History and identity : how historical theory shapes historical practice This introduction to contemporary historical theory and practice shows how issues of identity have shaped how we write history. Stefan Berger charts how a new self reflexivity about what is involved in the process of writing history entered the historical profession and the part that historians have played in debates about the past and its meaningfulness for the present. He introduces key trends in the theory of history such as postmodernism poststructuralism constructivism narrativism and the linguistic turn and reveals in turn the ways in which they have transformed how historians have written history over the last four decades. The book ranges widely from more traditional forms of history writing such as political social economic labour and cultural history to the emergence of more recent fields including gender history historical anthropology the history of memory visual history the history of material culture and comparative transnational and global history.