Islam's weight in global history: A response to Sidaway.

In this commentary, we discuss three major themes that Sidaway raises in his article, 'Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies': the problem of Muslims as 'others'; the fraught role of religion as a universal category; and Muslim geographies as perceived in area studies and global history. Along these lines, we argue that Sidaway makes a number of important interventions aimed at changing the social science focus on Muslims in the West, highlighting the importance of Islamic concepts, and dislocating spaces of Islam from predefined geographical areas. After a critical discussion of the specific approaches presented in the article, we follow up on Sidaway's encouragement to think beyond the decolonial. We see this as an invitation to formulate our own vision of a new global history of Islam that takes into account traces of the influence of Muslims and of Islam more broadly speaking from Indigenous Australia to China to the Americas, and from everyday culture in Europe to extinct empires in Iberia, Sicily, and the Balkans. From this perspective, we argue, a more serious engagement with the multitude of global Islamic influences beyond Muslim communities might turn into a powerful force of decolonization.

Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history. Yet, societies experience a wide range of outcomes when facing such challenges: some suffer from social unrest, civil violence or complete collapse; others prove more resilient and maintain key social functions. We currently lack a clear, generally agreed-upon conceptual framework and evidentiary base to explore what causes these divergent outcomes. Here, we discuss efforts to develop such a framework through the Crisis Database (CrisisDB) programme. We illustrate that the impact of environmental stressors is mediated through extant cultural, political and economic structures that evolve over extended timescales (decades to centuries). These structures can generate high resilience to major shocks, facilitate positive adaptation, or, alternatively, undermine collective action and lead to unrest, violence and even societal collapse. By exposing the ways that different societies have reacted to crises over their lifetime, this framework can help identify the factors and complex social-ecological interactions that either bolster or undermine resilience to contemporary climate shocks. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

The instrumental Brahmin and the "half-caste" computer: Astronomy and colonial rule in Madras, 1791-1835.

What did science make possible for colonial rule? How was science in turn marked by the knowledge and practices of those under colonial rule? Here I approach these questions via the social history of Madras Observatory. Constructed in 1791 by the East India Company, the observatory was to provide local time to mariners and served as a clearinghouse for the company's survey and revenue administration. The astronomical work of Madras' Brahmin assistants relied upon their knowledge of jyotisastra [Sanskrit astronomy/astrology], and can be seen as a specialized form of the kind of South Indian scribal labor and knowledge that also staffed the company's tax offices. If at Greenwich the division of labor meant observatory work bore resemblances to the factory and the accounts office, in Madras, astronomy and accounting drew on similar labor forms because they were part of the same enterprise. But the company did not just adapt preexisting forms of labor, it also attempted to produce its own at a school built near the observatory to train "half-caste" orphans as apprentice surveyors and assistant computers. The school, staffed by the Brahmins, drew upon knowledge and pedagogical practice associated with the tinnai, the schools in which upper-caste children learned to read, write, and calculate. For a time, the observatory's social order was literally "half-caste." The paper also considers how the relationship between caste, status, and instrument was reflected in the visual and material culture of the observatory, such as in Indian-language inscriptions on its central pillar. For company astronomers, the measurement of time meant reworking the relationships among the Indian past, the colonial present, and an imperial posterity. Science under colonial rule spanned multiple temporal and social registers because it was the result of negotiations between the demands of political economy and the knowledge and practices of colonized others.

Nodes of knowledge, managing transfer: Shipbuilding and repair during the transformation from sail to steam.

The core theme of the special issue in which this article appears is the inherent impossibility of confining the knowledge required to build and sustain the instruments of travel to a single space or institution. This is certainly true for the ships that built empires - the large sailing and later steam ships produced by navies and companies in the process of European expansion. Ships traveled between polities and required repairs overseas, taking the construction knowledge and practices with them. Skilled laborers - experienced shipwrights and increasingly also trained engineers - helped to transfer shipbuilding practices across oceans, and to adapt these practices to local conditions based on forms of "blended know-how." This article explores how the circulation of shipbuilding knowledge and practices within and between maritime empires changed with the increasing pace of industrialization. It does so on the basis of three moments: the Dutch East India Company's shipbuilding activities in Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the interaction between private industry and the Dutch state in advancing machine-manufacturing in both the Netherlands and on Java in the 1830s and 1840s; and the aid provided by Dutch engineers in laying the groundwork for Japanese industrial warship-construction in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such transfers put high demands on the capacities of states and naval administrators in controlling the flows of necessary resources and skilled labor, requiring complex arrangements between states and private capital. Industrialization did not change this basic fact, but it did change the nature of these arrangements. Although shipbuilding knowledge always remained practice-driven, highly mobile and susceptible to local adaptation, the increasing technological demands created by the transition from sail to steam and wood to iron, combined with the extension of the power of states and transnationally operating manufacturing companies, considerably changed the institutional embeddings and societal consequences of its circulation.

