One Historical Truth or Just Telling One's Stories?: Example of Conflict about the Establishment and Nature of Consumer Society
Abstrakt
The nature of historical works and historian's works itself has changed dramatically during the last two decades - the so-called mainstream positivist position has been pushed away and replaced by postmodern relativism. The main discussion of modern historiography currently concerns on the relationship between historical fact and historical truth.
Both these terms have been significantly challenged and questioned, where the main emphasis is put on subjectivity of historian's work. What is the point of history at the present time? Is it still possible to consider it as a ,,science" or should it be better likened history to literary stories? At the first part of paper there will be briefly presented these changes from classical concept of history to modern trends.
The theoretical part will be followed by the case study of the phenomenon of consumer society. It will be shown how differently individual historians approach to this term and that even after decades of debate they do not reach any agreeable consensus about the time, place and reasons that are linked to consumer society.