Development policy rests on the conceptual division of the world between developed and underdeveloped countries. The article argues that this dichotomous way of splitting the world into one collective self, on one side, and a collective other, on the other, pertains to the category of what Koselleck has termed “asymmetrical counterconcepts.” Moreover, many of the characteristics of our modern concept of development directly derive from older counterconcepts or dichotomizations e.g. the idea that the underdeveloped can, in principle, “develop” and that developed countries should assist others in developing themselves. In this essay some historical examples of such dichotomies are examined, with a special emphasis on the civilized-uncivilized conceptual pair and on the idea of civilizing the “Barbarian.” The recapitulation of past dichotomies not only unearths the historical influences on the idea of development. Above all, it contributes to a better understanding of its present-day complexities.
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In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Oct 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 202–225
The Specter of Communism
Denmark, 1848
Bertel Nygaard
Sartori, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 134–158. On “counterconcept”: Reinhart Koselleck, “On the Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts,” in Koselleck, Futures Past , 155–191; Kay Junge and Kirill Postoutenko, eds
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–23
Modernity, Ḥadātha, and Modernité in the Works of Abdallah Laroui
Conceptual Translation and the Politics of Historicity
Nils Riecken
does not hinge on “traditional values” or “tradition” as its asymmetrical counterconcept. Even if Laroui develops a modernist critique of “tradition,” this critique does not neatly align it with modernist claims of both a “cut” of the present from the
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 67–90
On Counterrevolution
Semantic Investigations of a Counterconcept during the French Revolution
Friedemann Pestel
dynamic, if not progressive, orientation and made not the slightest allusion to political regression. Second, this contemporary understanding of revolution’s most prolific “asymmetrical counter—concept” 3 stands in contrast to a mainstream
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 50–75
Precarious Time, Morality, and the Republic
New Granada, 1818–1853
Francisco A. Ortega
struggle is between voting with words and voting with daggers.” 103 The fiery language fashioned asymmetrical counterconcepts: “The opposite of civilization and morality is immorality and barbarism.” Such language did not seek nor admit moderation; it
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 85–109
Voluntarism
Promises of Proximity as Articulated by Changing Moral Elites
Anders Sevelsted
. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 88. 17 Reinhart Koselleck, “The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts,” in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time , trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 80–104