The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World, edited by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, Routledge: London and New York, 2016, xiv + 266 p. The collective research concentrated in this volume is claimed both from theoretical sources, mainly positioned in the last two decades of the past century – such as the innovative contribution made by the volume edited by Arjun Appadurai in 1986 or by the volume of author signed (...) by Daniel Miller in 1987 – and from the attempt of reconfiguring this interpretative tendency after a decade, through what the editors call “the global turn”, pointing to the manner in which globalization inherently affects the discourse of social sciences and humanities. Opening such a hermeneutical path, this book gives us grounds for a research program sui generis, for the globalization that characterizes the early modernity expressed through material culture, a program with multiple development opportunities, some of them quite unexpected and unpredictable. (shrink)

While the link between navigation and astronomy is quite evident and its history has been extensively explored, the prognosticatory element included in astronomical knowledge has been almost completely left out. In the early modern world, the science of the stars also included prognostication known today as astrology. Together with astronomical learning, navigation also included astrology as a means to predict the success of a journey. This connection, however, has never been adequately researched. This paper makes the first broad (...) study of the tradition of astrology in navigation as well as its role in early modern globalization. It shows how astrological doctrine had its own tools for nautical prognostication. These could be used when dealing with the uncertainty of reaching the desired destination, to inquire about the condition of a loved one, or an important cargo. It was widely used, both in time and geographical context, by navigators and cosmographers for weather forecasting and elections for the start of a successful voyage. (shrink)

This is a book about the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. Annabel Brett takes a fresh approach by looking at this political entity from the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them. She begins with a classic debate from the Spanish sixteenth century over the political treatment of mendicants, showing how cosmopolitan ideals of porous boundaries could simultaneously justify the freedoms of (...) itinerant beggars and the activities of European colonists in the Indies. She goes on to examine the boundaries of the state in multiple senses, including the fundamental barrier between human beings and animals and the limits of the state in the face of the natural lives of its subjects, as well as territorial frontiers. Drawing on a wide range of authors, Brett reveals how early modern political space was constructed from a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, she shows that early modern debates about political boundaries displayed unheralded creativity and virtuosity but were nevertheless vulnerable to innumerable paradoxes, contradictions, and loose ends.Changes of State is a major work of intellectual history that resonates with modern debates about globalization and the transformation of the nation-state. (shrink)

Visual representations of the whole earth permeate modern cultures, shaping how societies imagine globalization and planetary ecological derangement. To explore the complex ways in which these images configure human attitudes toward environments, this essay attends to a series of hegemonic representations of the earth from diverse situations and stages of modernity in conjunction with ideas drawn from Martin Heidegger’s ontological philosophy. I proceed from the insight that for Heidegger modernity is not a singular condition, but entails two contrary (...) determinations of being: “machination,” in which detached subjects reshape an objectified world, and “enordering,” in which fungible and flexible resources circulate endlessly around a closed global space. Taking up these divergent concepts, my argument accentuates basic differences in how the earth has been disclosed in representation over the course of modern history. Through close analyses of world maps from the early modern Netherlands; chalkboard globes from nineteenth-century schoolrooms; and the contemporary geospatial application Google Earth, I show how global visions both articulate and complicate Heidegger’s thinking of machination and enordering. Far from being the culmination of a singular modernity, images of the earth reveal and reinforce a discordant global condition, riven by clashing, equally total disclosures of the world. (shrink)

