We are pleased to announce that the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia will be hosting a Tobunken seminar co-organized by the Working Group “Methodological Issues in the Study of Ottoman Primary Sources” at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia and Islamic Trust Studies Group B01 “The Ideas of the Muslim Community and State Systems."
We invited for this seminar Dr. Orçun Can Okan of University of Oxford, who specializes in the history of transitions from the late Ottoman Empire to the post-Ottoman era. In this seminar, he will focus on petitions during and after World War I, offering a critical examination of the agency of "individuals" as revealed in those petitions.
Date and time: March 13, 2024 (Wed), 3pm~5pm
Venue: Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, 2nd Meeting Room (302)/Zoom
Speaker: Orçun Can Okan (University of Oxford)
Title: Petitions and “Individuals”: First-Person Narratives and Historical Agency at Intersections of Diplomatic, Administrative, and Legal History
Chair: Jun Akiba (IASA, U Tokyo)
Registration form: In person / Online
Abstract:
Historians use various kinds of first-person narratives to trace past experiences and analyze historical actors’ claims about the past, the present, and the future. These include memoirs published in multiple editions, manuscripts written for the eyes of the very few (if any), as well as petitions processed (or ignored) on the desks of bureaucrats. With a focus on petitions in particular, this talk invites renewed attention to how first-person narratives can facilitate the contextualization of historical agency in new, explanatory ways. It critically engages with the role of memoirs in recent scholarship on World War I and its aftermath(s) in the Ottoman Empire, and highlights alternative research directions that foreground petitions formulated to address specific administrative and legal problems in times of state succession. By questioning some of the basic assumptions underlying notions of “ordinary people” and “bottom-up” approaches, it problematizes uncritical reliance on these notions in analyses of social interactions through archival sources. Ultimately, the talk aims to stimulate conversation on how to balance structural factors with “individual” (and collective) agency in particular historical contexts.
Co-organizers: Working Group “Methodological Issues in the Study of Ottoman Primary Sources” (Principal Investigator:Jun Akiba (IASA)) / JSPS Kakenhi 20H01322 / Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A), “The Ideas of the Muslim Community and State Systems” (Principal Investigator: KONDO Nobuaki (ILCAA); 20H05827).