Discipline Of History Research Articles

How a Nazi occupied India’s first chair in International Relations

Abstract This article contributes to disciplinary histories of International Relations (IR) by revealing a little-known history: how a Nazi diplomat, Curt Max Prüfer, occupied the first chair in IR in India. While the paper documents how Prüfer, a discredited diplomat, landed in Delhi through his connections with peripatetic Indian anti-colonial networks and spent slightly over two years as the first IR chair at Delhi University, it also makes broader claims about how we narrate disciplinary histories. Intellectual genealogies, the predominant way in which disciplinary histories are written, often miss the contingent factors that play a considerable role in the fashioning of the discipline. Contingency-filled narratives also point towards the fact that International Relations/Affairs, at least in its early period of formation, operated as a term of mythical heft – a placeholder to fit anyone with academic or practical expertise in varied fields such as international law, colonial administration, anthropology, diplomacy, history, political economy, and military strategy.

Russian science of public relations: stages of formation, specifics, development formats

INTRODUCTION. Any social institution presupposes scientific reflection of its activities. The purpose of the study is to trace the history of the formation of Russian scientific knowledge about public relations (PRology) as a component of a social institution, to characterize various approaches to scientific reflection of PR activities; to identify its national specifics and to determine possible foresights.MATERIALS AND METHODS. General scientific methods of deduction and induction, synthesis and analysis were used. The rather small domestic literature on the theory and history of PR knowledge was studied and analyzed.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. It is analyzed various points of view on the science of public relations – classifying, problematic and historical. The analysis of the development of the Russian theory of public relations is given and the main characteristics of the stages of formation of Russian knowledge about PR are revealed, which generally correspond to the periodization of public relations in Russia. In the last five years, monographs and dissertations on the theory of PR have not appeared, but a significant number of works on media communications indicate the vulgarization of scientific knowledge about public relations due to the lack of a single scientific view on the nature and specificity of media communications. The tasks of the current stage of development of scientific knowledge about PR are outlined: reflection of the state of the PR industry; creation and legitimization of a single professional glossary; registration and generalization of regional experience in the field of communications; comprehension of the experience of European public relations.CONCLUSION. Among the foresight directions, the following are named: characteristics of the “model” mechanism of scientific description of modern PR-activity on the example of the communication model of G. Lasswell, operationalization in the scientific continuum of the concepts of “communication product”, “communication technology”. The area of application of the research results may be issues of the history of communication disciplines. In the prospects of scientific research, problems of interdisciplinary interaction of communication disciplines and the advancement of foresight topics of scientific research, reflecting the reflection of practical activities in the field of integrated communications, may be identified.

The Archival Fonds in ASHAK “Association The League of Prizren in Exile, headquartered in New York, 1962-2012”: Management, Content and History

This paper aims to elaborate the management and the content of the archival fonds The League of Prizren in Exile Association - New York, 1962-2012, held by the State Agency of Kosovo Archives (Agjencia Shtetërore e Arkivave të Kosovës - ASHAK) and the historical and political circumstances in which this fonds was created. What exactly does this voluminous fonds contain; how it is currently regulated; based on which law, regulations and international standards the documents are managed in ASHAK, are the issues examined in this article. The paper also aims to emphasize this fonds’ relevance for the scholars of different disciplines of history, as its detailed research will shed light on certain aspects which need a further scientific examination.

Consistory and Youth Surveillance in the Republic of Geneva: The Case of Games (16th–18th Centuries)

This article explores the theme of youth gaming in the Calvinist Republic of Geneva. This investigation is largely based on disciplinary cases found in the registers of the Consistory of Geneva. Legislative sources, and the registers of the Pastor’s Company and the Small Council, are also used herein. This study, deliberately placed at the crossroads of the history of games, childhood, and Calvinist-style ecclesiastical discipline, aims to shed light on the Consistory’s policy of controlling play activities, and to understand what was at stake. The author defends the idea that the surveillance and control of games played by children was intended to prevent them from straying from their religious education, but also to protect them from the excesses and dangers of abusive play and immoderate behavior (violence, lost money, insults, etc.).

