Engraving Accuracy in Early Modern England

The book traces major concepts including: the creation of the visual effects of accuracy through careful action and training; the development of visual judgment and connoisseurship; the role of a network in the production of knowledge; balancing readers’ expectations with representational conventions; and the effects of acts of collecting on the creation and circulation of knowledge. On the one hand, this study uncovers that approaches to knowledge production were different in the seventeenth century, as compared with in the twenty-first century. On the other, it reveals how the early modern struggle to sort through an overwhelming quantity of visual information - brought on by major changes in image production and circulation - resonates with our own.

Religion and Europe

This chapter introduces The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe: its rationale, timeline, geographical scope, approach, structure, and contents. The timeline—from Antiquity to the present day—is captured in a series of ‘portraits’ taken from European museums. The scope, methods, theories, and approaches are then outlined. No single theory or theoretical approach drives the volume as a whole, but particular attention is paid to the work of Max Weber, Jürgen Habermas, and David Martin. The structure (five parts) and contents (forty-five chapters and a statistical appendix) of the Handbook are carefully set out. A number of cross-cutting themes are then identified, including the role of religion in the circulation of knowledge and the tensions between Europe and its constituent states. The future is difficult to predict as Europe becomes not only more secular, but more religiously diverse.

Mapping Inuinnaqtun: The Role of Digital Technology in the Revival of Traditional Inuit Knowledge Ecosystems

The term Inuinnaqtun is often used in reference to a dialect of Inuktut spoken by Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) of the Central Canadian Arctic. The broader meaning of Inuinnaqtun, however, is to speak, to create, to practice, to do, to think, to be, like an Inuinnaq (a human being). Inuinnaqtun was once its own robust ecosystem, with Inuinnait physically immersed in a landscape and way of life that nourished a fluent and full language, supported human relationships, and maintained a sophisticated body of cultural knowledge. The Inuinnait journey into the 21st century has challenged the practice of Inuinnaqtun, along with the connectivity of its ecosystem. How can an integrated Inuinnaqtun ecosystem be restored in contemporary Inuinnait society? In this paper, we outline the decade-long development of a digital mapping program to document traditional forms of engagement between Inuinnait people, language and land, and facilitate the continued circulation of knowledge that underlies these relationships. In reviewing its various successes and challenges, we critically question digital technology’s ability to digitally represent Inuinnaqtun ontology, in addition to the role that digital technologies can play in facilitating the local relocation of knowledge, objects and relationships dispersed into global contexts.

Mapping Skies and Continents: The Production of Two Portuguese Scientific Atlases in the Era of Napoleonic Expansion (1799-1813)

To what extend the circulation of scientific knowledge was shaped by the European imperial geopolitics in the late-eighteenth century? Recruited to fulfill tasks increasingly considered essential to the very workings of imperial administrations, scientific practitioners of the time paradoxically seem to make use precisely of this encroachment in state apparatuses to secure some degree of autonomy for their nascent field. Thus, every material form of circulation of scientific information must be ultimately understood as an act of political consequences. Here we present these ideas through the analysis of two concrete scientific artifacts, which can exemplify the circulation of scientific information inside and across empires: two atlases, one terrestrial and one celestial (the latter being a version of Flamsteed’s famous atlas of 1729, by way of intermediate French editions), produced in Portugal at the turn of the nineteenth century. Discarding the simple assumption that such cartographic artifacts might have a “utilitarian” use to Portuguese imperial administration, we aim to insist on their political and communicative nature, grounded on their modes of participation in trans-imperial pathways of circulation of knowledge, people, practices, and models of scientific authority (entangling Britain, France, and the Americas in multiple time scales). We also highlight how the atlases contribute to the affirmation of new patriotic science in Portugal, and explore the markedly didactic vocation of both objects, which also stress the question of the recruitment and reproduction of a new kind of imperial elite.

Fire management in Hispanic America and Philippines: urban reforms, regulatory measures, and circulation of knowledge (15th - 19th centuries)

Las políticas de gestión de riesgo de las autoridades hispanas en los territorios peninsulares y americanos orientadas a disminuir la existencia de incendios pueden considerarse un campo casi inexplorado por la historiografía institucional y jurídica. A partir de una muestra de ejemplos, este artículo presenta una primera panorámica de la intervención urbana y medidas normativas que permitieron a las autoridades mediar y operar sobre el tejido urbano para reducir la vulnerabilidad al fuego de las ciudades hispanoamericanas, reglamentar o censurar todos aquellos comportamientos considerados productores de riesgo de incendio y disciplinar a la población respecto de la importancia de no manejar el fuego de manera imprudente o negligente. Labor que desde finales del siglo XVIII se vio complementada, con los estudios y obras de “policía y de higiene” respecto a la reducción del riesgo de incendio, que circularon en el ámbito hispánico, y que fueron transferidas en normas y reglamentaciones adoptadas en diversos espacios que integraron la monarquía hispánica, examinando en esta oportunidad, los casos específicos de Cuba y Felipinas.

Ripe for Resolution

This article discusses how the institutionalization of international mediation practices and its growing relevance since the end of the Cold War coincided with the formation of an epistemic community that shares common practices for a third party. This community focuses on core concepts that structure mediation practices such as efficiency, rationality, and the management of time and information. The article analyzes the consolidation of this community through the circulation of knowledge among scholars and practitioners. In particular, it highlights the place of the concept of ripeness, developed by Ira William Zartman, in stabilizing a division between a moment of conflict and a moment of nonconflict; and it discusses the place of the UN system in its dissemination among mediation practitioners. The article argues that the project-oriented understanding of mediation practices that arises from these shared conceptions contributes to an insulation of these practices from broader views of conflict within international politics.

Techniques of repair, the circulation of knowledge, and environmental transformation: Towards a new history of transportation

It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technological, scientific, and cultural implications of repairing and maintaining transportation networks. We argue that infrastructures for maintenance and repair played just as important a role in the history of transportation as the wharves and factories where ships, cars, trains, and airplanes were originally built. We also suggest that maintenance and repair are important sites of knowledge production, and a historical account of these practices provides a new, decentered narrative for the development of modern science and technology.