Mailing Address

Karin Tilmans / Wyger Velema,

University of Amsterdam,

UIZINGA
INSTITUUT
Onderzoekschool voor Cultuurgeschiedenis Research Institute and Graduate School of Cultural H istory

Department of History, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: Karin.Tilmans@hum.uva.nl http://www.hum.uvalnll-huizingainieuws

Colophon
Editors: Karin Tilmans, Wyger Velema, Freya Sierhuis Lay-out: Bas Broekhuizen

In this Issue:
A Dictionary of Basic Historical Terms The History of Dutch Concepts Conceptual History Projects in Denmark The Conceptual History of Finnish Political Culture German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity French Research on linguistic History of Conceptual usages

History of Concepts Newsletter

Nr 1, Fall1998

History of Political and Social Concepts Group: A statement concerning its founding and goals
Melvin Richter, Fail 1998

group will also organize panels at meetings of international and national organizations in disciplines involved in ihe study of the history of political and
social concepts.

T
be

his

organization brings

together all

those

concerned with the history of political and social

concepts. It is open to individual researchers, as well as to those involved in larger projects, past, present,

or planned. Its goal is to establish a forum where ihe

many different approaches to conceptual history can discussed; intellectual and and organizational studies experiences shared; comparative

Taking part in ihe foundation meeting were: Reinhart Koselleck (Bielefeld), Quentin Skinner (Cambridge), Pim den Boer (Amsterdam), Michael Freeden (Oxford), Patricia Springborg (Sydney), Bjorn Wittrock (StockholmfUppsala), Janet Coleman (London), Martin Burke (New York), Sisko Haikala (Jyviiskylii), Daniel Gordon (Amherst), Tuija Pulkkinen (Helsinki/Greifswald), Hans Blom (Rotterdam), Jose Rosales (Malaga), Jacques Guilhaumou (Marseilles), Raymonde Monnier (SaintCloud), Matti Hyviirinen (Tampere), Jan Ifversen (Aarhus), Jan-Werner Muller (Oxford), MikhaiJ Ilyin (Moscow), Gyorgy Bence (Budapest), Peter Baehr (St. Johns, NewfoundJand), Karin Tilmans (Amsterdam), Wyger Velema (Amsterdam), Uffe Jakobsen (Copenhagen), Dario Castiglione (Exeter), Christine Faure (paris), lain Hampsher-Monk
(Exeter); as well as the meeting's organizers, Kari

prepared. Thanks to Henrik Stenius (University of Helsinki and Director of the Finnish Institute in London), ihe foundation meeting was held at ihe Finnish Institute in London, June 18-20, 1998. Those present came
from fourteen countries and represented collective works on the history of political and social concepts

in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Finland,

Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, and Russia . The participants agreed to form an international society. This will meet regularly, publish a newsletter, and develop an archive in one or more international languages of projects and proposals, as well as interviews with, and critical reflections by those who have led and taken part in them. An e-mail network and a home page will soon be established. The newsletter, of which this is the first issue, will be

Palonen (Jyviiskylii) and Melvin Richter (New York).

The History of Dutch Concepts

Wyger Velema

onceptual history, or Begnffsgeschichte, has, of

course, long been a flourishing disclpime m

Germany, resulting, among other things, in the recently

edited for the ftrst two years by Karin Tilmans and Wyger Velema at ihe University of Amsterdam. They
can be contacted at the following address: University

of Amsterdam, Department of History, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This is the address to which ihose interested in joining ihe group should write and to which all materials for
inclusion in the second issue of the newsletter should

completed monumental series Geschichtliche Gnmdbegriffe. In recent years however interest in conceptual history has, for a variety of reasons, spread beyond Germany. The Handbuch politisch-sozialer Gnmdbegriffe in Frankreich 1680-1820, which started to appear in 1985, is a clear indication ofthis trend. For
although it originated in Germany, its contributors

be sent.
The next international conference, planned by

Jacques Guilhaumou (Marseilles) and Raymonde Monnier (Saint-Cloud) will be held in the Fall of 1999 at the Ecole Normale Superieure de SaintCloud, just outside Paris. Other members of ihe

include boih French and American scholars. The growing international imporlance of conceptual history is also evident in a number of recent Anglophone publications, for instance in ihe work of Terence Ball and Melvin Richter. Impressed and inspired by ihe results of ihis international research, a group of Dutch scholars, institutionally united in ihe Huizinga Institute, decided to initiate a research project in Dutch conceptual history.

From the beginning in 1990, it has been clear to all those involved that the Dutch project can not and should not aspire to the scale of either the Grundbegriffe or the Handbuch. The Dutch project selects a limited number of concepts - fifteen to (at the very most) twenty-five - and studies these in great depth. The history of each individual concept is researched not by individual scholars, but by groups of scholars, always including historians, historians of literature, and an historians. This approach is intended to stimulate both interdisciplinarity and the utilization of a broad and varied range of sources. The discussion about the concepts to be selected for study in depth is still being conducted, but a majority of participants in the project favors the following criteria for inclusion: 1. The concept should have played a prominent role in Dutch public discourse over a long period of time; 2. The concept should be of such central historical imporlance that a reconstruction of its history should contribute to a broad discussion about the existence (or non-existence) of a specifically Dutch pattern of conceptual history; 3. The concept should lend itself to international comparison. Although there are a number of significant differences between the Grundbegriffe and the Handbuch, both heavily emphasize the second half of the eighteenth century as a crucial period of conceptual modernization. The Dutch project also takes this period as a main chronological focus. At the same time, however, it includes the whole of the seventeenth century and for some concepts goes back even further. There are good reasons for following this path. The position of the Dutch Republic was unique in early modem Europe. It was a state without a monarchy (let alone an absolute one), in its social life the aristocracy was of relative insignificance, its economic life was dominated by commerce instead of agriculture, and its religious and cultural life was remarkably open and pluralist. One of the questions the Dutch project will attempt to answer is whether this extraordinary
political, social,
economic~

