Project acronym AlgoFinance
Project Algorithmic Finance: Inquiring into the Reshaping of Financial Markets
Researcher (PI) Christian BORCH
Host Institution (HI) COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Present-day financial markets are turning algorithmic, as market orders are increasingly being executed by fully automated computer algorithms, without any direct human intervention. Although algorithmic finance seems to fundamentally reshape the central dynamics in financial markets, and even though it prompts core sociological questions, it has not yet received any systematic attention. In a pioneering contribution to economic sociology and social studies of finance, ALGOFINANCE aims to understand how and with what consequences the turn to algorithms is changing financial markets. The overall concept and central contributions of ALGOFINANCE are the following: (1) on an intra-firm level, the project examines how the shift to algorithmic finance reshapes the ways in which trading firms operate, and does so by systematically and empirically investigating the reconfiguration of organizational structures and employee subjectivity; (2) on an inter-algorithmic level, it offers a ground-breaking methodology (agent-based modelling informed by qualitative data) to grasp how trading algorithms interact with one another in a fully digital space; and (3) on the level of market sociality, it proposes a novel theorization of how intra-firm and inter-algorithmic dynamics can be conceived of as introducing a particular form of sociality that is characteristic to algorithmic finance: a form of sociality-as-association heuristically analyzed as imitation. None of these three levels have received systematic attention in the state-of-the-art literature. Addressing them will significantly advance the understanding of present-day algorithmic finance in economic sociology. By contributing novel empirical, methodological, and theoretical understandings of the functioning and consequences of algorithms, ALGOFINANCE will pave the way for other research into digital sociology and the broader algorithmization of society.
Summary
Present-day financial markets are turning algorithmic, as market orders are increasingly being executed by fully automated computer algorithms, without any direct human intervention. Although algorithmic finance seems to fundamentally reshape the central dynamics in financial markets, and even though it prompts core sociological questions, it has not yet received any systematic attention. In a pioneering contribution to economic sociology and social studies of finance, ALGOFINANCE aims to understand how and with what consequences the turn to algorithms is changing financial markets. The overall concept and central contributions of ALGOFINANCE are the following: (1) on an intra-firm level, the project examines how the shift to algorithmic finance reshapes the ways in which trading firms operate, and does so by systematically and empirically investigating the reconfiguration of organizational structures and employee subjectivity; (2) on an inter-algorithmic level, it offers a ground-breaking methodology (agent-based modelling informed by qualitative data) to grasp how trading algorithms interact with one another in a fully digital space; and (3) on the level of market sociality, it proposes a novel theorization of how intra-firm and inter-algorithmic dynamics can be conceived of as introducing a particular form of sociality that is characteristic to algorithmic finance: a form of sociality-as-association heuristically analyzed as imitation. None of these three levels have received systematic attention in the state-of-the-art literature. Addressing them will significantly advance the understanding of present-day algorithmic finance in economic sociology. By contributing novel empirical, methodological, and theoretical understandings of the functioning and consequences of algorithms, ALGOFINANCE will pave the way for other research into digital sociology and the broader algorithmization of society.
Max ERC Funding
1 590 036 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30
Project acronym BEHAVFRICTIONS
Project Behavioral Implications of Information-Processing Frictions
Researcher (PI) Jakub STEINER
Host Institution (HI) NARODOHOSPODARSKY USTAV AKADEMIE VED CESKE REPUBLIKY VEREJNA VYZKUMNA INSTITUCE
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH1, ERC-2017-COG
Summary BEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.
Summary
BEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.
Max ERC Funding
1 321 488 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31
Project acronym CLIC
Project Classical Influences and Irish Culture
Researcher (PI) Isabelle Torrance
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2018-COG
Summary The hypothesis of this project is that Ireland has a unique and hitherto underexplored history of cultural engagement with models from ancient Greece and Rome. Unlike Britain and mainland Europe, Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire. Yet the island has an extraordinarily vibrant tradition of classical learning that dates back to its earliest recorded literature, and is unparalleled in other northern European countries. Research for this project will address why this is the case, by examining sources through nine significant diachronic themes identified by the PI: language; land; travel and exile; Troy; satire; Neoplatonism; female voices; material culture; and global influence. This multi-thematic approach will enable analysis of what is remarkable about classical reception in Ireland. It will also provide a heuristic framework that generates dialogue between normally disparate fields, such as classical reception studies, Irish and British history, English-language literature, Irish-language literature, medieval studies, postcolonial studies, philosophy, material culture, women's studies, and global studies. The project will engage with contemporary preoccupations surrounding the politics and history of the divided island of Ireland, such as the current decade of centenary commemorations for the foundation of an independent Irish state (1912-1922, 2012-2022), and the on-going violence and political divisions in Northern Ireland. These issues will serve as a springboard for opening new avenues of investigation that look far beyond the past 100 years, but are linked to them. The project will thus shed new light on the role of classical culture in shaping literary, social, and political discourse across the island of Ireland, and throughout its history.
