Current Research

1) Conceptual History and Global Translations: The Euro-Asian Semantics of the Social and the Economic (with Bo Stråth, Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki)

The target of this project is the understanding of conceptualisations and imaginations of the social and the economic in various European and Asian languages. The semantics of these two spheres are conventionally departing from Western conceptualisations with an origin in the Antique World. This Western provenience is arguably problematic in a global world without a Western centre. We want to establish a transnational epistemological horizon, towards which the European and Asian conceptualisations of the social and the economic are related to on an equal basis. The crucial question is to what extent the Western bias can be transgressed and how global communication across cultures and civilisations can be established.

The horizon we want to establish is not one where the Asian conceptualisations are played off against the European but one where European and Asian semantics are entangled in historical processes. A frequent argument in the postcolonial critique deals with a continuous Eurocentric agenda and that therefore full autonomy must be based on interruption of communication under development of indigenous discourse. The project wants to challenge this argument and search for possibilities of a non-Eurocentric transcultural dialogue.

The initiative is taken by conceptual historians at the universities of Helsinki (Bo Stråth) and Aarhus (Hagen Schulz-Forberg). The initiative is embedded in a larger consortium on conceptual history and global translations which in Europe has representatives at Bielefeld University, Bochum University and Freie University of Berlin and in Asia at Tokyo University, the Academy of Science in Beijing, Seoul National University, Srinakarinwirot University in Bangkok and the National University of Singapore. In a series of workshops this consortium will explore the semantics not only of the social and the economic, but also -- with other partners as main organisers -- the political, the religious and the cultural/the civilisational. Read more at: http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/nordic/strath/projects/worldhistory.html 

 2) Zero Hours: Global Moments of New Beginnings in the Twentieth Century

Globalization may be the most successful concept of the early Twenty-First Century. In a globalized world, societies have to change and adapt in order to rise to the challenge - this is the main line of thought in most debates on globalisation. This project looks at the development of the global order in periods, where old systems had collapsed and new had to be established: 1918, 1945 and 1989. Through a series of conferences and workshops, the project will bind together a group of partners and external contributors as well as a PhD and a post doctoral fellow to publish a book series on ‘Zero Hours: Global Moments of New Beginnings'.

The debates on globalisation are filled to the brim with terms and phrases that are mainly alluding to certain imaginations of change and relations that are somehow unavoidable and cannot be changed or influenced through individual or small-scale agency. Intellectual and scholarly explanations and comments on global developments refer to multiple level governance structures, to the fact of a networked globe, to change and to a polycentric power structure as well as to the complexity and multi-faceted character of global processes.  This is certainly correct. However, there is a fundamental lack of critical reflection about the terminology in which globalisation is dubbed. Empirical depth is also missing when it comes to the history of globalisation beyond broader strokes of macro-historical description as well as to the content and application of global conditions in political, social, cultural, and economic settings. This project strives to fill some of the existing gaps, on the levels of theory and methodology as well as on the level of a fleshed-out empirical reflection on global entanglements and processes.

The main rationale of this project is based on the hypothesis that what we call Zero hours: Global Moments of New Beginnings can be mapped out on a global scale. Following moments of crisis and critique, the process of reconstruction or reorientation in societies is accompanied by struggles for legitimacy and power, by redefinitions of legitimating concepts and discourses, and by a new emergence or new variety of future-oriented social models. This basic pattern of change can be observed globally. The project strives to analyse twentieth century patterns of legitimacy change and to present the different areas of the world and the prominent discourses of reconstruction and reorientation as entangled both synchronically and diachronically.

A thorough history of the twentieth century written under the umbrella of a global epistemological horizon is still a desideratum. The goal of this project is to provide input for achieving elements of a global history of the twentieth century in order to provide a sounder scientific and historical basis for today's talk of globalisation. The analytical focus will be on the periods following monumental crises of the 20th century: the First and the Second World War as well as the Cold War. A special attention is paid to the 1970s as a crucial decade of conceptual change and crisis in Europe and the world.