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30 | 2017
Contextualiser : une pratique transdisciplinaire ?

Is contextualisation common to the humanities and social science?
Edited by Wolf Feuerhahn, Rafael Mandressi and Antonella Romano
Couverture RHSH 30|2017
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16 x 24 cm - 300 pages
ISBN 978-2-85944-991-9

'Contextualisation' is often thought to be a practice shared by both the humanities and the social sciences. The specific time and place of the facts studied seems vital for sciences supposed to account for the singularity of their objects. But is this reference to context really unifying? Looking back at the emergence, circulation and rejection of the term 'context', and the practices associated with it in various disciplines, this volume reveals a more complex landscape than expected. 'Context' lays bare tensions between and within the various humanities and social sciences. Advocates of the autonomy of the (legal, philosophical, etc.) text see it as a relativistic practice. Others, on the contrary, criticise its lazy misuse, when it becomes a simple decorative background.  Some specialists in environmental history prefer the notion of the Anthropocene in order to highlight the human footprint on the planet on a less local scale. The varied case studies included here demonstrate that the historian of science cannot objectify the practices of 'contextualisation' without questioning his or her own.

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