Securing Democracy? The National Security State Revisited

ABSTRACT The “national security state” concept traditionally examines the interplay between security imperatives and democratic governance in the United States. While research has expanded it, further refinement is needed. This paper advocates for its universal relevance to democracies, shedding light on political reorganization driven by national security objectives. A qualitative analysis of prior studies reveals six core attributes of the concept, enhanced to formulate a robust definition that embodies its theoretical and analytical complexities in the disciplinary history of security studies. The resulting framework is instrumental in exploring how states balance the quest for security with democratic principles.

Special Issue Introduction: Abolition Rhetorics

ABSTRACT This introduction draws out and amplifies the major themes engaged in this special issue of “Abolitionist Rhetorics.” Insurgent abolition, we contend, far from marking yet another “turn” in disciplinary history, compels the field to reckon with its conditions of possibility and, in that encounter, with its abolition. It does so inasmuch as it proffers an immanent limit to the rhetorical field’s intellectual imagination; in its invention of a planetary vocabulary and praxes of relationality and scale that cuts against rhetoric’s imperial commonplaces; and by confronting rhetoricians with their disavowed desires for radical realization. In the upshot, the larger stakes of abolitionist rhetorics go beyond epistemic and disciplinary refurbishment. Instead, we argue that abolition—as seen in the rebellions, insurgencies, and resistances that have marked the twenty-first century—are unfoldments of radical survivance and living in the late racial capitalocene.

Historical Geography in Brazil: Examining Backgrounds and New Perspectives

ABSTRACTThe sub‐discipline of historical geography in Brazil, in contrast to the Anglophone and Francophone scholarship, often tends to be overlooked by the northern disciplinary history of this sub‐discipline. In Brazil, historical geography studies emerged in the 1980s as a result of personal initiatives. Nonetheless, in the last few years, distinct generations of Brazilian historical geographers have contributed to this sub‐discipline's promotion and recognition, mainly by diversifying their methodological approaches and research interests. Undoubtedly, developing transnational academic networks and collaborations represents a crucial contribution. This review provides an overview of the main Brazilian historical geographers engaged in studying past geographies. It delves into the central themes they address and also examines the academic conferences and research groups responsible for establishing institutional spaces to foster the practice of historical geography in Brazil in recent years. In doing so, the review calls for a ‘polyphonic’ approach to historical geography, urging the inclusion of southern sites of knowledge production and embracing a diverse scholarship beyond the English‐speaking community.

Sociology in the 21st century: between fragmentation and integration

The article is analyzing current sociology in the context of fragmentation and integration periods in the discipline history. The first integrative wave in the history of sociology was in the 1920s– 1950s. It appeared in grand theories by P.Sorokin, T.Parsons, the Frankfurt school which united heterogeneous ideas from classics in models of society as system. After the paradigm crisis of the 1960s– 1970s and following spread of postmodernist discourse, the second integrative wave arose in form of theories overcoming gaps between concepts of determinist structures and constructivist agency (J.Habermas, A.Giddens, P.Bourdieu) as well as in form of metatheorizing (G.Ritzer, P.Sztompka, J.Alexander). Today’s fragmentation of sociology under conditions of metaparadigm crisis and post-globalization is provoked by the rising postcolonial discourse, by attempts to stigmatize western classics and to create theoretical alternatives to the ‘global North’ domination in knowledge production as well as by spread of conceptions opposing social reality of networks and flows to classical sociality of structures and agency (M.Castells, B.Latour, J.Urry, K.Knorr Cetina). The third integrative wave is expected to come in the 2020s displacing tendencies of disintegration, discrimination, growing gaps and rising barriers. Now theories are relevant as they create a coherent configuration of four types of structures: institutions, interactions, networks, and flows. The new subject matter for theorizing is constituted by their interconnections in forms of fields of structurations, scapes of assemblages, communications, platforms, projects, and events. A metaphor of augmented reality is integrating different concepts of social reality and it is overcoming constitutive distinctions in the last century sociology: between system and lifeworld, locality and globality, the private and public, the material and symbolic, the real and virtual, the physical and digital, etc.

