Editing World history (field) (section)

==Establishment and perimeters of the field==
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| quote = "World history is not a thing, but an activity, and various physical forms of expression such as lectures, books, journal papers and classroom lessons are ''criteria'' for it. An historian, for instance, may point to a book and say 'that's a world history', even if they cannot elucidate why. 'World history' should thus be defined through an examination of the various forms of expression taken as its criteria, not apart from or prior to them."
| source = – [[Marnie Hughes-Warrington]] (2005){{sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2005|p=3}}
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[[Jerry H. Bentley]] (2011) observed that "the term ''world history'' has never been a clear signifier with a stable referent", and that usage of the term overlaps with [[universal history (genre)|universal history]], [[comparative history]], global history, [[Big History]], [[macro history]], and [[transnational history]], among others.<ref>Jerry H. Bentley, 'The Task of World History', in ''[https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235810.001.0001 The Oxford Handbook of World History]'', ed. by Jerry H. Bentley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 1-14, {{doi|10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235810.013.0001}} (p. 1).</ref> [[Marnie Hughes-Warrington]] (2005) reasoned that "world history" is often mistaken to encompass the entire [[Earth]], because works claiming to be "world histories" may have in practice a more limited scope, depending on the author's perspective: 'The "world" in world history (...) refers not to the earth in its entirety – both include and apart from human experience – but to the ''known'' and ''meaningful'' world of an individual or group.'{{sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2005|p=5}}

The advent of world history as a distinct academic field of study can be traced to the United States in the 1960s, but the pace quickened in the 1980s.<ref name="auto">Jerry H. Bentley, 'The Task of World History', in ''[https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235810.001.0001 The Oxford Handbook of World History]'', ed. by Jerry H. Bentley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 1-14, {{doi|10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235810.013.0001}} (p. 2).</ref><ref name="Gran2009">{{cite book|author=Peter Gran|title=The Rise of the Rich: A New View of Modern World History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fOv-dewXZi4C|access-date=25 May 2012|date=28 February 2009|publisher=Syracuse University Press|isbn=978-0-8156-3171-2|page=XVI}}</ref> A key step was the creation of the [[World History Association]] and graduate programs at a handful of American universities. Over the next decades scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations, and graduate programs in World History proliferated. World History has often displaced Western Civilization in the required curriculum of American high schools and universities, and is supported by new textbooks with a world history approach.

World history attempts to recognize and address two structures that have profoundly shaped professional history-writing:
# A tendency to use current [[nation-states]] to set the boundaries and agendas of studies of the past.
# A deep legacy of [[Eurocentrism|Eurocentric]] assumptions (found especially, but not only, in Western history-writing).
Trying to escape the nation-state, global history tries to transcend nation boundaries by looking at larger unburdened by spacial limitations.<ref name="Conrad">{{cite journal |title=What Is Global History? |last=Conrad |first=Sebastian |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=122 |issue=4 |date=2017 |doi=10.1093/ahr/122.4.1180 |pages=1180-1181}}</ref> Thus World History tends to study networks, connections, and systems that cross traditional boundaries of historical study like linguistic, cultural, and national borders. World History is often concerned to explore social dynamics that have led to large-scale changes in human society, such as [[industrialization]] and the spread of [[capitalism]], and to analyse how large-scale changes like these have affected different parts of the world. Like other branches of history-writing in the second half of the twentieth century, World History has a scope far beyond historians' traditional focus on politics, wars, and diplomacy, taking in a panoply of subjects like [[gender history]], [[social history]], [[cultural history]], and [[environmental history]].<ref name="auto"/>

===Organizations===
* The ''H-World'' website and online network<ref>see [http://www.h-net.org/~world/ H-World] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110310065155/http://www.h-net.org/%7Eworld/ |date=2011-03-10 }}</ref> is used among some practitioners of world history, and allows discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.
* The [[International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations]] (ISCSC) approaches world history from the standpoint of comparative civilizations.  Founded at a conference in 1961 in [[Salzburg]], Austria, that was attended by Othmar Anderlie, [[Pitirim Sorokin]], and [[Arnold J. Toynbee]], this is an international association of scholars that publishes a journal, ''Comparative Civilization Review'', and hosts an annual meeting in cities around the world.
* The ''[[Journal of Global History]]'' is a scholarly journal established in 2006 and is published by [[Cambridge University Press]]. 
* The [[World History Association]] (WHA) was established in 1982, and is predominantly an American phenomenon.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thewha.org/history_mission.phpWorld|title=History Association - Mission}}{{Dead link|date=June 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Since 1990, it publishes the ''[[Journal of World History]]'' on a quarterly basis.<ref>see [http://www.historycooperative.org/jwhindex.html JWH Website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512153957/http://www.historycooperative.org/jwhindex.html |date=2008-05-12 }}</ref>