On November 11 and 12, 2011, a symposium held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill honored John M. Headley, Emeritus Professor of History. The organizers, Professor MelissaBullard—Headley’s colleague in the department of history at that university—along with ProfessorsPaul Grendler (University of Toronto) and James Weiss (Boston College), as well as Nancy GraySchoonmaker, coordinator of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies—assembled presenters, respondents, and dozens of other participants from Western Europe and North America to (...) celebrate the career of their prolific, versatile, and influential colleague whose publications challenged and often changed the ways scholars think about Martin Luther, Thomas More, the Habsburg empire,early modern Catholicism, globalization, and multiculturalism.This special issue contains the major papers delivered at the symposium, revised to take account of colleagues’ suggestions at the conference and thereafter.^John O’Malley studies the censorship ofsacred art with special reference to Michelangelo’s famed “Last Judgment” and the Council of Trent.John Martin sifts Montaigne’s skepticism about contemporaneous strategies for self-disclosure andself-discipline. Stressing the significance of grammar, Constantin Fasolt helps us recapture theRenaissance’s and the early modern religious reformations’ disagreements with antiquity. RonaldWitt’s reappraisal of humanist historiography probes Petrarch’s perspectives on ancient Rome. JohnMcManamon includes tales of theft and market manipulation in his study of the early moderncollection and circulation of books and manuscripts, the commodification of study. To “nuance” John Headley’s conclusions about “the Europeanization of the world,” Jerry Bentley repossesses the influence of other than European societies on several European theorists of human rights.^Kate Lowe’s remarks on the reconstruction of race in the Renaissance explores the effects of a critical mistranslation on what being black was taken to mean by Europeans. David Gilmartin introduces readers to the shape of democracy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India, as well as to the understandings of popular sovereignty that affected elections, suggesting strides that scholars might take “toward a worldwide history of voting”.The remarkable range of these contributions comes close to reflecting the range of ProfessorHeadley’s interests and achievements, which James M. Weiss maps in his tribute, identifying“unifying themes” in Headley’s work. (shrink)

For several decades historians of science have interrogated the relationship between empire and science, largely focusing on European imperial powers. At the same time, scholars have sought alternatives to an early diffusionist model of the spread of modern science, seeking to capture the multi-directional and dialogic development of science and its institutions in most parts of the globe. The papers in this special issue illuminate these questions with added attention to particular claims about the exceptionalism – or not (...) – of Islamic societies’ approach to science, modernity and politics. Each contribution centres individuals and groups who engaged with science theoretically or practically, taking seriously their analytical categories and how they understood and grappled with the social, economic and intellectual transformations happening around them. Collectively, these studies make the case for Middle Eastern and Ottoman history as useful sites for furthering our field's understanding of processes of the globalization of science and how authority, politics and science have been and continue to be interconnected. (shrink)

The author analyzes the evolution of the concept of sovereignty from feudal times through early modernity to the present day. She examines the problematic relationship between the ideas of sovereignty, democracy, and pluralism, and discusses the decline and possible disappearance of sovereignty in the context of globalization.

O presente artigo objetiva refletir sobre os impactos da globalização econômica na cultura contemporânea. O processo acelerado de transformação da cultura e das relações sociais distingue-se de outros processos de mudança estrutural porque as mudanças no campo da economia desde a década de 1980 provocaram uma grave crise cultural. O que mais caracteriza os novos tempos é a expansão do mercado que se torna omniabrangente e omnipresente, transformando as relações humanas em relações de mercado. Globalização neoliberal e a expansão do (...) mercado se articulam e isso gera profunda crise da cultura. A racionalização produzida pela modernidade reduziu o ser humano e a natureza aos interesses produtivos. A crise na primeira modernidade faz emergir outra redução: a razão substituida pela sensação. Daí caminha-se para um radical individualismo, até ao indiferentismo e a recusa de se buscar um sentido ou significado para a experiência e a vida humana. Essa realidade oferece riscos para o Cristianismo e as religiões. Elas podem ceder à tentação do mercado, à satisfação do desejo, do gozo superegóico, com dupla conseqüência: ou oferecendo uma religião de consumo e da prosperidade econômica, ou o fundamentalismo que leva os fiéis à renunciarem à sua autonomia e se submeterem às lideranças religiosas da “Ordem Simbólica”. Na conclusão o artigo apresenta as mais recentes críticas do cristianismo a essa realidade, retomando o pensamento de João XXIII, Paulo VI e João Paulo II. Palavras-chave : Cristianismo; Globalização; Economia; Cultura Contemporânea, Ensino Social da IgrejaThis article aims to reflect on the impacts of globalization economy in contemporary culture. The accelerated transformation of culture and of social relations differs from other processes of structural changes because change in the field of economy have caused serious cultural crisis since the 1980s. What best characterizes the new era is the expansion of market that has increasingly been “all embracing” and “omnipresent”, thus transforming human relations in market relations. Neoliberal globalization and the expansion of market articulate themselves thus producing a deep crisis of culture. Rationalization produced by modernity has reduced human being and nature to productive interests. Crisis in early modernity brings out another reduction: the one of reason replaced by sensation. In this way one can say that it has emerged a radical individualism and even a kind of indifferentism as well as the refusal to look for a sense or a meaning to the experience and human life. This reality presents some risks to Christianity and religions. They may succumb to the temptation of the market, satisfaction of desire and hiper egoic enjoyment, with double consequence: or by offering a religion based on consumerism and on economic prosperity, or by offering a fundamentalistic perspective that leads believers to renounce their autonomy and submit themselves to the religious leaders of the "Symbolic Order ". This articles ends up by presenting the most recent criticism of Christianity to this reality, returning to the thought of the popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.] Key words : Christianity; Globalizing; Economics; Contemporary culture, Church’s Social Teaching. (shrink)

