The essays in this volume bring together historians and anthropologists to reflect on the place of history and the historical within present-day conditions. The central focus here is on aspects of the popular, on the ways in which the popular relates to the scientific, the professional, the aesthetic, the religious, the legal, and the political.

The essays represent a critique of the disciplinary practices of history. They share some of the impulses that had earlier produced movements such as ‘history from below’ as well as Subaltern Studies, which had also opened historiography to the domain of the popular. But this volume also reflects an urge to rethink the place of history in the present.