ORGANIZERS:

Johann Büssow, University of Halle
Valeska Huber, German Historical Institute of London
Liat Kozma, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Avner Wishnitzer, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The later decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century witnessed major economic, political, social and cultural transformations that are often referred to as "the first era of modern globalization". The conference aims to place the Middle East within these wider processes through one specific perspective – that of movement.

Across the globe, unprecedented movements of people, commodities, and ideas radically changed every aspect of life. Commercial patterns and warfare, urban space and religious life, eating manners and family relations, leisure culture and house interiors, immigration and education; nothing was left untouched. This seemingly uncontrolled movement dialectically brought about efforts to inhibit, or at least to limit the flow of this transit. As humans and objects began to circulate more freely, local and colonial governments sought to channel, contain, and control these movements more effectively. The destabilizing movement and the efforts to contain it were not limited to the political sphere. The flux of the first globalization threatened to sweep entrenched concepts and systems of ideas and thus generated anxieties at least as much as it brought about new hopes. Therefore, in the cultural realm too, intensified movement necessitated the formulation of new conceptual tools that would offer a measure of order, stability, and security.