The Electrophoretic Revolution in the 1960s: Historical Epistemology Meets the Global History of Science and Technology.

This paper uses zone electrophoresis, one of the most frequently used tools in molecular biology, to explore two ideas derived from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on experiments. First, the constraining role played by technical objects-instrumentation and material conditions-in the production of knowledge or epistemic things. Second, the production of interconnected experimental systems by such technical objects, which results in the unexpected entanglement of research fields and experimental cultures. By the beginning of the 1960s, the inception of zone electrophoresis in laboratories around the world transformed-some say, revolutionized-the study of proteins. Even today, electrophoresis continues to open research venues and questions in biomedicine, molecular biology, human genetics, and in the field of molecular evolution. In my essay, I seek to look at the interconnected lives of zone electrophoresis and address the broader social, and even global context, in which this apparently humble technique became a salient tool in the production of biological knowledge. In so doing, I aim to take the past and present of the history and historiography of experimental systems to the future, where experiments and technologies are interrogated as they are used in different geographies and contexts, including contexts of poverty.

Introduction: Race science in the Latin world.

This essay outlines the various analytical frameworks related to the history of race science that contribute to a "Latin" intellectual culture and tradition. In addition to defining Latinity as applied to the history of science, this article examines the troubled relationship between Latin American history and histories of science characterized as global. Similarly, it explores intellectual linkages across the Global South regarding racial mixture and the legacy of colonialism. It concludes by considering how a Latin perspective can illuminate the continued hegemony of ideas and scientific practices originating in North America and northern Europe.

[Corona and globalization: Arrested developmentCorona et la mondialisation enchaînée]. / Corona und die gefesselte Globalisierung.

The term "globalization" doesn't refer to a current epoch of world history, but to an undulated process interrupted by harsh setbacks. Its phases of upswing are characterized by exponential growth. They end when tipping points arrive. For globalization inevitably has its winners and losers, these phases are paralleled by processes of fragmentation in other countries, macro-regions and societies. The article provides a sketch of both types of processes, illustrated by examples from world history. It thereby shows that they must not be considered mere byproducts of technological development in transport and communication, but also depend on institutions that guarantee "International Public Goods" (IPGs), above all safety, stability and connectivity. Only great powers can provide this type of goods, for only they have the resources to do so, then again for only they are confronted with a volunteer's dilemma. Moreover globalization depends on a grand narrative that marginalizes competing schools of thought. Crises emerge either when transactions driving the process reach a tipping point, or when great powers decline and are no longer ready or able to provide IPGs. Now critical discourses emerge and become hegemonic in the face of successive crises undermining the grand narrative. This results in social division between cosmopolitans and populists. Both "big players" currently face different dilemmas conditioned by their positions as hegemonic power (USA) and freerider (China), in each case causing them to act neo-isolationist. The result: IPGs are no longer guaranteed, globalization is in crisis. This development has been catalysed by the Corona-pandemic.

Le concept de mondialisation ne désigne pas une période actuelle de l'histoire mondiale mais un processus se déroulant par vagues et entrecoupé de brusques reculs. Les phases d'expansion se caractérisent par une croissance exponentielle jusqu'à ce que soient atteints des points de bascule. Parallèlement se déroule un processus de fragmentation touchant certains pays, régions du monde ou parties de la société, la mondialisation produisant toujours des gagnants et des perdants. Ces deux processus sont esquissés à l'échelle mondiale à l'aide d'exemples historiques. Ils ne sont pas simplement la conséquence des transformations techniques dans le domaine des transports et des communications mais nécessitent des institutions encadrant la fourniture de biens publics internationaux tels que la sécurité, la stabilité et la connectivité. Ceux-ci sont fournis par les grandes puissances qui seules disposent des ressources suffisantes et sont confrontées au dilemme du volontaire. Un grand récit de la mondialisation qui marginalise les doctrines concurrentes est par ailleurs nécessaire. La mondialisation entre en crise quand les transactions qui alimentent ce processus atteignent des points de bascule ou quand les grandes puissances sont en déclin et ne sont plus disposées ou en mesure de prendre en charge les biens publics internationaux. C'est alors qu'émerge le discours critique de la mondialisation qui devient hégémonique quand des crises se succèdent qui délégitiment le discours de la mondialisation. Il en résulte un clivage au sein de la société entre cosmopolites et populistes. Actuellement, les principaux acteurs sont confrontés au dilemme hégémonique (USA) ou au dilemme du passager clandestin (Chine) et réagissent de manière néo-isolationniste. Les biens publics internationaux se trouvent ainsi remis en question et la mondialisation entre en crise. La pandémie de coronavirus a catalysé cette évolution.

