Călin Cotoi, Inventing the Social in Romania, 1848-1914: Networks and Laboratories of Knowledge. Leiden: Brill 2020. ISBN: 978-3-506-70489-4

URL: https://brill.com/view/title/57646

In Inventing the Social in Romania, 1848–1914, Călin Cotoi brings to life several ‘obscure’ anarchists, physicians, public hygienists and reformers roaming the borderlands of Europe and Russia. 

The book follows individuals, texts, projects, sometimes even bacteria, traveling, meeting, colliding, writing and talking to each other in surprising places, and on changing topics. All of them navigated the land, sometimes finding unexpected loopholes and shortcuts in it, and emerged in different and unexpected parts of the social, political or geographical space. 

Using materials ranging from anarchists’ letters, to social-theoretical debates and medical treatises, Călin Cotoi points to the larger theoretical and historical issues involved in the local creation of the social, its historicity, and its representability.

Călin Cotoi (Calin Cotoi)  is Professor at University of Bucharest, Department of Sociology. He has published monographs and articles on the history of social sciences, history of medicine, political anthropology, and social theory.