Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals

In this volume, young researchers present their views of the results of a joint project titled »AGORA: Work - Knowledge - Bindung (Social Cohesion)«, which was organized at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. The authors come from nine countries, from Canada to China and from Mozambique to Germany, and represent the fields of history and linguistics, anthropology and ethnology, political and social science, economics, medicine, and materials science.
In the course of the common project, the fundamental themes that emerged were not those originally conceived. Attention came to focus on the changed relationship between the private and the public sphere, the valid and so-called universal knowledge, and not least the insight that, all over the world, local histories are inseparably intertwined with other local histories and that, fundamentally, all history is the history of relationships. Two figures of argumentation ultimately developed out of this. The English vocabulary of AGORA termed them »entangled histories« and »negotiated universals«.
Unveränderter Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 2003

Wolf Lepenies was rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) from 1986 to 2001 and is professor of sociology at the Free University in Berlin. He is the author or editor of many books, including Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology.