A History of Curiosity

The Theory of Travel 1550-1800
1. Auflage 2002
ISBN: 978-3-7186-5621-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 356 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 816 g

Reihe: Studies in Anthropology and History

First Published in 2002. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a criticalhistorical perspective. The three principal methods of research, travel, the survey and the collection of significant objects, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times. The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. He weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasising links between the figures, the philosophies and the literatures of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focussing on the ars apodemica, or art of travelling'', a body of formal instructions on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, the author demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stagl, Justin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Empirische Sozialforschung, Statistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

The methodizing of travel in the 16th century - a tale of three cities; rerum memoria - early modern enquiries and documentation centres; imagines mundi - allegories of the continents in the Baroque and the Enlightenment; the man who called himself George Psalmanaazar or the problems of the authenticity of ethnographic description; Josephinism and social research - the patriotic traveller of Count Leopold Berchtold; August Ludwig Schlozer and the study of mankind according to peoples; from the autonomous to the heteronomous traveller - Volney's reform of travel instruction and the French Revolution.

Über Autor(innen)

Justin Stagl, born 1941, in Klagenfurt, Austria, presently holds the Chair in Sociology of Culture at the University of Saltzburg, Austria. Main fields of interest: theory and history of the social sciences, sociology of culture.