InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology

Social History - Historical Sociology

Editors InterDisciplines — 2019-02-08

Editorial

InterDisciplines Admin — 2018-12-03

Imagined markets? Long distance trade in the British Empire

InterDisciplines Admin — 2018-12-03

Imagined Markets?
Long-distance trade in the British Empire
Recent studies, particularly in economic sociology, point out the role of images and imaginaries of future states of the world—more precisely, the role of »fictional expectations«—as driving forces of capitalist dynamics. This perspective enriches historical research on markets while it simultaneously challenges historians to not only embed markets in complex social and cultural contexts, but also to consider their temporality. An actor-centered historical analysis of markets, then, ought not only to pay attention to historical actors’ past experiences, but also to their perceptions of the future.
In the nineteenth century, British merchants willing to trade their commodities to the far-off markets of the recently annexed colony of Natal were confronted with several risks and uncertainties: e.g., the business environment was unfamiliar or even completely unknown and demand was difficult to estimate. Historians therefor stress the importance of personal connections and co-ethnic networks with regard to nineteenth century long-distance trade. Communication with actors abroad could help to spread information, build trust and reciprocity, and enable market exchange. British settler communities played a key role in these communication networks as possible consumers and, more importantly, sources of information on supposedly future economic opportunities in the colony.
By analyzing emigrants’ manuals published shortly after the annexation of Natal the article proposes that discourses on these future business opportunities and prospective economic developments could shape expectations of merchants in Britain. Information in emigrants’ manuals therefor contributed to the construction of an »imagined market« in Natal.

Historical Sociology and the Antinomies of Constitutional Democracy: Notes on a Revised Approach

InterDisciplines Admin — 2018-12-03

This article outlines ways in which more extensive use can be made of historical-sociological methods in legal inquiry, especially in the analysis of constitutional law. It responds critically to other sociological accounts of constitutional law, claiming that they have only insufficiently reflected the social origins of the norms incorporated in constitutional law, and they have tended to replicate a simplified legal construction of the constitution as a vector that translates political decision into legitimate form. As an alternative, this article explains that historical methods bring greatest benefit in constitutional analysis because they allow us to look beyond express constitutional functions, and so to explain the reasons why, in its classical form, constitutionalism did not provide simple and reliable foundations for the legitimation of politics and law. Historical analysis of constitutions in fact has particular value in that it brings to light the deep antinomies in constitutional patterns of government, and it illuminates the ways in which constitutionalism often reflects a deeply conflict-laden mode of legitimacy formation. At the core of this approach is an attempt to question the binary model of the law/politics relation in sociological discussion of constitutionalism, indicating that, to be fully sociological, such analysis needs to renounce this essentially legal, textual precondition.

Holding doors for others — A history of the emergence of a polite behavior

Felix Bathon — 2018-12-03

The following article discusses the relationship between materiality and sociality, and more precisely that of an item of clothing–the hoop skirt–and a polite gesture–holding doors for others–applying a historical procedural perspective. After some introductory remarks on holding doors for others as a polite behavior, the history of the hoop skirt is reconstructed as a sequence on the basis of a methodology of processual explanation and is described as a process using Georg Simmel’s fashion theory. Subsequently, a history of politeness is reconstructed as a sequence and explained as a process using Norbert Elias’s theory of civilization. The hypothesis that the gesture emerged due to the exorbitant size of the hoop skirt, which made it necessary to hold doors for women wearing them, will then be plausibilized by a complex reconstruction that parallelizes both sequences in a temporal and social dimension. In addition to the temporal presumption that the gesture appeared in conduct books after the emergence of the hoop skirt, both fashion and politeness present similar reference problems in terms of differentiation in society, inclusion and authenticity. Furthermore, this argument serves as a possible example of a symmetry between materiality and sociality.

