The Transformation of the Perception of Change since the late Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Using Lévi-Strauss’s dichotomy of hot and cold societies, this article examines culture- and epoch-
specific perceptions of change in conjunction with attitudes toward pasts. It argues that a
transformation of the cold perception, seeking to keep change at bay, into the hot perception,
focused on promoting change, took place in Europe at c. 1800. This transformation concurred
with the strengthening experience of a gap disjoining past from present and of the felt need
to conjoin past with present through historiography. In other parts of the planet, however, the
cold perception of change prevailed jointly with the experience of continuity from past into
future. The discrepancy between these perceptions of change and attitudes toward pasts has
ushered in conflicts during and after colonial rule and has suspended or even suppressed endogenous
potentials for change in groups subject to colonial rule.