1. Note the remarks of a recent commentator: McLennan, G., ‘History and Theory: contemporary debates and directions’, Literature and History 10 (1984) 139–164 Google Scholar.

2. For example, in the field of history, C. Hempel’s ‘covering law model’, and Popper’s development of a ‘hypothetico-deductive’ method. See in partcular Popper, K. R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London 1974 Google Scholar); Hempel, C. G., Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York 1965 Google Scholar) (including a re-edition of the original paper of 1943); and see also Mandelbaum M., ‘The Problem of “Covering Laws”’, in: Gardiner, P., ed., The Philosophy of History (Oxford 1974) 51–65 Google Scholar (orig. in History and Theory 1 (1961) 229-242) for further discussion and bibliography. The best general survey of all these movements and philosophical problems, except for the most recent, is still Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (new edn., London 1961). For good general accounts of empiricist, positivist and rationalist approaches to the problem of reality and knowledge, but from a critical realist perspective, see Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Brighton 1978); idem, The Possibility of Naturalism: a Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (Brighton 1979); Harré, R.;, Philosophies of Science: an Introductory Survey (Oxford 1972 Google Scholar); and see esp. Hillel-Ruben, D., Marxism and Materialism (Brighton 2 1979 Google Scholar); McLennan, G., Marxism and the Methodologies of History (London 1981 Google Scholar).

3. See Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago 1970 Google Scholar); and the debate between Kuhn on the one hand, and those who followed Popper, in: Lakatos, I., Musgrave, A., eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge 1970 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For realist critiques of conventionalism, see the references in note 2 above.

4. See the work of Bhaskar, Hillel-Ruben and McLennan cited in note 2 above. Also the essays in: Mepham, J., Hillel-Ruben, D., eds., Issues in Marxist Philosophy III: Epistemology, Science, Ideology (Brighton 1979 Google Scholar).

5. See McLennan’s discussion, Marxism and the Methodologies of History (cited note 2 above) esp. 66ff., 97ff.

6. For some general remarks, see McLennan, , Marxism and the Methodologies of History, 97-111 Google Scholar. There are, of course, many elements within this basic paradigm, some of the representatives of which would certainly take issue with this rather rough-and-ready description. The rigorous approach of German positivism as exemplified by Ranke; the historicists’ emphasis on a relativist interpretative method (not totally dissimilar in its implications to, although radically different in its methods from, Levi-Straussian structuralism); more recent debates within philosophy of history on the problems of the possibility of the generation of historical/sociological laws (returning to the debate rekindled by Hempel and Dray, for example) and so on, all point to the flourishing debate and the fundamental awareness of the epistemological difficulties inherited from the empiricist/positivist tradition by modern non-Marxist historiography. There is a wide literature. For further discussion and bibliography, see: Lembeck, K.-H., ‘Die Giiltigkeit historischen Wissens: zum Zusammenhang von Geschichtstheorie und Geschichtstheologie bei Ernst Troeltsch’, Saeculum 33 (1982) 103–208 Google Scholar; Schnädelbach, H., Geschichtsphilosophie seit Hegel. Die Problème des Historismus (Freiburg/München 1974 Google Scholar); and note the other contributions in Saeculum 33 (1982), esp. Marquard, O., ‘Universalgeschichte und Multiversalgeschichte’, 106-115 Google Scholar. For general surveys see Mandelbaum, M., The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge (Baltimore 1977 Google Scholar), P. Gardiner, The Philosophy of History (cited noted 2 above). On historicism in particular, see Lembeck, art.cit., and, of course, Meinecke, F., Die Entstehung des Historismus (Miinchen 1936 Google Scholar); also Mandelbaum, M., History, Man, and Reason (Baltimore 1971) 42–9 Google Scholar, 113ff.

7. The two extremes are perhaps best summed up in Hindess, B. and Hirst, P.Q., Mode of Production and Social Formation (London 1977 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) — a conventionalist dismissal of all history as inevitably empiricist; and Hexter’s, J. rather contemptuous dismissal of all theorising in The History Primer (London 1972 Google Scholar).

8. See for a good survey — and critique — of this tendency, most strongly represented today, of course, in some Soviet and East European history-writing: McLennan, Marxism and the Methodologies of History, esp. 3-14 on ‘dialectical materialism’; and for a defence of a sophisticated ‘base-superstructure’ approach, see Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx’s Theory of History: a Defence (Oxford 1979 Google Scholar).

