Christian Karner

Bernhard Weicht

Bringing together contributions from an international group of social scientists, this collection examines diverse crises, both historical and contemporary, which implicate market forces, widening inequalities, social exclusion, forms of resistance, and ideological polarisation. The Commonalities of Global Crises offers carefully researched case studies which stretch across large geographical distances- from Egypt to the US and from northern, central, eastern and southern Europe to South America- and covers timely issues including human rights, slavery, care, migration, racism, and the far right. The volume demonstrates that such different settings and diverse concerns are characterized by a common tension in which the crises that unfold around pressures of widening marketization and commodification are met by the (re)building or re-assertion of various communities, and competing politics of solidarity and nostalgia.

Markets, Communities and Nostalgia

The Commonalities of Global Crises

Günter Bischof

Marc Landry

Austria's post-WWII 'victim-myth' both shaped the country post-war history and, since its deconstruction in the aftermath of the Waldheim affair, is now a central trope in the scholarly literature. This volume aims at extending the discussion of different myths throughout Austria's 20th century-history and some of their continuing impact on the present. We consider 'myths' to be socially, culturally and politically consequential - though always also contestable - narratives of particular pasts and their purported meanings. Such narratives are, at best, selective in what is being remembered. At worst, they contain outright distortions that are arguably particularly topical at our present historical juncture with its concerns about the 'post-factual'. Distinctly inter-disciplinary and focused on different realms of 'myth-making', this volume casts its analytical net unusually wide. The various myths critically examined here thus include: artistic representations of 'Austrian'/'German landscapes' both before and after the Anschluss; Austrian narratives surrounding World War II, the Holocaust and the much-discussed Stunde Null; re-construction and the Marshall Plan; neutrality; the trope of post-war Austria as an Insel der Seligen; collective self-portrayals as an Umweltvorzeigeland; Viennese narratives about the city's Jewish history; Mitteleuropa-Nostalgie and its (transnational) manifestations in policy-making. Importantly, this volume offers different critical responses to such myths, searching assessments about their political impact or usefulness, and thought-provoking discussions of the role and responsibilities of scholarship vis-a-vis such highly selective or positively distorting narratives.

Construction and Deconstruction

Myths in Austrian History (Contemporary Austrian Studies, vol. 29)

Mixing theories of the everyday with a wide range of case studies, this book explains the 'character' of ethnicity, from being a political tool of exclusion, to a source of meaning and solidarity, and the relationship between culture, power and identity. Combining theories of the everyday with empirical case studies, this book examines: the 'dual character' of ethnicity – as a political tool of exclusion and source of meaning/ solidarity respectively the relationship between culture, power and identity the significance of historical/socio-economic contexts to ethnicity and everyday life. This book addresses many important questions through a critical application of theories of the everyday to a series of case studies that include travellers, the South Asian diaspora, contemporary Austria, and asylum seekers in 'Fortress Europe'. This book provides an accessible and coherent introduction to the sociology of ethnicity and will be essential reading for undergraduate students on cultural studies, race and ethnic studies, and sociology courses.

Ethnicity and Everyday Life

Decades after the previously unimaginable horrors of the Nazi extermination camps and the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their memories remain part of our lives. In academic and human terms, preserving awareness of this past is an ethical imperative. This volume concerns narratives about—and allusions to—World War II across contemporary Europe, and explains why contemporary Europeans continue to be drawn to it as a template of comparison, interpretation, even prediction. This volume adds a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to the trajectories of recent academic inquiries. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, political scientists, and area study specialists contribute wide-ranging theoretical paradigms, disciplinary frameworks, and methodological approaches. The volume focuses on how, where, and to what effect World War II has been remembered. The editors discuss how World War II in particular continues to be a point of reference across the political spectrum and not only in Europe. It will be of interest for those interested in popular culture, World War II history, and national identity studies.

Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics

The Use and Abuse of Memory

Monika Kopytowska

Europeanness is challenged by the multiple crises and debates happening across the continent. There is long-standing disagreement over Europe's boundaries, and politicians and citizens continually reflect on the EU's past, present and future. This book analyses such reflections and political struggles in a variety of national and local contexts.

Doing and Undoing Europe

National Identity and Europe in Times of Crisis

Aline Sierp

Pictures of Angela Merkel in a Nazi uniform, the burning of German flags, newspaper articles portraying Southern Europe as work-shy and Northern Europe as tight-fisted: The Eurozone crisis has thrown up old stereotypes; often digging into well-established historical images of ‘the other’. The conscious or tacit (ab)use of national prejudices by politicians and parts of the media, and the strong emotional reactions among European citizens have caused a lot of public concern about the likely negative implications of such reawakening of national clichés and the newly hardening boundaries they construct for the process of European integration. It is evident that current and recent crises confront European citizens with profound dilemmas which they seek to make sense of, and in response to which much new political mobilisation takes place. At the same time, some of the interpretative and political reactions thus generated also have the potential to become very destructive processes, putting into question years of integration efforts. This book brings together scholars who examine the nexus between (economic) crisis, national identities and the use of historical images, and prejudices and stereotypes, by focusing particularly on media and political discourses in different European countries. In addition to detailed empirical discussions covering diverse national settings across Europe, the different contributions discuss and offer a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches within the inter-disciplinary study of national identities, prejudice and stereotyping in the context of socio-economic and political crises. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of National Identities.

Christian Karner

About

Books

Join the club