A kisemberek hangja. A mikrotörténetírás mint történetírói módszer

The 20th century was also the century of searching for new paths in historiography. The most important step was breaking the exclusivity of historicism, which was not fully achieved everywhere, since event history and macrohistory were no longer the only accepted approaches of historical research. Today, history can be divided into a number of subfields, such as mental history, economic history or social history. A new trend, microhistory has emerged in the subfield of social history, which, although it began in the mid-20th century, became widespread and popular in the 1990s, with perhaps the most influential works in the genre, such as Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms. Among their main efforts, we can mention the rejection of the macro-social approach, the focus on the history of small groups, the role of the narrative, and acknowledging the impact of anthropology in historiography. Although microhistory is generally seen in a positive light as a new approach, there are now sceptics and legitimate critics of the genre, who point out some of its shortcomings and limitations. Microhistory will probably never become the leading discipline in the study of history, but it has certainly produced valuable and innovative works.