Call for paper - History of Science from Below
Call for Paper - History of science from below
Université du Maine, Le Mans, France – June 5-7, 2013
“History from below” emerged in Britain around 1960 as a new historiographic project. It intended to substitute the history of practices and of forms of popular resistance for the more traditional history of institutions and great men, and therefore to confer a new legitimacy on the former. One important outcome of this new historical standpoint has been to take into consideration forms of knowledge and behaviours formally disregarded as marginal or irrational. Focusing on “modest” or “lay” agents, and reconsidering their role in history, this historical trend has greatly contributed to the renovation of social and political history.
History of science, notably history of medicine, did not remain uninfluenced by these new historical perspectives. In 1985, Roy Porter advocated a departure from a monolithic history of discoveries and medical glories neglecting popular practices as part of the cure.
Olivier Faure has since showed how crucial were the patient’s point of view and initiative. New research grounded on new sources, such as private or first person writings and letters kept in the archives of physicians (for example the Swiss Samuel Tissot), has highlighted the patient’s viewpoint and have contributed to revising the classical history of medicine “from below.” Now studied from multiple angles, the process of a linear and univocal, solely professional and academic, medicalization is rendered more complex, and the autonomous strategic aptitude of lay actors is reappraised.
In the history of experimental sciences, the practical skill and knowledge of craftsmen – “the knowledge from the hand”, according to Robert Halleux in 2009 – generate practices which can be considered as forms of trial, even as forms of experiment. During the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, botany and zoology evolved by taking into account this practical knowledge of gardeners, breeders, amateurs and collectors. Learned societies, botanical gardens, rose gardens and orchards were meeting points where scientists and non-scientists alike would observe plants and try to explain and master plant growth and heredity. Observations made by amateurs have often been collected and used by academic scientists in theoretical debates over evolution.
Nowadays, the nature and the extent of “scientific cultures” among the general public is an important political and social issue. It is an issue in the growing role played by associations of patients or relatives in the field of medicine. It is also an issue in the “public consultations” which are regularly held on technical and scientific policy. Therefore it seems promising to extend the perspectives of “history from below” to all human and natural sciences, and to emulate discussions on its methodological and theoretical implications. Such is the aim of this conference.
Papers should focus on the eighteenth – twentieth centuries, corresponding to the period of emergence of the human and natural sciences in their modern institutional form. Papers dealing with contemporary subjects will be accepted as long as they include some historical perspectives.
The following topics could be favoured:
- Outsiders from the main academic institutions (general
practitioners, technical staff, artisans, amateurs, etc.), and practises at the margins.
- Mediators, and modes of dissemination of scientific knowledge
(associations, networks, general and popular press, dictionaries and cyclopaedias, publishers, etc.)
- History of experimental “subjects” and the public as actors
of science, and not solely as material or audience of scientific discourses coming from “above”
- Appropriations of science (adaptation, resistance, etc.)
The aim of this conference is also to stimulate exchanges on methodological issues, such as:
- Sources. What kind of sources can be used to write a history
“from below” (oral sources, private letters, first person writings, etc.)?
- What should be the limits of the history of science “from
below?” Which categories of actors, which groups, which forms of knowledge should be included, or excluded? And how to take them into account? General practitioners are an interesting example. How and when did they cease to be part of the history of medicine “from above?” And how to write their history “from below?”
- What should be the right scale for the history of such actors
and practices? One could for example question the relationship between the history of science “from below” and microhistory.
Collective discussion on methodological issues is still scarce regarding history of science “from below.” It should therefore be central to this conference.
How to submit a paper?
Abstracts (300/500 words), with formulation of methodological issues, and a short bio-bibliographical notice (100 words), should be sent to the organizing committee before September 30, 2012. Results of the selection process will be announced by November 2012.
Conference languages: French and English (translation will not be provided during the conference).
Conference venue:
Université du Maine, Le Mans, France (Le Mans, France,
This conference is sponsored by the Centre de Recherches Historiques de l’Ouest (CERHIO, CNRS UMR 6258, http://www.univ-rennes2.fr/cerhio)
Organizing committee and contacts:
Cristiana OGHINA-PAVIE (CERHIO, Université d’Angers) cristiana.oghinapavie@gmail.com Hervé GUILLEMAIN (CERHIO, Université du Maine) guiherv@club-internet.fr Nathalie RICHARD (CERHIO, Université du Maine) Nathalie.Richard@univ-lemans.fr