Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and the United States (Publications of the German Historical Institute)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Revised ed., 7/18/2002
EAN 9780521525992, ISBN10: 0521525993

Paperback, 466 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm
Language: English

In a world of increasingly heterogeneous societies, matters of identity politics and the links between collective identities and national, racial, or ethnic intolerance have assumed dramatic significance - and have stimulated an enormous body of research and literature which rarely transcends the limitations of a national perspective, however, and thus reproduces the limitations of its own topic. Comparative attempts are rare, if not altogether absent. Identity and Intolerance attempts to shift the focus toward comparison in order to show how German and American societies have historically confronted matters of national, racial, and ethnic inclusion and exclusion. This perspective sheds light on the specific links between the cultural construction of nationhood and otherness, the political modes of integration and exclusion, and the social conditions of tolerance and intolerance. The contributors also attempt to integrate the approaches offered by the history of ideas and ideologies, social history, and discourse theory.

Introduction
Part I. Concepts of National Identity and the Symbolic Construction of Nations
1. National identity and the conditions of tolerance
2. The historical invention and modern reinvention of two national identities
3. Segmented politics
xenophobia, citizenship, and political loyalty in Germany
4. The discoursive construction of national stereotypes
collective imagination and racist concepts in Germany before World War I
5. Integration and fragmentation discourses
demanding and supplying 'identity' in diverse societies
Part II. The Social and Cultural Practice of Racism
6. Race, class, and Southern racial violence
7. Racism and Empire
a perspective on a new era of American history
8. Police, African Americans, and Irish immigrants in the nation's capital
9. The politics of boycotting
experiences in Germany and the United States since 1880
10. Jews and the German language
Part III. Race, Gender, Body, Biology
11. Ambiguous roles
the racial factor in American womanhood
12. Citizenship embodied
racialized gender and the construction of nationhood in the United States
13. Body matters
race, gender, and perceptions of physical ability from Goethe to Weininger
14. A horse breeder's perspective
scientific racism in Germany, 1870–1933
15. The thin line between eugenics and preventive medicine.