LUCIA SAVA, Viaţa cotidiană în oraşul Chişinău la - Asociatia ...

Viaţa cotidiană în oraşul Chişinău la începutul secoului al XX-lea (1900-1918)
209
rians, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists.Emile Durkheim
distinguished two types of comparison pleading for both of them. Firstly the
comparison of societies fundamentally similar by structure, and secondly, the
comparison of the fundamentally different societies. From the other hand,
some historians have tended to reject the comparison, having the principle to
be interested only in the peculiar, unique unrepeatable element. In this respect
is significant the answer given by the sociologist Max Weber in 1914 to the
historian Georg von Below, in terms of some debate on the urban history:
„We absolutely agree that the history should determine what is specific to say,
to medieval town, but this is not possible unless we discover first the other
cities’ lacks (the ancient, Chinese, Islamic).”
In terms of historical approach, the specification and generalization are
complementary and depend on the comparison either it is explicit or implicit.
Jack Hexter, the American historian divided the intellectuals into „those who
see things in ensemble” and „those who split the thread into four”, pleading
in favour of those from behind.
The problem of comparison becomes evident in The Study Over the History
worked out by Arnold Toynbee. The measure of the comparison was civilization,
whereby the author distinguished about twenty civilizations in the world
history. To enable the comparisons among these civilizations, the author had
to reduce each civilization to a small number of features, creating this way the
artificial barriers among these civilizations.
The quantitative methods which are used in the historical research, are based
on the analysis of the statistics related to the censuses, the price data, which
may be useful in studying certain types of the human behavior and even
human attitude. „The serial history” (histoire sérielle), is significant in this way, it
takes many forms, from an entire research to the research on samples. It is
used to study the group, but is also suitable for the research or for the relatively
small elite society where the information is not uniform.
Since 70’s years of the twentieth century, as well as the social anthropologists,
sociologists have paid more attention to the micro-social analysis,
and the historians to the micro-history. The aim of the micro-history is to
choose a personal example to be studied in depth, it can be determined in
representing in the miniature a situation which the historian already knows
that the history is prevalent. Excepting the politics, there are few important
phenomens of social life, that are closely related to the daily life, which allow
micro-relevant and clear analysis on new issues that are already known in
another way.