European Conceptual History
Offering a pioneering conceptual history of transition from a comparative perspective, this volume brings together eight case studies, ranging from the Third Wave of Southern Europe to the regime changes of Central and Eastern Europe, in order to rethink how we approach questions of temporality and transitional discourse.
Surveying a variety of significant asymmetrical conceptualizations, Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians' extends our current breadth of understanding of how ascriptive terms such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarity,’ or ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ functioned and continue to function in political, scientific, and fictional discourses.
Understanding the dynamics between nationalisms and internationalisms allows evaluating ongoing processes and intervening in current debates. Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined, uses a multidisciplinary approach to a long term and macro-level history of international projects since the eighteenth century to assess how spaces of politics have been debated and redefined in different European political cultures.
This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the concept of liberalism in Europe during the last several centuries, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of “liberal” but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them.
As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has reshaped not only the landscape of government, but also fundamental social and political thought on a global level. Democracy in Modern Europe covers the history of democracy in modern Europe.
The distinction between basic and applied research was central to twentieth-century science and policymaking, and if this framework has been contested in recent years, it nonetheless remains ubiquitous in both scientific and public discourse. Employing a transnational, diachronic perspective informed by historical semantics, this volume traces the conceptual history of the basic–applied distinction from the nineteenth century to today, taking stock of European developments alongside comparative case studies from the United States and China. It shows how an older dichotomy of pure and applied science was reconceived in response to rapid scientific progress and then further transformed by the geopolitical circumstances of the postwar era.
It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions—supra-national geographical designations such as “Scandinavia,” “Eastern Europe,” and “the Balkans.” Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such “meso-regions” have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.
This tightly organized collection locates the essence of European parliamentarism in four key aspects—deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty—and explores the ways in which they have been contested, reshaped, and implemented in various states and regions, including familiar western European formations alongside those from central, eastern, and southern Europe.
Bringing together leading scholars from across Europe, this volume represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. With clarifying overviews of such contested theoretical terrain as translatability, spatiality, and center-periphery dynamics, it also provides valuable insights into the current era of disenchantment with the European project.
