Book notes: The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk by Samuel McCormick

Abstract This article attempts to strip away the Eurocentrism of the Enlightenment, to reconsider how this concept that originated in Europe was transmitted to China. This is thus an attempt to treat the Enlightenment in terms of its global, worldwide significance. Coming from this perspective, the Enlightenment can be viewed as a history of the exchange and interweaving of concepts, a history of translation and quotation, and thus a history of the joint production of knowledge. We must reconsider the dimensions of both time and space in examining the global Enlightenment project. As a concept, the Enlightenment for the most part has been molded by historical actors acting in local circumstances. It is not a concept shaped and brought into being solely from textual sources originating in Europe. As a concept, the Enlightenment enabled historical actors in specific localities to begin to engage in globalized thinking, and to find a place for their individual circumstances within the global setting. This article follows such a line of thought, to discuss the conceptual history of the Enlightenment in China, giving special emphasis to the processes of formation and translation of this concept within the overall flow of modern Chinese history.

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Historical Overview of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences

The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190847388.013.10 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 21-58

Author(s):

Svend Brinkmann ◽

Michael Hviid Jacobsen ◽

Søren Kristiansen

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Qualitative Research ◽

Social History ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Conceptual History ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Technological History

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

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Tolerance and integrity at Johns Hopkins

Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences ◽

10.1525/hsps.2007.37.2.463 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 463-474

Author(s):

Robert Marc Friedman

Keyword(s):

History Of Science ◽

History Of Physics ◽

Conceptual History ◽

Great Freedom ◽

Departmental Culture ◽

Academic Mentoring ◽

History Of

The Department of History of Science at Johns Hopkins shaped by Harry Woolf and Robert H. Kargon brought together diverse scholars who nevertheless shared a basic outlook. Historical questions and scholarly craft took precedent over theo-retical or historiographic positioning. At the same time, students were allowed great freedom to explore and develop new perspectives for analyzing science historically. When Russell McCormmach arrived in Baltimore in the fall of 1972, he joined a departmental culture of intellectual tolerance and forthright expres-sion. In paying homage to Russ and the department I illuminate the departmental culture into which Russ entered, Russ's seminars and academic mentoring, and .nally Russ's vision for combining art and scholarship. Russ shared a deep affection for solid conceptual history of physics while supporting our ventures into new historiographic terrain.

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Tensions and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America

Contributions to the History of Concepts ◽

10.3167/choc.2021.160105 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 89-115

Author(s):

Roberto Breña

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Intellectual History ◽

English Language ◽

Conceptual History ◽

History Of ◽

The Way

This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.

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The Social Life of Fighting Words

Conflict and Society ◽

10.3167/arcs.2017.030109 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 108-124

Author(s):

Ronald S. Stade

Keyword(s):

Social Life ◽

Large Scale ◽

Political Correctness ◽

Conceptual History ◽

Political Conflicts ◽

Political Analysis ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Contemporary Context

Political correctness has become a fighting word used to dismiss and discredit political opponents. The article traces the conceptual history of this fighting word. In anthropological terms, it describes the social life of the concept of political correctness and its negation, political incorrectness. It does so by adopting a concept-in-motion methodology, which involves tracking the concept through various cultural and political regimes. It represents an attempt to synthesize well-established historiographic and anthropological approaches. A Swedish case is introduced that reveals the kind of large-scale historical movements and deep-seated political conflicts that provide the contemporary context for political correctness and its negation. Thereupon follows an account of the conceptual history of political correctness from the eighteenth century up to the present. Instead of a conventional conclusion, the article ends with a political analysis of the current rise of fascism around the world and how the denunciation of political correctness is both indicative of and instrumental in this process.

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Ambivalence, anxieties / Adaptations, advances: Conceptual History and International Law

Leiden Journal of International Law ◽

10.1017/s0922156518000432 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 747-771

Author(s):

MARTIN CLARK

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Conceptual History ◽

Negative State ◽

New Directions ◽

Intractable Problems ◽

History Of ◽

History Of International Law ◽

Or History ◽

Historical Theory

AbstractScholars of the history of international law have recently begun to wonder whether their work is predominantly about law or history. The questions we ask – about materials, contexts and movements – all raise intractable problems of historiography. Yet, few scholars have turned to historical theory to think through how we might go about addressing them.This article works towards remedying that gap by exploring why and how we might engage with historiography more deeply.Section 2 shows how the last three decades of the ‘turn to history’ can be usefully read as a move from ambivalence to anxiety. The major works of the 2000s thoroughly removed the pre-1990s ambivalence to history, offering brief considerations about method. Recent efforts building on those works have led to the present era of anxiety about both history and method, raising questions around materials, contexts and movements. But far from a negative state, this moment of anxiety is both appropriate and potentially creative: it prompts us to rethink our mode of engaging with historiography.Section 3 explores how this engagement might proceed. It reconstructs the principles and debates within conceptual history around the anxieties of materials, contexts and movements. It then explores how these might be adapted to histories of international law, both generally and within one concrete project: a conceptual history of recognition in the writings of British jurists.Section 4 concludes by considering the advances achieved by this kind of engagement, and reflects on new directions for international law and its histories.

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