will be appearing in two volumes of essays, to be published in the Spring of 1999 by Amsterdam University Press. The launch of the flISt two volumes in the series has been preceded by the publication of a volume of general essays on conceptual history: lain Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans and Frank van Vree, eds. History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives (Amsterdam, 1998). A third research group, working on the concept of 'civilization' and chaired by Pim den Boer, is in the process of finishing its work and will hopefully go to press in late 1999 or early 2000. In 1996 the Dutch project received a major research grant, specifically intended for the exploration of the conceptual world of Dutch republicanism. This has resulted in the fonnation of two more research groups, one working on the concepts 'republicl republican/republicanism' (Martin van Gelderen and Wyger Velema), the other on the concepts 'citizen/citizenship' (Joost Kloek and Karin Tilmans). Publication of these two volumes is planned for late 2000 or early 2001. Since the concepts that have so far been selected for study in depth have been largely from the sphere of politics, it is now generally agreed among those participating in the project that a broadening of scope is necessary. High on the list of priorities is the expansion of the project to include the study of such cultural concepts as virtue, sin and honor.

A comparative dictionary of basic historical terms

Nikolai Kopossov, Project's Coordinator, Saint-Petersburg State University

he Dictionary will offer a comparative analysis of the principal terms used to conceptualize history and society, with special reference to the vocabulary of the social sciences. It is conceived as a means of promoting mutual understanding between Russian and Western scholars, as well as a contribution to the critique of the social sciences' intellectual apparatus.

and cultural situation

resulted in an equally unique pattern of conceptual development. At the present moment the work of the first two research groups working on the concepts of 'liberty' (E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier and W.R.E. Velema) and 'fatherland' (N.C.F. van Sas) is completed. The results

The novelty of the proposed project consists of the systematic comparison of the key concepts of the social sciences emanating from in different cultural traditions. Both their meaning and the ways people use them vary enormously in Russian, English, German and French languages and in the respective intellectual traditions in the social sciences. The main goal of the

Dictionary is to flnd these differences in order to create an effective instrument of cross-cultural understanding.

This DiclionGlY will enable srudents coming from the different culrural perspectives to get an adequate understanding of the differences and similarities of the
foundations of the social sciences' intellectual

appararus in different culrures. Special attention will be paid to the murual intellecrual influences and to semantic transformations endured through the acculrurated concepts. The Dictionary is addressed to the large audience of srudents, researchers and translators. As such it will enable scholars and students to penetrate the barriers of language and raise the level of understanding of societies by a significant order of
magnitude. Russian social sciences need such a dictionary, and not

The introduction of Russia within the community of Western nations makes the mutual understanding between peoples the crucial issue of our time. Th.is is especially true for the social sciences, given the important role they play in the process of world integration. But it is also true that the long isolation of Russia from the West had profoundly marked its social sciences, which throughout Soviet history were used as an indispensable tool of propaganda. It goes without saying that the terminology of Russian social sciences was borrowed from other European languages. The semantic transformations undergone by these terms in their process of 'acculturation' due to the peCUliarities of the national intellectual tradition, to Marxist ideology, to the discursive practices of state propaganda, and to the grammatical strucrures of the Russian language, pertain to much less obvious and
less investigated issues. That is why even now, despite

only because of the nearly century-long isolation from

Western social sciences. The opening of Russia

towards the West during the last decade has made apparent both the possibility of successful collaboration in this domain and the recurrent
misperceptions and growing frustration on both sides. Since in the contemporary world social sciences are as

growing international collaboration, the illusory similarity of scientific vocabularies is an obstacle to murual understanding which has produced a certain frustration in both Russian and Western scientific
conununities. Hence the necessity of comparative

important a foundation of democratic society as of

international integration, their role in Russia's transition

to democracy should not be underestimated. The Dictionary will help better integration of Russian social
sciences into the international community.

investigation of the main concepts of Russian and the Western social sciences. The principal task of such a srudy is to identify the linguistically fixed and historically conditioned differences between national traditions of understanding the social phenomena, as
well as the influence these differences exercise over the

thinking of the social scientists. Th.is task obviously calls for broadening the framework of analysis. The oversimplified opposition of Russia and the West obscures the diversity of intellectual traditions within what is currently refereed to as Western science itself. In particular there is no common European languages and even within relatively homogeneous Western society the plurality of languages creates a diversity of ways of looking at the world. The comparison of the vocabulary of Russian and Western social sciences has thus to be complemented by that of the social nomenclarures within the main European languages (at least in English, French and Germanl. To be sure, linguistic analysis of these nomenclarures requires the use of methods developed by historical semantics on the one hand, and by the cognitive sciences, on the other. Thus the interplay of culMal contexts and mental mechanisms responsible for the formation of our

Three volumes will be published in two separate editions in Russian and English, followed by the Supplement containing bio-bibliographical information about the thinkers concerned and their murual influences. It is expected that the project will be completed in 6 or 7 years by an international team of about 50 or 60 authors. The list of entries will be
divided into thematic sections corresponding to the main semantic flelds of the social sciences' vocabulary.

