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SoSe 23: Demography, Statistics, and Mapping in Global History

Michael Goebel

Comments

Ever since economic history has begun to live a life of its own in economics department, it became increasingly divorced from the mainstream of the discipline of history. Whereas social-science methods, derived from serial sources such as censuses or vital statistics grounded in the likes of baptismal records, were widely used during the social-history boom of the 1960s, they increasingly fell into oblivion, used less and less in the wake of history’s cultural turn. Starting with an overview of various kinds of historiography for which demographic data and statistics serve as indispensable anchors, this seminar will familiarize students with the most common kinds of serial sources once widely used in social and economic history, as well as the methods through which they can be made usable. At the same time, however, the seminar focuses on such sources in historical settings beyond the North Atlantic, where they have been used less frequently, in part because their accuracy has typically inspired less confidence among historians. A significant part of the seminar therefore concentrates on (colonial) governmentality, or on the question of why and how such records were produced in the first place. Finally, we will ponder the implications and possibilities of digitization for the use of these sources, with a particular focus on mapping and Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS). close

12 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Mon, 08:00 - 10:00 12 Class schedule

Mon, 2023-04-17 08:00 - 10:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael Goebel