Carving Up the Past: The Socio-Cognitive Process of Periodization

• In Event: 40411 - Troubling Pasts: Challenges of History and Commemoration

Abstract

An attempt to examine the process of historical periodization using the conceptual tools of cognitive sociology. Throughout the paper I discuss the view of history as a system of classification, and examine socio-cognitive themes and concepts such as "temporal discontinuity," "turning points," "watersheds," "cutoff points," "intraperiodic lumping," and "interperiodic splitting."

Author

• Eviatar Zerubavel