This volume brings together historians and anthropologists to reflect on the place of history within present-day conditions. The central focus is on aspects of the popular, on the ways in which the popular relates to the scientific, the professional, the aesthetic, the religious, the legal, and the political. The essays in this book represent a critique of the disciplinary practices of history. They share some of the impulses that had earlier produced movements such as ‘history from below’ as well as Subaltern Studies, which had also opened historiography to the domain of the popular. But this volume also reflects an urge to rethink the place of history in the present. Its essays examine the historian’s practices and assumptions, the underlying concern being to find a set of practices of history-writing that are more truthful as well as more ethical. The essayists are united by the desire to find a way out of the self-constructed cage of scientific history which has made historians wary of the popular.
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