The field of socio-legal research has encountered three fundamental challenges over the last three decades - it has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to legal doctrine, for failing to develop a sound theoretical foundation and for not keeping pace with the effects of the increasing globalization and internationalization of law, state and society. This book examines these three challenges from a methodological standpoint. It addresses the first two by demonstrating that legal sociology has much to say about justice (...) as a kind of social experience and has always engaged theoretically with forms of normativity, albeit on its own empirical terms rather than on legal theory's analytical terms. The book then explores the third challenge, a result of the changing nature of society, by highlighting the move from the industrial relations of early modernity to the post-industrial conditions of late modernity, an age dominated by information technology. It poses the question whether socio-legal research has sufficiently reassessed its own theoretical premises regarding the relationship between law, state and society, so as to grasp the new social and cultural forms of organization specific to the twenty-first century's global societies. (shrink)

At the end of the sixteenth century, a new conception of history appeared that Jean Bodin theorized in France as geographistory. Building on the discoveries of the New World and the subsequent onset of globalization, and drawing on Polybius’s Histories as well as Stoic cosmopolitanism, geographistory aimed to impose a coherent and authentic order (“metre en ordre des choses tant désordonnees”) on the puzzle of fortuitous historical events by appealing to the immanent and material nature of things, presented as (...) a kind of Fortune through which events would realize their universal telos. Configured after the model of the destiny of the Roman Empire, which at his apogee dominated all the world urbi et orbi, the growing world’s unity and universality would therefore providentially substitute for both God’s miraculous intervention and the Aristotelian epic hero’s action; which had failed in the eyes of Calvinists because of the historic fiasco of King Henri IV. In that respect, the poet Agrippa d’Aubigné hoped, with his Histoire universelle, to endow history with a new direction and progress (as Bacon and, still later, Bossuet will do) by methodically combining the parameters of time and space, in the manner of panoptic and rotating Baroque perspective. (shrink)

