In the mid-twentieth century, historians associated with the French Annales school initiated a paradigm shift by advancing the concept of *histoire des mentalités* (history of mentalities), aiming to reconstruct the collective, often unarticulated cognitive frameworks of past societies. Departing from traditional political historiography, which privileged the conscious decisions of elite individual actors, proponents of mentalities history argued that human behavior is profoundly shaped by underlying cultural assumptions that change at an exceptionally slow pace—what Fernand Braudel termed the *longue durée*. Critics, however, contended that in prioritizing structural, collective mindsets, mentalities historians frequently homogenize diverse social groups, treating the worldview of an entire epoch as a monolithic entity. Furthermore, skeptics pointed out the methodological vulnerability inherent in inferring unexpressed popular beliefs primarily from elite-authored textual sources, which were often produced for didactic or polemical purposes rather than to document authentic popular sentiment. Despite these methodological challenges, the history of mentalities fundamentally altered historical scholarship by expanding the domain of legitimate historical inquiry to encompass everyday perceptions of time, death, and the supernatural.
Based on the passage, which of the following can be inferred regarding the study of the *histoire des mentalités*? Consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.
- Traditional political historiography operated on the assumption that major historical developments were largely driven by deliberate choices made by prominent figures.Cevap
- BMentalities historians successfully relied on non-textual archaeological artifacts to circumvent the bias present in elite written records.
- A central criticism of the *histoire des mentalités* approach is that it risks overlooking intra-societal variations in belief systems within a given historical era.Cevap