H. Berger
Quantitative analysis of mass data is usually associated with macro-analysis and not with the analysis of very small research entities. The microanalytic approach in the social sciences was originally considered more of an alternative to the quantitative research paradigms of the 1970s and ‘80s. Contrary to the historical-anthropological mainstream in microhistory, though, it does not seem to be sensible to turn completely away from quantification and, in performing analysis in actual practice, to investigate only small-scale objects of scholarly research. Invoking for the purpose of illustration Siegfried Krakauer’s metaphors of “maintaining the necessary distance” to a greater or lesser degree, of “panoramic perspectives,” and of “the bird’s-eye-view vs. the fly’s-eye-view” in historical research makes it obvious that both scholarly ways of looking at things (observation from up close or from far off) have their indisputable advantages, whereby I don't want to miss the benefits of either one of these approaches.
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