Each of these fields will be the subject matter of an international workshop. Besides the regular meetings (seminars, colloquia etc.l to be held both in SaintPetersburg and abroad, close working contact between

the participants will be ensured by means of the Internet The Internet will also pennit the rapid publication of the workshops initial results, but preliminary publications in the form of books are also
foreseen.

concepts is itself the subject matter of empirical research. In other words, the vocabulary of the social sciences must be submitted to critical analysis. This objective is of pressing importance for a number of
reasons.

discourse strategies, rhetorical devices or means of

The intellectual disorientation of the social sciences has recently been discussed by many observers. From the very beginning of their history dating back at least to the XIXth century the social sciences laid down claints to having discovered the universal laws governing society. It was precisely to tackle this task that their conceptual systems were created. Nowadays the collapse of their major paradigms (such as Marxism, structuralism or psychoanalysis) has made even the possibility of such a quest problematic. Some observers suggest that we live now in a period of the

persuasion (so far as the very genre of the dictionary makes it possible). But behind the occasional contextually bound meanings of historical terms there remain structural features of the social sciences conceived as an intellectual paradigm, as a historically constructed Weltanschauung, which is also appropriate for investigation. The comparative approach, which forms the core of this project, is no doubt a privileged tool of critical analysis. The structure of this Dictionary depends on the logic of the comparative research. Since comparison of particular terms is meaningful only insofar as those terms are considered as elements of larger conceptual systems, it is appropriate to begin with the framework of semantic fIelds belonging to the vocabulary of the social sciences. The Dictionary will be divided into thematic sections corresponding to these semantic fIelds considered as terminological sub-systems (for example: power relations, types of communities, forms of thought, ways of representing time and space, etc.) The initial choice of semantic fIelds cannot escape arbitrariness, so that control over it must depend on discourse analysis of actual conceptual networks. For example, it is important to investigate to what extent the boundsry between 'State' and 'society drawn by nineteenth-century philosophy of law, has been actually assimilated in different languages and intellectual traditions and has consequently become inherent to our ways of thinking. In other words, is it true that terms that apply to power relations and terms that describe types of communities actually form distinct semantic fIelds, or are they interrelated in a different way that does not necessarily imply the State/Society dichotomy ? This kind of investigation, if systematically pursued, could enable us to compare the 'thematisation' of the social world in the different languages. For example, the difference between the 'social' and the 'cultural' seems to be much more profound in Russian than in German, English or French. In Russian, the 'social' (and especially its equivalent of Russian origin, 'o6I1!ecmt:eHHbiff) connotes primarily 'collective 'official', 'belonging to the state' and ultimately 'inhuman ', while the social roots of culture are often neglected. On the other hand, in French and in English these terms are overlapping

most profound intellectual transfonnation, consisting in the abandonment of the 'regime of historicity' inherited from the Enlightenment. This means that the linear vision of historical time, dominated by images of the future providing both the past and the present with their meaning, has collapsed. It would appear that
some of the basic assumptions of the social sciences

have been put into question. So the intellectual climate today seems favorable for the re-examination of their intellecrnal apparatus. The semantics of historical terms has been the subject of many recent studies. Theoretical approaches in this domain include German Begriffsgeschichte and the discourse analysis of several English-speaking historians. In the German tradition, concepts are considered relatively stable and fIxed by language clusters of meanings intrinsically linked to historical phenomena whose essence can be immediately grasped by means of the study of concepts. By contrast, discourse analysis tends to reject the very notion of a concept in favor of that of ideology or discourse, regarded as a flexible system of linguistic behavior, so that propositions (and the words they consist of) are held to have meaning only insofar as they are linked to particular historical contexts and discursive strategies. It would seem sensible to join the advantages of both approaches, since words, propositions and discourses are equally important for semantic theory. At different levels, there are irreducible mechanisms and structures calling for appropriate methods of analysis. One should ignore neither semantic structures of the notions nor

and sometimes even interchangeable in a number of

contexts, while the Gennan tradition seems to be an

intermediary case. By contrast, in German the word 'Kullur' is semantically much stronger than the word 'Gesellschaft', especially if compared with French, so that the French term 'Ie social' may be considered a functional analogue of the German term 'Kultur since
both serve as key concepts of the respective social

extralinguistic experience (for example, that of space and time) is one way to address this task. Another way is to examine the classificatory devices social scientists use to organize their material, since these devices play an important role in the formation of social and historical concepts. To carry out such a program it will be necessary to set
up an international team of authors representing the

vocabularies.

The study of the boundaries between semantic fields should be complemented by the analysis of their internal structures. For example, in German the field of terms for forms of communities is structured around the opposition of 'Gemeinschaft' and 'Gesellschaft', which has no direct analogues in other languages under study in this Diclionary (even in English the opposition of 'society' and 'Community' is far less striking). Similarly, the opposition of 'spirit' and 'Mind' (',l[yX and 'Pa9yM) IS absolutely fundamental for conceptualizing consciousness in Russian, while it is much less significant - and is at the same time modified - in English, while being almost absent in French and German, where the notion of 'Esprit' (or 'Geist') practically embraces the meanings of both Russian words. But it is the same word 'Pa9yM which is the only Russian equivalent for a term as significant as 'Reason' ('Raison ', 'Vemunft,), that stresses the opposition of the spiritual and rational. Or consider another typical example, the word', 'Slale' ('Ela/', 'slaal;. Its Russian equivalent, 'FocyoapcmoO, springs from one of the Czar's titles, 'rocyoapb', reflecting the Byzantine idea of autocracy. Obviously, the underlying vision of the State is a mixture of the corresponding Western notion (known in Russia since the XVIIth century) with a more despotic and patriarchal concept of power. Undoubtedly the identification of the State with one of its forms resonates with the structure of the whole semantic field of terms dealing with power relations. It is in the framework of this structural comparison that we are going to investigate the history of particular social
terms.

variety of both academic disciplines and approaches to the study of historical concepts. The Dictionary should be the result of a collective effort: to promote mutual understanding of scientific communities its authors should start by anempting to understand each other. It is only by means of sustained collaboration through a number of seminars, conferences and workshops that an efficient team can be formed. The whole team will have to be divided into working groups, each being responsible for the investigation of a particular semantic field. To ensure close contact between the working groups some of the authors will be encouraged to participate in more than one. Since the project is a long-tenn enterprise, it could ensure the collaboration of scholars belonging to the different generations. For example, certain entries of the Dictionary could be presented by the younger scholars as the output of their dissertations jointly supervised by elder colleagues from different countries. An atmosphere of intellectual freedom will be an important condition of success of the project, in order that the researchers coming from different cultural and intellectual backgrounds may work closely together. Even the theoretical foundations of the Dictionary should be studied through the dialogue of different intellectual traditions, since the possibility of the 'translatability' of each tradition in the others' terms is far from self-evident. For example, the program of the Begriffsgeschichle too heavily depends on the meaning of the German word 'BegriJt, connoting the possibility of grasping intuitively the essence of a historical phenomenon, not plainly perceptible to those acculturated outside the German-speaking world. The absence of such a notion in English, French or Russian makes the whole idea far less persuasive for the speakers of these languages. So we have to deal with the fact that the intellectual means we mean to employ to carry out the project are far from being uniform and universally acceptable. It seems inevitable that we

