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Insightful analysis of relationships between human communities and aquatic ecosystems of Europe from c. 500 to 1500 CE.
Large city fires were a huge threat in premodern Central European every-day life; only quite late, institutional forms of fire insurances emerged as a post-disaster instrument of damage recovery. During the nineteenth century, insurance agencies spread through the World forming a plurality of modernities, safe or unsafe.
"Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and participant observation, this examination of the adoption and adaptation of Mod style across geographic space also maps its various interpretations over time, from the early 1960s to the present. The book traces the Mod youth culture from its genesis in the dimly lit clubs of London's Soho. where it began as a way for young people to reconfigure modernity after the chaos of World War II, to its contemporary, country-specific expressions. By examining Mod culture in the United States, Germany, and Japan alongside the United Kingdom, "We Are the Mods" contrasts the postwar development of Mod in those countries that lost the war with those that won. The book illuminates the culture's fashion, music, iconography, and gender aesthetics, to create a compelling portrait of a transnational subculture." --Book Jacket.
Images of ruins may represent the raw realities created by bombs, natural disasters, or factory closings, but the way we see and understand ruins is not raw or unmediated. Rather, looking at ruins, writing about them, and representing them are acts framed by a long tradition. This unique interdisciplinary collection traces discourses about and representations of ruins from a richly contextualized perspective. In the introduction, Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle discuss how European modernity emerged partly through a confrontation with the ruins of the premodern past. Several contributors discuss ideas about ruins developed by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benja...
More than sixty friends and colleagues pay tribute to the distinguised professor Janos M. Bak's 70th birthday."
To Know Our Many Selves profiles the history of Canadian studies, which began as early as the 1840s with the Study of Canada. In discussing this comprehensive examination of culture, Hoerder highlights its unique interdisciplinary approach, which included both sociological and political angles. Years later, as the study of other ethnicities was added to the cultural story of Canada, a solid foundation was formed for the nation's master narrative.
Significant recent research on the German Right between 1918 and 1933 calls into question received narratives of Weimar political history. The German Right in the Weimar Republic examines the role that the German Right played in the destabilization and overthrow of the Weimar Republic, with particular emphasis on the political and organizational history of Rightist groups as well as on the many permutations of right-wing ideology during the period. In particular, antisemitism and the so-called “Jewish Question” played a prominent role in the self-definition and politics of the right-wing groups and ideologies explored by the contributors to this volume.
In most cities today, fire has been reduced to a sporadic and isolated threat. But throughout history the constant risk of fire has left a deep and lasting imprint on almost every dimension of urban society. This volume, the first truly global study of urban conflagration, shows how fire has shaped cities throughout the modern world, from Europe to the imperial colonies, major trade entrepôts, and non-European capitals, right up to such present-day megacities as Lagos and Jakarta. Urban fire may hinder commerce or even spur it; it may break down or reinforce barriers of race, class, and ethnicity; it may serve as a pretext for state violence or provide an opportunity for displays of state benevolence. As this volume demonstrates, the many and varied attempts to master, marginalize, or manipulate fire can turn a natural and human hazard into a highly useful social and political tool.
Tales of Two Cities compares both metropolises and soon discovers differences as well as similarities. American and German experts from different fields (for example historians, geographers, architects, journalists or Americanists) join our 'guided tours' through Chicago and Hamburg. They introduce the reader to the sister cities as migration magnets and spaces of different interests. They discuss challenges and chances of urban life, city planning, safety measures or media cities within an Atlantic context. The volume includes contributions in German as well as English. Claudia Schnurmann is a researcher at the Department of History at the University of Hamburg (Germany). Iris Wigger is a researcher at the School of Sociology at University College in Dublin (Ireland).
As Enlightenment notions of predictability, progress and the sense that humans could control and shape their environments informed European thought, catastrophes shook many towns to the core, challenging the new world view with dramatic impact. This book concentrates on a period marked by passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional village life to new bourgeois and even individualistic urbanism. The volume employs a broad definition of catastrophe, as it examines how urban communities conceived, adapted to, and were transformed by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. Competing views of gen...