Researching in circles

Material culture, history and methodology

Abstract

This essay examines the value of ‘critical intimacy’, return and repetition as perspectives and practices applied in historical research. In particular, it addresses history-writing that uses material culture as primary evidence, or which considers questions of materiality. The discussion begins with examples of eighteenth-century knowledge-making by non-elite individuals and emphasises the early modern home as site of intellectual and creative work. This research was informed by a previous, collaborative project which questioned traditional historical methods. Ultimately, the essay argues that the study of material culture offers historians (and others) an important analytical perspective, one that disrupts linear narratives in favour of generative circles of enquiry.