Interdisciplinary Approach to Historical Scholarship: Issues in Historiography
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Date
2001
Authors
Adeboye, O.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
College Press, Ibadan
Abstract
The discipline of history is gradually coming out of its shell and cooperating with other disciplines. Gone were the days when ‘traditional’ historians preached the sanctity of the disciplines and exhorted that it should not be ‘adulterated’ by other disciplines. The old belief was that history would lose its identity as an independent discipline; that it would become dependent, and that it might even become a dumping ground for the hypotheses and theories of other related disciplines like the social science. But recent developments in the intellectual world have proved this wrong. There is a gradual move towards cooperation among related disciplines, especially in the Humanities. Conferences and research projects are packaged in such a way that scholars from different disciplines contribute their own perspectives on a given theme thus
producing a comprehensive result which no single discipline could have been able to fathom. This type of cooperation has given a vigorous fillip to research and has as well expanded the frontiers of knowledge. The interdisciplinary approach could thus be seen from two perspectives. One, there is a sense in which experts from different but related disciplines could collaborate in a joint research effort. The second sense in which one could talk of an interdisciplinary approach is when an historian utilizes the findings, insights, theories, hypotheses and other analytical tools generated by scholars from other disciplines to aid his own historical reconstruction and interpretation. This chapter examines the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship in history, and the main branches of knowledge with which history has had to cooperate. In each case the fruits of such cooperation and the problems generated in the process are examined. The conclusion looks at the implication of this trend for historiography in general. And as much as possible, special emphasis is laid on African history.
Description
Scholarly Articles
Keywords
Interdisciplinary approach , Historical , Scholarship , Humanities , Research Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::History and philosophy subjects::History subjects::History
Citation
Adeboye, O. A. (2001). Interdisciplinary Approach to Historical Scholarship in O. Olubomehin (ed.), Issues in Historiography Ibadan: College Press, 14-25