Global Historical Sociology and Connected Gender Sociologies: On the Re-Nationalization and Coloniality of Gender

Heidemarie Winkel — 2018-12-03

The article starts with a discussion of history’s and historical sociology’s influence on gender sociology. It is argued that the reconstruction of gender-historical developments as institutionally and socio-culturally sequential processes, or as historical figurations and their causal mechanisms, is a marginal research agenda in gender sociology. As a result, colonial history and its gendered legacy—which is considered pivotal for a comprehensive conceptual understanding of contemporary society—is (still) relegated to a back seat in gender sociology. This is reflected in the way how current anti-genderist controversies in European societies are discussed in terms of theory; gender sociology misses both to consult gender-historical and postcolonial perspectives systematically in the analysis of anti-genderism, although postcolonial approaches have become prominent in global historical sociology in the last decade. I suggest conceiving anti-genderists’ stance clearly as an indicator of European societies’ colonial (epistemic) legacy and as a result of the consistent (re)nationalization of gender throughout the twentieth century. Against this backdrop, the contribution starts from the question to what extent a global historical sociology can enable gender sociology to decolonize its body of knowledge and to decode the continuing (re)nationalization of gender as a colonial legacy. This includes a reflection on the extent to which gender sociology is built on a colonial body of white gender knowledge and how gender can be made visible as a colonial category of knowledge production. Accordingly, the deconstruction of gender sociology’s blind spot vis-a-vis its own imperial standpoint and its enmeshment with colonial epistemic legacies is envisioned as a central task. This is evidenced by the way how gender was inserted in national discourse throughout the second half of the twentieth century, namely as a medium that allows for the assertion of cultural differences between »us« and »them«. This finally led into a new, European nationalism after Germany’s so-called reunification, in which gender’s symbolic role once more became central, such as in the »headscarf debates« in the early 2000s, at a time when the NSU terror spread. At large it is argued that decolonial thinking reveals how classifications in terms of race and nation are unfolding as a cornerstone of the bourgeois, heteronormative gender order and how this is fostering the coloniality of gender, namely as part of (re)nationalization processes throughout the twentieth century up to now. As a consequence, recent anti-genderism affects white women and women of color alike, albeit in very different ways; but first and foremost, anti-genderism involves white women against women of color.

The history of epigenetics from a sociological perspective

Laura Benítez Cojulún — 2018-12-03

This paper explores the history of a scientific discipline, namely epigenetics, from a sociological perspective. It draws upon some theoretical insights provided by Mölders (2011): (1) a sociological learning-theoretical framework about systemic learning in the function system of science, conceived as an equilibration process at the level of a disciplinary communication community; (2) an evolution-theoretical framework about how learned structures reach the entire level of the function system of science. Thus, the leading questions asked were: (1) Do the emergence and development of epigenetics correspond to a learning process at the level of a disciplinary communication community, in the sense of a Piagetian equilibration process? and (2) Does the spreading of epigenetic knowledge constitute a case of (re)stabilization of learned structures reaching the level of the function system of science? The second approach seems more pertinent for the case of epigenetics for the following reasons: (1) in the realm of biosciences it is difficult to delimit disciplinary communication communities; (2) the kind of knowledge associated with epigenetics seems to have emerged outside of any preexisting disciplinary communication community; (3) ever since the coining of its name, epigenetics has transcended the dominant internal differentiation of the function system of science. It was found that several structures coming from epigenetics have been successfully selected beyond the boundaries of disciplines through scientific citation, so that an epigenetic shift has reached the function system of science. Following this historical thread, it was also found that some novel structures drawing upon Waddingtonian epigenetics were selected by a chain of authors reaching sociologists such as Klaus Eder, nourishing in turn a learning-related evolution-theoretical framework which can be applied to analyze the case of epigenetics itself.

Secularization as historical struggle

InterDisciplines Admin — 2018-12-03

As one of the oldest master narratives in the humanities, the term secularization has been one of the most-debated terms in the sociology of religion. Several scholars have proposed studying secularization from a conflict-centered perspective in recent years as a way to overcome the secularization/sacralization dichotomy that had developed over time. In the first section of the paper, I present a general approach on »secularization as struggle« based on Bourdieu’s praxeology. I show that the question about secularization amounts to the question about the legitimate meaning of religious praxis, which is always struggled about by different actors. This legitimate meaning can be assessed for three dimensions of secularization, namely differentiation, privatization, and religious decline. Besides theoretical reasoning, I draw on other scholars’ studies to lend some empirical evidence to the approach. In the second section, I argue that the approach is not complete until taken to a historical level. For this, I give three reasons that stem from the secularization debate, the theoretical background in Bourdieu, and the very definition of the terms revolving around secularization. In a next step, I argue that Bourdieu’s theory can well account for diachronicity, and give some examples of how the combination of both approaches can be made fruitful for research on secularization phenomena.