Conceptual History

Political Strategies and Language Policies: The European Union Lisbon Strategy and its Implications for the EU’s Language and Multilingualism Policy

by Ruth Wodak

co-authored with Michal Krzyzanowski

La « réforme » dans la vie publique anglaise: Les fortunes d'un mot

by Joanna Innes

Race and Genealogy : Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of “Race

by Claude-Olivier Doron

Draft to be published in Humana.Mente, 22, Special Issue “Making sense of Gender, Sex, Race and the Family”, July 2012

This article analyses the conditions of formation of the concept of “race” in natural history in the middle of the... more This article analyses the conditions of formation of the concept of “race” in natural history in the middle of the XVIIIth century. Relying on the method of historical epistemology to avoid some of the aporia raised by the traditional historiography of “racism”, it focuses on the specifities of the concept of “race” in contrast to others (“variety”, “species”…) and tries to answer the following questions: to what extent the concept of “race” was integrated in natural history’s discourses before the middle of the XVIIIth century? To which kind of concepts and problems was it linked and to which style of reasoning did it pertain? To which conditions could it enter natural history and develop in it? The article answers that “race” pertained to a genealogical style of reasoning which was largely extraneous to natural history before the middle of the XVIIIth century. Natural history was rather dominated by another style of reasoning, logical and classificatory, which principles and concepts defined strong obstacles to the development of a concept of “race”. To understand how the concept of “race” developed in natural history, one has to understand how the genealogical style of reasoning entered natural history and modified the very principles of classification that organized it. I try to establish that it is through Buffon and some of the main authors of the “monogenist” tradition that the most fundamental conditions for the integration of a genealogical style of reasoning and the development of a concept of “race” are met. To put it clearly, in contrast to many scholars’ analysis and following some intuitions of P.R Sloan, I argue that Buffon in particular, and monogenism in general, were decisive in the integration and development of the concept of “race” in natural history.

Bien Común (Borrador del rastreo de un concepto)

by Diana Monroy-García

Ejercicio de rastreo en los cambios del concepto "Bien Común" Ejercicio de rastreo en los cambios del concepto "Bien Común"

Justicia (Borrador del rastreo de un concepto)

by Diana Monroy-García

Ejercicio de rastreo en los cambios del concepto "Justicia" Ejercicio de rastreo en los cambios del concepto "Justicia"

De la casta a la raza. El concepto de raza: un singular colectivo de la modernidad. México, 1750-1850

by Carolina González Undurraga

publicado en: 'Historia Mexicana', LX:3, 2011, pp.1491-1525.

Reclaiming Revolution Owen Taylor

by Owen Taylor

With the events of the Arab Spring the language of revolution has suffused public and academic discourse. In light of... more With the events of the Arab Spring the language of revolution has suffused public and academic discourse. In light of this it seems timely to open discussion on how the concept of revolution functions in international law. This paper argues that the content specific to the modern concept of revolution involves a necessary connection between structural analysis and social agents of change, but that within critical scholarship the organised and disciplined elements of that agency have been elided. This paper argues that this is indicative of a broader rejection of modernist elements within critical discourse in international law, stemming from a traumatic relationship to history informed by pervasive liberal narratives. This aversion to one side of the concept of revolution severely limits its emancipatory potential within international legal discourse. This paper makes a call for the reclamation of revolution’s analytical and political content, through an engagement with its conceptual history, and a brief examination of revolution’s contemporary theoretical alternatives, such as the Badiouvian ‘event’.

Representing Kairos & The Exemplary Instance – Methodological & Epistemological Considerations

by Rowan Tepper

Images narratives ioniennes du XIX siècle et abstraction d’espace : Solomos, Polylas, Théotokis

by Catherine Brégianni

published in French, Neoellinica Histoica, Academy of Athens, vol. 1 (2008)

Réseaux techniques et concepts de modernisation. Le cas des chemins de fer thessaliens, vers la fin du XIXe siècle

by Catherine Brégianni

Ionian autobiographies and local indedity (XIX c.), in Greek, Proceedings of the Panionian International Conference, Athens, 2009

by Catherine Brégianni

published in Greek, proceeding of the Panionian International Conference, 2009

PHDabstract-résumésdethèse

by Claude-Olivier Doron

This document includes english and french abstracts of my PhD Thesis on 'Races and degeneration. The emergence on the... more This document includes english and french abstracts of my PhD Thesis on 'Races and degeneration. The emergence on the knowledge on the abnormals', a detailed description of the different chapters (in french) and of its main results (in french) and its table of contents.

Not a Process of Enlightenment: The Conceptual History of Organized Crime in Germany and the United States of America

by Klaus von Lampe

Published in 'Forum on Crime and Society', 1(2), 2001, 99-116

This study explores the conceptual history of organized crime in Germany and the United States of America during the... more This study explores the conceptual history of organized crime in Germany and the United States of America during the twentieth century. Data were obtained from a content analysis of various publications, including The New York Times Index and the German news magazine Der Spiegel from 1896 and from 1960, respectively, until 1995.

Evolution of the concept Finlandization in Western political discourses, 1960s-1980s

by Alexey Golubev

"The West": A Conceptual Exploration

by Riccardo Bavaj

European History Online / Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), published by the Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz 2011-11-21

This article explores the transformation of the directional concept "the west" into the socio-political... more This article explores the transformation of the directional concept "the west" into the socio-political concept "the West". From the early 19th century onward, the concept of the West became temporalized and politicized. It became a concept of the future ("Zukunftsbegriff"), acquired a polemical thrust through the polarized opposition to antonyms such as "Russia", "the East", and "the Orient", and was deployed as a tool for forging national identities. The gestation of "the West" went hand-in-hand with the gradual substitution of an east-west divide for the north-south divide that had dominated European mental maps for centuries.

