German Club Life as a Local Cultural System

In the shadow of the Historikerstreit over the meaning of the Nazi era, West German historians are conducting a less highly publicized but similarly politicized debate about the role of ethnography in social history. The following analysis of local club life, based on ethnographic and archival resea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative studies in society and history 1990-04, Vol.32 (2), p.357-382
Main Author: Eidson, John R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beautification
Clubs
Communities
Credibility
Cultural identity
Cultural systems
Culture (club life)
Ethnology
Everyday Life
Federal Republic of Germany
German language
Germany
Germany, Federal Republic of
Identity
Language culture relationship
Local government
Localism
Modernity
Neighborhoods
Political clubs
Political parties
Regional identity
Social classes
Social clubs
Social Life
Social life & customs
Social status
The Culture of Social Organizations
The Culture of Social Orgonizations
Town squares
Towns
Values
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Summary:In the shadow of the Historikerstreit over the meaning of the Nazi era, West German historians are conducting a less highly publicized but similarly politicized debate about the role of ethnography in social history. The following analysis of local club life, based on ethnographic and archival research in Boppard on the Rhine, is offered as a contribution to and comment on this debate from the viewpoint of interpretive cultural anthropology. I contend that “local knowledge”—to employ the phrase by Clifford Geertz—is indispensable to broader historical syntheses, though for different reasons than have been suggested by either critics or advocates of cultural anthropology among West German historians.
ISSN:0010-4175
1475-2999
1471-633X
DOI:10.1017/S0010417500016522