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Modernization in nineteenth century Central Europe

Class at Faculty of Humanities |
YMH327

Syllabus

1 - Conceptual framework; Historical sociology vs. social history; the historical geography of Central-Europe in the 19th century

Burawoy, Michael. "Two Methods in Search of Science: Skocpol versus Trotsky." Theory and Society 18, no. 6 (1989): 759-805.

Kiser, Edgar, and Michael Hechter. "The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology." American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 1 (1991): 1-30.

Skocpol, Theda. "Social History and Historical Sociology: Contrasts and Complementarities." Social Science History 11, no. 1 (April 1, 1987): 17-30.   2 - Modernization, economic backwardness and belated embourgeoisement in Central Europe

"Historians and the Question of ‘Modernity.’" American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (June 2011): 631-37.

Eisenstadt, S. N. "Multiple Modernities." Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000): 1-29.

Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962.

Janos, Andrew C. East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Postcommunism. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2000.   3 - Industrialization and urbanization (2 sessions)

Berend, Ivan. History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Brenner, Robert. "Economic Backwardness in Eastern Europe in Light of Developments in the West." In The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages until the Early Twentieth Century, edited by Daniel Chirot, 15-52. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Good, David F. The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Turnock, David. The Economy of East Central Europe 1815-1989: Stages of Transformation in a Peripheral Region. 1st ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005.   4 - Embourgeoisement and the middle-class question

Kocka, Jürgen, and Allan Mitchell, eds. Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Berg, 1993.   5 - The dynamics of educational expansion (2 sessions)

Müller, Detlef K. "The Process of Systematisation: The Case of German Secondary Education." In The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870-1920, 15-52. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Cohen, Gary B. Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848-1918. West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 1996.

Ringer, Fritz K. Education and Society in Modern Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.

Jarausch, Konrad. , ed. The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860-1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.   6 - Professionalization

Bailes, Kendall E. "Reflections on Russian Professions." In Russia’s Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History, edited by Harley D. Balzer, 39-54. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1996.

Gispen, Kees. "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization." Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 3 (July 1, 1988): 550-74.

Kovács, M. Mária. Liberal Professions and Illiberal Politics: Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.; New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press ; Oxford University Press, 1994.

McClelland, Charles E. The German Experience of Professionalization: Modern Learned Professions and Their Organizations from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Hitler Era. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.   7 - Jewry: agents of modernization (2 sessions)

Beller, Steven. Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Karády, Viktor. "Jewish Over-Schooling in Hungary. Its Sociological Dimensions." In Bildungswesen Und Sozialstruktur in Mitteleuropa Im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Viktor Karády and Wolfgang Mitter, 209-46. Studien Und Dokumentationen Zur Vergleichenden Bildungsforschung, Bd. 42. Köln: Böhlau, 1990.

Karády, Viktor. The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era: A Socio-Historicaloutline. Budapest: CEU Press, 2004.

Muller, Jerry Z. Capitalism and the Jews. Princeton University Press, 2010.   8 - Nations, empire, and nationalism at the challenges of modernization (2 sessions)

Bibó, István. "The Distress of East European Small States." In Democracy, Revolution, Self-Determination: Selected Writings, edited by Károly Nagy, translated by András Boros-Kazai. Boulder, Co.: Social Science Monographs, 1991.

Cohen, Gary B. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Judson, Pieter M. Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Annotation

The aim of the course is to familiarize students with the main topics and problem areas in the history of Central Europe in the long nineteenth century. The course follows a topical arrangement focusing on central themes at the intersection of social history and historical sociology; it is neither chronological, nor comprehensive.

Each section starts with the presentation of basic theoretical concepts, followed by the discussion of selected readings. The course focuses on problem areas in connection with the social and economic changes that took place in Central Europe during the long nineteenth century.

The key concept of our discussion is ‘modernization theory’ and the different facets of modernization understood as a process of social and economic change in the period under scrutiny. Here, instead of interpreting ‘modernization’ as a normative developmental model, the course demonstrates how modernization could be analyzed as a heterogeneous and non-linear process, which always infers the possibility of fallbacks, as the history of Central Europe demonstrates it, and contains a mixture of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ elements.