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Class vs. Citizenship: Keywords in German Gender History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Kathleen Canning
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Extract

There is perhaps no more fitting way to honor Vernon Lidtke than to demonstrate, in the form of this essay, that the questions he posed to his students years ago continue to provide a grid for contemplating and analyzing historical subjects, both familiar and new. One such question involved the impact of one concept's transformation upon another: would class persist as a crucial historical category once it had confronted the differences of gender? This question preoccupied me in previous work and I return to it here, taking stock of that which has changed since I first contemplated this question, in the fields of both German and European gender history. Another question that remains an object of debate is the longer-term trajectory of the history of women and gender: how might we define the point at which its work of subversion or revision is complete? What directions might this field take once “mainstream” histories have successfully incorporated its findings? This essay aims to compare the ways in which the keywords class, citizenship, and welfare state have been redefined, expanded, or circumscribed through the turn to culture, language, and gender. This comparative exercise allows me to expand Vernon's original questions to include citizenship, the critical concept in my more recent scholarship, and to review the potentials and promises of main-streaming across the so-called Atlantic divide.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2004

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References

1. The work of historical sociologist Margaret Somers both theorized and historicized the concept of citizenship in British history. See, for example, Somers, Margaret R., “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere, Law, Community and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy,” American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 587620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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6. Frederick Cooper makes this point far more elegantly in his response to Eley and Nield: “Farewell to the Category-Producing Class?” in ibid., 60–68. Also see Barbara Weinstein's reply, “Where Do New Ideas (About Class) Come From?” in the same issue, 53–59.

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34. Frader, and Rose, , eds., Gender and Class in Modern Europe, 15Google Scholar. For an excellent analysis of the meaning of labor for male citizenship claims, see Keith McClelland, “Rational and Respectable Men: Gender, the Working Class, and Citizenship in Britain, 1850–1867,” in ibid., 280–93.

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56. Berlant, Lauren, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, 1997), 10Google Scholar; see also Mouffe, , “Feminism and Radical Politics,” 372–73.Google Scholar

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