Cultures in Motion

Cultures in Motion

In: Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University, 5

Edited by: Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman and Helmut Reimitz

Princeton University Press | 2013

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400849895

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Contents

About this book

In the wide-ranging and innovative essays of Cultures in Motion, a dozen distinguished historians offer new conceptual vocabularies for understanding how cultures have trespassed across geography and social space. From the transformations of the meanings and practices of charity during late antiquity and the transit of medical knowledge between early modern China and Europe, to the fusion of Irish and African dance forms in early nineteenth-century New York, these essays follow a wide array of cultural practices through the lens of motion, translation, itinerancy, and exchange, extending the insights of transnational and translocal history.

Cultures in Motion challenges the premise of fixed, stable cultural systems by showing that cultural practices have always been moving, crossing borders and locations with often surprising effect. The essays offer striking examples from early to modern times of intrusion, translation, resistance, and adaptation. These are histories where nothing--dance rhythms, alchemical formulas, musical practices, feminist aspirations, sewing machines, streamlined metals, or labor networks--remains stationary.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Celia Applegate, Peter Brown, Harold Cook, April Masten, Mae Ngai, Jocelyn Olcott, Mimi Sheller, Pamela Smith, and Nira Wickramasinghe.

Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Author information

Daniel T. Rodgers is the Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University. Bhavani Raman is an associate professor in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Helmut Reimitz is a professor in the Department of History at Princeton University..

Reviews

"This successful collection of essays focuses on the inherent instability of cultural spheres and the increasing recognition that traditional models of comparative, global, and transcultural/transnational investigation do not do justice to the complexities of human history. Cultures in Motion defines the contours of a new way of thinking and researching cultural history."—Patrick J. Geary, Institute for Advanced Study

"This book provides a new approach to finding a language to describe the new realities that emerge from the interactions of geographically or temporally different cultural practices, material objects, and languages, as they meet in a given, shared space. The essays are engaging in subject matter and persuasively written, and the introduction is superb."—Barbara Metcalf, professor of history emerita, University of California, Davis

"Cultures in Motion represents first-rate scholarship and opens up a critical new space for historiography. Exploring the movement of things, ideas, and other cultural forms, the book—and the introduction in particular—gives an independent existence and importance to such work, and raises original questions about historical change and intercultural understandings."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	vii
Cultures in Motion: An Introduction Daniel T. Rodgers Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
PART I. The Circulation of Cultural Practices
CHAPTER 1. The Challenge Dance: Black-Irish Exchange in Antebellum America April F. Masten Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	23
CHAPTER 2. Musical Itinerancy in a World of Nations: Germany, its Music, and its Musicians Celia Applegate Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	60
CHAPTER 3. From Patriae Amator to Amator Pauperum and Back Again: Social Imagination and Social Change in the West Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle, CA. 300-600 Peter Brown Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	87
PART II. Objects in Transit
CHAPTER 4. Knowledge in Motion: Following Itineraries of Matter in the Early Modern World Pamela H. Smith Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	109
CHAPTER 5. Fashioning a Market: The Singer Sewing Machine in Colonial Lanka Nira Wickramasinghe Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	134
CHAPTER 6. Speed Metal, Slow Tropics, Cold War: Alcoa in the Caribbean Mimi Sheller Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	165
PART III Translations
CHAPTER 7. The True Story of Ah Jake: Language, Labor, and Justice in Late-Nineteenth-Century Sierra Country, California Mae M. Ngai Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	196
CHAPTER 8. Creative Misunderstandings: Chinese Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Europe Harold J. Cook Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	215
CHAPTER 9. Transnational Feminism: Event, Temporality, and Performance at the 1975 International Women's year Conference Jocelyn Olcott Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	241
Afterwords
Itinerancy and Power Bhavani Raman Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	267
From Cultures to Cultural Practices and Back Again Helmut Reimitz Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	270
List of Papers Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	279
List of Contributors Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	283
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	285
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	357

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Cultures in Motion

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