Culture and Crisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden / Edition 1

by Nina Witoszek, Lars Tr g rdh

Overview

It is often argued that Germany and Scandinavia stand at two opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to their response to social-economic disruptions and cultural challenges. Though, in many respects, they have a shared cultural inheritance, it is nevertheless the case that they mobilize different mythologies and different modes of coping when faced with breakdown and disorder. The authors argue that it is at these "critical junctures," points of crisis and innovation in the life of communities, that the tradition and identity of national and local communities are formed, polarized, and revalued; it is here that social change takes a particular direction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571812698
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	12/01/2002
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Nina Witoszek is Professor of Cultural History at Oslo University.

Lars Trägårdh received his Ph D in history from UC Berkeley and currently co-directs a research project concerning trust and state/civil society relations in Sweden at the Research Institute of Ersta Sköndal University College in Stockholm. His most recent publications include State and Civil Society in Northern Europe (Berghahn Books, 2007), After National Democracy: Rights, Law and Power in America in the New Europe (Hart Publishing, 2004), and with Henrik Berggren Är svensken människa: Oberoende och gemenskap i det moderna Sverige (Norstedts, 2006).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Nina Witoszek and Lars Trägårdh

Chapter 1. Some Questions Concerning the Conceptual History of "Crisis"
Reinhart Koselleck

Chapter 2. The Institutionalization of Modernity: Shocks and Crises in Germany and Sweden
Erik Ringmar

Chapter 3. Moral Community and the Crisis of the Enlightenment: Sweden and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
Nina Witoszek

Chapter 4. Crisis and the Politics of National Community: Germany and Sweden, 1933-1994
Lars Trägårdh

Chapter 5. Interpreting the Holocaust: Crisis of Modernity or Crisis of German Ideology?
Benjamin Lapp

Chapter 6. Politics and Catastrophe: Why Is the World So Obsessed with German History?
Manfred Henningsen

Chapter 7. Race, Nation, and Folk: On the Repressed Memory of World War II in Sweden and Its Hidden Categories
Piero Colla

Chapter 8. Crisis: The Road to Happiness?
Yvonne Hirdman

Chapter 9. The Crisis of Consensus in Postwar Sweden
Göran Rosenberg

Chapter 10. Political Modernity's Critical Juncture in the Course of the French Revolution
Robert Wokler

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"... the book deserves credit ... for trying to tackle the tricky issue of crisis as an historical theme, and in doing so offers a novel approach for rethinking the critical 1930s." ·H-German

From the Publisher