Negotiating Heritage: Observations on Semantic Concepts, Temporality, and the Centre of the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals

by Richard Utz

Philologie im Netz 58 (2011): 70-87.

This essay is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the "Fifth Conference on the Cultural Heritage... more This essay is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the "Fifth Conference on the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals" at University of Copenhagen on October 26, 2009. It seeks to review the interdisciplinary scholarship done by the Centre of the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, a project funded by the Danish National Research Foundation since 2001, from the perspective of Reinhart Kosellek's work on semantic concepts and temporality, focusing specifically on a recent Centre publication: Negotiating Heritage: Memories of the Middle Ages, edited by Mette B. Bruun and Stephanie Glaser as volume 4 in Brepols Publishers' book series, Ritus et Artes: Traditions and Transformations. By bringing the "father" of conceptual historiography to bear on some of the scholarship in Negotiating Heritage, the essay contributes to tracing, from a meta-perspective, the momentous mutations through which Western societies and their scholars continue to conceive their experiences of the medieval past.

"La revolución" antes y después de "la revolución": un análisis de los usos y significados políticos del término revolución en la "época revolucionaria" y la historiografía uruguaya

by Álvaro Caso Bello

En: Álvaro Caso Bello (et. Al): Bicentenario de la Revolución Artiguista (Montevideo: Contraviento-Fin de Siglo, 2011).

Este trabajo pretende ser un aporte, desde la "historia conceptual", sobre cómo era puesto en uso el... more Este trabajo pretende ser un aporte, desde la "historia conceptual", sobre cómo era puesto en uso el concepto de "revolución política" en Montevideo y la Banda Oriental en la época caracterizada por la historiografía uruguaya como "revolución oriental" o "artiguista". A su vez, a través de este artículo se vislumbran los contrastes ente los sentidos equívocos que el concepto encerraba a comienzos del siglo XIX, y las definiciones sobre "la revolución" que realizó la historiografía posteriormente, con fuerte influencia de las ideologías emergidas de las "revoluciones burguesas".

This paper enquires, from the "conceptual history" viewpoint, on the diverse uses and meanings of the concept "political revolution" in the political language of the early 19th century Montevideo and Banda Oriental. Such diverse uses contrast with the definition-type of meanings that posterior historiography gave to the concept of "revolution". Moreover, those uses were connected with the ideologies emerged in the "age of revolution" and were strongly tied to the different political cultures and languages of Uruguayan politics during 19th and 20th centuries.

Coming to Terms with Medievalism

by Richard Utz

European Journal of English Studies 15.2 (2011): 101-13.

Medievalism, the continuing reception of medieval culture in post-medieval times, has existed as an amphibolous term... more Medievalism, the continuing reception of medieval culture in post-medieval times, has existed as an amphibolous term since the mid-nineteenth century, when it was employed as a synonym for the medieval period. Following the foundational theoretical work by conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck, this essay investigates the history of the concept, ‘medievalism,’ as a linguistic performance responding to particular pressures inside and outside the academy. The concept can be shown specifically to be the product of what Koselleck calls the process of ‘temporalization’ (Verzeitlichung) which marks the transition from early modern mentalities to modernity and the modern university. Rejected as the dilettante ‘Other’ of academic medieval studies in the late nineteenth century, the English term survived probably due to the unique continuity postmedieval British subjects have felt with their medieval past. ‘medievalism’ has since transmuted into a scholarly practice (‘medievalism studies’), spawned a subfield (‘Neomedievalism’), competed with coeval movements (‘New medievalism’), and become, most recently, the linguistic and epistemological weapon of scholars who would like to bridge the rigid alterity toward medieval culture with the assistance of presentist empathy, memory, subjectivity, resonance, affection, desire, passion, speculation, fiction, imagination, and positionality. Based on its historical priority and conceptual inclusiveness, ‘medievalism’ is apt to encompass and reconfigure the various ways in which we will continue to receive medieval culture inside and outside the academy.

International parliamentary and quasi-parliamentary institutions as sources in the study of global conceptual history: methodological issues and considerations

by Marie-Christine Boilard

Work-in-progress paper presented at the Concepta Fifth Research Training Seminar: Re-thinking Parliaments, 13-14 June 2011, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
http://www.concepta-net.org/research_training_seminar_rethinking_parliaments

The overarching objective of this paper is to develop a set of analytical tools for the linking of conceptual problems... more The overarching objective of this paper is to develop a set of analytical tools for the linking of conceptual problems to the practice of global political struggles and controversies in the 20th century. More precisely, this paper proposes to exploit international parliamentary and quasi-parliamentary institutions as sources in the study of 20th century global conceptual history. The study of parliamentary institutions has been an important topic of research in political science during the 1990s and has come to reach the agenda of other fields, most notably those of history and linguistic, in the last decade or so. Although scholars have started to consider parliamentary sources in the study of conceptual history, little research has been conducted in that field – or any other fields for that matter – at the level of international parliamentary institutions and debates. Keeping in mind the major differences between domestic and international politics while recognising their various similarities and entanglements, this paper would like to bridge a link between the recent methodological developments in analysing parliamentary debates and the methodological requirements of global conceptual history. Accordingly, I begin this paper with a discussion of international organisations as relevant unit of analysis for 20th century global conceptual history. Then, I present international parliamentary style of debates as a common feature of international organisations in the 20th century. Finally, I discuss the availability of sources on international parliamentary debates together with other methodological considerations regarding, for instance, the method of reading these debates and the use of secondary sources to supplement them.

Koselleck applied: contributions of the distinction between language and action to the study of social concepts

by Julia Harfensteller

Paper presented at the 10th Annual International Conference on Conceptual History
Istanbul, Turkey, August 30-September 2, 2007