The structural and historical analyses should be complemented by investigations of the different cognitive mechanisms and forms of thought which have bearing on the semantic structures of the historical terms. The study of metaphors reflecting

should start by discussing them. Such theoretical work should from the very beginning go hand in hand with ernpllicalresearch. The work on the Dictionary is to be anticipated by a preliminary stage, which will allow the organization of a team of authors, to fonnulate the theoretical program and main hypotheses of the project, to gain experience in using different methods of research and to prepare the provisional versions of a number of articles. It is expected that this stage will start in September 1998 and will take about two years. For this period, number of international meetings are planned, including a colloquium on "The Semantics of Historical concepts" to be held at the Saint-Petersburg State University in June 1999.

include other contested key concepts such as nation, elite, citizenship, participation and representation. The project started in 1997 and will run for a four-year period. The other Danish research project concerned with conceptual history was launched in 1995 under the title 'Network in European Conceptual History'. The initiative came from the European Studies program of the University of Aarhus and was fmanced by a small grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities. The aim was to create a Danish network of researchers in conceprual history. The network has especially concentrated on discussing the methodical and theoretical implications of conceptual history. Conceptual history has been discussed in relation to many fields, among them linguistics, the history of ideas and political science. In the spring of 1995 the network arranged its first conference under the heading 'Conceptual History between Language, History and Ideas'. At the conference the current advances within German and French conceprual history were presented, among these Professor Lusebrink's work on the intercultural <limension of conceptual history and the work of French historians on investigating the relationship between event and concept (Sophie Wanich). In addition, the conference treated the relationship between conceprual history on the one hand and rhetoric and discourse analysis on the other. Since then the network has continued its work along these lines and it has held a series of lectures on the relationship between conceptual history on the one hand and discourse analysis and literary analysis on the other. The various methodical and theoretical discussions may be systematized in four perspectives: 1. 2. 3. 4. Concepts in discourse-Foucault's archaeology of knowledge Concepts in practice-sociological discourse analysis (Norman Fairclough) Concepts in texts-New Historicism Concepts in conceptual patterns-development of Begriffsgeschichte in Germany (Reichardt and Lusebrink)

Conceptual History Projects in Denmark

Jan Ifversen, European Studies, Aarhus University

urrendy in Denmark there are two research projects concerned with conceptual history. One project is part of a larger research program with the title 'Democracy Project'. 'Democracy Project', which is funded by the Danish Social Science Research Council and affiliated with the Dept. of Political Science of the University of Copenhagen, consists of five sub-projects. One of these, 'Contested Concepts: Changes in Political Concepts and Democratic Development in Denmark', works within a definite conceptual history perspective. The purpose of this project is to achieve a clarification of central, political concepts by investigating changes in the use of these concepts in the political debate in Denmark since 1945. At the center of the project are the concepts of democracy and politics. In Danish political culture democracy in particular has constituted a contested concept that has been spread out between different political positions ranging from the national-popular ones (authentic democracy) to grass-roots movements (close democracy) to liberal-elitist ones. Consequently, this project will focus on an analysis of which concepts of democracy have been dominant among which actors at which times, in which situations and with which purposes. The analysis of the concept of democracy will

1. Concepts in discourse In Foucault's systematic archaeology of knowledge,

concepts function as one of the four central elements

issues for conceptual history. One of them concerns

in the analysis of discursive fonnation. The three others are the object, the position of the subject, and the strategy/theme. Foucault empbasizes "the
conceptual instruments"
in the combination of

developing the fonnal, linguistic description of conceptual architecture (see item 4); the other pertains to the practical and inter-discursive orientation of concepts in discourse (see item 2).
2. Concepts in practice
The network's examination of Foucault's archaeology

utterances in discourse. But in contrast to traditional Begriffsgeschichte he empbasizes the necessity of including other linguistic elements besides the semantic relation between word and concept. He

emphasizes in particular two decisive aspects: the meaning of the position of the subject and the role of the strategy. Both aspects point towards an emphasis of the role of practice for the semantic level. For
Foucault it is a matter of pointing out the active role

of discourse (its practice) in the elaboration of the content. By emphasizing the meaning of the position of the subject he associates a linguistic description of discourse (enunciation) with a sociological one (institution). The position of the subject acts as the point of enunciation in discourse and as the point of authority in the institution. Likewise, strategy acts as an internal demarcation of themes via concepts (but conceptual analysis is not commented on) and as an
external demarcation via other discourses and institutions. In respect to the external demarcation, one must further distinguish between the demarcation

of knowledge was prompted by the issues already indicated by Koselleck in his discussion of the relationship between conceptual history and social history. The need to give conceptual analysis a pragmatic foundation was highlighted by Koselleck. But whereas he undertakes a separation of Begriff and Sache, the network has been concerned with illuminating the inner coherence between the two terms. Two questions arise in this connection: I) how is the use of a concept embedded in the concept's field of meaning? 2) how does communicative practice influence the meaning of the concept? In continuation of Foucault, the linguist Norman Fairclough has sought to answer these questions by looking at the relationship between the type of discourse and its use' In addition, the type of discourse enters in the understanding of the
discourse. Fairclough places a pragmatic perspective

of other discourses (discursive competition) and of

institutions. From the perspective of discourse, other discourses must be regarded as an inter-discourse. Therefore, a distinction bet\.Veen inter-discourse and intra-discourse must be introduced in discourse analysis (1. 1. Courtine) '. Interdiscourse functions as the external point of reference that intra-discourse

on discourse analysis in part by emphasizing the

"cues" built into the sender's orientation of discourse

towards a receiver, in part by illuminating the

meaning of the receiver's interpretation in the decoding of these cues.

deals with. Furthermore, Foucault endeavors to establish a link

between discourse and "non-discursive practice, II where the dividing line seems to be a question of the degree of discursive coherence. Opposite the systematizing discursive practices are apparently looser practices such as for instance "everyday practice".