Summary
The hypothesis of this project is that Ireland has a unique and hitherto underexplored history of cultural engagement with models from ancient Greece and Rome. Unlike Britain and mainland Europe, Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire. Yet the island has an extraordinarily vibrant tradition of classical learning that dates back to its earliest recorded literature, and is unparalleled in other northern European countries. Research for this project will address why this is the case, by examining sources through nine significant diachronic themes identified by the PI: language; land; travel and exile; Troy; satire; Neoplatonism; female voices; material culture; and global influence. This multi-thematic approach will enable analysis of what is remarkable about classical reception in Ireland. It will also provide a heuristic framework that generates dialogue between normally disparate fields, such as classical reception studies, Irish and British history, English-language literature, Irish-language literature, medieval studies, postcolonial studies, philosophy, material culture, women's studies, and global studies. The project will engage with contemporary preoccupations surrounding the politics and history of the divided island of Ireland, such as the current decade of centenary commemorations for the foundation of an independent Irish state (1912-1922, 2012-2022), and the on-going violence and political divisions in Northern Ireland. These issues will serve as a springboard for opening new avenues of investigation that look far beyond the past 100 years, but are linked to them. The project will thus shed new light on the role of classical culture in shaping literary, social, and political discourse across the island of Ireland, and throughout its history.
Max ERC Funding
1 888 592 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym CLIOARCH
Project Cliodynamic archaeology: Computational approaches to Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic archaeology and climate change
Researcher (PI) Felix RIEDE
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2018-COG
Summary Late Pleistocene/early Holocene Europe is said to be the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human responses to rapidly changing climates and environments, migration and adaptation. Yet, pinpointing precisely how and why contemporaneous Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic (15,000-11,000 years BP) foragers migrated, and which environmental or other factors they adapted to – or failed to – has remained remarkably elusive. At the core of ClioArch is the radical but, in light of research-historical insights, necessary hypothesis that the current archaeological cultural taxonomy for this iconic period of European prehistory is epistemologically flawed and that operationalisations and interpretations based on this traditional taxonomy – especially those that seek to relate observed changes in material culture and land-use to contemporaneous climatic and environmental changes – are therefore problematic. Hence, novel approaches to crafting the taxonomic building blocks are required, as are novel analyses of human|environment relations in this period. ClioArch’s premier ambition is to provide operational cultural taxonomies for the Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic of Europe and to couple these with interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary, quantitative ecological methods and field archaeological investigations beyond the state-of-the-art, so as to better capture such adaptations – almost certainly with major implications for the standard culture-historical narrative relating to this period. In so doing, the project will pioneer a fully transparent and replicable – and eminently transferable – methodology for the study of the impacts of climate change and extreme environmental events in deep history. In turn, such a quantitative understanding of past adaptive dynamics will position archaeology more centrally in contemporary debates about climate change, environmental catastrophe and their cultural dimensions.
Summary
Late Pleistocene/early Holocene Europe is said to be the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human responses to rapidly changing climates and environments, migration and adaptation. Yet, pinpointing precisely how and why contemporaneous Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic (15,000-11,000 years BP) foragers migrated, and which environmental or other factors they adapted to – or failed to – has remained remarkably elusive. At the core of ClioArch is the radical but, in light of research-historical insights, necessary hypothesis that the current archaeological cultural taxonomy for this iconic period of European prehistory is epistemologically flawed and that operationalisations and interpretations based on this traditional taxonomy – especially those that seek to relate observed changes in material culture and land-use to contemporaneous climatic and environmental changes – are therefore problematic. Hence, novel approaches to crafting the taxonomic building blocks are required, as are novel analyses of human|environment relations in this period. ClioArch’s premier ambition is to provide operational cultural taxonomies for the Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic of Europe and to couple these with interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary, quantitative ecological methods and field archaeological investigations beyond the state-of-the-art, so as to better capture such adaptations – almost certainly with major implications for the standard culture-historical narrative relating to this period. In so doing, the project will pioneer a fully transparent and replicable – and eminently transferable – methodology for the study of the impacts of climate change and extreme environmental events in deep history. In turn, such a quantitative understanding of past adaptive dynamics will position archaeology more centrally in contemporary debates about climate change, environmental catastrophe and their cultural dimensions.