Exploring History Teachers’ Understanding of the Goals of History Teaching and Historical Thinking Skills in Secondary Schools

The purpose of this study was to explore history teachers’ inclination toward the goals of teaching disciplinary history, active teaching methods, and their experiences with historical thinking skills during their college education and their classroom practices. The qualitative thematic analysis explores how secondary school history teachers’ beliefs and background knowledge about their subject matter influence classroom practices. It focuses on their conceptions of history and historical thinking, teaching goals, teaching methods, and instructional materials. The results revealed that teachers’ educational training and history courses significantly influence their disciplinary knowledge and teaching practices. In the quantitative phase, the findings reveal that the status of teacher experiences and efficacy with all the historical thinking skills indicators, namely, sourcing, contextualization, corroboration and explicit instruction, varies as revealed in the result section. To address this issue, the researchers suggested the need for teachers to update their professional development and incorporate historical thinking skills into classroom activities, fostering engagement and agency, and intensive training for in-service history teachers. In this preliminary phase, we use these exploratory findings and research on teachers’ conceptions of their discipline and practices of historical thinking skills to propose an interventional framework for teaching history.

WHAT IS HISTORY IN A SETTLER COLONIAL SOCIETY? MAPPING THE LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES OF ETHICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY USING AN AUSTRALIAN CASE STUDY

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, the role of the history discipline as part of the architecture of colonization has become more visible and better understood. Such acknowledgement reflects foundational shifts in historical practice and theory prompted by transdisciplinary and transnational scholarship in fields such as postcolonial and settler‐colonial studies, First Nations knowledges, and historical perspectives and practices contextualized by transatlantic slavery. Their intervention in turn prompted a vital question: How do we map settler‐colonial historiography if the discipline has been complicit in the settler‐colonial project? Using Australian historiography as a case study, this article explores how History has been part of the architecture of colonization, policing whose stories can be told and by whom. Drawing on the work of Indigenous history‐makers and knowledge‐holders, it also points to ways that researchers might reach outside the traditional scope of historiography to map and contemplate the range of history‐making that comprises history in the settler colony.

The Challenge of Kosovo

Abstract This essay offers a reflection on the vexed position of the pre-modern visual arts in Kosovo that sees medieval monuments under continuing armed guard. The violence that led to this state of affairs is sadly familiar, but this enduring phenomenon attracts little attention. The essay concentrates on the fate of the Serbian royal foundations in the region and suggests that it has important implications for the discipline of art history, whose established tools risk failing to find purchase on the polarised sectarian readings that have been forced on these monuments. The veneration of some of these nominally Christian sites by Muslims of varying ethnicities was well attested in the former Yugoslavia, but has not been integrated into their historical study. This essay proposes that the neglect of this experience, which is itself receding into an elusive past, raises questions about art history’s methods and scope.

A Short Overview of the Development of Historiography in Church History: Part 1–From the Development of Language to the Renaissance

In part 1 of the two articles on historiography in Church History, the reader is cursorily introduced to the field of historiography, its development that coincided with the development of language and the first written documents up to the end of the Renaissance. Part 2 discusses the modern, postmodern, and metamodern eras. Part 1 starts with a search for a suitable definition for historiography, adding philosophy to the argument to indicate its close relation to historiography and Church History. Only the most prominent and relevant proponents of each era are included in this historical literature review, which is done through document analysis. Although historiography forms part of all sciences, this research links the disciplines of theology, philosophy and history together by highlighting the overlaps that these subject areas have regarding historiographical development. It alerts to important principles of historiography used in research and practising in these disciplines that point towards opportunities for intern and multi-disciplinary interaction.

