Department seminar: Jan Breman
The Department of Social Anthropology is happy to announce the upcoming seminar with Jan Breman, Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The title of the lecture is "Alexis de Tocqueville on class and race".
Main content
Seminar paper
The first part of my essay is a factual chronology of Tocqueville’s life and work. The second part zooms in on the social and colonial questions which were high on his agenda though understated in the analysis of his scholarship which was mainly concerned with his first and last book publications.
The two questions on which I have focused in my reflections on his academic work are interrelated, should be contextualized in their entanglement and as related to his politically driven life. While claiming the universality of the human race, Tocqueville’s brand of liberalism is in denial of freedom and equality for the majority of humankind held unfit to join the democracy of citizenship postulated.
About the lecturer
Jan Breman is professor at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Read more about his scholarship here.