Introduction -- Overview of the contemporary global context : life stories -- Data on poverty, hunger, and inequality in an age of globalization -- The goals and structure of this book -- Development theory and practice : an overview -- Origins of the concept of development -- Modernization theory -- Modernization theory and U.S. aid policy -- The impact of modernizationist development -- Structuralist economic theories -- Dependency theories -- Basic needs approach -- New international economic order -- Alternative (...) development -- The impact of reformist thought on development policy -- Neoliberal resurgence and structural adjustment policies -- Current debates in development studies -- The failures of modernizationist development : a closer look -- The impacts of colonialism and slavery -- Post-WW II development policies and the third world debt crisis -- Consequences of debt and structural adjustment -- Responses to the debt crisis -- United States opposition to social change in the third world -- Summary of major structural influences on the third world -- Catholic social teaching and development -- CST prior to Pope John XXIII -- Early reflections on development : John XXIII and Vatican II -- The pivotal contributions of Paul VI, the Latin American bishops, and justice in the world -- John Paul II : the centrality of solidarity -- The social ethics of Benedict XVI -- Summary of catholic social teaching on development issues -- Catholic social teaching and political economy : neoconservative and radical critiques -- Neoconservative reflections on CST -- Radical reflections on CST -- Evaluation of neoconservative, radical, and CST views -- Grassroots critics of development and neoliberal globalization -- Rejecting the quest for development - Vandana shiva : the violence of development and reductionist science -- Further issues in the development/globalization debates -- Reclaiming the commons : the positive visions of development critics -- Catholic social teaching, the radical tradition, and development critics -- Grassroots action and policy alternatives -- Grassroots organizations in the third world : an overview -- The impact of grassroots organizations -- Development policies : follow the nic model -- Alternative development policies -- Differing visions : alternative development vs. regeneration -- Prospects for the adoption of alternative policies -- Re-envisioning C atholic social teaching -- The contributions of CST to the development debate -- Enhancing Catholic social teaching -- Structural analysis of capitalism -- Women, development, and CST -- CST, modernization, and cultural diversity -- CST and ecology - CST, grassroots movements, and social struggle -- The church and social change -- Social criticism and pioneering creativity : how Christians can constructively address issues of development and globalization -- Education -- Lifestyle choices -- Responsible purchasing -- Responsible investment -- Organizing, activism, and aid provision -- Direct service/solidarity -- Responsible parenting -- Applying CST in the life of the church -- Concluding reflections -- Theological epilogue: The path of discipleship. (shrink)

Before the establishment in the early 1800s of France's Sûreté Nationale and England's Scotland Yard, the detection of crimes was generally regarded as supernatural work, but the rise of modern science allowed mere mortals to systematize and categorize events—and thus to solve crimes. Reducing the amount of crime, however, did not reduce the fear of crime, which actually grew in the late-nineteenth century as the result of globalization and media sensationalism. Literary detectives offered an imaginary cure for (...) an imaginary disease. Sherlock Holmes, the most famous literary detective, retained many of the characteristics that earlier ages had attributed to superhuman “detectives”; a wondrous and a social being, he nonetheless was able to reassure an anxious public that even the most heinous crimes could be solved. His ability to calm the fears of the globalizing Victorian era was an early version of what later became a proliferation of imaginary characters serving similar public functions. (shrink)

Markets in Historical Contexts is the result of a dialogue between historians and social scientists thinking about markets in modern society. How should we approach markets after the collapse of Marxism? What alternative ways of thinking about markets can we recover from the past? The essays in this volume set out to challenge essentialist accounts of the market. Instead they suggest that markets are always embedded in distinctive traditions and practices that shape the ways in which they are conceived (...) and the manner of their working. The essays range widely over European and non-European societies from the eighteenth century to the present, from the great transformation to globalization. Rational peasants, republican economists, popular conservatives, guild theorists, early environmentalists, communitarians, progressives, consumers, Gandhi's descendants and others are all revived. The volume thus recovers alternative ways of thinking about markets, many of which are neglected or marginalized in contemporary debates. (shrink)

