(no subject)

[hathycol]

What classes, I wonder, as a legitimate internet resource?

I ask this because I am currently battling a tutorial exercise that asks me to identify a legitimate reosurce for my essay and one that is not. Easy, I thought - I'm doing the Reformation, so by my lights, Wikipedia would be legitimate and godhatescatholics would not type of thing.

But then... well... I was basing it on bias. What, exactly, is bias in history?

Everything is biased and everything is prejudiced. Opinions on historical figures change over time as those involved die and history becomes less immediate. A figure we revile now can be celebrated in a hundred years, and change right back. The facts do not change when you get right down to it, but the writing involved does. Elizabeth I never married - fact. A hundred years after her death, this was a sign of her dedication to her country. A hundred years later than that and it was a crying shame that she didn't enjoy married bliss. Add another hundred years and she foolishly gave up the chance of a dynasty because she wasn't strong enough to hold onto power by herself. Now it's seen that she was a strong enough to rule alone and passed the crown on - uncontested, mind you - to James I.

All from this one fact. Part of me, perversely, wonders how people will see Hitler in 200, 300 years time. Surely what counts if how people saw the person back then. Comtemporaries, friends, subjects, rulers, priests, lovers, children. That's the stuff that counts and in too many cases that's the stuff we'll never know.

Anything that a historian - or hell, I as a history student - writes about then eventually boils down to opinion. We can try making new theories as to why people did something or why something occured, but it stays as a theory because the thing about history is that we'll never know for certain. This is one of the most frustrating and the most tantalising things about it, the Holy Grail of the history world. That someday, someone will wake up going "AHAHAHA! NOW I KNOW WHY LUTHERISM DIDN'T SPREAD TO FRANCE!" rather than merely expounding someone elses ideas in a different light. Your ides are made from how you were raised, what common opinion is at the time, what society expects and demands in terms of morals. No one can help that. No one has a mind free of bias. We've been shaped this way by teachers, by parents, by the media, by everything we ever came into contact with and everything we will come into contact with. It marrs the way we view history. We can never see it from an objective source.

Of course, maybe that's a good thing. It gives us examples from the past of how not to behave - or possibly exatly how to behave.

Which leads me neatly onto the point of - okay, so what isn't a legitimate resource? If someone has written it on their little homepage, then its still their historical opinion. Having a PhD is not necessarily a key to knowing everything.

Yet that is what I shall do. Like all academia, until you get the required mark you jump through hoops until you do. Then you bitch about them, but don't quite remove the hoops.

Sometimes you make them smaller, though.

NaNoWriMo starts today. Oh dear.

Comments

[balthaser.livejournal.com]

How about including that in your essay?
It's a good point.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

Good point, but alas, I can only refer to it in a roundabout way when defining 'achievements' for Charlemagne.

I will, however, be telling the tutor this in thr tutorial I have to do the exercises for.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

The only real example I can think of what isn't a legitimate resource is something that is actually irrelevant. Like Nazi propaganda as a non-legitimate resource on Charlemagne, etc.

Two cents only; you are a real historian and I am not.

[living-yen.livejournal.com]

hmmm, interesting point(s). My inner historian (really, i was one once and liked it) is pondering now, but I'm too sciency now and I keep thinking about reliability and peer review and study design and other things that are important in research papers. (internet sources from reliable, peer reviewed sources are better than someone waffling on on their personal website i.e. ejournals) we had to do a similar exercise in first year, but for scientific stuff (i think it was the MMR debate)

so yeah, this comment is no help at all, but i relate to your hoop jumping
good luck with NaNoWriMo! (i chickened out)

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

my mother says that surely the only illegitimate web resource is one that writes your PhD for you. or one fathered by an unknown man, obviously.
xx