9. The classic structuralist critiques were elaborated in: Althusser, L., Balibar, E., Reading Capital (Eng. trans., London 1974 Google Scholar); Althusser, L., For Marx (eng. trans., Hármondsworth 1969 Google Scholar). For some critiques see Geras, N., ‘Althusser’s Marxismi an account and assessment’, New Left Review 71 (1972) 71–86 Google Scholar; Clarke, S., ‘Althusserian Marxism’, in: One-Dimensional Marxism, ed. Clarke, S. et al. (London 1980 Google Scholar); and, more polemically (and entertainingly) Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory (London 1979 Google Scholar). For the ‘post-Althusserians’, see the work of Hindess and Hirst, cited above (note 7) and their Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London 1977); Hirst, P., ‘Althusser’s Theory of Ideology’, Economy and Society 5 (1976 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). None of these is absolutely representative of all the work in their ‘area’, but they will provide some idea of the fundamental problems and the debates. The most useful exposition of the realist position from the historian’s standpoint is still McLennan, Marxism and the Methodologies of History. See also the summary of current debates in: G. McLennan, ‘Philosophy and History: some issues in recent marxist theory’, in: Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics, Johnson, Richard, McLennan, Gregor, Schwarz, Bill, Sutton, David (London/CCCS, Birmingham 1982) 133–152 Google Scholar; and Mouzelis, N., ‘On the Crisis of Marxist Theory’, British Journal of Sociology 35 (1984) 112–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. It is worth emphasising this. Adherents of Marxist/materialist interpretations of history are generally politically ‘socialists’ of one type or another. But they are not unique. All historians work with ‘theories’, whether explicit or not, as we have seen; and their methods and assumptions in turn reflect the ‘politics’ of their own social and cultural position, like it or not. Even the most avowedly non-political scholar is inescapably political in her/his intellectual practice and in the effects of that practice. For some valuable discussion see Blackburn, R., ed., Ideology in Social Science: readings in critical social theory (London 1972 Google Scholar), esp. Stedman-Jones, G., ‘History: the Poverty of Empiricism’, 95-115 Google Scholar.

11. See Sayer, D., Marx’s Method (Brighton 1979 Google Scholar); D. Sayer, ‘Science as Critique: Marx vs. Althusser’, in: Issues in Marxist Philosophy III (cited note 4 above), for example.

12. For some general surveys of Annales historiography, see Born, K. E., ‘Neue Wege der Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte in Frankreich. Die Historiker-Gruppe der “Annales”’, Saeculum 15 (1964) 298–309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; V. Rittner, ‘Ein Versuch systematischer Aneignung von Geschichte: die “Schule der Annales”’, in: Geiss, I., Tamchina, R., Ansichten einer künftigen Geschichtswissenschaft I (1974) 153–172 Google Scholar; Iggers, G. G., New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, Conn. 1975 Google Scholar); idem, ‘Die “Annales” und ihre Kritiker’, Historische Zeitschrift 219 (1974) 578-608; and representatives of Annales historiography: Bloch, M., The Historian’s Craft (Manchester 1954 Google Scholar); Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages: Selected Essays (Berkeley 1975); Fèbvre, L., A Geographical Introduction to History (London 1932 Google Scholar); Burke, P., ed., A New Kind of History: from the Writings of Fèbvre (London 1973 Google Scholar); Ladurie, E. Le Roy, The Territory of the Historian (Hassocks 1979 Google Scholar); Braudel, F., The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. 2 vols. (London 1975 Google Scholar), esp. the introduction; Furet, F., ‘Quantitative History’, in: Historical Studies Today, eds. Gilbert, F., Graubard, S. (New York 1971) 45–61 Google Scholar. See on one particular element in the Annales tradition Hutton, P. H., ‘The History of Mentalities: the New Map of Cultural History’, History and Theory 20 (1981) 237–259 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. See esp. Goff, J. Le, Nora, P., eds., Faire de l’histoire (Paris 1974 Google Scholar); Patlagean, E., Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4^e-7^e siècles (Paris 1974 Google Scholar), and the essays collected in: Structure sociale, famille, chrétienté à Byzance (London, Variorum 1981).

14. See for a very brief exposé Haldon, J. F., ‘On the Structuralist Approach to the Social History of Byzantium’, BS 42 (1981) 203 Google Scholarff.