Socio-cultural and political transformations that are taking place in the modern world under the influence of globalization, predetermine the growth of scientific interest in the history and the theory of shaping the group unity.The coverage of various aspects of this problem is found in the works of foreign philosophers (M. Gibernau, S. Huntington, E. Hiddens, B. Yak, et al.), which focus their primary attention on studying the factors, contributing to the emergence of communities in the modern world, (...) while distancing from the development of universal explanatory schemes for the process of forming the collective unity at various stages of the historical development of society.Some Ukrainian researchers (Y. Hrytsak, V. Kravchenko, H. Kasyanov, et al.), who, in contrast to foreign scholars, pay more attention to studying the various aspects of Ukrainian nation-building, are approaching the above problems from a bit different angle of view to solve them. Undoubtedly, the work of these researchers thoroughly and fully covers the history of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, explains the reasons or factors that contributed to its appearance. Meanwhile, they do not have sufficient potential to explain the causes of the cultural fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society, which, in our opinion, has become a logical consequence of the undivided domination in the Ukrainian intellectual discourse of the paradigm of perennialism, within which the cultural identity of the community appears to be a kind of “entity or reality.” Proponents of this position believe that the cultural diversity of nations emerged in the early stages of social development. Within this outlook, Ukrainians, as a mentally and culturally distinct community, have always existed. Of course, their culture has been developing and enriching in the process of historical development and intercultural communication, while its original spiritual and symbolic core remaining unchanged.Despite the fact, that renaissance has a rational grain and can become themethodological basis for very effective national consolidation strategies, one should not ignore its failure to explain the causes of the cultural and civilizational fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society. In our opinion, the solution of this issue requires a comprehensive understanding of the origins, mechanisms and factors, and the formation of a culturally homogeneous Ukrainian cultural space. In view of this, the purpose of our work is to uncover the theoretical preconditions and mechanisms for shaping the cultural identity of Ukrainians in the XIX and early XX centuries. Instead, the task of the work is to highlight the ideological foundations of the growth of scientific interest in folk culture in foreign and Ukrainian intellectual discourse and to reveal their significance in the process of thematizing the modern Ukrainian identity.Methods.The interdisciplinary approach and the principle of unity of the historical and logical have become a methodological basis of scientific research. Methods of historical and philosophical reconstruction, cultural analysis, and extrapolation have been also widely used in the process of research, as well as the fundamental principles of hermeneutics, which have been taken into account.Results. The dominance of the educational enlightenment-cognitive paradigm has contributed to the growth of scientific interest in the cultural identity of peoples, which, according to the prevailing beliefs, has been most clearly preserved in folk poetry and ancient literature. The study of the latter has resulted in the outbreak of ethnographic and linguistic exploration, which facilitated the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian language to literary use, thereby contributing to the thematization of modern Ukrainian identity. (shrink)

Late Tokugawa society and the crisis of community -- Before the Kojikiden : the divine age narrative in Tokugawa Japan -- Motoori Norinaga : discovering Japan -- Ueda Akinari : history and community -- Fujitani Mitsue : the poetics off community -- Tachibana Moribe : cosmology and community -- National literature, intellectual history, and the new Kokugaku -- Conclusion : imagined Japan(s).

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. Regional studies in Turkey have long focused on Europe and the Middle East, with which Turkey has traditionally been associated. East Asian studies seem to remain out of the spotlight. This study claims firstly that different phases of Asian studies scholarship in Turkey have all been geared towards confirmation and validation of the process of Turkish national identity formation. Secondly, this process also reflects the Western-centrism of Turkish academic knowledge production. This paper presents a periodization of (...) Asian Studies in Turkey in three phases to contextualize and demonstrate these claims. During the first phase of the early republican years, the first Sinology departments were expected to actively contribute to writing Turkish national history. Throughout the second phase of the Cold War years, Turkey found itself in both political and intellectual isolation. In the final phase of post-Cold War globalization, the scope of regional studies scholarship expanded to include East Asia. Despite this development, academic scholarship in Turkey still suffers from Western-centrism and it is not able to directly communicate with East Asia. Knowledge production on East Asia in Turkey is still filtered through the theoretical framework of the Western Anglophone academic world. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper examines cave environments as unique spaces of knowledge production and shows how visualizations of natural cavities in maps came to be powerful tools in scientific reasoning. Faced with the challenge of limited vision, mapmakers combined empiricism and imagination in an experimental setting and developed specific translation strategies to deal with the uncertain origin of underground objects and the shifting boundaries between the known and the unknown. By deconstructing this type of cartographic representation, which has barely been studied, this (...) paper furnishes surprising insights into the scholarly practices and tools used to deal with this considerable epistemic uncertainty and to signal credibility and trust to potential users. The array of maps used for this study includes both archival and published sources, depicting caves in Europe, America and Siberia. (shrink)

Introduction -- Descartes : purging the mind of childish ways -- Locke and Leibniz : understanding children -- Locke : children's language and the fate of changelings -- Leibniz : against infant damnation -- Wolff : the inferiority of childhood -- Baumgarten : childhood and the analogue of reason.