You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Negotiating National Identities presents an empirically detailed and theoretically wide-ranging analysis of the complex political and cultural struggles taking place in contemporary Europe. Taking contemporary Austria and her controversial identity politics as its central case study in a discussion of developments across a variety of national and pan-European contexts, this book demonstrates that neo-nationalism has been one among several competing reactions to the processes and challenges of globalization, whilst inclusive notions of identity and belonging are shown to have emerged from the realms of civil society and cultural production. Shifting the study of national identities from the party-political to the social, cultural and economic realms, this book raises important questions of human rights, social exclusion and ideological struggle in a globalizing era, drawing attention to the contested nature of European politics and civil societies, in which existing configurations of power and exclusion are both reproduced and challenged. As such, it will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of race and ethnicity, national identity and media and cultural studies.
Writing History, Constructing Religion presents a much-needed interdisciplinary exploration of the significance of debates among historians, scholars of religion and cultural theorists over the 'nature' of history to the study of religion. The distinguished authors discuss issues related to definitions of history, postmodernism, critical theory, and the impact on the study and analysis of religious traditions; exploring the application of writing 'history from below', discussions of 'truth' and 'objectivity' as opposed to power and ideology, crises of representation, and the place of theory in the 'historicized' study of religion(s). Addressing conceptual debates in a wide range of historical and empirical contexts, the authors critically engage with issues including religious nationalism, Nazism, Islam and the West, secularism, religion in post-Communist Russia, ethnicity and post modernity. This book constitutes a significant step towards the self-reflexive and interdisciplinary study of religions in history.
Negotiating National Identities presents an empirically detailed and theoretically wide-ranging analysis of the complex political and cultural struggles taking place in contemporary Europe. Taking contemporary Austria and her controversial identity politics as its central case study in a discussion of developments across a variety of national and pan-European contexts, this book demonstrates that neo-nationalism has been one among several competing reactions to the processes and challenges of globalization, whilst inclusive notions of identity and belonging are shown to have emerged from the realms of civil society and cultural production. Shifting the study of national identities from the party-political to the social, cultural and economic realms, this book raises important questions of human rights, social exclusion and ideological struggle in a globalizing era, drawing attention to the contested nature of European politics and civil societies, in which existing configurations of power and exclusion are both reproduced and challenged. As such, it will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of race and ethnicity, national identity and media and cultural studies.
Exploring the performance by immigrants of domestic and care work in European households, this book places the employer centre-stage, examining the role of the employer and his or her agents in securing the balance between work, family and welfare needs, as well as investigating both who the employers are and the nature of their relationships with migrant workers. With attention to the dynamics of inequality, as class, ethnicity and gender become intertwined in a location that is at once home and workplace, this volume is organised into sections that deal with the subjectivities of employers and their relationships with their employees in the home; the re-organisation of welfare and care arrangements at state level; and the wider area of migrant domestic and care work, with the transformation of the au pair scheme. Bringing together the latest empirical work from across Europe, Employers, Agencies and Immigration will appeal to social scientists with interests in migration, ethnic and class relations, immigrant labour and domestic work and the sociology of the family.
Suspect Families is the first book to investigate the social, political, and ethical implications of parental testing for family reunification in immigration cases. Drawing on policy documents, legal frameworks, case study material and interviews with representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisation and immigration authorities, immigration lawyers, geneticists and applicants for family reunification, the book analyses the different political regimes and social arrangements in which DNA analysis is adopted for decision-making on family reunification in three distinct European countries: Austria, Finland and Germany.
Inside Immigration Law analyses the practice of implementing immigration law, examining the different political and organisational forces that influence the process. Based on unparalleled academic access to the German migration management system, this book provides new insights into the ‘black box’ of regulating immigration, revealing how the application of immigration law to individual cases can be chaotic, improvised and sometimes arbitrary, and either informed or distorted by the complex, politically laden and changeable nature of both German and EU immigration laws. Drawing on extensive empirical material, including participant observation, interviews and analyses of public as well a...
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 co...
A beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination. In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat. The Shadow of the Empr...
During the 1970s todays Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung, BMBWF) supported the founding of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Austrian Chair at Stanford University in California. These foundings were the initial incentives for the worldwide `spreading' of similar institutions; currently, nine Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies exist in seven countries on three continents. The funding of the Ministry enables to connect senior scholars with young scholars, to help young PhD students, to participate in and to benefit from the scientific connec...
Exploring the similarities and differences between and across masculinities in the Middle East and the West, Postcolonial Masculinities avoids the constant reinforcement of divisions and stereotypes created by the process of 'othering' and the problematic discourse of the clash of civilisations, examining instead how subjectivities in Western and Arab societies are intertwined, operating through envy of the other and the desire to be at once the same and yet fundamentally separate. With a focus on England and Egypt, this book reveals the manner in which masculinities are shaped in and through a history of colonialism and postcolonialism, irrespective of colour, ethnicity, religion, class, se...