Alltagsgeschichte, or the
history of everyday life, emerged
during the 1980s as the most interesting new field among
West German historians and, more recently, their East German
colleagues. Partly in reaction to the modernization theory
pervading West German social history in the 1970s,
practitioners of
Alltagsgeschichte stressed the complexities
of
popular experience, paying particular attention, for
instance, to the relationship of the German working class to
Nazism. Now the first English translation of a key volume of
essays (Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer
Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen) presents this approach and
shows how it cuts across the boundaries of established
disciplines. The result is a work of great methodological,
theoretical, and historiographical significance as well as a
substantive contribution to German studies.
Introduced by Alf Lüdtke, the volume includes two empirical
essays, one by Lutz Niethammer on life courses of East
Germans after 1945 and one by Lüdtke on modes of accepting
fascism among German workers. The remaining five essays are
theoretical: Hans Medick writes on ethnological ways of
knowledge as a
challenge to social history; Peter Schöttler,
on mentalities, ideologies, and discourses and
alltagsgeschichte; Dorothee Wierling, on gender relations
and alltagsgeschichte; Wolfgang Kaschuba, on popular
culture and workers' culture as symbolic orders; and Harald Dehne on
the challenge alltagsgeschichte posed for Marxist-Leninist
historiography in East Germany.
Review:
"The book will be valuable to those interested in new
approaches in social history, social science history, and
the sociology of popular culture."--American Journal of
Sociology
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