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Jewish Life in Austria and Germany Since 1945
Based on published primary and secondary materials and oral interviews with some eighty communal and organizational leaders, experts and scholars, this book provides a comparative account of the reconstruction of Jewish communal life in both Germany and in Austria (where 98% live in the capital, Vienna) after 1945. The author explains the process of reconstruction over the next six decades, and its results in each country.The monograph focuses on the variety of prevailing perceptions about topics such as: the state of Israel, one's relationship to the country of residence, the Jewish religion, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the influx of post-soviet immigrants. Cohen-Weisz examines the changes in Jewish group identity and its impact on the development of communities. The study analyzes the similarities and differences in regard to the political, social, institutional and identity developments within the two countries, and their changing attitudes and relationships with surrounding societies; it seeks to show the evolution of these two country's Jewish communities in diverse national political circumstances and varying post-war governmental policies.
eBook
Shifting sands : the unravelling of the old order in the Middle East
\"At a time when the Middle East dominates media headlines more than ever-and for reasons that become ever more heartbreaking-Shifting Sands brings together fifteen impassioned and informed voices to talk about a region with unlimited potential, and yet which can feel, as one writer puts it, 'as though the world around me is on fire' ? Collecting together the thoughts and insights of writers who live or have deep roots in there, Shifting Sands takes a look at aspects of the Middle East from the catastrophic long-term effects of the carving up of the region by the colonial powers after World War One to the hopes and struggles of the Arab spring in relation to Egypt, Iran and Syria. And it asks questions such as: what is it like to be a writer in the Middle East ? What does the future hold? And where do we go from here ? For all those who are wearied by the debates surrounding the Middle East-often at best ill-informed and at worst, defeatist propaganda-this intelligent, reasoned perspective on life in the Middle East is a breath of fresh air\"-- Publisher.
Ruptures in the Everyday
During the twentieth century, Germans experienced a long series of major and often violent disruptions in their everyday lives. Such chronic instability and precipitous change made it difficult for them to make sense of their lives as coherent stories—and for scholars to reconstruct them in retrospect. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together an international team of twenty-six researchers from across German studies to craft such a narrative. This collectively authored work of integrative scholarship investigates Alltag through the lens of fragmentary anecdotes from everyday life in modern Germany. Across ten intellectually adventurous chapters, this book explores the self, society, families, objects, institutions, policies, violence, and authority in modern Germany neither from a top-down nor bottom-up perspective, but focused squarely on everyday dynamics at work \"on the ground.\"
eBook
Explaining economic backwardness : post-1945 Polish historians on eastern Europe
\"This monograph is about a string in the intellectual history of eastern Europe: the debate of leading Polish historians on the origins of the economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years that span between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. The author focuses on the works of four leading participants in the debate, Kula, Malowist, Topolski and Wyczaânski. The analysis provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the post1945 Polish historians' notion on Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate on backwardness influenced Western historical sociology, discussion on origins of capitalism, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and image of Eastern Europe in western, Marxisminspired social science. Although created under the pressure of the adverse conditions of state socialism, censorship in particular, this scholarship, with its emphasis on international comparisons and global perspective, as well as its stress on social theory and explanations, is an important part of social science of the postwar period. Its analysis helps also to understand current differences that occasionally lead to conflicts between Europe's richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The rise and decline of the Post-Cold War international order
This book surveys the evolution of the international order in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War through the prism of developments in key regional and functional parts of the 'liberal international order 2.0' (LIO 2.0) and the roles played by two key ordering powers, the United States and the People's Republic of China. Among the partial orders analysed in the individual chapters are the regions of Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and the international regimes dealing with international trade, climate change, nuclear weapons, cyber space, and international public health emergencies, such as SARS and ZIKA. To assess developments in these various segments of the LIO 2.0, and to relate them to developments in the two other crucial levels of political order, order within nation-states, and at the global level, the volume develops a comprehensive, integrated framework of analysis that allows systematic comparison of developments across boundaries between segments and different levels of the international order. Using this framework, the book presents a holistic assessment of the trajectory of the international order over the last decades, the rise, decline, and demise of the LIO 2.0, and causes of the dangerous erosion of international order over the last decade.
Book
The American Soul Rush
Yoga. Humanistic Psychology. Meditation. Holistic Healing. These
practices are commonplace today. Yet before the early 1960s they
were atypical options for most people outside of the upper class or
small groups of educated spiritual seekers. Esalen Institute, a
retreat for spiritual and personal growth in Big Sur, California,
played a pioneering role in popularizing quests for
self-transformation and personalized spirituality. This \"soul rush\"
spread quickly throughout the United States as the Institute made
ordinary people aware of hundreds of ways to select, combine, and
revise their beliefs about the sacred and to explore diverse
mystical experiences. Millions of Americans now identify themselves
as spiritual, not religious, because Esalen paved the way for them
to explore spirituality without affiliating with established
denominations The American Soul Rush explores the concept of
spiritual privilege and Esalen's foundational influence on the
growth and spread of diverse spiritual practices that affirm
individuals' self-worth and possibilities for positive personal
change. The book also describes the people, narratives, and
relationships at the Institute that produced persistent, almost
accidental inequalities in order to illuminate the ways that gender
is central to religion and spirituality in most contexts.
eBook
Kingdom of characters : the language revolution that made China modern
\"After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world's most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire, with literacy reserved for the elite few. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China's greatest and most daunting challenge was a linguistic one. Just as important as China's technological and industrial advances and political maneuvers was the century-long fight to make the Chinese language-with its many dialects and complex character-based script-accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold and cunning innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world defined by the West and its alphabet: the exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, the Chinese Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a tea cup, among others. Without the advances they enabled, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. The revolution of the Chinese script is just as breathtaking as China's transformation into a capitalist juggernaut, in large part because those linguistic innovations literally enabled China's reinvention. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China's tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle yet potent power to be exercised and expanded\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Militant Around the Clock?
During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek \"popular tradition.\" This book critically interrogates the notion of \"sexual revolution\" by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.
eBook