On how to explain the region without getting lost in the attempt. Revising and rethinking Regional History

Abstract

The debate on region and regional history emerged in academia when there was an interest in doing a total history, with a strong mark on the economic aspect, that was trying to go beyond the state’s administrative and political domains. Therefore, it arose as a critique of a history that did not include or minimized spatial particularities that remained blurred behind the political construction, i.e. the attempt to make history coincide with the territoriality of the state’s jurisdiction. The giving up of the claim to total history, which was concomitant to the so-called crisis of the scientific paradigm, had a strong impact on the concept and the representative character of the region as a part of that construct, which was interested in cases just for purposes of contrast. This article discusses this process. For that purpose, it first analyzes the initial understanding of region. It then describes the construction of a scientific regional history dependent on theoretical explanatory models (functional structuralism and structuralist Marxism with a strong mark on economic history). It finally shows how the crisis of the scientific paradigm affects regional historical studies. It suggests that somewhere along the way there was a thematic displacement from economy to culture and that, on the other hand, regional investigations got rid of rigid molds and determining contexts. Thus, the regional dimension acquired an explanatory power in itself, which invites to revise traditional models and explanations. This means that the debate focuses on the implications of the use or non-use of the models.

Key words: total history, regional history, theoretical models, singularity.