I know there's some stuff in the book rec links, but I'd like to once again see what people are suggesting for reading in the general historiography arena.

I kinda want to ask people a broad, probably common question: do you think our understandings of history in an academic sense contribute to the world around us politically?

What I mean to say is this: a historian, by most accounts, looks to document and understand and explain history. How does that tie into the political science discipline that is rising in places like the United States? Do historians get enough credit in politics, or should they be consulted more in government to provide historical pretext on decisions?

Are there any dramatic historian listservs? Because the big one for archivists (Archives and Archivists, run by the Society of American Archivists, which is open to the public) is an absolute shitshow. For a long time the bulk of traffic was one guy forwarding his google alerts for the word "archives" (not even joking), and a retired person posting pictures of his flowers. Complaining about the listserv has its own twitter tag. Recently SAA has cracked down on this crappy content and people are all up in arms. Some of the stuff publicly posted this week has been at a level of histrionics normally only seen in AH modmail.

I feel a little bad for airing archives' dirtiest laundry, but PLEASE tell me your professional listservs are just as bad on the other side of the counter?

In a B.A./M.A./PhD thesis, what makes an outstanding conclusion? Anything you would recommend beyond the usual (refer to the introduction again, relevance for historiography, sum up your work)?

I have a question that hopefully somebody here can answer. How is Victor Turner seen by historians?

I recently read an article that used Turner's method of symbolic textual analysis to dissect a historical document. For those not familiar, Turner is one of the key pioneers of a school of thought known as symbolic anthropology. It involves dissecting a narrative by treating it as the semantic juxtaposition of opposing symbols. The author concluded that the text was so laden with symbolism and formalized narrative structure that its historicity must be questioned. He seems to conclude that the story is largely fictitious.

I'm skeptical, but part of this may be because I have no formal training in history. In anthropology (my background), Victor Turner is kind of a controversial figure. Lots of us question the utility of symbolic anthropology for being largely unscientific. Is this kind of textual analysis more common in history? Further, is it fair to make a claim that a document is fictitious just because it's laden with symbolism?