Max ERC Funding
1 907 638 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31
Project acronym ConTExt
Project Connecting the Extreme
Researcher (PI) Sune Toft
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE9, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary Advances in technology and methodology over the last decade, have enabled the study of galaxies to the highest redshifts. This has revolutionized our understanding of the origin and evolution of galaxies. I have played a central role in this revolution, by discovering that at z=2, when the universe was only 3 Gyr old, half of the most massive galaxies were extremely compact and had already completed their star formation. During the last five years I have led a successful group of postdocs and students dedicated to investigating the extreme properties of these galaxies and place them into cosmological context. Combining a series of high profile observational studies published by my group and others, I recently proposed an evolutionary sequence that ties together the most extreme galaxies in the universe, from the most intense dusty starburst at cosmic dawn, through quasars: the brightest sources in the universe, driven by feedback from supermassive black holes, and galaxy cores hosting the densest conglomerations of stellar mass known, to the sleeping giants of the local universe, the giant ellipticals. The proposed research program will explore if such an evolutionary sequence exists, with the ultimate goal of reaching, for the first time, a coherent physical understanding of how the most massive galaxies in the universe formed. While there is a chance the rigorous tests may ultimately reveal the proposed sequence to be too simplistic, a guarantied outcome of the program is a significantly improved understanding of the physical mechanisms that shape galaxies and drive their star formation and quenching
Summary
Advances in technology and methodology over the last decade, have enabled the study of galaxies to the highest redshifts. This has revolutionized our understanding of the origin and evolution of galaxies. I have played a central role in this revolution, by discovering that at z=2, when the universe was only 3 Gyr old, half of the most massive galaxies were extremely compact and had already completed their star formation. During the last five years I have led a successful group of postdocs and students dedicated to investigating the extreme properties of these galaxies and place them into cosmological context. Combining a series of high profile observational studies published by my group and others, I recently proposed an evolutionary sequence that ties together the most extreme galaxies in the universe, from the most intense dusty starburst at cosmic dawn, through quasars: the brightest sources in the universe, driven by feedback from supermassive black holes, and galaxy cores hosting the densest conglomerations of stellar mass known, to the sleeping giants of the local universe, the giant ellipticals. The proposed research program will explore if such an evolutionary sequence exists, with the ultimate goal of reaching, for the first time, a coherent physical understanding of how the most massive galaxies in the universe formed. While there is a chance the rigorous tests may ultimately reveal the proposed sequence to be too simplistic, a guarantied outcome of the program is a significantly improved understanding of the physical mechanisms that shape galaxies and drive their star formation and quenching
Max ERC Funding
1 999 526 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym CRIMTANG
Project Criminal Entanglements.A new ethnographic approach to transnational organised crime.
Researcher (PI) Henrik VIGH
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Linked to terrorism, moral breakdown, and societal decay, Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) has come to embody current global anxieties as a figure of fear and cause of disquiet. Yet despite its central position on the social and political radar, our knowledge of it remains limited and fragmentary. Quantitative analyses may have identified the scale of the problem, but its underlying socio-cultural logic and practices remain under-researched and largely obscure. TOC is on the rise, and we need better insights into how it develops and expands, who engages in it and why, and how it is linked to and embedded in social networks that straddle countries and contexts.
CRIMTANG proposes a unique approach to the study of the social infrastructure of contemporary TOC. It develops a research strategy that is ethnographic and transnational in design and so attuned to the human flows and formations of TOC. The project comprises a trans-disciplinary research team of anthropologists, criminologists and political scientists, and builds on their prior experience of the people, regions and languages under study. It explores the illegal and overlapping flows of migrants and drugs from North-West Africa into Europe, following a key trafficking trajectory stretching from Tangiers to Barcelona, Paris and beyond.
In so doing, CRIMTANG sheds new light on the actual empirical processes in operation at different points along this trafficking route, whilst simultaneously developing new theoretical and methodological apparatuses for apprehending TOC that can be exported and applied in other regions and contexts. It reimagines the idea of social entanglement and proposes new transnational and collective fieldwork strategies. Finally, it will advance and consolidate the European research environment on TOC by creating a research hub for transnational ethnographic criminology at the University of Copenhagen.
