How does a minority come to be? In an unusual project, a notable group of French and American scholars take the view that minorities are socially constructed. Their original studies of specific historical examples produce a series of stimulating and provocative essays useful and enjoyable for specialists and the general reader alike. Spawned from a conference organized by the journals Annales and Comparative Studies in Society and History in concert with the Center for Historical Research at l'EHESS in Paris and the Department of History at the University of Michigan, this collection contrasts studies of Afro-Americans in the United States, French Protestants, notables in Renaissance Florence, religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Muslim and Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, the native peoples of Spanish America, lower-caste Indians, ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, Australian aborigines, and American and French responses to AIDS to reveal valuable information about how minorities come to be constructed within societies. Some of the minorities considered are identified primarily in terms of their ethnicity, some by social class, and some by religion (Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim); a final essay asks whether the victims of AIDS constitute a minority at all. With its cross-cultural emphasis, this book will be a valuable addition to courses on diversity, ethnicity, and cultural comparison. It is destined to be a useful reference for undergraduate and research libraries and a much-consulted work for specialists on each of the societies considered. André Burguière is Research Director, l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (l'EHESS) in Paris. Raymond Grew is Professor of History Emeritus, University of Michigan.

A new approach to history, the Annales School, developed in France in the late 1920’s, profoundly renewed French and international historiography through the research work carried out by its founding members, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and their successors, Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie, Jacques Le Goff, Philippe Ariès, Fernand Braudel, Ernest Labrousse and Michel Foucault. It replaces history’s traditional focus on battles and kings, great eras and events or the fortunes and misfortunes of a nation with that of multifaceted, transdisciplinary issues:  was François Rabelais an atheist? Why has France always failed to become the leading economic power in Europe? Building on his privileged position as both an insider (he was a member of the editorial board of the History Journal Annales d’Histoire économique et sociale) and an outsider, André Burguière brilliantly presents the development of this school of thought. The Annales school focuses mainly on the history of human mentalities, that is, the emotive and cognitive structures and unconscious representations underpinning human behavior. It captures the intellectual framework through which past societies would think about themselves. How can we see the history of others through their lens?  How does this approach relate to the more recent paradigm of Cultural Studies? This book provides a broad overview of the Annales School’s academic expansion and examines the importance of its central concept – mentalities – in historiographical research. André Burguière, a historian, was a director of studies at the École des Hautes Ètudes en Sciences Sociales and a member of the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale (Yearbook of Economic and Social History). He has written several collective works, including Histoire de la famille (1986) and Histoire de la France (1989).

How does a minority come to be? In an unusual project, a notable group of French and American scholars take the view that minorities are socially constructed. Their original studies of specific historical examples produce a series of stimulating and provocative essays useful and enjoyable for specialists and the general reader alike. Spawned from a conference organized by the journals Annales and Comparative Studies in Society and History in concert with the Center for Historical Research at l'EHESS in Paris and the Department of History at the University of Michigan, this collection contrasts studies of Afro-Americans in the United States, French Protestants, notables in Renaissance Florence, religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Muslim and Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, the native peoples of Spanish America, lower-caste Indians, ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, Australian aborigines, and American and French responses to AIDS to reveal valuable information about how minorities come to be constructed within societies. Some of the minorities considered are identified primarily in terms of their ethnicity, some by social class, and some by religion (Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim); a final essay asks whether the victims of AIDS constitute a minority at all. With its cross-cultural emphasis, this book will be a valuable addition to courses on diversity, ethnicity, and cultural comparison. It is destined to be a useful reference for undergraduate and research libraries and a much-consulted work for specialists on each of the societies considered. André Burguière is Research Director, l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (l'EHESS) in Paris. Raymond Grew is Professor of History Emeritus, University of Michigan.

A new approach to history, the Annales School, developed in France in the late 1920’s, profoundly renewed French and international historiography through the research work carried out by its founding members, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and their successors, Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie, Jacques Le Goff, Philippe Ariès, Fernand Braudel, Ernest Labrousse and Michel Foucault. It replaces history’s traditional focus on battles and kings, great eras and events or the fortunes and misfortunes of a nation with that of multifaceted, transdisciplinary issues:  was François Rabelais an atheist? Why has France always failed to become the leading economic power in Europe? Building on his privileged position as both an insider (he was a member of the editorial board of the History Journal Annales d’Histoire économique et sociale) and an outsider, André Burguière brilliantly presents the development of this school of thought. The Annales school focuses mainly on the history of human mentalities, that is, the emotive and cognitive structures and unconscious representations underpinning human behavior. It captures the intellectual framework through which past societies would think about themselves. How can we see the history of others through their lens?  How does this approach relate to the more recent paradigm of Cultural Studies? This book provides a broad overview of the Annales School’s academic expansion and examines the importance of its central concept – mentalities – in historiographical research. André Burguière, a historian, was a director of studies at the École des Hautes Ètudes en Sciences Sociales and a member of the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale (Yearbook of Economic and Social History). He has written several collective works, including Histoire de la famille (1986) and Histoire de la France (1989).