History and the Development of Historical Scholarship in Africa

Abstract How has historical scholarship fared in Africa? What is the state of decolonization and deconstruction historiography in the production of historical knowledge on the continent? What role does the state play in aiding or undermining historians’ access to official historical data and the production of historical knowledge in postcolonial Africa? This article engages these questions. It harps on the reconstruction of African intellectual history as a daunting postcolonial challenge, and argues that historians on Africa need to engage with and reexamine the development of the discipline of history in Africa in relation to the debates on decolonization and the enterprise of history-writing in the production of historical knowledge and historical scholarship across the continent. This illuminates the understanding of the history of contemporary Africa. It also throws fresh light on the continent’s remote past as a way of establishing its connections with the present. Complementary to the problems of writing the history of contemporary Africa, this work argues that to appreciate and understand the problems of history-writing on Africa, we need to focus on the development and limitations of the discipline across the institutional sites of the universities in postcolonial Africa.

The beast that never forgot? Baboon conservation and the role of multispecies history

History and culture were long seen as definitionally human. As other distinctive traits that once defined our species as unique disappeared, at least we still had those two. But are we really the only species shaped by our pasts and who have cultures that change over time? This article explores animal cultures, the significance of history (and individual and group memory) in the survival of social animals and the role the discipline of History can play in conserving them. Haraway contends that people are “becoming with” other species and that these shared histories matter ethically. I argue that it is not only a matter of ethics but one of coexisting better with each other. By considering animals’ culture with a historical lens, we understand them better and adjust interactions with them. Human-wildlife connections can be fundamental to ecological assemblages rather than ancillary. Second, I show how human-animal history can push back into Deep History, also challenging static representations of human-animal relations in indigenous cultures or the pre-colonial past. Most importantly, I argue that other animals (especially social ones) have cultures themselves (neither static nor uniform) and that these can be reconstructed and used in conservation.

Giving Women the Benefit of the Doubt? Examining Gender Differences in Schools’ Management of Sexual Allegations Against Employees

ABSTRACT Comparing women’s and men’s sexual offending patterns in educational settings is a relatively recent empirical endeavor. Accordingly, gender-based examinations of schools’ management of sexual allegations are lacking. We address this gap by drawing on a unique administrative dataset from an Australian jurisdiction that captures alleged improper sexual conduct by educational employees. We compare 809 female- and male-perpetrated cases reported between 2015 and 2019 with respect to event, location, victim, and perpetrator characteristics, as well as the ensuing risk management strategies and sanctions. Compared to men, reported women were younger, employed on more secure employment arrangements, and less often had a relevant discipline history. Most alleged event characteristics did not significantly differ based on perpetrator gender. Women’s alleged perpetration, however, more often occurred in places external to school and involved more serious sexual victimization of comparatively older male students. After controlling for event, victim, perpetrator, and allegation characteristics there was nearly no support for a gender bias in institutional responses. However, a lack of any action was more often observed in female-perpetrated cases under very specific and limited conditions. Resultant implications for the management and oversight of employee-related allegations are discussed.

The Institutionalization of Feminism in the Romanian Academic and Intellectual Sphere

The present research aims to explore the institutional history of feminist disciplines and the trajectory of their inclusion in the Romanian academic curriculum, as well as in the intellectual space from the late 90’s to the present day. The adoption of feminist theories has been limited by two impediments that have made their curricular inclusion difficult and their circulation in Romania quite sporadic: firstly, the subject has been rejected and boycotted by a moralising conservative public discourse and secondly, their critical disciplinary implication has posed problems of institutional acceptance due to suspicion of leftist bias. The paper aims to analyse the public debates concerning feminism, compared to a form of totalitarianism, in Romania, on the one hand. The second part has in view to define the import channel of feminist studies in Romania, along with the difficulties that hindered the first feminist scholars and activists’ efforts to disseminate the discipline in post-communist countries. The liberal ethos with conservative nuances of the Romanian academic space and the public intellectuals’ anti-communist positions remain responsible for the poor representation of feminism in Romania, as its impiety towards feminist theories has to do with the protectionism of dominant, conservative discourses.