15. See Godelier, M., Horizon, trajets marxistes en anthropologie (Paris 1973 Google Scholar); Auge, M., ‘Towards a Rejection of the Meaning-Function Alternative’, Critique of Anthropology 13/14 (1979) 61–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (orig. in L’Homme 18 [1978] 139-154); idem, The Anthropological Circle: Symbol, Function, History (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 37, Cambridge 1982); Glucksmann, M., Structural Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought: a Comparison of the Theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser (London 1974 Google Scholar); and Assiter, A., ‘Althusser and Structuralism’, British Journal of Sociology 35 (1984) 272–296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. See the work, and critiques, of Althusser in note 9 above. His approach to ideology (although he has since tried to modify it in accordance with some criticisms) is best expressed in: ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (notes towards an investigation)’, in: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London ²1977) 121-173. For commentaries and discussion see McLennan, G., Molina, V., Peters, R., ‘Althusser’s Theory of Ideology’, in: On Ideology (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Working Papers 10, 1977) (London 1978) 77-105 Google Scholar; Hirst, P. Q., ‘Althusser’s Theory of Ideology’, Economy and Society 5 (1976 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Althusser owes something to Gramsci, too, especially with regard to the idea of ideology as a mechanism of social cohesion. See Hall, S., Lumley, R., McLennan, G., ‘Politics and Ideology: Gramsci’, in: On Ideology, 45 Google Scholarff.

17. See Althusser, L., ‘Freud and Lacan’, New Left Review 55 (1969 Google Scholar); Adiam, D. et al., ‘Psychology, Ideology and the Human Subject’, Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977) 5–56 Google Scholar; and compare the reply of Hall, S., ‘Some Problems with the Ideology/Subject Couplet’, Ideology and Consciousness 3 (1978) 113–121 Google Scholar. See also Wollheim, R., in: New York Review of Books, vol. 25 nos. 21–2 (Jan. 1979 Google Scholar). For further elaboration, see Coward, R., ‘Lacan and Signification: an Introduction’, Edinburgh ‘76 Magazine 1 (1976) 6–20 Google Scholar

18. See, for example, Giraud, R., Semiology (London 1975 Google Scholar); Barthes, R., Elements of Semiology (London 1970 Google Scholar); Macherey, P., A Theory of Literary Production (London 1978 Google Scholar); Foucault, M., ‘What is an author?’, in Bouchard, D. F., ed., Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (New York 1977 Google Scholar).

19. Foucault’s work has stimulated a great deal of discussion in the fields here reviewed. See in particular his The Archaeology of Knowledge (London 1972); The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London 1973); The History of Sexuality I: an Introduction (London 1978); ‘Politics and the Study of Discourse’, Ideology and Consciousness 3 (1978). For a useful analysis and description of his work, its influence, and the development of his ideas, see Weeks, J., ‘Foucault for Historians’, History Workshop Journal 14 (1982) 106–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar with literature; and also P. H. Hutton, The History of Mentalities (cited note 12 above) esp. 251ff; Megill, A., ‘Foucault, Structuralism and the Ends of History’, Journal of Modern History 51 (19791) 451–503 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. The clearest examples of this argument have been presented by B. Hindess and P. Q. Hirst, Mode of Production and Social Formation (cited note 7 above). See also Machery, A Theory of Literary Production (note 18 above); Hirst, P. Q., ‘The Social Theory of Anthony Giddens: a New Syncretism?’, Theory, Culture and Society 1 (1982 Google Scholar); idem, On Law and Ideology (London 1979). These are written mostly within a sociological/historical context; but the central importance of language and literary construction is clear, and is expressed in the work of Machery and Barthes, for example, as well as in that of Pecheux: see for a useful summary R. Woods, ‘Discourse Analysis: the Work of Pecheux’, Michel, Ideology and Consciousness 2 (1977) 57–79 Google Scholar; also Haroche, C., Henry, P., Pecheux, M., ‘La sémantique et la coupure saussurienne: langue, langage, discours’, Langages 24 (1971) 93–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of some of Derrida’s work, and of Foucault’s critique, see Jusdanis, in this volume, below.

21. Many post-structuralists would argue, of course, that there is no point in explaining such correspondences, since each discourse is complete in itself and can refer only inwards. This refusal, in turn, means the admission that discourses come into conflict on the basis of pure chance, and that those ‘meanings’ which do appear to have approximately equivalent values in different discourses do so by accident. Since this is the case, there is — following the argument through to its logical conclusion — no justification for the study of either the past or of literature, except perhaps that of personal gratification.

22. For the post-structuralist perspective, Adiam, D., Salfield, A., ‘A Matter of Language: Review of Coward, R., Ellis, J., Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject (London 1977 Google Scholar)’, Ideology and Consciousness 3 (1978) 95-111. For critiques see, for example, Bob Scholte, ‘From Discourse to Silence: the Structuralist Impasse’, in: Towards a Marxist Anthropology: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Diamond, S. (New York/The Hague 1979) 31–457 Google Scholar; and Goodfriend, D. E., ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: the Dilemma of the French Structuralist Marxists’, ibid., 91–124 Google Scholar.

