The Germans : power struggles and the development of habitus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The Germans : power struggles and the development of habitus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Polity Press, 1996
- Other Title
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Studien über die Deutschen : Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
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  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
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  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
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Note
First published in German as Studien über die Deutschen by Suhrkamp Verlag, c1989
Includes bibliographical notes (p. [437]-481) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Norbert Elias is one of the most important and influential social thinkers of the twentieth century. Towards the end of his life he completed a major study of German society and culture in which he used his key ideas to analyse the development of the country in which he had lived for many years. The "Germans" is Elias' last great work and it displays all of the breadth, brilliance and originality of his other major writings.Through a skilful interweaving of empirical evidence and theoretical reasoning, Elias explores the ways in which the particular features of German personality, social structure and behaviour, arose out of Germany's past. Proceeding chronologically from the Enlightenment to the present day, he draws particular attention to the devastation wrought in the seventeenth century by the Thirty Years' War; Germany's late unification compared to countries such as Britain and France which were unified much earlier and, as a result, enjoyed a much less discontinuous pattern of history and social development; and the series of wars under the leadership of the militaristic ruling strata of Prussia during which German unification eventually took place.In the course of this unification, he argues, large sections of the middle classes abandoned the humanistic values which had hitherto predominated in their social circles and became 'brutalized'.
Elias then examines the weakening of state control in Germany after the First World War and the emergence of the private armies of the Freikorps, destabilizing the fledgling Weimar Republic and contributing to a terrorist movement that strove for the restoration of authoritarian rule. He argues that these events, which culminated in the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, occurred as a result of decisions made in a context of national crisis by ruling groups which enjoyed widespread popular support, especially among the middle classes. The "Germans" is a classic work. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociology and social theory, politics, modern European history and German Studies.
Table of Contents
Preface by Eric Dunning and Stephen Mennell. Introduction. 1. Civilization and Informalization. 2. A Digression on Nationalism. 3. Civilization and Violence: On the State Monopoly of Physical Violence and its Transgression. 4. The Breakdown of Civilization. 5. Thoughts on the Federal Republic. Editorial Postscript by Michael Schroter. Notes. Index.
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