Terapias globales, psiquiatras locales: la circulación de tratamientos de shock y su implementación en Rosario, Argentina, 1936-1944 / Global therapies, local psychiatrists: shock treatment circulation and its implementation in Rosario, Argentina, 1936-1944

Resumen El artículo analiza la implementación de los tratamientos biológicos de shock en el Instituto de Psiquiatría de Rosario, Argentina, durante el período de entreguerras. El objetivo es destacar el impacto que un fenómeno global, referido al fortalecimiento de la disciplina y el surgimiento de nuevas terapias, tuvo en un espacio de atención psiquiátrica argentino. Así, se analizará la relevancia que tuvieron las limitaciones presupuestarias, la experimentación de alternativas y la presencia de expertos internacionales en la incorporación de las novedades terapéuticas. Se sostiene que las estrategias desplegadas por el Instituto para implementarlos exponen los matices locales de un fenómeno global, así como su aporte a la experimentación de los tratamientos.

Abstract This article analyses the implementation of biological shock treatments in the Psychiatric Institute of Rosario, Argentina, during the interwar period. The aim is to illuminate the impact that a global phenomenon, referred to the strengthening of the discipline and the emergence of new therapies, had on an Argentinean psychiatric care space. Thus, it will analyse the relevance that budgetary limitations, the experimentation of alternatives and the presence of international experts had in the incorporation of therapeutic novelties. It is argued that the strategies deployed by the Institute to implement them expose the local nuances of a global phenomenon, as well as its contribution to the experimentation of treatments.

The politics of environments before the environment: Biopolitics in the longue durée.

Our understanding of body-world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer world - 'plasticity' or 'metabolism'- or external influences on the body - 'environment' or 'milieu' - appeared with rise of modern science. On the other side, although premodern science lacked a unifying term for it, an anxious attentiveness to the power of 'environmental factors' in shaping physical and moral traits held sway in nearly all medical systems before and alongside modern Europe. In this article, I build on a new historiography on the policing of bodies and environments in medieval times and at the urban scale to problematize Foucault's claim about biopolitics as a modern phenomenon born in the European eighteenth-century. I look in particular at the collective usage of ancient medicine and manipulation of the milieu based on humoralist notions of corporeal permeability (Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sina) in the Islamicate and Latin Christendom between the 12th and the 15th century. This longer history has implications also for a richer genealogy of contemporary tropes of plasticity, permeability and environmental determinism beyond usual genealogies that take as a starting point the making of the modern body and EuroAmerican biomedicine.

Material conditions and ideas in global history.

Since the rise of a "scientific" historiography in the nineteenth century, the role of ideas in history versus that of material forces has been a key philosophical problem. Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology (2019), read as a work of global history, offers a provocative rehearsal of this question. On the one hand, the book is an attempt to provide a narrative historical frame for the hard data of the World Inequality Database. On the other, paradoxically, it offers a defiant conclusion that ideology is, or at least could be, the key driver in social and institutional change towards universal progress. St Simon, Comte and Spencer have found their twenty-first century heir. How can we historicize Piketty's impetus, both understanding its provenance and making sense of its limitations? One key issue is its roots in the traditions of National Accounts, which leads to an approach to the global which is stresses comparison over connection, and to an uncritical reproduction of the portrait of an egalitarian non-capitalist Twentieth century painted by Kuznets during the Cold War. Another is its presentism, with the historical argument driven by an attempt to understand the c.1980-2020 conjuncture and its alternatives, and a connected overdependence on the support of a few historians. A third, a consequence in part of the inequalities between the quality of data we have for different parts of the world, and of Piketty's provenance and imagined audience, is a Eurocentric, even Gallocentric approach. A fourth is a very French republican refusal to address how class is complicated by identities of race and nation so that neither egalitarian policies nor ideologies provide remedies for the populist politics of right. None of these criticisms are in contradiction with our view that Capital and Ideology is a work of social theory of world historical importance.

