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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2009
The growing popularity of local history in towns and cities raises some questions for urban historians. What contribution is being made to our knowledge of the urban past by groups of people for whom local history is a leisure-time occupation? Are they poles apart from the interests and approaches of urban history? Can guide-lines be laid down? There is no general agreement on these matters. Opinions range from the view that local history is best left to develop its own canons, to the view that it can supply a source of labour for academics under their direction and control. Another, possibly more sympathetic view, is that the two kinds of work might feed into each other, provided that local historians are willing to move more purposively into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So they are urged to take on new subjects, to ‘flesh out’ the urban process, and to develop a more ‘vital approach’, making their ‘touchstone the real life experiences of people themselves’, But how responsive are local historians likely to be?
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