Some afterthoughts on culture and explanation in historical inquiry

I argue here that the articles in this forum contain basic agreements. All three reject naturalism, reductionism, and monism while retaining causality as an explanatory category, and all three emphasize the role of time and a rgue for a view in which culture is regarded as both structured and conting ent. The differences among the explanatory proposals of Hall, Biernacki, an d Kane are as important as the similarities: while Hall favors a Weberian a pproach, Biernacki argues for a primarily pragmatic explanation of culture, and Kane for a primarily semiotic explanation. I argue that all three posi tions face immanent problems in elucidating the exact nature of cultural ex planation. While Hall leaves the problem of "extrinsic" ideal-typical expla nation unsolved, Biernacki simply presupposes the superiority of pragmatic over other types of cultural explanation, and Kane does the same for semiot ic explanation. Hints at cultural explanation in the form of narrative rema in underargued and are built on old ideas of an opposition between "analysi s" and "narrative." This is also the case with the latest plea for "analyti c narratves." I conclude that a renewed reflection on this opposition is ca lled for in order to come to grips with cultural explanation and to get bey ond the old stereotypes regarding the relationship between historical and s ocial-scientific approaches to the past.