History Of Concept Research Articles

Reinhart Koselleck’s chrono-political crisis theory. Actuality and limits

ABSTRACT This article is intended to contribute to the discussion of the topicality and historical and theoretical limitations of Koselleck’s theory. The concept of acceleration, which has a special meaning for Koselleck, both in terms of conceptual history and social theory, will serve as a guide to this investigation. Since it is a socio- and temporal-analytical concept, the current thesis, that we have entered a post-Koselleckian culture, should be amenable to testing on the basis of this concept, which this article will consider in some detail. The examination is divided into three parts: The first part addresses the concept of acceleration and its implications for Koselleck. On the basis of the results of the first part, the second part discusses issues and problems that go beyond Koselleck’s approach, and/or show it’s theoretical or methodological limits. Finally, the third part summarizes the conclusions of the foregoing examination, and emphasizes the problem-historical continuity with Koselleck’s inquiry into a socio-historically informed history of concepts.

Katherine Foxhall. Migraine: A History

This is an exemplary book, majestic in its scope, forensic in its attention to detail, and judicious in its balancing of the shifting boundaries of medical knowledge and the recovery of the experiences of migraine that medical knowledge has neglected. To track the history of a disorder over more than a thousand years, set against a working knowledge of contemporary pharmaceutical innovations and medical politics, would give all but a few scholars a serious headache. Foxhall pulls it off with aplomb, revealing not only a long and complex conceptual history of migraine, from hemicrania to megrim to sick headache to migraine, but also a clear appreciation of the situatedness of the experience of these disorders and the power structures that validate or invalidate accounts of suffering. Interwoven in all of this is a history of therapeutic treatments for migraine, from a tenth-century “leechbook” to a seventeenth-century manuscript household recipe book; from astrology to water treatments; from patent pills and nostrums to dietary regimens; from trepanation to vasoconstriction; from crushed worms to caffeine to art therapy. It is an astonishing parade of medical knowledge and, crucially, an appraisal of the practical value of this medical knowledge.

Venturing beyond Koselleck’s Erwartungshorizont: on the category of the utopian

ABSTRACT For a long time, the reception of German historian and theorist Reinhart Koselleck’s work focused on disciplinary and methodological aspects of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte). However, in recent years, there has been an increased interest in Koselleck’s more theoretical discussions on historical time and temporality, highlighting his oeuvre of a theory of the conditions for possible histories (Historik). Taking its cue from the current trend, this article revisits the Koselleckian category of horizon of expectation (Erwartungshorizont) in light of Ernst Bloch’s work on the principle of hope (Das Prinzip Hoffnung) and the concept of utopia as the forward dreaming of the Not-Yet (Noch-Nicht). By exploring and developing the utopian as a formal category – used as a supplement to Koselleck’s conceptualization of the relationship between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation – the article argues that Koselleck’s theory can be reframed into one that can fully account for the utopian imaginaries of political thinking.

Of Mice and Schoolchildren: A Conceptual History of Herd Immunity.

This article explores a tension at the core of the concept of herd immunity that has been overlooked in public and scientific discussions-namely: how can immunity, a phenomenon of individual biological defenses, be made relevant to populations? How can collectives be considered "immune"? Over the course of more than a century of use of the term, scientists have developed many different understandings of the concept in response to this inherent tension. Originating among veterinary scientists in the United States in the late 19th century, the concept was adopted by British scientists researching human infectious disease by the early 1920s. It soon became a staple concept for epidemiologists interested in disease ecology, helping to articulate the population dynamics of diseases such as diphtheria and influenza. Finally, though more traditional understandings of the concept remained in scientific use, in the era after World War II, it increasingly came to signal the objective and outcome of mass vaccination. Recognizing the complexity of scientific efforts to resolve the paradox of herd immunity may help us consider the best distribution of immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Reinhart Koselleck and the crisis of historical science in the context of post-war German historiography

