Two Conceptual Forums in autumn
As part of the “Conceptual Forum” workshops, the Käte Hamburger Kolleg invites researchers at irregular intervals to interdisciplinary discussions of current methodological and theoretical ideas relevant to work in history and legal history. Fractality and concurrence of norms are on the programme in autumn.
The concept of fractality developed by Christophe Duhamelle and Falk Bretschneider for the Holy Roman Empire of the early modern period brings the space of the empire and its members into a direct relationship with its political and social order. In mathematics, a fractal refers to an entity composed of ever smaller copies of itself. Duhamelle and Bretschneider apply this metaphor to the Empire to illustrate how its institutional structures were similar at different levels, and how actors constantly switched between levels. On 12 and 13 October, there will be an opportunity to engage in conversation with both scholars about their conceptual proposal and its applicability across disciplines.
Hillard von Thiessen has described the European early modern period as an “age of ambiguity”. For the centuries between 1500 and 1800, he identifies a particularly strong concurrence of norms, i.e. the coexistence of different, sometimes contradictory expectations with regard to behaviour. For the actors, this meant either aligning their behaviour with different normative expectations depending on the case, or keeping things undecided in abeyance, i.e. practising tolerance of ambiguity. How far this phenomenon is specific to the early modern period or can be regarded as a historical constant – this will be explored on 13 November in an interdisciplinary and trans-epochal discussion.