3. Concepts in texts A similar attempt to elaborate a pragmatics of discourse has been carried out within the movement in modem literary history called New Historicism (NH). NH arose from an attempt to tone down the boundaries between literary and historical analysis. In the network we have especially been preoccupied with NH as a new, historical textual analysis in which
texts are analyzed in a domain of tension between the

The network's discussion of the archaeology of

knowledge has given rise to what are two crucial

type of discourse (genre), the historical situation and the strategy of the text. Strategy is taken to mean the
text's potentials or choices in respect to existing

Jean-Jacques Courtine: Quelques problemes theoriques et methodologiques en analyse de discours, in Lamgages nr 62, pp. 6-127.

Nonnan Fairclough: Language and Power. London: Longman 1989; Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Blackwell 1992.

gemes and its specific representation of a historical

siruation (cf. Sache in Koselleck). The text thus

enters into a dialogue with existing geme conventions in order to represent a certain historic siruation. NH has especially been used to clarify the relationship between individual texts and types of discourse or genres in order to show how different types of discourse can cross one another and thus create new meaning in the individual text.

4, Concepts in conceptual patterns Within the narrow perspective of conceprual history the network has discussed the various new developments in the circle around Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich. Inspired by strucrural semantics, the network has been busy edifying the formal-analyrical side of conceprual history. This has fIrst of all been reflected in systematic work on constructing quantifIable text corpora ("quantitative-serial methods of investigation"). Second, by means of analyses of frequency it has sought to systematize the analysis of conceprual patterns in delimited semantic fIelds . This systematics has been strengthened by a systematic analysis of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations

of seminars aimed at illuminating the concepts of civilization and culture in a European context. The shifting meanings of the concept of civilization were considered in 1 8th century discourses in the fields of ethnography and the philosophy of history. The modern use of the concept of civilization (from Spengler and Elias to Huntington) has also been carefully discussed and related to other concepts such as the West and globalization . The concept of culrure constirutes a crucial European concept that is a concomitant to civilization and thus unavoidable in work on key European concepts. Other associated concepts taken up by the network include those of nation, empire and federation . It is the network's intention to map out the semantic fields surrounding a historical European discourse. This work will continue with considerations of concepts like respublica christiana, balance of power and European integration .

Conceptual changes in European political cultures

concepts in Context: The Conceptual History of Finnish Political Culture Matti Hyvarinen

surrounding selected key concepts in the delimited fIelds. Thus it has succeeded in qualifying its work on equivalency, complementarily and opposition in conceprual analysis. Furthermore, it is shifting from
analyses single words to analyses of sentences. The network will continue its discussion of

theoretical and methodical issues in respect to conceprual history. Two areas will be in focus in the furure work of the network: fIrst, the development of a historical Dramatics of discourse, in which the network will seek to clarify the concepts' embedment in the discourses used in connection with both
discursive cues and a systematic investigation of the siruations where the discourses are exercised; second, the investigation of the various possibilities thematicized around the designation rhetoric.

History fficially, the Finnish project was launched in 1996 as a three-year project fmanced by the Academy of Finland. The grant enabled the project to employ two doctoral srudents, and later on a research assistant as well for one year. In 1997, Matti Hyvarinen, received a three year contract as a senior researcher in the Academy of Finland with some

extra resources for the project.

The project did not start from ground zero. To point out just one thread in the background work, the project was clearly proceeded by Kari Palonen's landmark work on the concept of politics, both in
Gennan and French, as well as his insistence on

The network has not only taken up theoretical and methodical issues. The network has also been concerned with narrowing down key European concepts. Focus has been directed toward the
concepts used in representing Europe as a unity of some kind. The network has thus organized a series

propagating this approach to political thought and political history among Finnish political scientists, philosophers and historians. The main result of the three-year period will probably, and hopefully, be the two dissertations (by Eeva Aamio and Ismo Pohjantammil, but the main

part of the work remains to be fulfilled over the years

to come.

State (valtio) Tuij a Pulkkinen (philosophy)

Objective: to write an anthology

The aim of the project is not an overview of the

history of Finnish political culture, not even broad histories regarding the chosen concepts. To put it another way, we are not planning to write a Finnish version of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. At this stage of the work, the main purpose is to write an anthology on chosen key 'analytical' concepts of Finnish political culture. Such normative concepts as liberalism, socialism and legalism, have also been postponed to a further anthology. Perhaps a list of the
selected concepts, writers and their primary

In practice, there are many problems with schedules with a big and active group such as this. One of the consequences may be that various articles will cover different periods of time, and writers may possibly utilize different chunks of collected material.

disciplinary backgrounds may give a more tangible conception of the project:

Concepts in Motion The Conceptual History of Finnish Political Culture Matti Hyvarinen, Kari Palonen, Henrik Stenius editors The Conceptllal Change of European Politics Sattelzeit in Finland? Kari Palonen (political science) Finnish Political Languages Before the Autonomy Kari Saastamoinen (history) Citizen (kansalainen) Hernik Stenius (history) Democracy (demokracia, kansanvalta) Ilkka Turunen (history)
Government, Administration , Domination (halli/us. hallinto, hallinta)

Source materials The compilation of pre-selected materials for the writers constitutes one of the main ways of working together in the project. Over the rust year of work, government appropriations to create new temporary jobs were used to gain assistance for this compilation. The main categories of material are:
The (partly) computerized databases of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland. We have had access to selected materials of old written Finnish (meaning the period before the 1809 status as a Grand Duchy of Russia), and the archives collected by Finnish linguists. The database also includes a great deal of classic Finnish novels. 2. Lexicons, encyclopaedias and handbooks. 3. Manifestos of political parties (most of which are available on disc). 4. Selected database of legislative material. Records of the Parliament and its Committees
and Government reports for discussion and

I.