ABSTRACT Structural history, Conceptual history, Theory of historical time, Semantics of History: the work of Reinhart Koselleck is associated with a wide spectrum of methodological orientations that emerged during the post-war period and originated from the in-depth reflection on the significance of historical sciences. Koselleck shared with numerous West-German historians the observation that historical science was experiencing a profound crisis exacerbated by the increasing influence of social sciences. However, unlike his contemporary historians, who advocated the criticism of historicism as a prerequisite for reforming their discipline, Koselleck championed a radically different path to remedy to this crisis. In this paper, we shall outline the major stages of the critical dialogue between Koselleck and the West-German historiography of his time. Two distinct historical intervals emerge from this analysis: the first is marked by the influence of the structural historical model, developed by Werner Conze during the 1950s, on Koselleck’s theoretical vision; the second, which started in the 1970s, is characterized by the refusal to consider the critical social history as the basis for a holistic explanation of national history.

Tensions and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America

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.

The Birth of International Conceptual History

Abstract In March 2020, Melvin Richter, one of the founders of international, conceptual history passed away. This sad occasion makes it timely in our journal to reflect on the process that turned national projects within conceptual and intellectual history into an international and transnational enterprise. The text that follows—published in two parts, here and in the next issue—takes a closer look at the intellectual processes that led up to the founding meeting of the association behind our journal, the History of Concepts Group. It follows in the footsteps of Melvin Richter to examine the different encounters, debates and protagonists in the story of international, conceptual history. The text traces the different approaches that were brought to the fore and particularly looks at Melvin Richter's efforts to bridge between an Anglophone tradition of intellectual history and a German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte.

Tensions and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America

Abstract 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.

The Concept of Religion in Meiji Popular Discourse

This article challenges claims that the Japanese neologism shūkyō (as a translation for “religion”) lacked an established nature prior to the twentieth century and had little to do with experiences of the urban masses. It accordingly problematizes the term as a largely legal concept, highlighting historical newspapers as underutilized sources that offer insight into Meiji popular discourse and attendant conceptualizations of “religion.” This article endorses a shift in both our chronological understanding of shūkyō’s conceptual history as well as its sociocultural mobility. By expanding the milieu understood as being familiar with debates on a range of “religious” issues, this article thereby offers a counter-narrative in which regular use of shūkyō begins to clearly emerge from the mid-1880s, exponentially increasing with the following decades.

The Concept of Religion in Meiji Popular Discourse

Abstract This article challenges claims that the Japanese neologism shūkyō (as a translation for “religionȍ) lacked an established nature prior to the twentieth century and had little to do with experiences of the urban masses. It accordingly problematizes the term as a largely legal concept, highlighting historical newspapers as underutilized sources that offer insight into Meiji popular discourse and attendant conceptualizations of “religion.” This article endorses a shift in both our chronological understanding of shūkyō's conceptual history as well as its sociocultural mobility. By expanding the milieu understood as being familiar with debates on a range of “religious” issues, this article thereby offers a counter-narrative in which regular use of shūkyō begins to clearly emerge from the mid-1880s, exponentially increasing with the following decades.

The Birth of International Conceptual History

In March 2020, Melvin Richter, one of the founders of international, conceptual history passed away. This sad occasion makes it timely in our journal to reflect on the process that turned national projects within conceptual and intellectual history into an international and transnational enterprise. The text that follows—published in two parts, here and in the next issue—takes a closer look at the intellectual processes that led up to the founding meeting of the association behind our journal, the History of Concepts Group. It follows in the footsteps of Melvin Richter to examine the different encounters, debates and protagonists in the story of international, conceptual history. The text traces the different approaches that were brought to the fore and particularly looks at Melvin Richter’s efforts to bridge between an Anglophone tradition of intellectual history and a German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte.

Epistemologies of evidence-based medicine: a plea for corpus-based conceptual research in the medical humanities

Evidence-based medicine has been the subject of much controversy within and outside the field of medicine, with its detractors characterizing it as reductionist and authoritarian, and its proponents rejecting such characterization as a caricature of the actual practice. At the heart of this controversy is a complex linguistic and social process that cannot be illuminated by appealing to the semantics of the modifier evidence-based. The complexity lies in the nature of evidence as a basic concept that circulates in both expert and non-expert spheres of communication, supports different interpretations in different contexts, and is inherently open to contestation. We outline a new methodology that combines a social epistemological perspective with advanced methods of corpus linguistics and elements of conceptual history to investigate this and other basic concepts that underpin the practice and ethos of modern medicine. The potential of this methodology to offer new insights into controversies such as those surrounding EBM is demonstrated through a case study of the various meanings supported by evidence and based, as attested in a large electronic corpus of online material written by non-experts as well as a variety of experts in different fields, including medicine.

