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Patterns of Radicalization in Political Activism: An Introduction
- Donatella della Porta, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
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- Journal:
- Social Science History / Volume 36 / Issue 3 / Fall 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 January 2016, pp. 311-320
- Print publication:
- Fall 2012
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Research on political violence occurs in waves, generally corresponding to the successive swells of violence that in many ways define modern society. Critically, this violence is characterized as much by diversity as by uniformity. As each new spate in research on political violence has shown us, rarely can we generalize about either the aims or the repertoires of action of the purveyors of violence. Some similar mechanisms are in play, however, as violence develops from political conflicts between states and their opponents.
This suggestion comes from social movement studies, whose influence is increasing in the analysis of political violence. These studies developed especially from a critique of ‘terrorism studies,’ which emerged within security studies as a branch of international relations and have traditionally been more oriented toward developing antiterrorist policies than toward a social scientific understanding of political violence.
5 - Terrorism and the state
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- By Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, European University Institute, Florence, Klaus Weinhauer, University of Bielefeld
- Edited by Donald Bloxham, University of Edinburgh, Robert Gerwarth, University College Dublin
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- Book:
- Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 March 2011, pp 176-209
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Summary
Introduction
Any chapter that confronts the subject of terrorism immediately encounters problems of definition. Thus, acts of violence that come under the label ‘terrorism’ are not easy to study. Some heuristic clarifications on defining terrorism are provided by the sociologist Peter Waldmann and the political scientist Louise Richardson. Together, their key defining elements leave us with the following insight: terrorism is a specific form of violence carried out by sub-state groups which plan and execute their politically motivated violent actions from a semi-legal or illegal milieu against civilians and against state institutions. The choice of victims and the type of terrorist act are of symbolic importance and aim to spread insecurity and win sympathy. Applying the terrorist label to violent acts is a means of delegitimizing social movements and political groups and is routinely used by states. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, these labelling processes became a powerful instrument in political life to deny the legitimacy of violent protests and to maintain and strengthen the modern state's monopoly of legitimate violence. Employing the terrorist label facilitates the isolation, social exclusion and persecution of oppositional groups. In this discriminatory discourse, the state and the media may create ‘moral panics’. At the same time, this use of the term conceals the fact that the state – in the past as well as in the present – may act in a similar way to ‘terrorists’.
8 - Market: Consumption and Commerce
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- By Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Professor of History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence, Paul Nolte, Professor of History at the Free University of Berlin
- Edited by Christof Mauch, Kiran Klaus Patel, European University Institute, Florence
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- Book:
- The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century
- Published online:
- 12 October 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2010, pp 121-143
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Summary
American GIs hand out chewing gum, chocolate bars, and cigarettes in occupied Germany; West German youngsters in the 1960s and 1970s are fascinated by the images of American pop and protest culture;Coca-Cola and McDonald's dominate everyday life inWestern Europe. As these developments attest and countless other ubiquitous images underscore, aside from its influence on world power struggles, there is hardly a sphere that modern America and its global influence throughout the twentieth century have affected as deeply and as penetratingly as the world of mass consumption. We seem to have a clear winner in the contest to shape the modern era: the United States emerges as the pioneer of the market-driven society, especially with respect to consumerism. It is a phenomenon that, in addition to its economic impact, fundamentally changes or even invents in many ways the culture of everyday life, the concept of lifestyles, and the world of images and symbols that characterizes the modern era. Bundled into the term “Americanization” is the notion of a one-way street, running from West to East, from which the Germans constantly received new impulses of modernism emanating fromthe United States, without ever being able to counter them with their own.
On closer inspection, however, this picture becomes more complex. In fact, we can easily call up images of a successful transfer of consumer goods from Germany to America; German luxury cars parked in front of American garages, for example, and German kitchens sparkling in American households. Products “made in Germany” have long had the reputation in the United States of being not only at the cutting edge of technology but also embodying the latest stylistic innovations. Thus, we see that the cultural dimension of consumerism in these two countries is also reciprocal. Viewed historically, the conventional images of German–American commercial consumption are clearly concentrated in the period since World War II when the political ties between the Federal Republic and the United States were at their strongest. However, the question arises as to whether the lead that America enjoyed since the late nineteenth century in establishing the modern, commercialized, and urbanized society was so obviously dominant or whether this competition with Germany toward a consumer society was more evenly matched.
5 - Guild theory and guild organization in France and Germany during the nineteenth century
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- By Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Professor of History Universität Bielefeld
- Edited by Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley, Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck College, University of London
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- Book:
- Markets in Historical Contexts
- Published online:
- 22 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 February 2004, pp 90-104
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Summary
Hardly any institution of old Europe called the principles of the free market into question to such an extent as the guilds. In most early modern European cities and rural areas alike, master artisans and retail traders associated in order to control the quality, quantity and exchange of commodities, and in order to limit access to the labour market to a select circle of persons who were either specially trained or provided with special certificates. The guilds produced a balance between the guarantee of income and ‘food’ for the master artisans and the needs of the population for sufficient provision, which was often precarious. Consequently, the access to the urban market of producers and service providers was limited to guild members, who rarely yielded to the pressure of municipal authorities or admitted outsiders into their ranks. Their most important goals were the protection against commodities produced outside the guilds, which were stopped at the gates of the city, and the maintenance of the social exclusivity and monopoly of the master artisans and principals of the guilds. These influential persons controlled both the market of commodities and the labour market. They limited the number of journeymen and apprentices, and subjected these groups to strict qualification standards and a particular cursus honorum, which, if the professional training was successful, culminated in the degree of ‘master’.