5.

Kyosti Pekonen (political science) Nation, People (/cansa, kansakunta) Ilkka Liikanen (history) Party (puolue) Eeva Aarnio (political science) Politics (politiikka) Kari Palonen (political science) Power (valta) Matti Hyvarinen (political science)
Representation, Parliamentarism (edustus.
eduskunla, parlamentarismi)

6.

legislation are available as copies. A selection of key political periodicals is available as in photocopy form. In a couple of cases, the pre-selected material has been further narrowed down for particular writers. Political memoirs and biographies.

Ismo Pohjantammi (political science) Revolution (vallankumous) Risto Alapuro (sociology) Society, Community (yhteisklmca) Pauli Kettunen (history)

The Finnish Case From the thirteenth century to 1809, the present-day 'Finland' was a province of Sweden, and Swedish accordingly was the language of administration, politics and education. The growing nationalist movement, that swelled from the 1830s onwards, directed its protest against the domination of the Swedish language and the Swedish elite. In this process, written Finnish. was created as a purposeful process by the rising "Fennoman" elite. The process was amazingly rapid, with the basis of written

Finnish was created between 1840 and 1870.

Paradoxically, a number of the most radical

German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity

Jan Muller, All Souls College, Oxford.
y project analyzes the response of German intellectuals to uruficatlOn and pOSSible shifts in public discourse precipitated by unification. It focuses on the origins of concepts, arguments and patterns of thought used in post-unification discourse, tracing them back to different German ideological traditions, and to their earlier use in the Federal Republic. An examination of the response of German

Fermomans had spoken Swedish as their mother tongue, hence the entire beginning of Finnish political culture took place within and in competition with a dominant Swedish public arena. In addition to Swedish, German, French, Russian and English had a strong impact on the political language and are thus
relevant.

Most political concepts in the Finnish language are

therefore relatively young. Just a couple of words like hallita (govern, dominate) and valta (power) are very old German loan words. At least in the case of valta (power), spoken Finnish had conserved old and distinct features in comparison with the dominant Swedish political culture of the mid-nineteenth century. In summary, the relatively short history of written
Finnish seems to enable quite a concise research

intellectuals to unification seeks to contribute to an

understanding of German political culture and particularly the nature of present-day public discourse on German national identity, citizenship and foreign policy .. But it also aims to illwninate the formative experiences of major intellectuals in the Federal Republic during the 1950s and 1960s, and explains their public stances at the time of unification in part through these fonnative experiences. A plurality of methods is used to examine both the systems of thought of particular authors and the way in which shared concepts have been contested and redefmed in a sometimes very self-conscious battle over cultural hegemony. In particular, the more language-based approach to political thought, as advocated by Quentin Skinner, is fruitfully combined with Begriffsgeschichte, i.e. the conceptual historiography mainly associated with Reinhart
Koselleck. Moreover. it argued that generation

process and the usage of a relatively wide array of

sources.

The Project in Context We are painfully aware of the fact that writing about
a small language area and a small political culture
cannot succeed in a vacuum. All of the conclusions about "particular" Firmish fearures are valid only after comparison with various languages and cultures. We are certainly not able to do all of this comparative work alone, if we are determined to publish something in one lifetime The only solution is a genuine international testing and comparison of results. Again, we recognize a huge need for

conflict (as so often in twentieth century German history) has played a significant role in the post-unification debates. In the case of individual authors, the morphology of their political thought, their contestation of key
concepts and the consistency of their argwnents are

commentary, in particular from the side of Swedish

scholars, but not forgetting other European perspectives. As a practical solution, we are planning an

international conference "Concepts in Motion. The

analyzed. In that sense, I seek to combine what Richard Rorty once referred to as 'historical' and
'rational reconstruction'. Overall, the pluralist

Conceptual History of Finnish Political Culture", that will take place in Tampere in September of 1999. We
are not planning only to "translate" our articles on the

main concepts but to anempt to translate the "Finnish imagery" into a clearly different language. Writing in
a foreign language can, therefore, be one method of explicating the particular in one's own language.

methodology outlined above is underpinned by a firm belief that methods developed in Anglo-Saxon intellectual history can be fruitfully applied to
continental debates.

The study is prefaced by an account of national identity and the quest for legitimacy in the two

10

Germanies since 1945. Special emphasis is placed on the 'public uses of history' and the fact that German intellectuals feel compelled to change perceptions of the past if they want to alter Germany's selfconceptualization in the present. Subsequently, the
responses of two major West German intellectuals,
Guenter Grass and Juergen Habermas, are analyzed

identity in Germany.

French research on linguistic history of conceptualusagese

Jacques Guilhaumou, Raymonde Monnier (CNRSjENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud)

in detail. Grass and Habenmas projected themselves powerfully into the public sphere and brought most
intellectual capita l to bear on their interventions. Then follows a more general categorization of

responses by the West German left. Left-wing intellectuals, trapped in debates of the past, lacked
the framework and criteria for reacting to a radically

ethods of lexical and discursive .anal~sis set forth in the LaboratolIe de lexlcometne et textes politiques (ENSlFontenay-Saint-Cloud) are generally related to linguistic hi story in the

changed situation. By completely rejecting the . concept and language of nation they arguably missed yet another opportunity in German history to link the "new" nation with the ideas of civil society and popular sovereignty, which had played crucial roles in the East German and East European revolutions. The left, by turning in on itself and extensively
debating 'what was left', created a vacuum of ideas

