Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Culture and Society
THE CONCEPT OF culture has undergone such a highly complex process of development that it would be impossible in a short essay to highlight all its different facets. However, it is possible to gain some impression of this development during the course of the nineteenth century by looking at certain distinctions and definitions that are familiar from today's academic discourse. One such definition is that of culture as an independent part of a three-fold social order, an idea that has become established over the last twenty or thirty years in a large number of social theories. Although the terms used may vary, there is considerable agreement on the basic idea. For instance, Jürgen Habermas speaks of a society that consists of three subsystems: socio-cultural, political-administrative, and economic (1973). The sociologist Daniel Bell, from the more conservative camp, makes a similar differentiation (1976). Others have linked this three-fold system to further concepts, such as Johann Arnason's concept of practice (1988) or Nicolas Perlas's concept of globalization (2000). Moreover, it is worth noting that this division into three is also used outside professional sociology, for instance in the artistic and social theory of Josef Beuys.
In all these definitions, the cultural sphere is regarded as distinct from the political and economic spheres. This means that society is not viewed as a homogeneous entity characterized by a unified structure and organized according to universal principles.
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- Chapter
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- Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany , pp. 23 - 42Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003