Depathologizing Sexual Orientation and Transgender Identities in Psychiatric Classifications

Introduction. This article presents the history and rationales of conceptualization and classification of homosexuality and transgender identity in both ICD and DSM. We review the efforts that have been made (and those that remain pending) to improve psychiatric classifications with new scientific knowledge, changing social attitudes and human rights standards. Method. We conducted a literature search of the classification of homosexuality and transgender identity as mental disorders. Result. We provide a historical description of these concepts in ICD and DSM, including fundamental points of disagreement as well as arguments that have been effective in achieving changes in both classifications. Conclusions. Fundamental changes have been made in the International Classification of Diseases Eleventh Revision (ICD-11) in terms of the classification of sexual orientation and gender identity based on scientific evidence and the ICD’s public health objectives. These changes might support the provision of accessible and high-quality healthcare services, and are responsive to the needs, experience and human rights of the populations involved.

Depathologizing Sexual Orientation and Transgender Identities in Psychiatric Classifications.

This article presents the history and rationales of conceptualization and classification of homosexuality and transgender identity in both ICD and DSM. We review the efforts that have been made (and those that remain pending) to improve psychiatric classifications with new scientific knowledge, changing social attitudes and human rights standards. We conducted a literature search of the classification of homosexuality and transgender identity as mental disorders. We provide a historical description of these concepts in ICD and DSM, including fundamental points of disagreement as well as arguments that have been effective in achieving changes in both classifications. Fundamental changes have been made in the International Classification of Diseases Eleventh Revision (ICD-11) in terms of the classification of sexual orientation and gender identity based on scientific evidence and the ICD's public health objectives. These changes might support the provision of accessible and high-quality healthcare services, and are responsive to the needs, experience and human rights of the populations involved.

Reframing the History of the Competition Concept: Neoliberalism, Meritocracy, Modernity

AbstractThis paper reframes the concept of competition, arguing that recent tendencies to frame it in the context of neoliberalism are too narrow to grasp its full significance. We need to see how it operates well beyond the capitalist economy, as a social and not just theoretical concept. I contextualise it in a deeper history, going back to the eighteenth century, beginning with an empirical examination of the development of the concept in English language dictionaries and encyclopaedias, using a method of ‘conceptual history’. I show how the concept, its grammatical forms, and characteristic associations have evolved substantially since the eighteenth century. This finding is placed in a broader explanatory context, arguing that it is the combined rise of a set of core institutions of modernity, not just capitalism but also democracy, adversarial law, science, and civil society, that deeply embeds competition in the modern world. The decline of aristocratic and religious authority, and the national subordination of martial power, opened the way for more ‘liberal’ forms of society in which authority is routinely contested through competition, across economy, politics, culture and beliefs. Appreciating this is a necessary step towards truly grappling with the effects of competition on modern life.

Sustainability as a “magic concept”

Sustainability studies have not been able to come up with a consensus conceptualization of “sustainability,” despite many attempts. This article asks what this conceptual confusion means. I do this through a (conceptual history) vertical analysis, and horizontal (discourse) analysis of the current use of the term. It finds that sustainability is a perfect fit for what Hupe and Pollit have called a “magic concept,” in that it is; broad, has a positive normative charge, imply consensus or at least the possibility of overcoming current conflicts, and has global marketability (2011: 643). This has both positive and negative effects: On the one hand, the popularity of the concept of sustainability has enabled an overarching discourse on the responsible use of natural resources. On the other hand, the concept is vulnerable to various strategic misuses, ranging from corporate greenwashing to Luddite passions. Based on a vertical analysis of the history of sustainability, this vagueness is not a coincidence: It was part of a political bargain at its birth, where environmental concerns were grafted onto an older discourse on “development” during the writing of the 1987 Brundtland report. Based on a horizontal analysis, this vagueness is now inherent to the concept and cannot be abandoned without losing the very magic qualities that make sustainability such a rallying point. This finding points to the conclusion that we should be cautious about how sustainability is wielded.
 Received: 03 February 2021Accepted: 01 March 2021

Whatever Happened to Socialization?

