Facing Asymmetry: Nordic Intellectuals and Center–Periphery Dynamics in European Cultural Space

Abstract

This article addresses the role of asymmetry in the interaction between intellectual fields in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on the spatial and temporal hierarchies implicit in the ways intellectuals from the Nordic countries perceived and made use of marginality and backwardness, the article brings a peripheral perspective to the discussion of transnational intellectual history. This is important as the discussion on transnational history tends to stress notions like reciprocity and hybridity, which reproduce the ideal of a borderless and equal republic of letters, and paints a too harmonious picture of global cultural space.

The Evolution of Cultural Space in a World Heritage Site: Tourism Sustainable Development of Mount Wuyi, China

“…It is a multifunctional and wide-ranging space, which includes not only aesthetic space but also life and service space along with production and consumption [26]. In recent years, cultural space has been examined from anthropological and sociological perspectives [5,[27][28][29], particularly in relation to its meaning, cultural value, and localization history [15]. Cultural space contains a dialectical relationship between social practice and cultural-symbolic meaning.…”

Introduction to Section 6

“…Considering such converging pressures to stress the peripheral nature of Finnish art and literature, we should indeed look critically at the perception of Finland and other European peripheries as the backwaters of modernism, where there was only national art and delayed superficial imitations of a selection of modern cultural "-isms", in eclectic combinations. But nor should we uncritically accept the other extreme of interpreting the European avant-gardes as de-centred interactive networks, where cultural hierarchies hardly mattered at all (see Nygård and Strang 2016). Instead, we arguably do better justice to the historical actors themselves if we take into account the social constraints that conditioned their modernising efforts.…”

Nordic Modernities

“…Furthermore, a visit to the centre is hard currency when coming back to one's local intellectual field. 6 Could this perspective also have been used to understand the relation between the Nordic countries, and perhaps more, the way in which intellectuals in the different countries related to each other?…”