First Published in 2002. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a criticalhistorical 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 obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. He weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasising links between the figures, the philosophies and the literatures of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focussing on the ars apodemica, or art of travelling'', a body of formal instructions on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, the author demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.
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.'