The uses of useful knowledge and the languages of vernacular science: Perspectives from southwest India.

In the first half of the eleventh century, a group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing systematic texts about everyday life in a register of language sometimes called New Kannada. While looking back toward earlier texts composed in Sanskrit - and even translating portions of them - these scholars centered their poetic ability and their personal experiences as opposed to prior authoritative texts. They described themselves as authoring "worldly sciences" that were "useful to the people of the world," and they provided extensive reflections on the systematics of knowledge. Epistemic, linguistic, and political concerns were significantly renegotiated in this moment as local context was turned into a virtue for the production of technical treatises. This article uses this moment to interrogate recent discussions of useful knowledge and vernacular science. Usefulness can mean different things at different times and vernacular sciences change according to their language. This article argues for a usage of both terms that is more attuned to historical particulars. A history of useful knowledge from a place that now appears under the double effacement of the non-modern and non-West offers an opportunity to think through central concepts of the history of science without relying on economic or utilitarian discourses. This paper presents one possible example of what a more global history of useful knowledge might look like.

"Peruvian balsam": an example of transoceanic transfer of medicinal knowledge.

BACKGROUND: Connections between China and the new Spanish colonies in America are known for an exchange of silver for silks and porcelains. That also medicinal drugs and medicinal knowledge crossed the Pacific Ocean is hardly known or discussed. Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms ("New World" or "Peruvian balsam") is a botanical balsam that has a long history of medicinal use, particularly as antiseptic and for wound healing. Except for a Chinese article discussing the reception of balsam in China and Japan, no scientific studies on its impact in China and Japan and the channels of transfer from the Americas to Asia exist. METHODS: Description: (1) This section provides a general introduction into Commiphora gileadensis ("Old World" balsam) as a medicinal category and discusses the specific medicinal properties of Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms. The section "Historical research and uses" provides a brief survey on some historical analyses of balsam. Aim, design, setting: (2) Applying a comparative textual and archaeological analysis the article critically examines Chinese and Japanese sources (texts, maps) to show (i) what Chinese and Japanese scholars knew about balsam, (ii) where and how it was used, and (iii) to identify reasons why the "digestion" of knowledge on balsam as a medicinal developed so differently in China and Japan. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: This chapter discusses the introduction of "Peruvian balsam" into, its uses as a medicinal as well as its scholarly reception in early modern China and Japan and introduces the channels of transmission from Spanish America to Asia. It is shown that Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms was partly a highly valued substance imported from the Americas into China and Japan. But the history of the reception of medicinal knowledge on Peruvian balsam was significantly different in China and Japan. CONCLUSIONS: In Japan, the knowledge on Myroxylon balsamum was continuously updated, especially through mediation of Dutch physicians; Japanese scholars, doctors and pharmacists possessed a solid knowledge on this balsam, its origin and its medicinal uses. In China, on the contrary, there was no further "digestion" or development of the knowledge on either Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms or Commiphora gileadensis. By the late nineteenth century, related medicinal and even geographic knowledge had mostly been lost. The interest in "balsam" in late Qing scholarship was pure encyclopaedic and philosophic.

Trend and Prospect of Study on Chinese Medical History - Diversification of the Study on Medical History Study Through Integration and Communication.

