Rethinking the Nineteenth Century: Cultural Struggle, Society and the State

Edmund "Terry" Burke, III, University of California, Santa Cruz

This is a work in progress not intended for publication beyond this website! It may not be reproduced, disseminated or altered without the explicit consent of the author.

Despite much notable recent historical research and theorizing the long nineteenth century (1750-1914) continues to be framed in terms of the binaries presented in Edward Saidís Orientalism: East/West, modern/traditional, active/passive, male/female. For different reasons, theorists of modernity, world systems, the culture of colonialism and the modern state all accept this framework. What is at stake? How might a study of cultural struggles around the nineteenth century Liberal Project help shed light on the ways in which the modern world came into being? One place to start the rethinking is to conceive of modernity as both social structural and discursive elements, in which the latter is the arena of contestation and struggle over the institution of new practices.

The conference seeks to develop elements for an alternative way of viewing the long nineteenth century from a comparative world historical perspective.  The focus on the cultural struggles occasioned by the emergence of the world market and the modern state provides a productive point from which to embark on such a task.

Please submit proposals of organized panels and papers on these and other themes to the organizers, Terry Burke (email: eburke@cats.ucsc.edu), Randy Head (email: randolph.head@ucr.edu), Ken Pomeranz (email: klpomera@uci.edu), and Jack Goldstone (email: jagoldstone@ucdavis.edu).
 

Possible thematic approaches or issues include:


© Edmund Burke III, 2/2000. This is a work in progress not intended for publication beyond this website! It may not be reproduced, disseminated or altered without the explicit consent of the author.