Later reconstructions of classical liberalism, Shubitz argues, suffered from too much concern about then-contemporary economic issues, and hence, from a
presentist focus.
However, while Carey's histories were typically broad-brushed and in some cases bordered on fabrications justified by
presentist concerns (e.g., "the Lippmann-Dewey debate"), Pooley combines textual hermeneutics with the historical sociology of academic fields to produce scholarly work of the highest order, written in elegant humanistic prose.
Although his detailed and illuminating exploration of popularity and publicity in Shakespeare's plays is resolutely historical, there are occasional glimpses of a more
presentist critique, and this cognate modern word 'populism' carries something of the shifting ideological charge of 'popularity' in late Elizabethan England.
The same "
presentist" attitude is betrayed in terms applied to Ashoka's ideology such as "proto-secularism" and "early environmentalism" (195, 271).
Southern Anthropology is not exactly
presentist history, but it does make history more present to anthropology--and in a most engaging way.
If
presentist concerns had shaped representations of the past already in antiquity, then our modern historical analyses of the identities of ancient communities should highlight narratives of peoples memories, rather than of mere events.
In the next chapter, turning to "technologies of the manuscript matrix," Nichols addresses the rich aesthetics and "
presentist politics" (39) to be found in manuscripts created in milieus of collaborating artisans.
So its perspective is strongly
presentist. In terms of anthropology's history, the sharpest articulation of the
presentist perspective was in classic structural-functionalism.
The result is a very
presentist and even sentimental championing of the anarchist movement, which in its tone resembles a work of hagiography.
For example, the section on the Ottoman context suffers from
presentist tendencies, as it readily seeks to uncover the "turning points" towards Turkish nationalism in an otherwise imperial context.