Socialization is a key mechanism of social reproduction. Yet, like the functionalists who introduced the concept, socialization has fallen out of favor, critiqued for ignoring power and agency, for its teleology and incoherence, and for a misguided link to “culture of poverty” arguments. In this review, we argue for a renewed, postfunctionalist use of socialization. We review the concept's history, its high point under Parsons, the reasons for its demise, its continued use in some subfields (e.g., gender, race and ethnicity, education), and alternative concepts used to explain social reproduction. We then suggest that something is lost when socialization is avoided or isolated in particular subfields. Without socialization, conceptions of social reproduction face problems of history, power, and transferability. We close by outlining a postfunctionalist agenda for socialization research, providing a framework for a new theory of socialization, one that builds off of cognitive science, pragmatism, the study of language, the reinterrogation of values, and the development of ideology in political socialization.

The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World

This book has been an intellectual adventure to read, all 600-plus pages of it. The Scientific Revolution, Ralph Bauer argues, carries a connotation of “the discovery of new worlds” in nature. In historiography, the early modern revolution in cosmology has long been connected to the Age of Discovery in cosmography. Yet the two things remain conceptually distinct. We can indict Christopher Columbus for the violence of conquest but not Galileo for the discovery of spots on the sun. Yet what if discovery and conquest were conceptually intertwined from the very beginning? The Alchemy of Conquest completely reframes the concept of the Scientific Revolution by taking medieval nominalism and alchemy seriously.Bauer traces the origins of the categories of discovery and conquest back to the thirteenth-century Renaissance, particularly to the rise of Franciscan nominalism, artisanal alchemical experimentation, and the late medieval spiritual conquest of pagan and heathen souls. Both the alchemical-atomistic conception of matter and the nominalist interpretation of nature led to a voluntarist understanding of divine and human creation. Nature and thus God could be understood not through Aristotelian logic and Scholastic syllogism but through a painstakingly empirical exploration of randomly assembled matter. Universal law could only be known though the careful empirical codification of myriad local laws. The discovery of the secrets of nature happened through violent artisanal extraction and alchemical fire. Artisanal tinkering, in turn, could improve nature.Such a voluntarist understanding of God's power and human knowledge of nature led to a voluntarist understanding of religious conversion and to Franciscan global chiliastic religious missions of spiritual conquest. The empirical conquest of both nature and souls (religious transformation) began with William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Ramon Llull, Arab Aristotelians, and dozens of other artisan alchemists.By remapping the medieval conceptual history of discovery and conquest, Bauer's The Alchemy of Conquest does a number of things. First, it shows the deep alchemical, Franciscan, Llullian roots of Columbus's ideas of discovery as the artisanal conquest of the occult. Second, it presents New World missionary Franciscan notions of conversion as tied to alchemical notions of material and spiritual transformations and to demonology and apocalyptic chiliasm. In colonial Spanish America, there was a science of conversion. Religious reducciones (the congregation of Natives in towns and missions) did not merely mean social reengineering, as the scholarship on colonial missions and Indian cabildos seems to suggest. Reducción meant a craft, artisanal, and alchemical transformation of the soul via an empirical science of ethnography. Third, it radically reframes the origins of early modern Epicurean atomism. As Bauer shows, atomism as a commentary on the structure of matter and as a moral-religious discourse of disorderly teleologies first began as a commentary on American cannibalism. Fourth, the book squarely connects English discourses of colonization to Spanish Franciscan and Spanish Neoplatonic humanist ones (not Spanish Scholastic Dominican ones). English and Spanish interpretations of conquest were connected to alchemical nominalism, demonology, and the natural right to reshape American humans and religious landscapes through craft and conquest. The similarities arose despite the obfuscating English rhetoric of negative contrast (the Black Legend) and England's outright denial of conquest (the White Legend). Finally, Bauer completely reframes Francis Bacon's new revolutionary empiricism as a deliberate project of applying Spanish alchemical discourses of American colonialism not to peoples but to objects.This book will remain an enduring accomplishment of scholarship and erudition.