Summary
Linked to terrorism, moral breakdown, and societal decay, Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) has come to embody current global anxieties as a figure of fear and cause of disquiet. Yet despite its central position on the social and political radar, our knowledge of it remains limited and fragmentary. Quantitative analyses may have identified the scale of the problem, but its underlying socio-cultural logic and practices remain under-researched and largely obscure. TOC is on the rise, and we need better insights into how it develops and expands, who engages in it and why, and how it is linked to and embedded in social networks that straddle countries and contexts.
CRIMTANG proposes a unique approach to the study of the social infrastructure of contemporary TOC. It develops a research strategy that is ethnographic and transnational in design and so attuned to the human flows and formations of TOC. The project comprises a trans-disciplinary research team of anthropologists, criminologists and political scientists, and builds on their prior experience of the people, regions and languages under study. It explores the illegal and overlapping flows of migrants and drugs from North-West Africa into Europe, following a key trafficking trajectory stretching from Tangiers to Barcelona, Paris and beyond.
In so doing, CRIMTANG sheds new light on the actual empirical processes in operation at different points along this trafficking route, whilst simultaneously developing new theoretical and methodological apparatuses for apprehending TOC that can be exported and applied in other regions and contexts. It reimagines the idea of social entanglement and proposes new transnational and collective fieldwork strategies. Finally, it will advance and consolidate the European research environment on TOC by creating a research hub for transnational ethnographic criminology at the University of Copenhagen.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 909 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31
Project acronym DEVOMIND
Project How do infants mentalize? Bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mindreading.
Researcher (PI) Victoria SOUTHGATE
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Human social interaction and learning depends on making the right inferences about other people’s thoughts, a process commonly called mentalizing, or Theory of Mind, a cognitive achievement which several decades of research concluded was reached at around age 4. The last 10 years has radically changed this view, and innovative new paradigms suggest that even preverbal infants can think about others’ minds. This new developmental data has created arguably one of the biggest puzzles in the history of developmental science: How can infants be mentalizing when years of research have shown that a) pre-schoolers fail at mentalizing tasks and b) mentalizing depends on the development of cognitive control, language, and brain maturation? The key issue is whether behaviour that looks like infant mentalizing really is mentalizing, or might infants’ success belie alternative processes? The most powerful strategy for resolving this puzzle is to look to brain activity. By applying the same methods and paradigms across infancy and early childhood, DEVOMIND will investigate whether infants’ success on mentalizing tasks recruits the same network of brain regions, and neural processes, that we know are involved in success in older children and adults. In the second half of the project, we will use our neural indicators of mentalizing to test a completely novel hypothesis in which infants’ success is possible because they have a limited ability to distinguish self from other. Although novel, this hypothesis deserves to be tested because it has the potential to explain both infants’ success and preschoolers’ failures under a single, unified theory. By bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mentalizing, DEVOMIND will allow us to move beyond the current impasse, and to generate a new theory of Theory of Mind.
Summary
Human social interaction and learning depends on making the right inferences about other people’s thoughts, a process commonly called mentalizing, or Theory of Mind, a cognitive achievement which several decades of research concluded was reached at around age 4. The last 10 years has radically changed this view, and innovative new paradigms suggest that even preverbal infants can think about others’ minds. This new developmental data has created arguably one of the biggest puzzles in the history of developmental science: How can infants be mentalizing when years of research have shown that a) pre-schoolers fail at mentalizing tasks and b) mentalizing depends on the development of cognitive control, language, and brain maturation? The key issue is whether behaviour that looks like infant mentalizing really is mentalizing, or might infants’ success belie alternative processes? The most powerful strategy for resolving this puzzle is to look to brain activity. By applying the same methods and paradigms across infancy and early childhood, DEVOMIND will investigate whether infants’ success on mentalizing tasks recruits the same network of brain regions, and neural processes, that we know are involved in success in older children and adults. In the second half of the project, we will use our neural indicators of mentalizing to test a completely novel hypothesis in which infants’ success is possible because they have a limited ability to distinguish self from other. Although novel, this hypothesis deserves to be tested because it has the potential to explain both infants’ success and preschoolers’ failures under a single, unified theory. By bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mentalizing, DEVOMIND will allow us to move beyond the current impasse, and to generate a new theory of Theory of Mind.
