Conceptualizing the World

Helge Jordheim is a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. His latest book is a global history of the concepts of civility and civilization, written with an international team of scholars (Civilizing Emotions, 2015). At present he is writing a book on the cultural history of time in the eighteenth century.

“A fascinating journey at large, travelling over the concepts and representations of ‘the world’, across languages and cultures, discourses and disciplines, media and materialities.” • International Journal for the Semiotics of Law“This is a thought-provoking collection of essays that deals with a question of interest to scholars across the humanities. It is enriched by the broad range of approaches and topics present in each essay.” • Sara-Louise Cooper, University of Kent“Conceptualizing the World is a fantastic, original cornucopia of valuable insights into how humans have thought about and experienced the world across history.” • Ingjerd Hoëm, University of Oslo

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: The World as Concept and Object of KnowledgeHelge Jordheim and Erling SandmoPART I: NAMING THE WORLDChapter 1. “World”: An Exploration of the Relationship between Conceptual History and EtymologyIvo SpiraChapter 2. A Multiverse of Knowledge: The Epistemology and Hermeneutics of the ʿālam in Medieval Islamic ThoughtNora S. EggenChapter 3. Globalization of Human Conscience: A Modern Muslim CaseOddbjørn LeirvikChapter 4. Creating World through Concept LearningClaudia LenzChapter 5. Between Metaphor and Geopolitics: The History of the Concept the Third WorldErik TängerstadChapter 6. On the Dialectics of Ecological World ConceptsFalko SchmiederPART II: ORDERING THE WORLDChapter 7. The Emergence of International Law and the Opening of World Order: Hugo Grotius ReconsideredChenxi TangChapter 8. “Natural Capital,” “Human Capital,” “Social Capital”: It’s All Capital NowDesmond McNeillChapter 9. The Worlds in Human Rights: Images or Mirages?Malcolm LangfordChapter 10. Democracy of the “New World”: The Great Binding Law of Peace and the Political System of the Haudenosaunee ConfederacyLars Kirkhusmo PharoChapter 11. The Immanent World: Responsibility and Spatial JusticeAndreas Philippopoulos-MihalopoulosChapter 12. From Critical to Partisan Dictionaries; or, What Is Excluded from Today’s Flat World Orthodoxies?Sanja PerovicPART III: TIMING THE WORLDChapter 13. At Home or Away: On Nostalgia, Exile, and CosmopolitanismOlivier RemaudChapter 14. Extensions of World Heritage: The Globe, the List, and the LimesStefan WillerChapter 15. The End of the World: From the Lisbon Earthquake to the Last DaysKyrre KverndokkChapter 16. Time and Space in World Literature: Ibsen in and out of SyncTore RemPART IV: MAPPING THE WORLDChapter 17. Middle Age of the GlobeAlfred HiattChapter 18. The Champion of the North: World Time in Olaus Magnus’s Carta MarinaErling SandmoChapter 19. The Search for Vínland and Norse Conceptions of the WorldKarl G. JohanssonChapter 20. The Cartographic Constitution of Global PoliticsJeppe StrandsbjergChapter 21. The Individual and the “Intellectual Globe”: Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Vannevar BushRichard YeoPART V: MAKING THE WORLDChapter 22. The World as Sphere: Conceptualizing with SloterdijkKari van DijkChapter 23. The Fontenellian Moment: Revisiting Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century WorldsHelge JordheimChapter 24. Fixating the Poles: Science, Fiction, and Photography at the Ends of the WorldSiv Frøydis BergChapter 25. The Norwegian Who Became a Globe: Mediation and Temporality in Roald Amundsen’s 1911 South Pole ConquestEspen YtrebergIndex