CfP: The History of Bureaucratic Knowledge: Global Comparisons, c.1200- c.1900

We are delighted to announce that The History of Bureaucratic Knowledge: Global Comparisons, c. 1200- c. 1900 has been selected as the inaugural special theme issue of the Journal for the History of Knowledge. Edited by Sebastian Felten and Christine von Oertzen, it will appear in 2020.

To quote from the proposal:

"This collective publication makes the claim that the history of bureaucracy is, at its core, a history of bureaucratic knowledge. It is therefore best studied with the methods developed to historicize scientific practices. We follow knowledge-making practices as they moved across company headquarters, government bureaus, the study, and the field. In fact, fundamental practices such as writing, calculation, and record-keeping flourished first to administer states before they were used to study nature. The entwined history of science and bureaucracy is increasingly coming into focus, as the history of science continues to broaden into the history of knowledge. Furthermore, colonial historians, anthropologists, and media scholars have come to study the epistemic power of states with approaches that are comparable to those used by historians of science. In short, our volume comes at a critical juncture in the development of disciplines that study knowledge in the past and that make these investigations relevant to current policy concerns.”

Visit the website www.journalhistoryknowledge.org to follow the publication of this issue. We expect that the call for the next special issue, to be published in 2021, will be posted in July.