Suchergebnisse

Bibliographie von ca. 4000 Büchern, Zeitschriftenartikeln, Reports u.a. Veröffentlichungen, die bis 1983 in arabischer Sprache erschienen sind und in europäische Sprachen übersetzt wurden. Übersetzungen ins Englische wurden nicht berücksichtigt, da diese in dem Werk von Anderson, Arabic Materials in English Translation, G.K.Hall, Boston 1980, bibliographiert sind. Das Material ist nach folgenden Sachbegriffen geordnet: Anthologien, Islamstudien, Philosophie, Musik, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Technologie, Medizin, Geschichte, Geographie, Sozialwissenschaften, Literatur, nichtislamische Religionen. Indices der Autoren, Übersetzer und Titel. (SWP-Hck)

On the morning I sat down to begin this paper, Melbourne's daily newspaper, the Age, had chosen to run an interesting combination of stories on its 'Opinion 'page. This is a page towards the back of the first news section of the paper, on which writers, thinkers, or general 'opinion makers' express their views on topical issues, or ideas. There was only one main topic this day - Australia's contested black/white history and the Federal Government's inability to come to terms with it.

What happens when manhood suffrage, a radically egalitarian institution, gets introduced into a deeply hierarchical society? In her sweeping history of Imperial Germany's electoral culture, Anderson shows how the sudden opportunity to "practice" democracy in 1867 opened up a free space in the land of Kaisers, generals, and Junkers. Originally designed to make voters susceptible to manipulation by the authorities, the suffrage's unintended consequence was to enmesh its participants in ever more democratic procedures and practices. The result was the growth of an increasingly democratic culture in the decades before 1914. Explicit comparisons with Britain, France, and America give us a vivid picture of the coercive pressures--from employers, clergy, and communities--that German voters faced, but also of the legalistic culture that shielded them from the fraud, bribery, and violence so characteristic of other early "franchise regimes." We emerge with a new sense that Germans were in no way less modern in the practice of democratic politics. Anderson, in fact, argues convincingly against the widely accepted notion that it was pre-war Germany's lack of democratic values and experience that ultimately led to Weimar's failure and the Third Reich. Practicing Democracy is a surprising reinterpretation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany and will engage historians concerned with the question of Germany's "special path" to modernity; sociologists interested in obedience, popular mobilization, and civil society; political scientists debating the relative role of institutions versus culture in the transition to democracy. By showing how political activity shaped and was shaped by the experiences of ordinary men and women, it conveys the excitement of democratic politics

I am grateful to Volker Berghahn for the chance to clarify our differences as well as for the characteristic civility of his critique. In what follows, I will 1) take issue with his view of German historiography; 2) rebut his charge that the recent scholarship has left us with a "fragmented," ultimately undecipherable picture of the Kaiserreich; and 3) explain why I think my own argument in Practicing Democracy, which he agrees takes seriously the oppressive features of German society, is more persuasive than his picture of "deterioration to the point of impasse and ungovernability."