Figures, Types and Images of the Social in the 19th and 20th Century
Published:
Figures, Types and Images of the Social in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Practices of Social Imagination in the History of Knowledge and Science
Date Nov. 20, 2025, 10:00 a.m. - Nov. 21, 2025, 4:00 p.m.
Venue M38 – IBZ, International Meeting Center (Michaelisstraße)
Organizer Chair of History of Science
Workshop as part of the EXC “Imaginamics. Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagination”
Information from the organizers:
“It is no easy matter [...] to arrange the several varieties of work into ‘orders,’ and to group the manifold species of arts under few comprehensive genera, so that the mind may grasp the whole at one effort – it is a task of most perplexing character,” wrote Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor (1849–1851). Mayhew's early social research in London is well known – far less so, however, is the fact that he lived in Paris in the late 1830s, when the new medium of illustrated journals and anthologies was experiencing its heyday, bringing together images and texts, artistic-literary and scientific circles in a new, creative way.
Back in London, Mayhew also worked between popular journalism and social statistics, deliberately resorting to pictorial representations of social types for the latter, with which he fundamentally shaped ideas of the social.