Projects / Programmes
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.01.00 |
Humanities |
Historiography |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 003 |
0000 |
003 |
Slovenian history, culture, synthesis, Central Europe, poliphony of cultural practices, borders.
Researchers (11)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
Research project “The Land Beneath” consists of three parts:
1. In cooperation with the National Museum, the Institute for Contemporary History, the Graz Karl Franz University, the Johanes Kepler University, and some other Slovenian and international partners, we wish to finish the synthetic overview of the history of Slovenian nation in English language. The project, initiated two years ago, following the rejection of target research project, is expected to end during the Slovenian presidency over the EU. Thus, the national and international interested public could be presented with the history of the region where present-day Slovenia lies; from the time before the first settlements of the Slavs throughout the subsequent phases in development of Slovenian nation and state. In this respect, we attempt to rectify the fault of previous discussions that dealt with the prehistoric period and antiquity rather superficially and exerted a rather unfavourable attitude towards the periods of Early and Late Middle Ages. To that end, we provide systematic descriptions, analyses, and explanations of the processes that decisively influenced formation and development of the Slovenian nation, and other nations in direct contact with it. On the other hand, we outline wider circumstances (influence of the Frankish state and the Holy Roman Empire of German peoples, life in the Austrian Empire and Kingdom SHS / Yugoslavia) that hindered or stimulated the development of Slovenian lands until the creation of the independent state. Considerable attention will be drawn at thus far poorly researched seminal topics and periods, which still today fuel heated scientific and political debates.
2. Basically independent from the first task, we wish to research and record, in collaboration with colleagues at the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon (SBL), the life stories of thus far overlooked and neglected individuals, who nevertheless considerably influenced the political, cultural, and economic development of Slovenian cities, towns, and regions, and during the last fifty years contributed decisively to modernisation of Slovenia within the SFRY, or within and outside the independent Slovenia.
3. In the project’s last phase we intend to attempt an integral cultural history of Slovenia, which is the central and long-term task of the Institute for Cultural History at SASA. Doing this, we will try to explicate that in order to present a universal portrayal of Slovenian past, all aspects of our ancestors’ lives have to be considered. Thus we follow both the tradition set up by the generation of Ferdo Gestrin, Bogo Grafenauer, and Vasilij Melik, and guidelines of the so-called new cultural history, founded in nineteenth century by Johan Huizinga and Jakob Burchardt and re-actualised in the last quarter of the twentieth century by Peter Burke and Roger Chartier. This framework includes history of everyday life, history of ideas, history of mentalities, historical anthropology etc.
Significance for science
Researchers, included in the project, are mainly adherents of historical anthropology that aims at representing the past as a whole, i.e., at giving a balanced interpenetration of various segments of the past, stretching from politics, art and economy to private life.
Research within the project The Land Between is focused on the concept of new cultural history, where the phenomenon of culture encompasses very wide areas of human activity. The objectives of research are not only limited to politics, science and art, but extend to material culture; along with written sources we take into consideration oral sources. Phenomena, once attached exclusively to one subdivision of historiography, take place in the entire history of human culture, which provides space for multi- and inter-disciplinary research. Historiographical research encompasses rules, ideas and conventions that define spaces of everyday life. The realization of the project The Land Between represents the move from social history to cultural history of communities and individuals. In that way we are able to to address cultural representations, history of imagining and ideas.
The project has significantly upgraded the long development of Slovenian historiography. Conceptually it gave a strong incentive to distance Slovenian historiography from positivisitic representation of facts and selected personalities, and instad offers wholistic representation of the past lives of people, who have for nearly 14 centuries continuously inhabited the area of the south-eastern Alps, western edge of Panonic lowland, river basins of Mura, Drava, Sava and wider areas of Karst and Istria. The accomplishment of the project The Land Between put Slovenia on the European academic map in metodological and realization sense.
Significance for the country
Before the publication of the monograph The Land Between: A History of Slovenia, Slovenia was the only Central/South-Eastern European country with no comprehensive history written in one of the world languages. In this sense it lagged behind Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Serbia. Some of them boast with up to three comprehensive works on national history. The published synthetic history as well as biographical researches and the study of individual institutions fill in a great gap in the Slovenian historiography. Their results possess a great promotional value for Slovenia.
Results of the project The Land Between have brought about new insights and questioned many "self-evident truths" about Slovenian history. This is why the insights, gained by the accomplishment of the project, are important for pedagogic practice.
Results of the project The Land Between are also significant for the scrutiny of current questions of regionalism in that they expose historical specificity of individual Slovenian regions, which inhabit their own identities. The results are likewise important for the making of optimal strategies in establishing close contacts with individual states, for they possess not only political and economic dimensions, but also cultural and historical.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2008,
2009,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2008,
2009,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
