Global Conceptual History: A Reader

by Margrit Pernau (Editor), Dominic Sachsenmaier (Editor)

Overview

The influential readings contained in this volume combine conceptual history - the history of words and languages - and global history, showing clearly how the two disciplines can benefit from a combined approach. The readings familiarize the reader with conceptual history and its relationship with global history, looking at transfers between nations and languages as well as the ways in which world-views are created and transported through language.

Part One: Classical Texts presents the three foundational texts for conceptual history, giving the reader a grasp of the origins of the discipline. Part Two: Challenges focuses on critiques of the approach and explores their ongoing relevance today. Part Three: Translations of Concepts provides examples of conceptual history in practice, via case studies of historical research with a global scope. Finally, the book's concluding essay examines the current state and the future potential of conceptual history.

This original introduction provides the students of conceptual, global and intellectual history with a firm grasp of the past trajectories of conceptual history as well as its more recent global and transnational tendencies, and the promises and challenges of writing global history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474242547
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/11/2016
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Margrit Pernau is Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. She is the author of Ashraf Into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (2013) and co-author of Family and Gender: Changing Patterns of Family and Gender Values in Europe and India (2002).

Dominic Sachsenmaier is Professor of Modern China with a Special Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives at Georg-August-University Göttingen. He is the author of Global Perspectives on Global History (2011) and co-editor of Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements (2007).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Global History, Translation and Semantic Changes Margrit Pernau (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany), Dominic Sachsenmaier (Jacobs University, Germany)
Part One: Classical Texts in Conceptual History
1. "Introduction", in Basic Concepts of History, Reinhart Koselleck (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
2. Social History and Conceptual History Reinhart Koselleck
3. "Introduction", in Handbook of Sociopolitical Basic Concepts Rolf Reichardt (University of Giessen, Germany)
Part Two: Challenges
4. Conceptual History or Discursive History? Some Remarks on the Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Questions of Historically Semantic Epistemologies Dietrich Busse (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)
5. Rhetoric and Conceptual Change Quentin Skinner (Queen Mary, University of London, UK)
Part Three: Translations of Concepts
6. Translation as Cultural Transfer and Semantic Interaction: European Variations of Liberal between 1800 and 1830 Jörn Leonhard (University of Freiburg, Germany)
7. Translation, Politics and Conceptual Change Kari Palonen (Academy of Finland)
8. The Question of Meaning-Value in the Political Economy of the Sign Lydia Liu (Columbia University, USA)
9. The Resonance of 'Culture': Framing a Problem in Global Concept-History Andrew Sartori (New York University, USA)
10. Biculturality in Modern China and Chinese Studies Philipp C.C. Huang (UCLA, USA)
11. Ustaarabu: A Conceptual Change in Tanganyikan Newspaper Discourse in the 1920s Katrin Bromber (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany)
Part Four: Outlook
12. 40 Years of Conceptual History: The State of the Art Willibald Steinmetz (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
Index

Editorial Reviews

Moving from classic essays on the contours of conceptual history to the prospect of the globalization of this approach - and challenges it must surmount - this excellent volume provides readers a superlative introduction to how a field is adapting itself for a new historiographical moment. Margrit Pernau and Dominic Sachsenmaier deserve considerable thanks for so artfully curating a collection that will inform scholars and educate students about what makes Reinhart Koselleck's Begriffsgeschichte distinctive, just as it will prompt them to reflect on whether the approach is up to the challenge of a necessarily multilingual global space.

Samuel Moyn

Moving from classic essays on the contours of conceptual history to the prospect of the globalization of this approach - and challenges it must surmount - this excellent volume provides readers a superlative introduction to how a field is adapting itself for a new historiographical moment. Margrit Pernau and Dominic Sachsenmaier deserve considerable thanks for so artfully curating a collection that will inform scholars and educate students about what makes Reinhart Koselleck's Begriffsgeschichte distinctive, just as it will prompt them to reflect on whether the approach is up to the challenge of a necessarily multilingual global space.” —Samuel Moyn, Harvard University, USA, and coeditor, Global Intellectual History

From the Publisher