Author: Konrad Lawson

The project of ‘the database of the published books in the early modern era’ that Andrew Pettigrew presented could mean a contribution also to my work ‘The Left-wing terrorism in Italy and Germany in the 1970s.’ The German and Italian extra-parliamentary movements were influenced by each other, and it would be interesting to find out which books were translated from one language to another. Such a database would raise several questions. Which authors were translated? What was the number of circulation of those authors? In which cities were they published?

Professor Andrew Pettegree – Transnational History of Early Modern News

The influence of specific authors would thus be in a certain way quantifiable. This approach would also raise a number of issues. The number of the books circulating is in the 20^th century immense and it would be difficult to put them all in the database. Therefore, the criteria would have to be set for cataloging the books. But in this way we would have to pre-define the books chosen for the database and thus limiting the contribution. The high mobility and the availability of the books would also make it difficult to find out how many people really read specific books.

Mikulas Pesta

Discussing scales, Europe and interconnectedness

We believe that scale is a defining factor when considering networks. All three of us are working on interconnections that may be defined as networks, but are nonetheless very different in terms of scale from one another. In scrutinising punk rock, Ondrej is exploring a scale shift from a closely connected group of people to a mass movement. Anna is mainly examining a very small personal network which at the same time is connected to a bigger shift in the understanding of relationships in general. Nikos is working on the connectivity between young people from West Germany, Greece and Britain. He examines transnational, small and loosely-knit groups, whose members simultaneously shared the feeling of common belonging to a broader “imagined community” of a transnational youth culture in the context of the “sexual revolution”.

The ways in which the networks each of us is exploring were constituted vary:

For Nikos, the above mentioned networks were based on travelling and “being elsewhere” from the place where these young people lived. The people that Ondrej is examining are drawn together by the enjoyment of the same music, looks and ideas. And in Anna’s case, the network is just formed through Lou Salome’s correspondents

So far, we have experimented with other concepts in our analyses. For example, Nikos has employed the concept of sociality. Anna considers the conceptual history of friendship as a specfic description of relationships. Since the notion of network can be conceptualised in various ways (see, for instance, Latour, Castells), we are interested in further exploring its compatibility with the other concepts we have already been using. We are also keen on examining further the possibilities of distinguishing between different kinds of networks and diverse links between their members.

Anna, Ondrej, Nikos

Raj and Saunier both challenge the notion that Europe is a closed container and a self-defined space. They claim that Europe was defined in relation to other parts of the world and that non-Europeans played a critical role in this process. The same insight could be applied to the history of the United States. Placing the early history of the North American colonies in the context of competing European empires highlights the ways in which different regions were shaped by European commercial and intellectual networks. Through expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the United States began to more actively shape global networks and in the process to define a unified national identity. It also began to more actively participate in the global production of knowledge. An avenue for further research might be the impact of US participation in European and then North American expansionary networks on the development of US scientific institutions. In particular, American philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and economic development in the second half of the twentieth century have profoundly shaped US scientific practices and institutions.  Most historians have privileged the perspective of US aid agencies and scientists and have not adopted the kind of approach advocated by Raj. Much of this scholarship is still assumes that knowledge is diffused outward from Euro-American experts and it gives relatively little consideration to the role of non-Western actors and research practices.

Jan Koura, Mattie Dungy