Approaches to the Study of Intercultural Transfer

Thomas Adam

Description

A study of the intricacies and mechanisms of intercultural transfers

“Approaches to the Study of Intercultural Transfer” presents a collection of compelling case studies in the area of social reform, museums, philanthropy, football, nonviolent resistance and holiday rituals such as Christmas that demonstrate key mechanisms of intercultural transfers. Each chapter provides the application of the intercultural transfer studies paradigm to a specific and distinct historical phenomenon. These chapters not only illustrate the presence or even the depth and frequency of intercultural transfer, but they also reveal specific aspects of the intercultural transfer of phenomena, the role of agents of intercultural transfer and the transformations of ideas transferred between cultures thereby, contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms of intercultural transfers.

The transfers explored in this volume provide for a narrative of an interconnected world in which societies and cultures exchanged ideas and objects over long distances connecting places and spaces across the globe and contributing to the creation of distinct local cultures and societies. Ideas about social reform and customs such as the Christmas tree were transferred across political and geographic borders. In the process, they were modified to fit into the receiving society. They lost some of their meaning and received new meaning. The Pagan symbol of the Christmas tree was Christianized through its transfer from cities such as Dresden to cities such as Boston.

Concepts such as Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance appealed to many Western observers who considered peaceful and rational conflict solution in the aftermath of World War I as essential to the survival of humankind. The appeal of nonviolent resistance did not result in a full grasp of such phenomena. Western observers misunderstood and mistranslated Satyagraha with passive resistance. Such modifications reveal the nature of intercultural transfer. In this process, the power of adopting a new idea rests with the receiving society. The giving society has little influence over the transfer process and loses control over the transfer fairly early. This contributed to the conundrum of the modern world which, in spite of the multitude of such transfers, became not only more similar but also more dissimilar.

Introduction; 1. New Ways to Write the History of Western Europe and the United States: The Concept of Intercultural Transfer; 2. Social Housing Reform and Intercultural Transfer in the Transatlantic World before World War I; 3. Cultural Excursions: The Transnational Transfer of Museums in the Transatlantic World; 4. The Intercultural Transfer of Football: The Contexts of Germany and Argentina; 5. Interreligious and Intercultural Transfers of the Tradition of Philanthropy; 6. Change through Nonviolence: The Rationalization of Conflict Solution; 7. From “Weihnachten” to Christmas: The Invention of a Modern Holiday Ritual and Its Transfer from Germany to England and the United States; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Modern history
• 20th century
• World
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785271670
• Langue: English