This study has focused on studying Chinese medical history for the past 10 years (2010-2019). There has been no overall introduction to how the study of Chinese medical history has been carried out so far in Korea. To understand the trend for the recent 10 years, understanding of the period before that is needed. This study had classified the study trend of Chinese medical history from the 1950s when the study of Chinese medical history started in full swing until the last 10 years into the following three periods: First period: internal study period on Chinese medical history (the 1950s-1980s) Second period: external study period on Chinese medical history (the 1980s-1990s) Third period: diverse study period on Chinese medical history through integration and communication (2010-2019) There can be an opinion that various studies by each period have not been adequately reflected, and the classification has been excessively simplified. For example, the internal study has been considerably performed in the second period, and the consciousness of conflict between the internal study and external study remains in the third period. Nonetheless, the keywords that connote each period's characteristics for the past 70 years are considered the keywords presented above. The study of Chinese medical history has mainly placed importance on the modern times. Indeed, no change has been present as well. However, the fact that the study on the Chinese pre-modern medical history in Korean academia for the past 10 years has quantitatively grown from just a comparison of the number of papers can be identified. Also, the researchers and study themes have been confirmed to be diversified. In the past, ancient Chinese medicine was understood as a connection between Taoism and medicine. The environmental history researchers dealt with the connection between natural disasters and diseases, and just a few studies in the fields of medicinal herb distribution and the viewpoint of the body were carried out. Meanwhile, studies from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty were carried out based on new data such as the archaeological relics and bamboo and wooden slips in the Korean academia for the past 10 years. Discovering new data is undoubtedly a driving force to activate studies. Studies on the Tang Dynasty Medical System and laws based on 'Chunsungryeong' are significant achievements connecting the Qin Dynasty & Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasty & Yuan Dynasty. Identification of each period's medical system in medical history is the most essential thing, and the combination of environment and medical history is conducted. It is significant to examine medical history from the viewpoint of the academic disciplines' integration. Approaching medical history from the female viewpoint has already started in the U.S., Europe, and Taiwan, and it is nice that such a study has been conducted in Korean academia. There are not many researchers on Chinese medical history in Korean academia. As several researchers have led the study, the study's concentration on specific periods or specific themes cannot be denied. The integration of systematic research achievements from the pre-Qin Dynasty until the Qing Dynasty is still minimal. Specifically, the study on pre-modern medical history targets a more extensive period than the study on modern medical history; therefore, researchers' density is low. This is why the possibility of intersection is not high in the period, region, and theme between researchers. This can be the source of an evaluation that study on medical history chain is sparse. It is wistful that the study continuity or systematic research is lacking. To overcome such a limitation, existing researchers need to conduct collaborative joint planning and research centered on particular themes through cooperation. They need to complement the study's sparse part in medical history through multidisciplinary co-research. Beyond the research centered on country study history, attempts to understand history as global history are being carried out. Studies on the exchange and interrelations between Western medicine and Chinese medicine have been performed in Chinese medical history. Nonetheless, studies on the exchange and interrelations of medical knowledge, medical systems, medicinal herbs, medical books, medical workforce, and diseases (epidemics) from global history are insufficient. Studies on a medical history that started from Chinese science and technology development history in the 1950s are developing to discuss one theme diversely. Plenty of studies on Chinese medical history need to be performed in various fields, including environmental history, the history of women, archeology, humanities, humanities therapy, integrated medical humanities, medical literature, medical theory, and medical system, which are the traditional fields.

The knowing world: A new global history of science.

This article proposes a new global approach to the history of science centered on questions of geopolitics, historical consciousness, and cultural identity. Arguing that the field is now at a crossroads between its longstanding focus on the history of the natural sciences in the Western world, and the prospect of some form of worldwide history of science, the article describes a new undergraduate lecture course, designed by the author and taught at Rutgers and Harvard since 2015, which neither begins in Western Europe nor culminates with the United States. It aims to articulate an original vision for the field on this basis. Histories of science can and should offer deep histories of the global present, it is argued, by rethinking how historical narratives involve geographical decisions about where to focus analytical attention (and where not) and tackling narrative and geography together as linked issues. The approach proposed here is neither science in context nor knowledge in transit but engages the notion of a knowing world: one made up of multiple scientific cultures and long historical memory, and requiring dialectical movement back and forth across both space and time on a worldwide scale to grasp the scientific past's importance for the present, as well as the present's impact on how we perceive the past. Explicitly addressing polemics of identity, culture, race, and nationhood can help us to construct a more civic-minded and geopolitically informed history of science of use in the changing circumstances of the twenty-first century.

Russia and the Medical Drug Trade in the Seventeenth Century.

This article deals with the trade in medicines into Russia in the seventeenth century. Both the early modern medical drug trade, and Russian medicine, have previously received substantial attention, but no work has thus far been undertaken on the Russian angle of the drug trade. Drawing on previously unused documents, this article traces the kinds of drugs acquired by the Moscow court. In contrast to the dominant view of official Russian medicine as divorced from native healing practices and fundamentally reliant upon Western European trends, these documents reveal that drugs were sourced as locally as Moscow markets, and from as far afield as East Asia and the Americas, but that not all drugs were accepted. As many of these imports came through Western European markets, this article also sheds further light on what drugs were available there, demonstrating the great diversity of drugs traded in early modern Europe.