22a. For a good summary of recent debates in these areas, see Dews, P., ‘Power and Subjectivity in Foucault’, New Left Review 144 (Mar.-April 1984) 72–95 Google Scholar; and also Wickham, Gary, ‘Power and Power Analysis: Beyond Foucault?’, Economy and Society 12 (1983) 468–498 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. White, Hayden, Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore 1973)Google Scholar; Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore 1978); see further Goldstein, L. J., Historical Knowing (Austin, Texas/London 1976 Google Scholar); Munz, P., The Shapes of Time: a New Look at the Philosophy of History (Connecticut 1977 Google Scholar).

24. Critiques of Metahistory can be found in History and Theory 19/4 (1980) (= Metahistory: six critiques. History and Theory Beiheft 19), for example. See in particular Pomper, P., ‘Typologies and Cycles in Intellectual History’, 30-38 Google Scholar; and Mandelbaum, M., ‘The Presuppositions of Metahistory’, 39-54 Google Scholar.

25. See Stone, L., ‘The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on an Old New History’, Past and Present 85 (Nov. 1979) 3–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Past and the Present (Princeton, N.J. 1982) (collected essays). For some criticisms of Stone, see Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘The Revival of Narrative: some comments’, Past and Present 86 (Feb. 1980) 3–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abrams, P. ‘History, Sociology, Historical Sociology’, Past and Present 87 (May 1980) 3–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. See Rabb, Th.K., Roberg, R. I., eds., The New History: the 1980s and Beyond (Princeton 1982 Google Scholar), for example. The ‘New History’ is a mélange of rather diverse and eclectic points of view rather than a distinctive approach or set of approaches in its own right. ‘New Archaeology’, in contrast, represented since the early 1960s in particular by the work of Lewis Binford and Graham Clarke, presents a more cohesive picture. It inaugurated a move to introduce archaeologists to sociological and anthropological theory and to widen both the scope of the subject and the attitude of its practitioners. It is, of course, multifaceted, ranging from rigidly statistical approaches to settlement patterns, to more interpretative model-building; but there is a degree of unity and a certain clear line of development. See in particular Paddaya, K., ‘Myths about the New Archaeology’, Saeculum 34 (1983) 70–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, an admirable discussion and analysis of some of the difficulties presented by attempts to develop a theoretically-informed archaeology; also Bayard, D., ‘15 Jahre “New Archaeology”: eine kritische Ubersicht’, Saeculum 29 (1978) 69–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Except for, on the one hand, ‘extreme’ nanativists such as L. Goldstein (Historical Knowing, cited note 23 above) who would maintain that there is no difference between a historical fact and a description of that fact by the historian: since the historian constitutes facts while attempting to describe them, there is no need to study the ‘truth’ of a historical narrative. It is the narrative which constitutes and validates the facts, rather than vice versa. On the other hand, ‘hard-line’ methodological empiricists would contend that in fact historians do simply collect surviving ‘bits’ of the past, which is given (ontologically) unproblematically. See G. McLennan, History and Theory: Contemporary Debates and Directions, cited note 1 above.

28. For the tension between narrative account and structural description, see Lassman, P., ‘Social Structure, History, and Evolution’, Economy and Society 13 (1984) 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Byzantinists have yet to catch up with the discussion inaugurated within western historiography, for example: see M. Kerner, Ideologie und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (=Wege der Forschung Bd. 530. Darmstadt 1982) and in particular Kerner’s valuable critical survey of the theoretical and empirical work carried out in the field since the 1930s: 1-58. Compare this with the Byzantinological equivalent, Das byzantinische Kaiserbild (= Wege der Forschung Bd. 341. Darmstadt 1975).

30. This debate has flourished in the natural sciences. For three conflicting examples, which nevertheless demonstrate the point being made here, one need only refer to: Popper, K., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London 1972 Google Scholar); also Conjectures and Refutations (London 1963); Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago 1962 Google Scholar); and Feyerabend, P., Against Method (London 1975 Google Scholar) and Science in a Free Society (London 1978). For further discussion see Wartofsky, M. W., Models: Representation and Scientific Understanding (Boston 1979 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Hesse, M., The Structure of Scientific Inference (London 1974 Google Scholar).

31. Reference to the introductory sections of Ostrogorsky’s History of the Byzantine State or Moravcsik’s Einfiihrung in die Byzantinistik will provide a summary of this development.

