Mentalités

Abstract

What role do socially shared ideas and identities play in historical causation? Large-scale historical causation commonly involves objective factors such as climate, demography, and natural resources; it involves as well reference to social structural factors such as political institutions, cities, or transportation networks. Is there a rigorous meaning to be assigned to the notion of “mentalité”—a broadly shared set of ideas, representations, and values within a given people? Do subjective factors such as paradigms, practices, or moral systems influence historical change? Is there such a thing as a “mentalité” of a people, group, or nation? Take a group of young people at an Iowa potluck supper and a group of young traders at the Chicago Board of Trade—is there a midwestern mentalité that they can be said to share? What factors might be comprised by such a concept? What forms of variation must we expect within a group sharing a mentalité? And what are the social mechanisms through which these hypothesized forms of shared experience and thought are conveyed?