Assignment task: Material Interpretations ~ Marxism (class-based history) & the Annales School (Social History)
1. What is the common factor that links together all materialist approaches?
2. Do you see any differences between the Annales approach (Social History), and the class-based approach of Marxists (Historical Materialists) in how they interpret the historical past?
3. All historical approaches are a response to earlier approaches, so how did these materialist approaches challenged the political history narrative used by the Empiricists?
4. Also, what trend from the Empiricists did they continue? (think about dependence on factual material)
5. What strengths and/or weaknesses do you see in the use of the materialist approach, as you read in the articles by Hobsbawm and Lefebvre? Think about what in History the materialist approaches will illuminate (that is show us) that another approach might miss as well as what do you see as not covered or explained through the use of a materialist interpretive framework.