신약성서 안에서 ύπόστασιϛ의 의미

ύπόστασιϛ has been employed as a term for a person in the doctrine of the Trinity. Therefore, it is a word that plays a critical role in the history of Christian doctrine. However, in the Bible, this word may be one of the most challenging terms to translate. In the New Testament, this word hasn’t been translated identically, despite its a few examples. Religious reformers have translated this word as trust and confidence, reflecting their theological perspectives.<BR> For an accurate and consistent translation ofύπόστασιϛ, we need to take a look at the conceptual history of ύπόστασιϛ in ancient Greek documents. The fundamental problem in ancient Greek ontology was that the Transcendental Being could not enter the limited individual due to its substantial nature.ύπόστασιϛ resolved the problem in the ontology of this ancient philosophy by enabling a connection between the Transcendental Being and the limited one while keeping the essential nature of the Transcendental Being. In ancient Greek philosophy, the reason why ύπόστασιϛ was able to play a role as a link between the Transcendental Being and the limited one was that the word had the meaning of continuance(Bestand) and existence(Wirklichkeit) at the same time. These two meanings are likely to have been driven initially by different schools. But the two became a unified concept when Poseidonios, one of the main figures of the Middle Stoics, combined the ideas. Thus, the ontological possibility, which means the Transcendental Being keeping its nature could exist in the limited individuals, was made possible through ύπόστασιϛ.<BR> The meaning of ύπόστασιϛ found in conceptual history can be used for the translation of ύπόστασιϛ in the New Testament. In the New Testament, ύπόστασιϛ is employed five times by two authors (2 Corinthians 9:4; 11:17; Hebrews 1:3; 3:14; 11:1). However, ύπόστασιϛ was not translated identically in other foreign language Bibles as well as the KRV. Although sense-for-sense translation benefits the audience’s understanding, the translation’s purpose to carry its original denotation should not be lost. Consequentially, contextually liberal translation poses the threat of misunderstanding of the author’s intention.<BR> Most of all, in the texts of the New Testament, it is important that ύπόστασιϛ was used to bridge opposing points that are difficult to reconcile contextually in the texts of the New Testament. Contrary to the author of Hebrews, Paul used ύπόστασιϛ to personally imply conflicts within the church whilst the author of Hebrews used ύπόστασιϛ within the theological scope. Paul applied ύπόστασιϛ to describe his situation instead of theological perspectives, while the author of Hebrews applied u`po,stasij in the meaning of the theological subjects. The actual aspects of Paul himself in his situation is delicately expressed through ύπόστασιϛ, and Paul prepares lessons and encouragements for the status of the church through this. In Hebrews, the revelation of the existence of God in the present day has been portrayed through ύπόστασιϛ. Hebrews 1:3 has an almost perfect theological agreement with the example used by Trinitarianism, which is the final purpose of studying this word.<BR> Therefore, the fundamental ontological meaning of existence should not be weakened or alienated within all these examples. The translation should be attempted within the range containing the fundamental meaning of existence in line with the context and authors’ intent. The uniform translation of ύπόστασιϛ in the New Testament based on the conceptual history provides the very ground for the interpretation of the text itself and a decisive contribution to the whole history of Christian doctrine.

Transformations in the concept of quality at the beginning of the educational privatisation process in Chile: a historical study (1985–1990)

ABSTRACT This paper aims to recognise the transformations in the concept of quality as formulated by Chilean educational policies between 1985 and 1990, at the beginning of the educational privatisation process. Using a conceptual history approach allowed us to analyse the meanings attributed to the concept of quality in the design and implementation of two evaluation systems: The Educational Quality Assessment System (SECE, Spanish initials) and the Educational Quality Measurement System (SIMCE, Spanish initials). The findings show a transformation in meaning for the concept of quality. It moved from the operationalisation, management, and improvement of school systems to equating quality with the results of educational evaluations. This new definition of quality resulted from decisions by the Chilean State, which simplified its complexity and helped manage the new school system. An implication of this semantic transformation is the understanding of quality as a tool used to rank schools.