demarcation
Stöcker, Lars Fredrik
Hello again,
I think it is good that we obviously have a discussion now. Unfortunately, the time pressure at the moment is the result of 5 people having been in 5 different countries during the summer, so no one - me included - had really the will to discuss transfers online during the nicest period of the year. That is why I wrote - and sent - my comments in an 'uncensored' and unedited version, panicking a bit because of the time, which maybe was stupid. Some things might not have become clear and I definitely did not want to overthrow everyone else's work, only because I had different thoughts and imaginations about the topic.
I think that the main problem is that we all had a title consisting of three words, of which two were catchphrases without any intepretation, and nothing more, so I suspect that everyone imagines demarcation to be something completely different and this is the core problem and also the possible key to a good conference: we as organizers must have an absolutely clear idea what exactly we are talking about if we initiate the collection of a whole row of academics from all over Europe in order to discuss something, whose title we just invented. So, although I should provide concrete answers at this very moment, I will have to think it through and take a look at my notes and some more texts in order to give you a concise description of what I could imagine "demarcations" to be and how they could possibly be approached. Maybe this is the main part of the work - a common discussion of how we should label "demarcation" and then sell it on to the academic public. The writing part is then merely more than a question of formulation.
Hear you soon, Fredrik
Lars Fredrik Stöcker
Researcher, Department of History and Civilization
European University Institute
Via Boccaccio 121
50133 Florence
ITALY
tel.: +39 388 175 98 56
Hanne
1. Regarding changing what I have written, I have no problems
whatsoever with that. I'm not offended.
2. As for the discussion:
a) Demarcation as concept or method: I agree with the current view:
its a concept (at least so far, maybe somebody at the conference makes
a method out of it).
b) The changes to the cfp: I'm taking a position between Magnus and
Fredrik. We do not need a lot of historical background, but we want to
recruit as broadly as possible, we should have some historical
background. Maybe we can attract somebody who is not into the
historiographical debate. I think it is a mistake to think that
everybody has read these people, it being a sort of EUI gospel.
However, this is not a major point.
3. I suggest that we take Fredrik's version, clean it up and send it
to Ther, Romano and the rest.
Hanne