Ricardo Duchesne

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Ricardo Duchesne is a Canadian sociologist of history . His research focuses on the history and culture of the occident and the rise of the western world . In his major work The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (2011) Duchesne criticizes the destructive effects of multiculturalism on Western culture .

Life

Born in Puerto Rico , Duchesne earned a bachelor's degree in history from McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada . In 1987 he received a Magister Artium from Concordia, where he devoted his thesis to the origins of the French Revolution with George Rudé . In 1994 he received his doctorate from York University as part of the multidisciplinary program Social & Political Thought , where he dealt in particular with Hegel's philosophy ; his doctoral thesis on " Historical Materialism and the Debate on the Transition to Capitalism " was named the best dissertation of the year in 1995 by the humanities faculty.

In the same year Duchesne took a position as a research assistant in the department of social sciences at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John , where he was appointed full professor in 2007. In 2003 he received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), for which he currently serves as a member of a selection committee for doctoral candidates.

By 2011, Duchesne had written a book, 31 peer-reviewed articles and thirteen encyclopedic entries, among other things . His main work The Uniqueness of Western Civilization was published in 2011. In his sociological history work, Duchesne has dealt extensively with world system theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank , whom he accuses of systematically devaluing Western history and civilizational achievements. He publishes many of his contributions to the debate in H-World .

theory

In his work The Uniqueness of Western Civilization , Duchesne denounces the devaluation of Western culture by the historical revisionism of multiculturalism, the ideology of which has spread in academic circles since the 1960s. Duchesne defends the rise of the West against left-wing criticism such as the world system approach and argues for the unbroken validity of the Eurocentric historical image of Europe as the one culture that has brought mankind into modernity. In particular, he opposes the thesis that Asia still showed surprising economic parallels to Europe until 1800. He criticizes how the previous debate about the 'rise of the West' was conceptually limited to the emergence of modern science ( Scientific Revolution ) and the use of steam engines to replace conventional muscle work ( Industrial Revolution ). Duchesne believes the West was long before unique in two ways:

  • through the establishment of the first liberal and democratic culture, starting with the ancient Greek and Roman public assemblies, the communes , universities and estates of the Christian Middle Ages, the early modern parliaments and diets, the literary circles , newspapers and other publications of the Enlightenment
  • through the great creative achievements in art such as natural science and the humanities, which have been predominantly of European origin since ancient Greece

Duchesne's analysis traces the special development of Europe in a wide arc from Greek logos and Roman law through the Renaissance and Reformation to the voyages of discovery and early capitalism . The search for the reasons for the restless creative activity of the West leads him back to the aristocratic and freedom-loving culture of the Indo-Europeans , who with their ethos of heroic individualism and their rivalry for personal glory made the Occident from about 2000 BC. Began to dominate.

Work

  • "The French Revolution as a Bourgeois Revolution: A Critique of the Revisionists," Science & Society , Vol. 54, No. 3, 1990, pp. 288-320
  • "Between Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism: Debating AG Frank's Re-Orient", Science & Society , Vol. 65, No. 4, 2001/2002, pp. 428-463
  • "Rodney Hilton's Peasant Road to Capitalism?" Journal of Peasant Studies , Vol. 30, No. 2, 2003, pp. 129-145
  • Centers and Margins: The Fall of Universal History and the Rise of Multicultural World History, in Hughes-Warrington, Marnie (eds.), Advances in World Histories , London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 135-167 , ISBN 1-4039-1278-5
  • "On the Rise of the West: Researching Kenneth Pomeranz's Great Divergence," Review of Radical Political Economics , Vol. 36, No. 1, 2004, pp. 52-81
  • "Defending the Rise of Western Culture Against its Multicultural Critics," The European Legacy , Vol. 10, No. 5, 2005, pp. 455-484
  • "Globalization, the Industrialization of Puerto Rico and the Limits of Dependency Theory," Journal for Development Policy , Vol. 32, No. 1, 2006, pp. 55-83
  • "Asia First?", The Journal of the Historical Society , Vol. 6, No. 1, 2006, pp. 69-91
  • "Christianity is a Hellenistic Religion, and Western Civilization is Christian," Historically Speaking , Vol. 7, No. 4, 2006
  • "The Way of Africa, the Way I Am, and the Hermeneutic Circle", in Yerxa, Donald (Ed.), Recent Trends in World History: The Place of Africa and the Atlantic World: Historians in Conversation , Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-57003-758-0
  • "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization" , Studies in Critical Social Sciences , Vol. 28, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011, ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5
  • "The Fall of British Vancouver and the Rise of 'Pacific' Canada" , The Salisbury Review , Vol. 31, No. 1, 2012 ( long version ; PDF; 184 kB)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ricardo Duchesne: "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization" ( Memento of the original of July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 61 kB), Studies in Critical Social Sciences , Vol. 28, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011, ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.brill.com
  2. ↑ York University: Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought (Eng.)
  3. ↑ Brill : "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization" (Eng.)
  4. ↑ Ricardo Duchesne: "Between Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism: Debating AG Frank's Re-Orient", Science & Society , Vol. 65, No. 4, 2001/2002, pp. 428-463

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Duchesne, Ricardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian sociologist of history
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century