32. Primarily and historically a result of the post-Second World War rejection of Marxism/materialism, which was, and to a large extent still is, equated unequivocally with historical writing in the Soviet Union and the GDR, and with ‘dialectical materialism’, together with the political systems which were regarded as inevitably bound up with these phenomena.

33. Historismus was (and is) a complex debate, marked on the one hand by attempts to define methods of analysing the past in its own terms without falling into absolute relativism; and on the other hand, by attempts to develop general laws of historical causation within which the uniqueness and specificity of the evidence could be comprehended without depriving it of its particular contextual meaning. Representatives of Historismus, such as Dilthey, viewed the movement as a turning point in the understanding of the past; it was, as well as a theory of historical knowledge, and a methodology of the social-historical sciences, a new step towards the comprehension of reality. This confidence was shaken during the period of re-assessment following the first World War, but the legacy of historicism continues to dominate modern German historiography, challenged only by elements of Annales-type history and by western Marxist historiography (dismissed by many West German historians, as we have seen, as irredeemably compromised by the existence of the Soviet/East European political bloc and their systems). The latter influences — particularly of the Annales and of structuralism — can be most obviously detected in attempts to develop a German histoire non-événémentielle ór Begriffsgeschichte. For some general comments, see Rossi, P., ‘The Ideological Valences of Twentieth-Century Historicism’, History and Theory, Beiheft 14 (1975) 16–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Passmore, J., ‘The Poverty of Historicism Revisited’, ibid. 30–47 Google Scholar; McLennan, Marxism and the Methodologies of History 67ff; Veit-Brause, I., ‘A Note on Begriffsgeschichte’, History and Theory 20 (1981) 61–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scribner, R., ‘Is There a Social History of the Reformation?’, Social History 4 (jan. 1977) 483–505 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note also the literature cited in note 6 above.

33a. This is particularly so in the English-language tradition, although the comment certainly applies to Byzantine studies in general. On the other hand, some areas within the field, partly because of their varied roots and more broadly-defined objectives, are less open to criticism from this point of view — the study of Byzantine law, of demography and of geography are cases in point. And more recently, it must be said, historians of the Byzantine world have shifted the focus of their attention to emphasise aspects of the Byzantine past which had been neglected, or to introduce interpretational innovations. See the comments of Kazhdan, A. P., Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge/Paris 1984 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) (trans. S. Franklin), particularly the opening survey of historians’ approaches to the Byzantine past, 1-22. See also Kazhdan, A. P., Constable, G., People and Power in Byzantium. An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies (Washington D.C. 1982 Google Scholar). But while Byzantine history-writing has been influenced from outside, this has had little effect upon the implicit assumptions of the historians in question. It represents in many ways simply a fashionable re-working of the material within the traditional empiricist paradigm.

34. Although what exactly constitutes ‘continuity’ or ‘discontinuity’ has fuelled debate since the beginnings of the phil-hellenic movement. For some recent highly critical comments, see Speck, P., ‘Waren die Byzantiner mittelalterliche Altgriechen, oder glaubten sie es nur?’, Rechtshistorisches Journal 2 (1983) 5–11 Google Scholar; and note the discussion of Sp. Vryonis, ‘Recent Scholarship on Continuity and Discontinuity of Culture: Classical Greeks, Byzantines, Modern Greeks’, in: Byzantina kai Metabyzantina 1: The ‘Past’ in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Sp. Vryonis, jr. (Malibu 1978) 237-256. Vryonis distinguishes a variety of different approaches to some of these questions, grouping them loosely into five ‘schools’: the classicist, periodist, nationalist, racist and legalist, according to their perspective with regard to the role of ethnicity, language and culture, and so on. A useful critique of this analysis has been made by D. Stein in a paper presented to the Byzantine seminar at the University of Hamburg. The paper unfortunately remains unpublished, but I would like to thank the author for making his notes available to me.

35. See the articles of Beaton and Jusdanis in this volume.

36. See the article of Vryonis, cited note 35 above.

37. Interestingly, those most ready to dismiss the unfamiliar as ‘jargon’ regularly employ their own ‘technical’ language in social contexts, regardless of their audience, on the asssumption that their values and knowledge are universally accessible and contextually meaningful. Likewise, the powerful subjective, humanist element in their hostility to formalised technical language in the human sciences is illustrated by their ready acceptance of such vocabulary in the natural sciences, which are somehow conceived of as more ‘objective’.

38. See Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (cited note 3 above), esp. 19-21, 43-51, and 5-18; note also 87-93, on the appearance of a ‘generation gap’ within a scientific community when such paradigm crises occur.