Suchergebnisse

While historians have analyzed and discussed the fragmentation of life in transatlantic societies by focusing on economics, law, or politics, we propose that a focus on biomedicine in the period since 1970 adds important perspectives on the shifting public role of science and of medicine. Biomedicine (the convergence of biological research and of medicine within the life sciences) moved to the center of public debates after the end of the Cold War. The papers in this special issue highlight how it became a prism through which societies, governments, and states renegotiated the roles of the medical and scientific professions, the opportunities, risks, and limits associated with scientific research and medical technologies, the responsibilities of individuals and of the professions in making life-or-death decisions, and important norms shaping the lives of individuals, families, and communities. Historians have analyzed and discussed the impact of market-oriented governing rationalities and of shifting discourses about the societal roles of individuals by focusing on politics, economics, or law. The contributors to this special issue propose to expand the focus towards biomedicine in order to include developments that otherwise would remain distinct from evolving narratives in recent contemporary history.

The first part of this essay examines the peculiar role European intellectual history played in coming to terms with the twentieth century as an 'Age of Extremes' and the different weight it was given for that task at different times and in different national contexts up to the 1970s. The second part looks at the contemporary history of politically focused intellectual history — and the possible impact of the latter on the writing of contemporary history in general: it will be asked how the three great innovative movements in the history of political thought which emerged in the last fifty years have related to the practice of contemporary history: the German school of conceptual history, the 'Cambridge School', and the 'linguistic turn'. The third part focuses on recent trends to understand processes of liberalization — as opposed to the older search for causes of political extremism. It is also in the third part that the so far rather Euro-centric perspective is left behind, as attempts to create an intellectual history of the more or less new enemies of the West are examined. Finally, the author pleads for a contemporary intellectual history that seeks novel ways of understanding the twentieth century and the 'newest history' since 1989 by combining tools from conceptual history and the Cambridge School.