Историческа антропология и възможностите за разбиране на всекидневието
Historical Anthropology as an Attempt to Understand Everyday Life

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the methodological uncertainty of a relatively new research field – the historical anthropology – and offers a proposition how to do research in a condition of permanent uncertainty. History and anthropology have been facing the challenge to answer multifarious questions about their research approaches and existing metanaratives during the last 30 years. Historical anthropology, the realm of their overlapping interests, is addressed here through the problem of the interpretation. The author suggests that if „the understanding” is conceived simultaneously as a) learning and b) „making sense” the awareness of its relativity could loose part of the inevitable anxiety. The second part of the texts attempts to apply the methodological reflection to the historical study of an everyday practice – the eating. The emergence and proliferation of places to „eat out” is retraced in a single document but the text is situated in broad social and discursive context. The author draws the conclusion that if we accept the understanding as a process of constant shuttling between the fixed “fact” and the different possibilities for its interpretation we can reach a possible strategy how to overcome the crisis of the humanities for those researchers for whom this crisis is a matter of concern.

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