Microhistory

Micro-history is a history of scientific research that generates its knowledge through a very detailed analysis of relatively small and manageable research units. In the center of the micro-historical perspective, however, is not the historical detail in itself, but this is used in order to make richer and better founded statements about history in a wider context, due to the closer examination of the smaller unit can. Nevertheless, it is the micro-history not about the smaller and structurally or limited quantitative research ( local history, individual biographies, etc.) deny their importance, but rather to put them into a new, larger context of meaning.

Nor is the micro-history as an alternative to macro history. This partly pointed to a research strategy contrast difference of the research perspective is largely artificial, since the former are precisely differs from the local history that their views do not remain on the small investigation unit limits, but always takes on more general research questions or to larger research units reference. As a result, this means that micro -and macro- history non-complementary parts of a " total history " but research approaches that in parts quite well may overlap and also to.

Methodologically different paths be disputed in micro-historical studies that have as a common denominator only the detailed consideration of a manageable object. Due to the widely practiced concentration of micro- analytical studies on single individuals ( "actors" ) and smaller social networks and the extensive knockout historical structures ( structural functionalism ) are a large overlap with the everyday history and historical anthropology.

Classical micro-historical studies

• Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms. The world of a miller around 1600. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-8108-0118-6.
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie: Montaillou. A village in front of the Inquisitor from 1294 to 1324. Propylaea -Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, inter alia, 1980, ISBN 3-549-07390-9.
• Natalie Zemon Davis: The true story of the return of Martin Guerre. Piper, Munich et al, 1989, ISBN 3-492-02858-6.