Towards a Global Intellectual History of an Unequal World, 1945-Toda
This two-day symposium is designed to investigate the global intellectual history of inequality. It will do so through a double global lens: How have intellectuals from around the world thought about inequality in the world? The aim of the symposium is to contribute with a new transnational intellectual history of inequality in different geographical and cultural contexts. The symposium will investigate links, differences and similarities between different intellectual traditions, as well as the circulation of inequality concepts and knowledge across countries. It aspires to facilitate a unique transcultural and multi-linguistic knowledge about inequality concepts, contributing to the fields of global conceptual and intellectual history. The symposium will aim at a special journal issue on the global intellectual history of inequality, exploring relationships between geographical anchoring (place) and thinking on inequality in history. We are delighted that the journal Global Intellectual History has kindly agreed to be the host of this special issue.
Critics of global intellectual history have rightfully pointed out that few connections are actually truly global (planetary), but can much more adequately be described as transnational or transcultural (or ‘transcolonial’ or ‘transimperial’) connections. Taking this criticism into account, we are interested both in learning more about the intellectual histories of inequality in non-western countries, including in non-English, indigenous languages.
Secondly, we are interested in learning more about intellectual and conceptual histories of transnational connections between various parts of the world, such as North-South and South-South connections and intellectual biographies of key thinkers on inequality whose histories are linked to several countries and continents. How did intellectuals across the globe address inequalities in a post-world war II age of ‘development’, promises of universal human rights, new data on inequalities, and of the crucial historical dynamics of the Cold War and decolonization?