3月4日：研究会のご案内／Workshop announcement on March 4th

【研究会のご案内】

2026年3月4日（水）16:30より、American University of ParisのStephen W. Sawyer教授を迎えして以下の通り研究会を開催いたします。Sawyer教授は政治史・政治思想史の分野で多数の興味深い研究を発表されており、IPSA（世界政治学会）のInternational Political Science AbstractsのCo-editorとしても活躍されています。今回の研究会では、2025年1月に刊行されたばかりの新著”Demos Rising: Democracy and the Popular Construction of Public Power in France, 1800-1850”  (University of Chicago Press) の内容を中心にご発表いただきます。この新著は、19世紀後半の第三共和政成立前後のフランスにおける民主主義と近代国家形成、そこにアメリカが与えた影響を明らかにした前著”Demos Assembled”の続編として、どちらかというと民主主義から遠ざかった時期として一般に理解されがちな19世紀前半のフランスにおける民主主義の概念形成を、ドイツの思想家が与えた影響も考慮しつつ検討した大変興味深い内容となっています。皆様のご参加をお待ちしております。
We are delighted to host a workshop by Professor Stephen W. Sawyer from American University of Paris. Please find the details below. In the workshop, he will mainly discuss his major findings of his most recent book, Demos Rising Democracy and the Popular Construction of Public Power in France, 1800-1850 (University of Chicago Press), just published in January 2025. Everyone is welcome.

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Date and Time:
March 4, 2026 (Wednesday), 16:30-18:00

Place:
Room 203 (2nd floor), Building 3, Waseda Campus, Waseda University

Speaker:
Stephen W. Sawyer (American University of Paris)

Title:
Toward a Genealogy of the Modern Demos:Democratic Society and the Problem of Public Authority in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract:
Examining the period between 1800 and 1850, Sawyer studies a set of thinkers who debated at length over the political problems of everyday life wrought by the emergence of post-revolutionary democracy. He traces how debates on the possibilities of democratically governing a society of equals sparked calls for political action and social reform in the face of conflict wreaked by deforestation, urbanization, health crises, labor relations, industrial capitalism, religious tensions, and imperial expansion. By studying this profound transformation in governance we can better understand the origin and meaning of democracy — event when events in our own time have thrown the concept into doubt.

Bio:
Stephen W. Sawyer is the Ballantine-Leavitt Professor of History and Director of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies at the American University of Paris (AUP). Sawyer is currently at work on a multivolume study of democracy. The first volume of this project was published in 2018 under the title Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State, 1840-1880 (University of Chicago Press) and the second volume Demos Rising Democracy and the Popular Construction of Public Power in France, 1800-1850 (University of Chicago Press) has just appeared.