Max ERC Funding
1 761 190 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31
Project acronym LuxFaSS
Project Luxury, fashion and social status in Early Modern South Eastern Europe
Researcher (PI) Constanta Vintila-Ghitulescu
Host Institution (HI) FUNDATIA NOUA EUROPA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary It is hard to give a broadly acceptable definition of the concept of luxury, which as a field of study has also been largely neglected by historians and sociologists. From a moral or philosophical point of view, luxury is seen as a form of decadence, although from the economic perspective it is seen as a force that drives development of the consumerist economy. Every society knows it in some form, regardless of the degree of economic development, reserving luxury to elite groups, who show their power and pomp through the display of luxury goods. The history of luxury is therefore, from this perspective, a history of power, reflecting the syncretism of cultural and political thought. Luxury and fashion as components of material culture can also be analysed through the lens of cultural history, since they play an important role in the creation of visual culture. This project proposes to analyse the Christian elites of Ottoman-dominated Europe in the Early Modern period from these perspectives, and to look at how they defined their social status and identity at the intersection of East and West. In such an analysis, the Westernisation of South-Eastern Europe proceeds not just through the spread of Enlightenment ideas and the influence of the French Revolution, but also through changes in visual culture brought about by Western influence on notions of luxury and fashion. This approach allows a closer appreciation of the synchronicities and time lags between traditional culture, developments in political thought and social change in the context of the modernisation or “Europeanization” of this part of Europe.
Summary
It is hard to give a broadly acceptable definition of the concept of luxury, which as a field of study has also been largely neglected by historians and sociologists. From a moral or philosophical point of view, luxury is seen as a form of decadence, although from the economic perspective it is seen as a force that drives development of the consumerist economy. Every society knows it in some form, regardless of the degree of economic development, reserving luxury to elite groups, who show their power and pomp through the display of luxury goods. The history of luxury is therefore, from this perspective, a history of power, reflecting the syncretism of cultural and political thought. Luxury and fashion as components of material culture can also be analysed through the lens of cultural history, since they play an important role in the creation of visual culture. This project proposes to analyse the Christian elites of Ottoman-dominated Europe in the Early Modern period from these perspectives, and to look at how they defined their social status and identity at the intersection of East and West. In such an analysis, the Westernisation of South-Eastern Europe proceeds not just through the spread of Enlightenment ideas and the influence of the French Revolution, but also through changes in visual culture brought about by Western influence on notions of luxury and fashion. This approach allows a closer appreciation of the synchronicities and time lags between traditional culture, developments in political thought and social change in the context of the modernisation or “Europeanization” of this part of Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 437 500 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-07-01, End date: 2020-06-30
Project acronym NAMO
Project Narrative Modes of Historical Discourse in Asia
Researcher (PI) Ulrich Timme Kragh
Host Institution (HI) UNIWERSYTET IM. ADAMA MICKIEWICZA W POZNANIU
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary Modern historiography produced in Asia belongs to the history-paradigm of the European humanities and it is from within these epistemological confines that Western as well as Eastern scholars of Asian studies view the Asian writing of the past. While source criticism and historicism have today become key parts of historical consciousness in Asia, Asian historical representations are nonetheless firmly embedded in pre-modern Asian literary traditions via specific uses in historical writing of traditional rhetorical structures of narrative, emplotment, tropes, and literary imagery.
Taking such linkage between present and past Asian traditions of historiography as its premise, project NAMO – with four team members consisting of the PI and three Postdocs – will examine the literary features of Asian historiography in India, China, and Tibet across the longue durée of the classical, medieval, and modern periods. First, a new method for the study of the literary forms that characterize historiography in Asia will be established by adapting basic analytical principles from Asian literary theories drawn from twelve classical Indian and Chinese works on poetics. Next, the team will determine the specific literary characteristics of narrative, plot, tropes, and historical explanation found in seventeen classical and medieval histories composed in China, India, and Tibet. Finally, it will be examined to which extent those traditional literary features still function as constitutive rhetorical elements in modern Asian history writing. This will be done by analyzing the literary forms used in a selection of twenty representative histories written in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India during the period 1980-2010.
The outcome will be a novel approach for the empirical study of Asian history that will open up a new level of comparative work in the theory of history across non-Western and Western traditions.
