Research Team "Micro-Spatial Perspective"

How can we combine microhistory and global history? The debate around this issue took off during the last decade and has hitherto resulted into very diverse propositions. Micro-spatial history is one specific approach within this debate. Within global history, it highlights those strands that address the way spatiality is constructed, and delve into the specific sites,
connections and actors that are key to the social process under study („spatial history“). Within microhistory, it connects to the tradition of Italian microhistory, and views microhistory as the analytical approach that investigates the making of social processes, rather than predefining the categories, spatial units and periodizations of analysis (as in macro-analytical approaches).
Key features of the micro-spatial perspective include:

• Avoiding any conflation between the type of analysis („micro“/“macro“) and its spatial scope („local“/“global“). Consequently, the micro-spatial perspective rejects the association of micro with local and macro with global.
• Focussing on the connectedness and singularity of places as a way to overcome the local/global divide. The attention here goes to how the specificity of a site emerges from its multiple connections with other localities, and how connections bring together sites that are diverse.
• Addressing how the social practices of the historical actors construct larger social processes and historical configurations. In this way, the micro-spatial perspective moves beyond the agency/structure divide.
• Inviting to unthink „scale“ as an analytical concept, and analyzing the scaling procedures by which social actors legitimise their power and actions.

The research team also contributes to the ongoing re-thinking of social history. The micro-spatial perspective seeks to unearth the practices and processes that lie behind abstract concepts like „war“, „capitalism“, „the state“, or „the empire“. It interrogates how the collaboration, negotiation and conflict among (individual and collective) historical actors shape larger social configurations. It studies the sedimentation, synchronisation and shifts of historical processes, in order to understand social change. And it deals with how intersectional regimes of inequality are connected to the production, reproduction and legitimation of power.
The research team includes Christian G. De Vito, Anka Steffen and Nicole Götzelmann.

Are you interested in joining the activities of the research team? Do you wish to embed your research project in the research team (through third-party funding)? Please contact: christian.de.vito@univie.ac.at