883336642     

9883336640                        

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Belonging in the two Berlins : kin, state, nation / John Borneman

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1992

1 Online-Ressource (xiv, 386 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Englisch

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)

978-0-511-60771-4 ( : ebook)

978-0-521-41589-7 (ISBN der Printausgabe); 978-0-521-42715-9 (ISBN der parallelen Ausgabe)

OCoLC: 967416214     

Elektronische Ressource: Zugang über Resolving-System (Lizenzangabe: Lizenzpflichtig)

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1017/CBO9780511607714

GN585.G4

305.8/009431/55     Ähnliche Literatur

LOC-SH: National characteristics, West German ; National characteristics, East German ; Berlin (Germany) -- Social conditions ; Berlin (Germany) -- Economic conditions ; Berlin (Germany) -- Social life and customs ; Kinship -- Germany -- Berlin ; Ethnology -- Germany -- Berlin

Ethnology ; Germany ; Berlin ; Kinship ; Germany ; Berlin ; National characteristics, West German ; National characteristics, East German ; Berlin (Germany) ; Social conditions ; Berlin (Germany) ; Economic conditions ; Berlin (Germany) ; Social life and customs

Belonging in the two Berlins is an ethnographic investigation into the meaning of German selfhood during the Cold War. Taking the practices of everyday life in the divided Berlin as his point of departure, Borneman shows how ideas of kin, state, and nation were constructed through processes of mirror-imaging and misrecognition. Using linguistics and narrative analysis, he compares the autobiographies of two generations of Berlins residents with the official version of the lifecourse prescribed by the two German states. He examines the relation of the dual political structure to everyday life, the way in which the two states legally regulated the lifecourse in order to define the particular categories of self which signify Germanness, and how citizens experientially appropriated the frameworks provided by these states. Living in the two Berlins constantly compelled residents to define themselves in opposition to their other half. Borneman argues that this resulted in a de facto divided Germany with two distinct nations and peoples. The formation of German subjectivity since World War II is unique in that the distinctive features for belonging - for being at home - to one side exclude the other. Indeed, these divisions inscribed by the Cold War account for many of the problems in forging a new cultural unity