Apologies for any cross postings.  Note that anyone wanting to send 
out a call for papers or similar message is free to use 
[log in to unmask], though you have to be a member to do this.
 At present this seems enough security, but if there are any 
difficulties, I can reset the permissions so that any messages have to
come from me.  Terrell

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FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANELS - please circulate


History of Concepts Group Annual Conference
RHETORIC AND CONCEPTUAL CHANGE
28-30 June, 2001, Tampere,
Finland.

History of Political and Social Concepts Group

This organization brings together all those concerned with the
history of political and social concepts. It is open to individual
researchers, as well as to those involved in larger projects, past,
present, or planned. Its goal is to establish a forum where the many
different approaches to conceptual history can be discussed;
intellectual and organizational experiences shared; and comparative
studies prepared. The special theme of the 2001 conference will be:

Rhetoric and Conceptual Change

Guest speaker: Terrence Ball (Arizona). Program committee:
Pim den Boer (Amsterdam) * Uffe Jakobsen (Copenhagen) *
Raymonde Monnier (Paris, Saint-Cloud)* Kari Palonen
(Jyväskylä)* Tuija Pulkkinen (Helsinki)* Melvin Richter
(SUNY) * Patricia Springborg (Sydney) * Björn Wittrock
(Uppsala), Matti Hyvärinen (Tampere, chair).

The history of concepts and rhetoric are titles indicating
two intellectual re-orientations in the academic and political
culture of recent decades. Until now they have remained
independent of each other, but in important respects they
have common aspects, and their combination or juxtaposition
with one another would be important for both kinds of studies.
     A common horizon of both rhetoric and conceptual history
consists in their opposition to the "realist" or "functionalist"
orientation of the post-war philosophy, historiography,
political science, sociology, etc. Both approaches avoid the
neglect or the devaluation of the words of agents so characteristic to
the post-war schools of thought. Taking the speeches and writings of
the contemporary agents seriously and using them as a key to the
analysis, does not, of course, mean taking them literally or judging
them by their face value. On the contrary, in both approaches
procedures of interpretation are developed in order to account
for the fact that the same words can be used differently,
depending on the aims of the agents, on the situation, on the
audience, on the history of their usage, etc.
     As a moment of difference between rhetoric and conceptual
history we can, by using the linguistic vocabulary, speak of
a distinction between a pragmatic and a semantic approach
to the use of language. Inaddition, we can speak, for example,
of the emphasis  on short-term conceptual changes in
the rhetorical analysis and of the pre-eminence of long-
term changes in the history of concepts, especially in so far
as it has been connected to social history. From another perspective
we can allude to the primarily intentional approach within the
rhetoric and to the largely unintended character of conceptual
changes analyzed by the history of concepts, in particular when
written for the lexical purposes.
    Now it seems that these aspects in opposing rhetoric and history
of concepts to each other are increasingly turning obsolete. A
semantic of concept without pragmatic dimensions leaves important
nuances of out of sight, while a pragmatic of conceptual changes
always contains also implications towards the semantic dimensions.
Similarly, in the practice of the use of political and social concepts
long-term and short-term changes are intertwined in multiple
ways. Analogously, closer attention to both unintended forms
of rhetoric and intended moves for and a gainst conceptual
changes is something that is obvious today.
     Judged from the perspective of conceptual history, the inclusion
of rhetorical perspectives could be characterized as something that
turns the studies of conceptual changes at the same time to be
more literal and more political, as compared to a history of concept
on the borderlines of social history or linguistics. The literary
character of the conceptual changes can be related to the Sophistic
and Nietzschean insistence on the figurative character of all language,
including the concepts.
     In addition to proposals, which address the main theme of the
conference directly, we invite proposals for panels and papers
discussing the various forms of conceptual history. Papers
focusing on one concept in one political culture; papers comparing
concepts in several  languages; papers investigating the usage of
concepts in popular disputes, novelsand plays; diachronic papers
covering long periods of time, or synchronic papers considering
the change of concepts during a particular debates, or papers
discussing the change of concepts in transgressing language
borders are all welcome. Because the  conference takes place
in Finland, one particular theme might be the history of
concepts in new languages.

Deadline for panels: February 1, 2001.
Deadline for papers: April 1, 2001.
Participation fee: ¤ 130/70


For further information, please contact:
Dr. Matti Hyvärinen, [log in to unmask]
Research Institute for Social Sciences (YTY)
FIN-33014 University of Tampere, Finland
http://www.uta.fi/~ytmahy/
See also http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/yty/concepts/
--- End Forwarded Message ---


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T Carver
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Dr. Matti Hyvärinen
Research Institute for Social Sciences (YTY)
FIN-33014 University of Tampere, Finland
Tel: +358-3-2156 999 (0ffice) +358-3-260 9663 (Home): +358-3-2156 502 (fax)
http://www.uta.fi/~ytmahy/
See also http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/yty/concepts/