Theoretical and methodological principles of studying everyday history: contemporary ukrainian historiographic discourse

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the state of development of the main theoretical and methodological foundations of the history study of an everyday life in modern Ukrainian historiography, to determine their problems and further prospects for analysis. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, objectivity along with the use of general scientific methods – analysis, synthesis, abstraction and generalization; historiographical – specifically historiographical analysis and synthesis; historical – comparative and historical, chronological and typological. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that the article is the first attempt at historiographical reflection on the theoretical and methodological foundations of the history study of an everyday life in modern Ukrainian historical science. The Conclusion. Over the past decades, in modern Ukrainian historiography, there has been a significant increase in research interest in the history of an everyday life and everyday life as a theoretical and methodological concept, which has been formed into a stable scientific direction. This process is evidenced by the scientific work on the history of an everyday life at both factual, theoretical, methodological, and conceptual levels. A whole series of thorough concrete historical, theoretical and methodological studies and source researches have been done. Their characteristic feature is a significant predominance of concrete and historical research papers (both in number and subject matter) over theoretical and methodological (conceptual) studies. Another characteristic feature of research papers is a certain conceptual and categorical, conceptual uncertainty of an everyday history, the vagueness of its boundaries and relationships with other directions of anthropologically oriented history. An important feature of modern historiography on the problem raised is, in addition, national peculiarities regarding the clarification of the subject and methodology of an everyday history, which are determined by the level and state of the general development of national historiography, the presence of scientific traditions and schools, and the degree of general development of society. Despite a considerable number of scientific publications, still not all theoretical and methodological foundations of an everyday history have been solved. In particular, this concerns the definition of the very concept of “everyday”, its object and subject. Even nowadays, these issues are at the stage of formation, having not found their solution either in Western or in modern Ukrainian historiography. In general, the outlined issue is quite complex and requires further research, first of all, it is important to develop tools, systematize approaches, principles and methods of determining one's own subject field of an everyday life.