Extrait

Approaches to the Study of Intercultural Transfer
Approaches to the Study of Intercultural Transfer
Thomas Adam
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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Copyright © Thomas Adam 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-165-6 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-165-2 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. New Ways to Write the History of Western Europe and the United States: The Concept of Intercultural Transfer
2. Social Housing Reform and Intercultural Transfer in the Transatlantic World before World War I
3. Cultural Excursions: The Transnational Transfer of Museums in the Transatlantic World
4. The Intercultural Transfer of Football: The Contexts of Germany and Argentina
5. Interreligious and Intercultural Transfers of the Tradition of Philanthropy
6. Change through Non-Violence: The Rationalization of Conflict Solution
7. From Weihnachten to Christmas: The Invention of a Modern Holiday Ritual and Its Transfer from Germany to England and the United States
Index
INTRODUCTION
With this volume we start our new series in intercultural transfer studies, which aims to present innovative scholarship that reveals the interconnected nature of human cultures and societies. The concept of intercultural transfer studies is based on the recognition that humans have always lived in an interconnected world. They moved around and, in the process, transferred ideas and objects across continents and oceans. Such transfers shaped all human societies and cultures across the globe. And even though limitations on transportation and information exchange in the premodern world could cause one to believe that such transfers of ideas and objects were more characteristic of the modern world, intercultural transfers are nothing new. 1 Historians of the modern era have, however, one decisive advantage over historians of the premodern area when it comes to the exploration of intercultural transfers. Intercultural transfers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were much better documented than intercultural transfers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Our series focuses on the circulation of notions, images, things, living beings, capital, and practices across cultures and societies around the globe and the creation or disruption of relations and spaces that shaped the perception and reality of individuals. These circulations created spaces of their own that overlapped and competed with spaces created by states, empires, and nations. This series provides a home for scholars who explore and analyze historical phenomena in their entirety rather than segments of such phenomena within specific and isolated regional or national settings. Such an approach provides for a comprehensive understanding of specific phenomena that could never be reached within a state- or nation-centered approach.
Nation-centered accounts of history seem to have exhausted themselves. Phenomena such as football have, for instance, received much attention by scholars in the context of nation-building and the creation of national identity. And while there is no doubt that football has become intertwined with nationalism , historians have largely failed to explore how this sport came into existence and how it spread across the globe. 2 Football was born at English public schools (Rugby and Eaton ) and was transferred from there to high schools across Europe and South America as part of school reform efforts . Neglecting this dimension of transfer isolated football from the context in which it emerged: the context of school reform . Football was not accepted into societies and cultures as a sport but as a teaching tool that gave high school students a way of self-determination and self-disciplining. Football was, furthermore, not introduced into emerging national cultures but rather into subcultures that were defined by socioeconomic status and social class. In many places, competing football cultures emerged that were only later nationalized. Football , further, found acceptance first among students from entrepreneurial families since this game provided opportunities of learning teamwork and experiencing (capitalist) competition that other physical exercises of the time did not. Applying the intercultural transfer studies approach to the history of football reveals its long-lost connections with school reform and the creation of market economies.
Telling the story of past phenomena from this perspective is not merely about getting the story right, but more importantly about providing students and readers with a narrative that matters in a globalized world. The increasingly globalized and interconnected world requires academics to engage in research and to produce publications that provide answers to questions about the nature of the modern world. Globalization and the information revolution changed the context for research fundamentally. Existing historical approaches that remain focused on narrow fields and contexts seem to be out of touch with an audience that lives in this globalized world and needs guidance for tackling challenges that are global in nature. This series will provide readers with a fresh look at topics and themes that are familiar and locate these topics within their global context. It will highlight the interconnected nature of the modern world by exploring the processes that resulted in the global spread and expansion of specific phenomena.
This first volume presents essays that have, with the exception of the essay on the history of Christmas , previously been published in specialized journals and volumes across the historical discipline. Bringing them together in this inaugural volume was motivated by the desire to show the wide range of possible topics. Each chapter, further, provides the application of the intercultural transfer studies paradigm to a specific and distinct historical phenomenon, including football , social housing reform , museums , philanthropy , nonviolent resistance , and holiday rituals . Each chapter, thereby, reveals specific aspects of the intercultural transfer of phenomena, the role of agents of intercultural transfer and the transformations of ideas transferred between cultures. These chapters, thereby, contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of intercultural transfers.
The approach of intercultural transfer studies differs significantly from traditional and vertical ways of doing history. Traditionally, historians have explored a specific phenomenon within a narrowly defined (national, regional, or local) space over time. The study of intercultural transfers does not limit itself to such a vertical and spatially limited approach. Instead it combines a horizontal approach with a vertical approach as it explores the separation of a specific idea or object from a giving society , the transformation of that idea or object by an agent of intercultural transfer , the transportation of that idea or object from a giving society to a receiving society and the integration of the idea or object into a receiving society . The integration of ideas into receiving societies often took years and decades and required extensive lobbying for the introduction and integration of a new idea by agents of intercultural transfer . It took Harvard professor George Ticknor more than two decades to realize his dream of introducing a public lending library in Boston that was based on libraries he had encountered in Göttingen and Dresden .
The approach of intercultural transfer studies also goes beyond the horizontal approach of comparative studies . 3 Intercultural transfer studies are not merely concerned with comparing and, thereby, solidifying the notion of different cultures and societies. Instead, they seek to undermine the perception that there were distinct cultures that could be treated as disconnected entities. The intercultural transfer approach seeks to study the objects moving between ever-changing cultures and the contribution of these transfers to the making and transformation of these cultures. Objects and ideas transferred, changed, and transformed the places and spaces into which they moved. They, further, created cultural spaces of their own that provided bridges between cultures. The transfer of models for philanthropic activities between Islam , Christianity , and Judaism linked these three religions and provided for the formation of modern concepts of civil society with foundations , endowments , and associations as the core of civic engagement.
The approach of intercultural transfer studies builds on cultural transfer concepts that were developed in the context of transfers between French and German society in the era of Enlightenment and the French Revolution . 4 The concept introduced here goes beyond this approach, which was still centered on states and nation-building, and abandons the framework of the state and instead focuses on spaces created by