Methodological challenges involved in compiling the Nahua pharmacopeia.

Recent work in the history of science has questioned the Eurocentric nature of the field and sought to include a more global approach that would serve to displace center-periphery models in favor of approaches that take seriously local knowledge production. Historians of Iberian colonial science have taken up this approach, which involves reliance on indigenous knowledge traditions of the Americas. These traditions present a number of challenges to modern researchers, including availability and reliability of source material, issues of translation and identification, and lack of systematization. This essay explores the challenges that emerged in the author's attempt to compile a pre-contact Nahua pharmacopeia, the reasons for these challenges, and the ways they may - or may not - be overcome.

How the nerves reached the muscle: Bernard Katz, Stephen W. Kuffler, and John C. Eccles-Certain implications of exile for the development of twentieth-century neurophysiology.

This article explores the work by Bernard Katz (1911-2003), Stephen W. Kuffler (1913-1980), and John C. Eccles (1903-1997) on the nerve-muscle junction as a milestone in twentieth-century neurophysiology with wider scientific implications. The historical question is approached from two perspectives: (a) an investigation of twentieth-century solutions to a longer physiological dispute and (b) an examination of a new kind of laboratory and academic cooperation. From this vantage point, the work pursued in Sydney by Sir John Carew Eccles' team on the neuromuscular junction is particularly valuable, since it contributed a central functional element to modern physiological understanding regarding the function and structure of the human and animal nervous system. The reflex model of neuromuscular action had already been advanced by neuroanatomists such as Georg Prochaska (1749-1820) in Bohemia since the eighteenth century. It became a major component of neurophysiological theories during the nineteenth century, based on the law associated with the names of François Magendie (1783-1855) in France and Charles Bell (1774-1842) in Britain regarding the functional differences of the sensory and motor spinal nerves. Yet, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that both the histological and the neurophysiological understanding of the nerve-muscle connection became entirely understood and the chemical versus electrical transmission further elicited as the mechanisms of inhibition. John C. Eccles, Bernard Katz, and Stephen W. Kuffler helped to provide some of the missing links for modern neurophysiology. The current article explores several of their scientific contributions and investigates how the context of forced migration contributed to these interactions in contingently new ways.

História da sociologia como campo de pesquisa e algumas tendências recentes do pensamento social brasileiro / The history of sociology as a field of research and some recent trends in Brazilian social thought

Resumo O artigo estabelece as bases para um diálogo entre os estudiosos do pensamento social brasileiro e os historiadores da sociologia como disciplina. Para atingir esse objetivo, analiso os desenvolvimentos recentes no campo da história da sociologia, destacando a incorporação de métodos historiográficos e a emergência de uma abordagem transnacional, que aponta para o projeto de uma história global da disciplina. Critico os limites eurocêntricos desse campo e argumento que as tendências recentes de pesquisa na área do pensamento social brasileiro podem ajudar a superar tal limitação. Finalmente, analiso brevemente os obstáculos que impedem tal diálogo e aponto possíveis estratégias para superá-los.

Abstract The article lays the foundation for a dialog between scholars of Brazilian social thought and historians of sociology as a discipline. In order to achieve this objective, I analyze recent developments in the field of the history of sociology, highlighting the incorporation of historiographic methods and the emergence of a transnational approach, which points toward a global history of the discipline. I criticize the Eurocentric limits of this field and argue that recent research trends in the area of Brazilian social thought can help overcome this limitation. Finally, I briefly analyze the obstacles that impede this dialog and indicate possible strategies for overcoming them.

From bauxite to cooking pots: Aluminum, chemistry, and West African artisanal production.

The history of aluminum's transformation from a precious to a commonplace metal over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has frequently been told as a narrative about intrepid western chemists, whose discoveries made it possible for industrialized manufacturers to make the metal global. This paper questions both the singularity of that discovery and the inevitability of aluminum's global dominance as a 'modern' material of manufacture. It does so by considering the history of aluminum in West Africa and the ways in which artisans in that region domesticated the substance to an artisanal mode of production and developed quotidian chemical knowledge of it in the process. Considering aluminum from the perspective of West Africa suggests that aluminum may not have been discovered once, but many times, and that everyday material engagements can inspire forms of chemical knowhow that operate well beyond the bounds of the laboratory and industrial manufacturing plant.