perspective of the lexical formal. Yet they never presented range of results, in the field of political and
social concepts, like the German lexicons. We are

still concerned in such projects with the elaboration of a Dictionnaire des usages sociopolitiques du jran9ais contemporaiJJ, that takes actually two forms:
1. A I1thematic prototype" on the two last centuries

which a self-declared 'New Right' of young academics unsuccessfully sought to fill. Alongside a conceptual anatomy of the 'New Right', I present the influential public interventions by the literary scholar and publicist Karl Heinz Bohrer, especially his critique of the old Federal Republic as apolitical and provincial, and the call for 'national identity' by the erstwhile leftwing writer Martin Walser. J argue that the first strategic attempt by the New Right to self-consciously conquer 'cultural hegemony' has failed, both on an ideological and an institutional level. This failure can be largely explained by the
lack of ideological innovation and institutional

with the publication of a book, Les lennes de l'imegalile e/ de i'egalile. Flux el reflux (J 8~ 20'
siecles).
2. Six volumes, and more than a thousand pages,

on the vocabulary of the French Revolution, with a large I1Sattelzeit" if we may be allowed the term 1770 1815. Here we intend to distinguish the two projects. The first one assumes the complex of usages as a historical creation, but looks after a lexicographic method that introduces linguistic aspects in a Dictionary of concepts. The specificity of the research led by Pierre Fiala mainly lies in a work on corpus of texts (1740-1995), in a description of the
language usages in various discourses, after the

support, as well as its lack of appeal in what remains a broadly liberal political culture, and fmally the
continuing institutional and ideological strength of

the intellectuals of the old Federal Republic .

Finally. changes in a number of crucial concepts are

semi-quantitative methods of the Saint-Cloud laboratory. It emphasizes on a diachronic description of the linguistic and discursive qualities of some characteristic tenms of political languages of our
time. The team undertook two years ago, as an

identified. The choice of these concepts is determined by the fact that they structure public discourse as a whole and that all intellectuals can be situated on the
intellectual field according to their interpretation of these concepts. Conclusions are then drawn about the

hypothesis, to work on the vocabulary of equality, a

concept and tenns that are at the core of actual

political and social debates. It has achieved into a volume actually in press, on the terms of inequality
and equality. Ten monographs study the changes,

characteristics of the 'intellectual field' in Genmany,

about changes in public discourse over the last five

years and about the politics of nationhood and

shifts and substitutions of words and their usages from the eighteenth century to the present time. A second volume, more turned to texts, will follow.

11

Such project, that stakes on plural discourses and perspectives in limited fields of study, allows to work
on various cultural and linguistic uses and speech

acts, from the analysis of nonnative discourse to oral corpus, but raises the problem about a synthesis (tackled in the introduction) and the possibility of a pertinent lexicon, The main point of the research project remains that of an original lexical method; the objective is to provide, on the same theme, a thematic prototype, to be used either as a model of an article for a Dictionary of concepts, or as the frame of a Data base of social and political language usages. The second project, which was undertaken before and is closer to an issue, in a perspective of history of discourses, is interested in the way language may match to the context within the historical understanding, So it is concerned with an history of speech acts, a language investigation of texts and contexts. The six volumes on revolutionary words are not a lexicon of concepts, They describe the changing contexts of the new political language (Sieyes' "nouvelle langue polirique"), with great concern about actions, options and operations of the participants in the French Revolution, In this way, far
from a "domestic tf research in linguistics, they inquire into a taxonomy of concepts

Pimden Boer Dept, of Cultural Studies University of Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands teL +31 -20 525 3503 (office)1 +3 1-30-2515426 (home) Fax +31-20-525 3052 Hans Blom Dept, of Philosophy Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam P,Q Box 1738
NL-300 DR Rotterdam The Netherlands fax: +3 1-10-212 0448 e-mail: H.W.Biom@fwb.eur.nl

Martin J. Burke Dept. of History Lehman College City University of New York 250Bedford Park Boulevard West Bronx, New Yark 10468
USA e-mail:martinj@alpha,lehman,cuny,edu

in an

henneneutic and pragmatic perspective.

conceptual Changes in Political Cultures

Participants/ Addresses

Peter Baehr Dept. of Sociology Memorial University of Newfoundland St, John's New Foundland Canada A I C 5S7 e-mail: pbaehr@margan.ucs.mun.ca Gyorgy Bence Dept. of Philosophy, ELTE Piarista koz I Pf. 107 1364 Budapest Hungary TeL+361-2663769 Fax,+361-2664612 e-mail:bence@ludens.elte.hu

Dario Castiglione Dept, of Politics University of Exeter Exeter UK e-mail:D.Castiglione@exeter.ac.uk Sandro Chignola Via S, Mattia 16 1-37128 Verona Italy fax: +45-913880 Janet Coleman Dept. of Government London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE UK Fax: +44- 171-83 1 1707

12

Pierre Fiala
ENS. Fontanay Saint Cloud-laboratoire de lexicologie Le Parc. 92211 Saint Cloud Cedex France e-mail:Fiala@ens-fc l.fr

Lucian Holscher
Lehrstuhl fur Neuere Geschichte III Fakultiit fur Geschichtswissenschaft Riihr-universitiit Bochum Universitiitsstr. 150 D-44780 Bochum Germany e-mail Lucian.Hoelscher@rz. ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Michael Freeden Mansfield College Oxford OX I 3TF UK e-mail: michael.freeden@socstud.ox.ac.uk Daniel Gordon
Dept. of History University of Massachussets Amherst MA 0 1003-3930 USA e-mail: dgordon@history.umass.edu

Istvan Hont King's College Cambridge CB2 l 5T UK Matti Hyvarinen

RlSS University of Tampere pi 607 Tampere Fin-33 101 Finland e-mail: ymathy@uta.fi fax: +358-3-21 56502

