Historical Fields and"Boundary Works": a commentary on recent Brazilian historiography and a reconciling proposal

Abstract

The goal of this article is to try to identify a rather new configuration in Brazilian cultural and historiographic production -the increase in"boundary works" -and to outline a discussion of their epistemic status as compared to academic historiography. In the last quarter of a century the rising numbers of published academic history books probably reflects the recent expansion of undergraduate and graduate History courses and the increase in more educated readers. This was followed by an equivalent rise in what we here call"boundary works" -historical literature that incorporates academic research procedures but also makes free and liberal use of the resources of literary imagination and narrative. We propose that a return to the discussion of epistemic boundaries in science could be of benefit to an appraisal of the historiographic value of"boundary works".