Summary
Modern historiography produced in Asia belongs to the history-paradigm of the European humanities and it is from within these epistemological confines that Western as well as Eastern scholars of Asian studies view the Asian writing of the past. While source criticism and historicism have today become key parts of historical consciousness in Asia, Asian historical representations are nonetheless firmly embedded in pre-modern Asian literary traditions via specific uses in historical writing of traditional rhetorical structures of narrative, emplotment, tropes, and literary imagery.
Taking such linkage between present and past Asian traditions of historiography as its premise, project NAMO – with four team members consisting of the PI and three Postdocs – will examine the literary features of Asian historiography in India, China, and Tibet across the longue durée of the classical, medieval, and modern periods. First, a new method for the study of the literary forms that characterize historiography in Asia will be established by adapting basic analytical principles from Asian literary theories drawn from twelve classical Indian and Chinese works on poetics. Next, the team will determine the specific literary characteristics of narrative, plot, tropes, and historical explanation found in seventeen classical and medieval histories composed in China, India, and Tibet. Finally, it will be examined to which extent those traditional literary features still function as constitutive rhetorical elements in modern Asian history writing. This will be done by analyzing the literary forms used in a selection of twenty representative histories written in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India during the period 1980-2010.
The outcome will be a novel approach for the empirical study of Asian history that will open up a new level of comparative work in the theory of history across non-Western and Western traditions.
Max ERC Funding
1 995 162 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-12-01, End date: 2019-11-30
Project acronym OurMythicalChildhood
Project Our Mythical Childhood... The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges
Researcher (PI) Katarzyna Marciniak
Host Institution (HI) UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary The project aims at developing a pioneering approach to the reception of Classical Antiquity in children’s and young adults’ contemporary culture. This newly identified research field offers valuable insights into the processes leading to the formation of the culture recipients’ identities along with their initiation into adulthood. However, the most vital potential of this phenomenon remains unexploited, for the research is still selective, focused mainly on Western culture. With my project, I intend to overcome these limitations by applying regional perspectives without the pejorative implication of regional as parochial or inferior. I recognize regions as extremely valuable contexts of the reception of Antiquity, which is not only passively taken in, but also actively reshaped in children’s and young adults’ culture in response to regional and global challenges. Thus, the essence of this innovative approach consists in comparative studies of differing reception models not only across Europe but also America, Australia & New Zealand and – a bold but necessary step – in parts of the world not commonly associated with Graeco-Roman tradition: Africa and Asia. The shared heritage of Classical Antiquity, recently enhanced by the global influence of popular culture (movies, Internet activities, computer games inspired by the classical tradition), gives a unique opportunity – through the reception filter – to gain deeper understanding of the key social, political and cultural transformations underway at various locations. The added value of this original research, carried out by an international team of scholars, will be its extremely broad impact on the frontiers of scholarship, education and culture: we will elaborate a supra-regional survey of classical references, publish a number of analyses of crucial reception cases, and prepare materials on how to use ancient myths in work with disabled children, thus contributing to integration and stimulating cultural exchange.
Summary
The project aims at developing a pioneering approach to the reception of Classical Antiquity in children’s and young adults’ contemporary culture. This newly identified research field offers valuable insights into the processes leading to the formation of the culture recipients’ identities along with their initiation into adulthood. However, the most vital potential of this phenomenon remains unexploited, for the research is still selective, focused mainly on Western culture. With my project, I intend to overcome these limitations by applying regional perspectives without the pejorative implication of regional as parochial or inferior. I recognize regions as extremely valuable contexts of the reception of Antiquity, which is not only passively taken in, but also actively reshaped in children’s and young adults’ culture in response to regional and global challenges. Thus, the essence of this innovative approach consists in comparative studies of differing reception models not only across Europe but also America, Australia & New Zealand and – a bold but necessary step – in parts of the world not commonly associated with Graeco-Roman tradition: Africa and Asia. The shared heritage of Classical Antiquity, recently enhanced by the global influence of popular culture (movies, Internet activities, computer games inspired by the classical tradition), gives a unique opportunity – through the reception filter – to gain deeper understanding of the key social, political and cultural transformations underway at various locations. The added value of this original research, carried out by an international team of scholars, will be its extremely broad impact on the frontiers of scholarship, education and culture: we will elaborate a supra-regional survey of classical references, publish a number of analyses of crucial reception cases, and prepare materials on how to use ancient myths in work with disabled children, thus contributing to integration and stimulating cultural exchange.
Max ERC Funding
1 489 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30
