1st Edition

(Re)Constructing Communities in Europe, 1918-1968 Senses of Belonging Below, Beyond and Within the Nation-State

Edited By Stefan Couperus, Harm Kaal Copyright 2017
    294 Pages
    by Routledge

    294 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book offers a new perspective on the social history of twentieth-century Europe by investigating the ideals and ideas, the life worlds and ideologies that emerge behind the use of the concept of community. It explores a wide variety of actors, ranging from the tenants of London council estates to transnational cultural elites.

    1. Introduction: (Re)Constructing Communities in Europe, 1918–68

    [Stefan Couperus and Harm Kaal]

    Part I: Urban Communities

    2. Languages of Place and Belonging: Competing Conceptions of "Community" in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bermondsey, London

    [Jon Lawrence]

    3. Rethinking the "Blueprint for Living Together": Community Planning and Sociology in Coventry, 1940–55

    [Stefan Couperus]

    4. ‘Washing Away the Dirt of the War Years’: History, Politics and the Reconstruction of Urban Communities in Post–World War II Helsinki

    [Tanja Vahtikari]

    Part II: Rural and Regional Communities

    5. A Counter-Community Between Regionalism and Nationalism: State-Building and the Vision of Modernisation in Interwar Romania

    [Florian Kührer-Wielach]

    6. Community Building and Expert Involvement with Reclaimed Lands in the Netherlands, 1930s–50s

    [Liesbeth van de Grift]

    7. The Turn to Local Communities in Early Post-War West Germany: The Case of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen, 1945–65

    [Jeremy DeWaal]

    Part III: Transnational Communities

    8. Restoring the Republic of Letters: Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig and Transnational Community-Building in Europe, 1914–34

    [Marleen Rensen]

    9. A Vatican Conspiracy?: Internationalism, Catholicism and the Quest for European Unification, 1945–50

    [Maarten van den Bos]

    10. Piercing the Iron Curtain?: Competing Visions of Transnational Expert Community and the Question of International Order after 1945

    [Phillip Wagner]

    Part IV: Nation, Class, and Religion

    11. Reconstructing Post-War Political Communities: Class, Religion and Political Identity-Formation in the Netherlands, 1945–68

    [Harm Kaal]

    12. Dialogues on Religion in a "Socialist Society" under Construction: Marxist Social Scientists and Czech Protestants, 1940s–60s

    [Ondrej Matejka]

    13. Languages of "National Community" and Its "Others" in Europe, 1918–68

    [Stefan Berger]

    Biography

    Stefan Couperus is a senior lecturer at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

    Harm Kaal is an assistant professor of political history at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.