Transnational Concepts, Transfers and the Challenge of the Peripheries

The 10th Annual International Conference on Conceptual History
Istanbul, Turkey, August 30-September 2, 2007
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Istanbul Technical University and the History of Political and Social Concepts Group (HPSCG) warmly welcome you to the 10th Annual International Conference on Conceptual History. Since 1998 the HPSCG has been involved in organising annual conferences on conceptual history. In later years, the focus has been on the theoretical, methodological and empirical questions dealing with transfers, translations and re-interpretations of concepts in various parts of the world. This year’s conference will continue on this path.
Processes of political and social transformation have always been a core interest of conceptual history, particularly those processes variably called modernization, westernization or civilization related to the establishment of social and political modernity. Conceptual historians have studied the key concepts that contributed to bring about social and political modernity.

At the 10th conference we intend to examine and question the master narratives and the Western modernization canon that resulted from these processes. The creation of a canon of ideas, values and concepts included a division between centre and periphery. Centres became defined by possessing what was to be seen as the uniform way to modernity (Normalweg). Peripheries were seen as late-comers and receivers.

Master narratives and their conceptual frameworks were transferred from parts of Europe to other parts of Europe and to other regions in the world. They provided tools for local processes of transformations. The master narratives had an in-build demand for imitation and copying. But what actually happened in various places were translations, elaborations, adaptations and mergers into other cultural frameworks. Although transfers often took place under conditions of power and asymmetry, ‘peripheries’ were never passive receivers.
At the conference we will focus on the canonical and transnational key concepts that played a crucial role in the processes of democratization, nationalization, temporalization and secularization contributing to the establishment of social and political modernity in different parts of the world. We will discuss and compare the reception, translation and adaptation of concepts such as state, people, democracy, citizenship, nation, civilization, class and religion in different cultures. We will highlight the different modernist and anti-modernist strategies formed by the battles around the concepts. We will deal with the challenges that the peripheral elaborations have posed to the canon.