Carlo Ginzburg in Conversation with Filippo Barbera and Maurizio Catino: The Historical Method at the Crossroad of Social and Human Sciences

Carlo Ginzburg; Filippo Barbera; Maurizio Catino

doi:10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23260

Authors

Carlo Ginzburg Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4118-6599

Carlo Ginzburg is a Professor Emeritus at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, the University of Bologna (Italy), and the University of California, Los Angeles (USA). His books and essays, which have been translated into 30 languages, include The Night Battles; The Cheese and the Worms; Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method; The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca; Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath; History, Rhetoric, and Proof; Threads and Traces: True False Fictive; Fear, Reverence, Terror: Five Essays in Political Iconography; Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal; La lettera uccide. His research areas range from the Italian Renaissance to early modern European history, with contributions to art history, literary studies and the historical method. He has received 23 honorary degrees from different universities, and awards including the Aby Warburg Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungs Prize, the Balzan Prize for European History, 1400–1700; the Hemingway Prize.
Filippo Barbera Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin; Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3103-0531

Filippo Barbera is Professor of Economic Sociology at the CPS Department of the University of Turin and Fellow at the Collegio Carlo Alberto (Torino). Current research projects focus on the regeneration of the public sphere, on the dynamics of marginalized areas, and on the analysis of foundational economy experiments. His recent publications include: "Critical capacity and community engagement. The Janus face of Renewable Energy Communities" (with L. Damaschin). 2024, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 65(2), 263-286; Commons, Citizenship and Power: Reclaiming the Margins, (eds. with E. Bell), Policy Press, 2025.
Maurizio Catino Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milan-Bicocca https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4937-9544

Maurizio Catino is a Full Professor of Organizational Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy), and a visiting scholar at the Department of Sociology at New York University. He is President of the Academic Coordination Council for the Master's Degree Program in Security, Deviance, and Risk Management. He is the General Secretary of the National Center for Prevention and Social Defense Foundation. His main research interests include: organization theory, errors and failures in organizations and learning processes, high-reliability organizations, organizational deviance, and criminal organizations. He has published numerous articles on these topics in Italy and abroad.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23260

Keywords:

Indiciary paradigm, Philology and historical method, Abductive inference, Evidence and truth, Post-truth and neoscepticism

Abstract

This interview with Carlo Ginzburg — conducted in Bologna in May 2025 by sociologists Filippo Barbera and Maurizio Catino — explores the epistemological foundations of the indiciary paradigm and its relevance for historical and social inquiry. Ginzburg articulates a conception of truth as a provisional endpoint reached through the careful analysis of traces, signs, and unintentional revelations, as opposed to the postmodern dissolution of the boundary between historical and fictional narrative. Drawing on his work in microhistory, the history of witchcraft trials, and the Sofri case, Ginzburg clarifies the role of philology as both a technical discipline and a moral disposition — one that enables scholars to overcome the provincialism of the ego through critical distance rather than empathetic identification. The conversation addresses the relationship between the indiciary paradigm and abductive inference, the methodological potential of judicial records for sociology, and the ongoing relevance of an Aristotelian rhetorical tradition that places evidence at the centre of argumentation. Ginzburg also reflects on the threat posed by neosceptical and post-truth positions to democratic epistemology, and on the possible convergence of the indiciary paradigm with computational methods and artificial intelligence.

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Carlo Ginzburg in Conversation with Filippo Barbera and Maurizio Catino: The Historical Method at the Crossroad of Social and Human Sciences

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