Introduction: The Blockade in the Era of the World Wars

How did blockades shape the course, outcome and aftermath of the world wars? In both wars, belligerents sought to blockade their enemies, cutting them off from vital resources such as food, oil, information and capital to hasten their defeat. They thus impacted societies the world over, testing their resilience and vulnerability. They produced new forms of violence and humanitarian care, prompted innovation and learning, and had integrative and disintegrative effects on wartime societies, alliances and the world order. The special issue on “The Blockade in the Era of the World Wars” challenges orthodoxies that have been in place for decades, and stake out the ground for new research. It brings together experts from different historical disciplines and geographical specialisations to produce a nuanced, research-driven transnational and international history of the era of the blockade. Their contributions widen the focus from more traditional protagonists such as admirals, diplomats and government ministers to companies, NGOs, intellectuals and private citizens. They also consider just how strongly the blockade experience of the Great War affected preparation for and policy during the Second World War, not only in terms of raw materials or food, but also of know-how, law and mentalities. Finally, they integrate legal, military, economic, business, diplomatic, social and cultural perspectives, paving the way for an understanding of the world war-era blockades as a system that is larger than the sum of its parts.

Comrade: Bill Anderson: A Communist, Working-Class Life

In 2011, Nick Salvatore reflected on the ‘intimate relationship’ between biography and social history. Challenging the suggestions made by some historians that biography was outside the ‘discipline of history’, Salvatore argued that the recent turn to biography in labour and social history was a welcome development. It opened the possibility of a broader understanding of ‘the interplay between an individual and social forces beyond one’s ability to control’. Such biography, he continued, could shed light far beyond any individual, even if it does not always reach into every corner of social life’. Like any historical work, however, it demanded a ‘disciplinary rigor and thorough research effort that treats equally seriously both the subject and the context that shapes that life’. In his excellent biography, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, Salvatore referred to the book as a ‘social biography’, one that ‘intended to explore both the individual and the broader social context’.

The Use and Misuse of East Asian History in IR Theorizing

Abstract The past two decades have witnessed a wave of research into the history of East Asian international relations (IR). Scholars seek to broaden the historical frames of reference in IR for both theory testing and theory generation. The article reviews this recent trend, examining its limitations and exploring future agenda. In studying historical East Asian IR, scholars have different expectations regarding whether their research would support, complement, or undermine mainstream Western IR. The spatial and temporal scope of their historical inquiries, as well as theoretical ambitions, therefore, differ significantly. Scholars no longer treat all East Asian history as simply one case, but as multiple cases with divergent patterns, and they recognize that the system consisted not solely of China but of multiple actors. In addition to contrasting East Asia with Western Europe, they explore also the similarities between East Asia and other non-Western regions. To advance the agenda, however, scholars must scrupulously navigate three tensions. They are: the tension between the “East” and “West”; the tension between the two disciplines of history and IR; and the tension between past and present. Future studies, therefore, must broaden their horizons in order to better transcend ethnocentrism and exceptionalism, refine their methodology both to avoid selection bias and conduct more sophisticated comparisons, and to maintain a proper distance from contemporary politics. Most importantly, they should combine high-quality historical research with cutting-edge IR theoretical trends to construct dynamic theories that could be applied to other regions.

Curating the Past

Abstract We talk about curatorship as a process in which someone carefully and thoughtfully chooses and organizes a way to present particular artworks to the public. Some have theorized that curating an art exhibit and exercising the selection and organization of artworks is very similar to telling a story. This analogy invites us to expand it and reflect on how it can help illuminate what historians do as storytellers of the past. The central point of this paper is to think of historical work as a curatorial practice. This, in turn, allows us to understand the constructive enterprise that historians engage in and challenge a rooted and prevalent commitment in the historical discipline that the past is discovered rather than constructed. Historians as curators of the past select and organize undetermined materials that become determined when subsumed under a narrative that bestows the past with a particular meaning. The analogy also serves to clarify that no epistemic or metaphysical tension need exist between a notion of the real and an acknowledgment of narrative construction.