C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - N I N E Historiography The term “historiography,” literally “the writing of history,” carries two distinct meanings. On the one hand, it refers to historical accounts of the past, in contrast to the past itself. On the other hand | CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Historiography Matthias Klaes Introduction The term historiography literally the writing of history carries two distinct meanings. On the one hand it refers to historical accounts of the past in contrast to the past itself. On the other hand the term is used in a meta-theoretical sense as the reflection on how historians account for the past. Historiography in this second sense has two aspects. It may refer either to the particular historical methods employed by the historian or to a broader reflection on the methodology underlying her historical research. According to the broader interpretation historiography is to the practice of the history of economics what the methodology of economics is to the practice of economics. An additional complexity arises because both history and methodology of economics are meta-discourses cf. Emmett 1997 in respect to the discipline of economics which increasingly draw upon one another. For the remainder of this contribution the term historiography will be used to refer to the methodology as opposed to the methods of historical research. Finally the relevance of historiography as a meta-theoretical reflection on the methodology of historical research in economics is of course not restricted to disciplinary history of economics but is equally relevant to economic history as the history of the economy although this dimension will not be further explored here. Among the various ways in which one could discuss historiographic issues in the history of economics two seem to suggest themselves in particular. One could provide a comparative overview of different historiographies that are currently employed or hotly debated in the history of economics. Alternatively one could embark on a historical account of the development of the various approaches. The first perspective is much better served by the present volume as a whole than by any single work of survey. The second further discussed below suffers the .