Jacques Guilhaumou 29 Bd Rodocanachi F-1300B, Marseille France

e-mail:guilhaum@ newsup. univ-mrs.fr

Sisko Haikala University of Jyvaskylii Dept. of History PL 35 FIN -40351 Jyviiskylii Finland e-mail: haikala@campus.jyu.fi lain Hampsher-Monk Dept. of Politics University of Exeter
Exeter

Jan Ifversen Center for Kulturforskning Finlandsgade 26 DK-8200 Arhus Denmark e-mail:kultji@cfk.hum.aau.dk Pasi I halainen Dept. of History University of Jyviiskyla PL35 Fin-4035 l Jyviiskylii Finland e-mail: ptihalai@campus.jyu.fi Mikhail Ilyin Journal "Polis" Kolpachyi per 9a Moscow / Leo Tolstoy Sir 7, 149 Moscow 11 902 1 (home) Russia e-mail:ilyin@glasnet.ru

UK e-mail: i.w.hampsher-monk@exeter.ac.uk Birger Hermansson

Dept. of political Science University of Stockholm S-1069 1 Stockholm Sweden e-mail:birger.hermansson@statsvet.su.se

13

Uffe Jacobsen Institute for Political Science

University of Copenhagen Rosenborggade 15 DK-1130 Copenhagen Denmark tel: +45-35-323 404 fax: +45-35-323 399 e-mail: UJ@IFS.KU.DK

Aladan Madarasz Institute of Economics

Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budaiirsiut 45 Budapest Hungary e-mail: madarasz@econ.core.hu

Nikolai Kopossov Collegium Budapest Szentharomsag ut.2 10 14 Budapest Hungary e-mail: Nikolai.Kopossov@zeus.colbud.hu Dana Khapayeva Collegium Budapest Szentharomsag ut.2 1014 Budapest Hungary Rheinhart Koselleck Luisenslr.36 D-33602 Bielefeld Germany fax: +44-52 1-1 06 2966 Tina Lahogue Institute of Political Studies University of Copenhagen Rosenborggade 15 DK-1130 Copenhagen K Denmark e-mail: TI@ifs .ku.dk Kia Lindroos 41 Milford Gardens Edgware Middlesex HAS 6EY UK e-mail: kialind@globalnet.co.uk

Raymonde Monnier 49 Chemin de la Vallee aux Loups 92290 Chatenay Malabry France e-mail: Monnier@ens-fcl.fr Jan Werner Miiller All Souls College Oxford OXI 4AS UK e-mail: sant0068@sable.ox.ac.uk Kari Palonen Political Science University of Jyvaskyla PL35 Fin-4035 1 Jyvaskylii Finland e-mail: kpalonen@jyu.fi fax: +358- 14-603 101 Van Peng Dept. of Political Science University of Stockholm S-10691 Stockholm e-mail: yan.peng@statsvet.su.se Tuija Pulkkinen Kristiina Instituutti PL29 Fin-00014 Helsingin yliopisto Finland e-mail: tupulkki@helsinki.fi
Institut fur Philosophie, Emst-Moritz-Amdt-Universitat Kapaunenslr. 5-7 D-17487 Greifswald Germany e-mail: pulkkine@rz.uni-greifswald. de

14

lisa Rasanen University of Jyviiskylii Political Science Pl35 Fin-4035 I Jyviiskylii e-mail: iipara@cc.jyu.fi Melvin Richter Dept of Political Science Hunter College Cuny New York 1002 1 USA e-mail: mrichter@shiva.hunter.cuny.edu Jose M, Rosales Dept. of Philosophy Faculty of philosophy and literature University of Malaga E-29071 Malaga Spain e-mail: jrnrosales@uma.es Quentin Skinner Cambridge University Christ's College Cambridge CB2 3BU UK fax: +44-1223-33 9 557 Patricia Spring borg Dept of Government University of Sydney Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

Balasz TrencsEmyi 1032 Zapor u.63 VIII. 46 Budapest Hungary e-mail: n97treI4@student.ceu.hu Keith Tribe Dept. of Economics Keele University Keele Staffordshire ST5 5BG UK Wyger Velema Dept. of History University of Amsterdam Spuistraat 134 1012 VB Amsterdam The Netherlands fax: +31-20-525 4433 Bjorn Wittrock
SCASSS Gotaviigen 4 S-75236 Uppsala Sweden fax: +46-18-5211 09 e-mail: Bjorn.Wittrock@scasss.uu.se

e-mail: panicia@bullwinkle.econ.su.oz.au

Karin Tilmans Dept. of History University of Amsterdam Spuistraat 134 1012 VB Amsterdam The Netherlands fax: +31-20-525 4433 or +31-23.5258420 e-mail: Karin.Tilmans@hum.uva.nl

15

Book announcements
History of Concepts: Comparative Approaches lain Hampsber Monk, Karin Tilmans and Frank van Vree, eds. (Amsterdam University Press 1998) 293 p. ISBN 90/5356/306n, paperback, f. 69,50.

Agenda
15-18 september 1999
seminar ItConcepts in Motion: The History of Finnish Political Culture" contact: Matti Hyvarinen
RlSS University ofTampere pI 607 Fin-3310 1 Finland email: ymathy@uta.fi fax: +358-3-2156502

14-16 oktober 1999

conference 'I The History of Concepts, Comparative
Approaches / Histoire des Concepts, Approches Comparatives" Ecole Normale de Saint-Cloud, Paris. contact: Raymonde Monnier, UMR Lexiometrie et textes politiques ENS Fontenay - SI. Cloud Grille d'honneur - Le Parc 9221 I S I. Cloud e-mail: Monnier@ens-fcl.fr. or Jacques Guilhaumou 29 BD Rodocanachi F -13008 Marseille guilhaum@newsup.univ-mrs.fr

Call for copy

Please send any information relevant for this Newsletter to: Karin Tilmans / Wyger Velema, University of Amsterdam, Department of History, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Please enclose also a diskette (WordPerfect or Word) or send your copy to: Karin.Tilmans@hum.uva.nl

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