Creating a New Historical Perspective: EU and the Wider World ...

Report of the Tuning Validation Panel for History
The members of the validation panel would first like to emphasise the high quality
of the text presented by the Subject Area Group in History. The project represents
an enormous amount of high-quality work and the validation process undoubtedly
concludes in confirming the very good value of the project.
The panel was also charged with making comments designed to improve future versions
of the text. These can be summarized in the sixteen following points:
1. The document would be enhanced by taking in account the necessity
throughout the text of a global history viewpoint (imposed, among other
arguments, by the globalization of such phenomena as the recent development
of the megalopolis throughout the world, or the incidence of and global
response to natural catastrophes). This would involve two major consequences
for the references to space and time proposed in the document:
a) a greater sensitivity to the perspective of non-European centred approaches to
history; b) the enlargement of the periodization offered in the document according
to this global view.
2. Along the same lines, the diachronical framework used in the document would be
more convincing by strongly adding a spatial dimension to it.
3. The text would also be strengthened by a stronger accent on comparative – or
connecting – history, including various forms of interactions like cross processes or
transfers of technology.
4. On the central question of identity and diversity, the validation panel suggests
that these categories (identity and diversity) should not be used as such, but
should rather be themselves taken as objects of historical reflection.
5. This theme of the historicity of the categories of identity and diversity leads to our
next point: the importance of strongly distinguishing between different scopes, or
levels of approach: local, regional, national, trans national, worldwide.
6. Another strong recommendation of the panel concerns the twofold necessity: a) to
open more clearly the text to other disciplinary fields: sociology, political science,
political philosophy, economics; and b) to link more explicitly the field of history
with the connected fields of history of science (more specifically history of economics,
history of medicine, history of mechanics, history of biology) and of the history
of techniques: history of statistics, history of accounting, history of computing
technologies.
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