Seminar: Critical Histories: Theories of Capitalism and the Writing of History (S) - Details

Seminar: Critical Histories: Theories of Capitalism and the Writing of History (S) - Details

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General information

Course name Seminar: Critical Histories: Theories of Capitalism and the Writing of History (S)
Subtitle
Course number 990472
Semester WiSe 2019/20
Current number of participants 13
expected number of participants 25
Home institute Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS)
Courses type Seminar in category Teaching
First date Wednesday, 23.10.2019 12:00 - 14:00, Room: (Raum 0.705, Gebaeude Waldweg 26, Altbau - PIZ 4484)
Type/Form

Rooms and times

(Raum 0.705, Gebaeude Waldweg 26, Altbau - PIZ 4484)
Wednesday: 12:00 - 14:00, weekly (14x)
(Raum 9.101, Gebaeude Waldweg 26, Hochhaus - PIZ 4485: Waldweg 26)
Monday, 16.12.2019 16:00 - 19:30
No room preference
Monday, 17.02.2020 (all-day)
Monday, 16.03.2020 (all-day)
Monday, 16.03.2020 (all-day)
Monday, 16.03.2020 (all-day)
Monday, 16.03.2020 (all-day)

Fields of study

Comment/Description

The cultural, linguistic and postcolonial turns of the 1990s and early 2000s have resulted in a wider historiographical vision and in a more serious dialogue between students of history and culture. The flip side of this productive development is, however, an attrition of earlier lines of communication between history and social science disciplines like sociology, social geography and economics. The intellectual costs of this development are visible, for instance, with regard to the history of colonialism. On the one hand, the critique of 'coloniality' has increasingly confined itself to knowledge systems and cultural practices, while the critique of the colonial political economy was until recently all but abandoned as a subject of research. On the other hand, a triumphalist historiography of 'globalization' has subsumed the phenomenon of colonialism under a linear narrative of market expansion and global connectivity, often with blatant disregard for the structures of coercion and exclusion inherent with this process. Those who speak about colonialism and empire often prefer to remain silent about capitalism — and vice versa.
Yet the impact of current processes of transterritorial entanglement, of a persistent deep economic crisis in various centres and peripheries of world capitalism, of socio-spatial as well as political instability, of growing social tensions, of a resurgent authoritarianism and of spiralling violence raises new questions that can only be analysed critically by combining the methodologies of history and the social sciences. New and parallel developments in the various disciplines need to be connected and older, inconclusive and unexhausted debates require reassessment.
This course will introduce students to a corpus of writings that engage conceptually with three broad and interlinked agendas: (a) attempts to conceptualize the social, spatial and temporal structures of capitalism while avoiding facile and mechanical teleologies; (b) a historical social science that does not confuse Euro-American and imperial perspectives with a homogenizing "global history" and reconstructs the divergences and disparities inherent in the history of capitalism; (c) the reconstruction of social histories "from below" that combine the in depth analysis of social, political and economic structures with a reconstruction of plebeian cultures. The course is based on a mix of readings from "classic" and more recent authors giving due weight also to the histories of Asian and African societies. It is directed at students of history as well as of the social sciences.

Introductory reading:
William H. Sewell Jr., Logics of History. Social Theory and Social Transformation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

See also the description of the supplementary "Tutorium", course no. 990443.

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Anmeldung gesperrt (LIZA)".
Eintragen nicht möglich, diese Veranstaltung ist (noch) gesperrt. Bitte lesen Sie unbedingt die Hinweise zur Veranstaltungsanmeldung !
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • Admission locked.