scholarly journals Max Weber and the Problem of a ‘Successful Peace’

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hinnerk Bruhns ◽  
Suzanne Kirkbright
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Post War ◽  
German Reich ◽  
The Way

“How can we think of peace? And when?”, Max Weber asks in a letter to Ferdinand Tönnies, in 14 October 1914. This article focuses on the concept of “successful” peace, the decisive concept for Weber’s ideas about the “way out of the war” that the author refined between 1914–1918 in his speeches, texts and letters. For Weber, a successful peace depended not only on the foreign policy dimension but even more on important inner reforms and a fundamental reorganisation of the German Reich. Analysing Weber’s “ideas of 1918” – radically opposed to the well-known “ideas of 1914” – this paper focuses on three aspects: (1) nation and state citizens (2) Prussia, (3) German tradition, history and political culture, before outlining, at the end, Weber’s ideas about the European post-war order.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

scholarly journals Culture, Strategy, and State-Centered Explanations of Revolution, 1789 and 1989

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Culture Strategy ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution

Social scientists studying revolutions have increasingly argued that explanations of revolutions that do not include subjective factors, such as culture, are inadequate. The failure to explain the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989 is forceful testimony to this inadequacy. But the way in which cultural aspects are being added to existing approaches tends to undermine past advances in studying revolutions. Recent historiography of the French Revolution provides an example of a more thorough-going approach to political culture. A productive synthesis that both preserves past advances and better explains the revolutions of 1989 is achieved by analyzing the effects of cultural change on state elites.

Two post-war paths: Popular violence in the Bohemian lands and in Austria in the aftermath of World War I

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 759-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ota Konrád
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
New World ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
World War ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Post War ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Wartime Experience

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again.

Musical Culture To-day: A Sociological Note

Tempo ◽  
1944 ◽  
pp. 104-107
Author(s):  
W. H. Mellers
Keyword(s):  
New Technique ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Good Music ◽  
Adequate Provision ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Way

We are often told that there is to-day a promising efflorescence of musical culture in this country; that the public for ‘good’ music is growing rapidly; and that more adequate provision must be made for music in the post-war reconstructed world. Substantially I believe all this is true; but it does also seem to me that much potential cultural vitality may be wasted if these conclusions are accepted too easily, without enquiry into the premisses on which they are based. What do we mean by musical culture? What do we expect music to give us? The mere quantity of music played tells us nothing; we want to know what kind of relation the noise has to the society that produces it, we want to know what bearing it has on the way people live. If we look back a moment to consider some of the things that music has meant to people living before us, we shall soon see that our problems are peculiarly difficult, and that we may well need a virtually new technique to deal with them. A refusal to see our educational problems against the background of history will lead to confusion and incompetence in musical culture as in everything else.

Foreign, Security, and Defence Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Ben Tonra
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
Face Adaptation ◽  
Policy Engagement ◽  
The Eu

This chapter explores the roots of Irish foreign, security, and defence policy, placing them in the context of a deeply pragmatic approach to public policy. Those roots are defined in terms of nationalism, solidarity, and global justice, which are themselves deep markers within Irish political culture. Ireland’s pragmatic approach is then grounded in a meticulously crafted rhetoric surrounding key foreign policy priorities but an associated reluctance to devote substantial resources towards these foreign policy and defence goals. Together, this gives rise to an assessment that the interests of smaller and less powerful states such as Ireland are best defended within legitimate, strong, and effective multilateral institutions such as the UN—even as the state continues to face adaptation challenges arising from a deepening foreign, security, and defence policy engagement within the EU.

Anglo-american policy in Greece (1946-50)

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spero Simeon Zachary Paravantes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
Current Financial Crisis ◽  
Post War

While trying to understand and explain the origins and dynamics of Anglo-American foreign policy in the pre and early years of the Cold War, the role thatperception played in the design and implementation of foreign policy became acentral focus. From this point came the realization of a general lack of emphasisand research into the ways in which the British government managed to convincethe United States government to assume support for worldwide British strategicobjectives. How this support was achieved is the central theme of this dissertation.This work attempts to provide a new analysis of the role that the British played in the dramatic shift in American foreign policy from 1946 to 1950. Toachieve this shift (which also included support of British strategic interests in theEastern Mediterranean) this dissertation argues that the British used Greece, first asa way to draw the United States further into European affairs, and then as a way toanchor the United States in Europe, achieving a guarantee of security of theEastern Mediterranean and of Western Europe.To support these hypotheses, this work uses mainly the British andAmerican documents relating to Greece from 1946 to 1950 in an attempt to clearlyexplain how these nations made and implemented policy towards Greece duringthis crucial period in history. In so doing it also tries to explain how Americanforeign policy in general changed from its pre-war focus on non-intervention, to the American foreign policy to which the world has become accustomed since 1950. To answer these questions, I, like the occupying (and later intervening)powers did, must use Greece as an example. In this, I hope that I may be forgivensince unlike them, I intend not to make of it one. My objectives for doing so lie notin justifying policy, but rather in explaining it. This study would appear to havespecial relevance now, not only for the current financial crisis which has placedGreece once again in world headlines, but also for the legacy of the Second WorldWar and the post-war strife the country experienced which is still playing out todaywith examples like the Distomo massacre, German war reparations and on-goingsocial, academic and political strife over the legacy of the Greek Civil War.

scholarly journals Religion in the Yugoslav conflicts: post-war perspectives

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 256-275
Author(s):  
Christian Moe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Yugoslav Wars ◽  
Post War ◽  
Critical Notes ◽  
The Way

The wars that dissolved Yugoslavia – were they religious wars? Why are conflicts increasingly coded as religious, rather than as, for example, social or ethnic? What constitutes a ‘religious’ or ‘holy’ war. This article attempts an inventory of important cat­egories and hypotheses generated in the relevant literature so far, with a few critical notes along the way. The author considers the role assigned to religion in structural, cultural, and actor-oriented explanations of the Yugoslav wars. Structural and cultural explanations downplay the role of human agency and, hence, of moral responsibility; actor-oriented approaches focus on it.

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