higher-stakes fields of study...

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#15

Post by zeroCalories »

simbolit wrote: post #3

I think the authors confuses stories and /grand stories/ (sometimes called "meta-narratives"). I don't see how it is possible to do history without stories. That literally is what history is, telling stories about the past. Yes, the stories should have a factual basis, and some don't, but that's not a problem with stories as such. The problem lies with the desire for all stories to fit a /grand story/. Such a grand s…

I have mixed feelings on this. While trivially it's true that we need to compress the world with stories, I do think there is a problem with people constructing grand narratives. We should be moving away from "story" and towards "hypothesis" so that we don't commit too strongly to a story that isn't supported by evidence.

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#16

Post by supazek »

whatshisface wrote: post #7

I guess it's impressively bad that a blatant conspiracy theory made it past peer review and into Wikipedia, but this article is a summary of a review of a rebuttal to a bad paper.

>made it past peer review

I don’t think that’s an especially difficult thing to do. It seems any paper dealing with social sciences or history that fits the current narrative is lauded and “reviewed” favorably. I think the mechanism which facilitates this is relatively simple and similar to how USSR officials would rather bring good news than bad facts

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#17

Post by drewcoo »

I strongly considered pursuing a PhD in history a couple of decades ago. I figured there was so much disprovable BS published following dominant narratives that it would be easy to make a mark as a debunker.

Then I realized that if the problem was so widespread, I'd be up against the whole educational ecosystem.

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#18

Post by drewcoo »

bdw5204 wrote: post #4
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I love history but I'm just a layman. I get quite angry when people get reductionist about history, usually because of story or narrative (pre-templated story patterns re-applied over and over again) The beauty of history is that the same event can have multiple, conflicting, powerful narratives associated with it. Looking at these narratives challenges our understanding of our own humanity. If we're smart, we end up…

There's nothing wrong with stories, either in history or elsewhere. But good vs evil stories are bad history and almost always bad writing too. Reality is almost always either different shades of gray or blue and orange morality. If you can't get beyond your own personal view of morality to be capable of understanding a different perspective, you're probably incapable of doing good history or creating good fiction be…

> There's nothing wrong with stories

I disagree. When there's pressure to piece together a story, it can easily become a search for facts to fit a narrative, motivated reasoning. Data that doesn't fit that narrative must just be outliers. New details not substantiated by facts enter the picture because they improve the story. Stories tend to lose some truth. That's dangerous.

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#19

Post by rectang »

I would find this piece more convincing if it had sampled stories from different sources in service of its thesis rather than focusing on a single work the author finds particularly galling, as there is no shortage of fictional narratives anywhere — look no further than US state-approved high-school history textbooks.

Given the narrowness of the material cited, this piece seems to me like unequal application of skepticism and status-quo gatekeeping.

Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories

#20

Post by simbolit »

coldtea wrote: post #11
simbolit wrote: post #3

I think the authors confuses stories and /grand stories/ (sometimes called "meta-narratives"). I don't see how it is possible to do history without stories. That literally is what history is, telling stories about the past. Yes, the stories should have a factual basis, and some don't, but that's not a problem with stories as such. The problem lies with the desire for all stories to fit a /grand story/. Such a grand s…

> But it is seldom helpful as a tool for prediction and problem-solving. I'm not that sure. Perhaps that is the prejudice of an age with lesser historical ambitions.

Can you please elaborate? what grand stories (or meta-narratives) historically shown to be good tools for prediction and problem-solving do you have in mind?
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