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Number of published serials
400
300
200
100
0
1970
1980
Alphabet Soup 321
1990
fostered as well by expectations of scholarly productivity in the
assessment of promotion, tenure, and salaries.
Our particular pattern, however, should not be lost in global
trends. Why the Mediterranean? And why then? In some ways,
the development may even appear counterintuitive—at least if
we follow Horden and Purcell’s arguments about the ‘deflation’
of Mediterranean studies in the wake of Fernand Braudel’s La
Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II,
especially its second revised edition (1966). In The Corrupting
Sea, they note a subsequent lack of major synthetic works—at
least until their own hefty contribution. To paraphrase their
argument (in a section entitled ‘The End of the Mediterranean’),
7 a pervasive sense of ‘been there, done that’ long discouraged
other attempts at overarching regional narratives. On
the other hand, Horden and Purcell acknowledge how Braudel’s
monumental, and passionate, argument for the ‘unity and
2000
History
Anthropology/
Sociology
Fig. 13.2. Number of US periodicals, in history and in anthropology/sociology,
1970–2000.
7 CS 39–43.