356 Pages
by
Routledge
356 Pages
by
Routledge
356 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
First Published in 2002. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a criticalÂhistorical perspective. The three principal methods of research, travel, the survey and the collection of significant objects, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times. The author's grasp of the vast, often... Read more
The methodizing of travel in the 16th century - a tale of three cities; rerum memoria - early modern enquiries and documentation centres; imagines mundi - allegories of the continents in the Baroque and the Enlightenment; the man who called himself George Psalmanaazar or the problems of the authenticity of ethnographic description; Josephinism and social research - the patriotic traveller of Count Leopold Berchtold; August Ludwig Schlozer and the study of mankind according to peoples; from the autonomous to the heteronomous traveller - Volney's reform of travel instruction and the French Revolution.
Biography
Justin Stagl, born 1941, in Klagenfurt, Austria, presently holds the Chair in Sociology of Culture at the University of Saltzburg, Austria. Main fields of interest: theory and history of the social sciences, sociology of culture.
'...Stagl's explorations of late eighteenth-century debates over the nature of World History are also enlightening, as they reveal the origins of Volkskunde and ethnologie - categories that were to dominate travel and scholarship for the next two centries to the present.'
'This strikingly original, painstakingly researched...book exhibits all the virtues and a few of the weaknesses of long-sustained maverick devotion. Though not exclusively focused upon travel, it will remain a pillar of scholarship in travel history...For anyone interested in the history of travel cultures this book - with its rich references to primary manuscript sources and German historical scholarship not available in English - will prove indispensable.'
