Synopses & Reviews
Culture is the lens through which we make sense of the world. In any conflict, from petty disputes to wars between nation-states, the players invariably view that conflict through the filter of their own cultural experiences. This innovative volume prompts us to pause and think through our most fundamental assumptions about how conflict arises and how it is resolved.
Even as certain culturally based disputes, such as the high-profile cases in which an immigrant engages in conduct considered normal in the homeland but which is explicitly illegal in his/her new country, enter public consciousness, many of the most basic intersections of culture and conflict remain unexamined. How are some processes cultured, gendered, or racialized? In what ways do certain groups and cultures define such concepts as "justice" and "fairness" differently? Do women and men perceive events in similar fashion, use different reasoning, or emphasize disparate values and goals?
Spanning a wide array of disciplines, from anthropology and psychology to law and business, and culling dozens of intriguing essays, The Culture and Conflict Reader is edited for maximum pedagogical usefulness and represents a bedrock text for anyone interested in conflict and dispute resolution.
Contributors include: Kevin Avruch, Peter W. Black, Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Frank E. A. Sander, John Paul Lederach, Heather Forest, Sara Cobb, Janet Rifkin, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Laura Nader, Pat Chew, Stella Ting-Toomey, Harry C. Triandis, Christopher McCusker, C. Harry Hui, Anita Taylor, Judi Beinstein Miller, Carol Gilligan, Trina Grillo, James W. Grosch, Karen G. Duffy, Paul V. Olczak, Michele Hermann, Martha Chamallas, Loraleigh Keashly, Phil Zuckerman, Tracy E. Higgins, Howard Gadlin, Janie Victoria Ward, Kyeyoung Park, Taunya Lovell Banks, Margaret Read MacDonald, Mary Patrice Erdmans, Manu Aluli Meyer, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Bruce D. Bonta, Paul E. Salem, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Marc H. Ross, Z.D. Gurevitch, Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Hsien Chin Hu, Glenn R. Butterton,Walter Otto Weyrauch, Maureen Anne Bell, Martti Gronfors, Thomas Donaldson, Marjorie Shostak, and Heather Forest.
Review
"[This book] ranges from the most general reflections (on the relationship between "culture" and Nazism) to the intellectual-historical (on the myth of "Judaization" in Germany, on Nazism and Nietzsche, and on the Weimar-era Jewish revolt against rationalism) to historiographical critique (on recent Holocaust literature with special attention to racial thought). Throughout the book, Aschheim is interested to provide his reader with a summary of the various ways that Nazism and the Holocaust have been treated in philosophical and historical literature, in national polemic an public commemoration."-Tikkun,
Review
"This single volume covers the universe of cultural issues and ethnic conflict. Professor Pat Chew has revealed she has the secret heart of an anthropologist. This collection of materials from far-flung places is fascinating, made more so by the helpful notes and materials she employs to stitch them together."-Michael A. Olivas,Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance, University of Houston
Review
"At a time when ethnic conflicts seem unending and the rule of law is increasingly threatened, it is the responsibility of every thinking person to learn as much as possible about the ways in which law, conflict and culture affect one another and, in turn, the ways in which they affect us all. This new book offers a thought-provoking—and sometimes disturbing—medium for exploring the host of issues raised by the interrelationships between these concepts."-John M. Burkoff,Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh
Review
"Covering groups as diverse as Finnish gypsies, Chicago Polish, Native Hawaiians, Israeli Druze, and African Americans, Pat Chew presents us with a global feast on conflict and culture. This multidisciplinary collection enables us to appreciate the complex interplay when race, ethnicity, gender, and culture confront both unwritten customs and formal legal systems."-Adrien Katherine Wing,author of Global Critical Race Feminism
Review
"Pat Chew makes an important contribution by bringing together voices that speak to this complex topic that is at the heart of the rapidly shrinking world we all are beginning to share and navigate together."-Syed Shariq,RGK Foundation Scholar, Stanford University
Review
"This not only a wonderful book to read but one that will assist all of us as we travel across borders to work, explore and enjoy the wonders of other places."-John P. Tymitz,Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Shipboard Education
Synopsis
Our understandings of culture and of the catastrophe unleashed by National Socialism have always been regarded as interrelated. For all its brutality, Nazism always spoke in the name of the great German tradition, often using such high culture to justify atrocities committed. Were not such actions necessary for the defense of classical cultural values and ideal images against the polluted, degenerate groups who sought to sully and defile them?
Ironically, some of National Socialism's victims confronted and interpreted their experiences precisely through this prism of culture and catastrophe. Many of these victims had traditionally regarded Germany as a major civilizing force. In fact, from the late eighteenth century on, German Jews had constructed themselves in German culture's image. Many of the German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who became victims of National Socialism had been raised and completely absorbed in the German humanistic tradition.
Steven E. Aschheim here engages the multiple aspects of German and German-Jewish cultural history which touch upon the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe, providing insights into the relationship between German culture and the origins, dispositions, and aftermath of National Socialism. He analyzes the designation of Nazism as part of the West's cultural code representing an absolute standard of evil, and sheds light on the problematics of current German, Jewish, and Israeli inscriptions of Nazism and its atrocities.
Synopsis
Our understandings of culture and of the catastrophe unleashed by National Socialism have always been regarded as interrelated. For all its brutality, Nazism always spoke in the name of the great German tradition, often using such high culture to justify atrocities committed. Were not such actions necessary for the defense of classical cultural values and ideal images against the polluted, degenerate groups who sought to sully and defile them?
Ironically, some of National Socialism's victims confronted and interpreted their experiences precisely through this prism of culture and catastrophe. Many of these victims had traditionally regarded Germany as a major civilizing force. In fact, from the late eighteenth century on, German Jews had constructed themselves in German culture's image. Many of the German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who became victims of National Socialism had been raised and completely absorbed in the German humanistic tradition.
Steven E. Aschheim here engages the multiple aspects of German and German-Jewish cultural history which touch upon the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe, providing insights into the relationship between German culture and the origins, dispositions, and aftermath of National Socialism. He analyzes the designation of Nazism as part of the West's cultural code representing an absolute standard of evil, and sheds light on the problematics of current German, Jewish, and Israeli inscriptions of Nazism and its atrocities.
About the Author
Steven E. Ascheim is Associate Professor of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the author of Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German-Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 and The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990. Currently he is on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University.