1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of Ideas
The Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of Ideas establishes a new and comprehensive way of working in the history and sociology of ideas, in order to obviate several longstanding gaps that have prevented a fruitful interdisciplinary and international dialogues. Pushing global intellectual history forward, it uses methodological innovations in the history of concepts, gender history, imperial history, and history of normativity, many of which have emerged out of intellectual history in recent years, and it especially foregrounds the role of field theory for delimiting objects of study but also in studying transnational history and migration of persons and ideas.
The chapters also explore how intellectual history crosses the study of particular domains: law, politics, economy, science, life sciences, social and human sciences, book history, literature, and emotions.
Introduction: The Society of Ideas
Stefanos Geroulanos and Gisèle Sapiro
Part I: Problems
1. Engaging Intellectual History Otherwise
Judith Surkis
2. Publicness and the Public Sphere
Sebastian Veg
3. The Historicity of Texts: Intellectual History and Critical Hermeneutics
Antoine Lilti
4. Plea for a Social History of Political Ideas
Frédérique Matonti
5. Normativity and Intellectual History
Giuseppe Bianco
6. Quantitative Methods in Intellectual History
Amine Brahimi and Tristan Leperlier
7. Against Vanilla History: Why and How Histories of Sexual Acts Could Matter to Intellectual Historians
Todd Shepard
Part II: Domains in Intellectual History and the Sociology of Ideas
8. The Legal Environment of Ideas and the Intellectual Making of Law: Copyright Law and International Law at the Crossroads of State and Disciplinary Boundaries
Lara Manbeck and Jérôme Pacouret
9. Nations, Networks, and Parties: Locating the Political Engagement of Intellectuals
Antoine Aubert and Alexander Langstaff
10. From Political Culture to Economic Theology
Charly Coleman
11. History of Science, Intellectual History, and the World, 1900-2020
Kapil Raj
12. Methodological Approaches for the Life Sciences and Intellectual History
Nuala Caomhánach and Sébastien Lemerle
13. Reconceptualizing National Traditions in Intellectual History
Johan Heilbron
14. Intellectual Histories of the Book and the Sociology of Texts
Jean-Michel Chahsiche and John Raimo
15. Literature, Knowledge, Worldview
Gisèle Sapiro
16. History of Emotions and Intellectual History
Jonas Knatz
Part III: Circulations
17. Comparativism and Transfer: Relational Approaches in Intellectual History and the Sociology of Ideas
Quentin Fondu and Lotte Houwink ten Cate
18. Connective Dimensionality
Andrew Sartori
19. Intellectual Migration(s)
Elsie Cohen and Anne Schult
20. Circulations of Ideas and Intellectual History: The Role of Mediators
Mathieu Hauchecorne
Afterword
David Armitage
Biography
Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute, a Professor of History at New York University, and a Co-Executive Editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas. His books include The Invention of Prehistory (2024), Transparency in Postwar France (2017), The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe (with Todd Meyers, 2018), and Power and Time (coedited with Natasha Wheatley and Dan Edelstein, 2020).
Gisèle Sapiro is Professor of Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Her books include The French Writers’ War (2014), The Sociology of Literature (2023), Les Ecrivains et la politique en France (2018), and Peut-on dissocier l’œuvre de l’auteur? (2020). She coedited Ideas on the Move in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (2020).
