1st Edition
(Re)Constructing Communities in Europe, 1918-1968 Senses of Belonging Below, Beyond and Within the Nation-State
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.