Event Details
-
Date
III. Thursday, 11th September, 11:00-13:00
-
LocationK1073
-
ThemeC Expanding the Global Archive
Convenor
- Janne Lahti (Linnaeus University)
- Stefan Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University)
Chair
- Janne Lahti (Linnaeus University)
Commentator
- Laura de Mello e Souza (University of São Paulo)
Panelists
- Stefan Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University)
- Paul Kramer (Vanderbilt University)
Papers
-
Stefan Eklöf Amirell
The Problems of Eurocentrism in Global History -
Paul Kramer
Boundary Work: Critical Global and Transnational Histories in an Unequal World
Abstract
The rise of global history since the 1990s has contributed greatly to broadening the previous focus on European and Western developments in world history. Consequently, the history discipline today shows a much more reasonable geographical balance than before, both in research and teaching. Still, the field of global history has been criticised for being imbued with Eurocentrism.
In this roundtable, seven key aspects of Eurocentrism in the field of global history are analysed in the light of the criticism against the field that has been voiced in recent years. In doing so, the roundtable aims not only to highlight the many different and sometimes concealed aspects of Eurocentrism, but also to suggest ways to address them in practical research and teaching.
The seven dimensions of Eurocentrism in global history that are analysed and addressed are:
1.Eurocentrism of the modern history discipline with its focus on linear chronological developments and Eurocentric periodizations of global historical processes.
2.Eurocentrism of agency and priority of interpretation: Europeans are often seen as the main actors in historical processes, while non-Europeans are portrayed as passive spectators or victims, which may lead historians, consciously or unconsciously, to adopt thefrequently biased or mistaken interpretations of the European historical actors.
3.Eurocentrism of the global historical archives: Most research in the field of global history is based on textual sources created, collected and maintained by Europeans, historically and today, all of which raises several difficult source-critical problems with regard to what is preserved and available for historical research, as well as to the biases in the texts themselves.
4.Eurocentrism of social theories and concepts: Most influential theories and concepts in the social sciences have been formulated by Western scholars in European languages and based on abstractions of European historical developments, which raises serious questions with regard to their usefulness for analysing historical processes in non-European or cross-cultural settings.
5.Eurocentrism of comparisons: Comparative studies in global history often take European developments as their point of departure, which risks leading to hegemonic and misleading analyses and to non-European cultures and societies being found deficient or lacking with regard to one or several of the chosen comparata.
6.Eurocentrism of Academia: Global history research is dominated by rich countries, mainly in the Western world, resulting in globally unequal access to essential resources for research, including funding for research, access to archives, libraries and digital resources, and access to leading publication channels.
7.The dominance of English: English is the dominant language of global history research and teaching, leading to an obvious danger of the field being imbued with Anglocentric concepts and ways of thinking, as well as an overemphasis of the British Empire and Anglophone parts of the world in the writing of global history.
The roundtable will feature a presentation by Stefan Amirell, professor of global history at Linnaeus University, followed by comments by the other participants in the roundtable and a panel discussion