| Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture Contributor(s): Boyer, Dominic (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226068919 ISBN-13: 9780226068916 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $34.65 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2005 Annotation: Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's "Spirit and System" exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture. Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of "Germanness" from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of "Germanness"--that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner "spirit" and an external "system" of social life--is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals' self-knowledge as he tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity across two centuries. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - History | Europe - Germany |
| Dewey: 943 |
| LCCN: 2005012475 |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 6.12" W x 8.98" (1.00 lbs) 288 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Germany |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's Spirit and System exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture. Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of German-ness from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of German-ness--that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner spirit and an external system of social life --is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals' self-knowledge as it tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity. |