Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and the United States

by Edited by Norbert Finzsch , Dietmar Schirmer

• ISBN13: 9780521525992
• ISBN10: 0521525993
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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. Identity and Intolerance attempts to show how German and American societies have historically confronted and currently confront matters of national, racial, and ethnic inclusion and exclusion. The comparative perspective sheds light on the specific links among the cultural construction of nationhood and otherness, the political modes of integration and exclusion, and the social conditions of tolerance and intolerance.

Table of Contents

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.