Transcending boundaries in Europe

Transcending boundaries in Europe in the Period of the Belle Epoque

Transcending Boundaries in Europe in the Period of the Belle Epoque: Organizing Knowledge, Mobilizing Networks, and Effecting Social Change
A colloquium to be held at the Mundaneum, 20-21 May 2010

The Belle Epoque is a turbulent periodi in Western European history between about 1880 and 1914 characterized by an emerging modernization in social and political organization, in
artistic and literary life and in the conduct and discoveries of the sciences. These developments – and the opposition and unrest that they occasioned– were accompanied by the creation of new structures and processes for discovering, communicating and managing information. In some quarters there was a deepening awareness of, even anxiety about, the problem of how best to create the organizations, systems and processes that, constituting a new or at least improved information infrastructure, would become central to the strategies being adopted to achieve particular scientific, political or social purposes.

But how did these structures and processes emerge, inter-relate, operate and themselves further develop during the period? We suggest that possible answers lie in the dynamics of emerging networks of individuals, organizations and publications by means of which information was exchanged across and through all kinds of social, organizational, linguistic, epistemic, political and geographical borders or boundaries. All of these boundaries were
penetrated and many were replaced by others as the different modalities of information creation, organization and communication were mobilized to achieve the developments
characteristic of the period.

Papers for the colloquium will explore aspects of network development, information creation, organization and exchange, and related “boundary spanning”ii activities of individuals and institutions and the scholarly tools and techniques that this enabled them to develop during the period of the “Belle époque” in which the Western European world underwent extensive social, political and “epistemic” change from 1880 to 1914.

Call for papers

Composition of the Scientific Committee

A note on the background of the Colloquium

Background paper

For more information, please contact the secretariat of the colloquium