Gary B. Cohen

Johannes Feichtinger

Offers a comparative, critical analysis of muticulturalism as a concept for understanding pluricultural societies and offers historical studies of the Central European experience to show how pluricultural situations can be effectively analyzed and interpreted. Critically analyzes the concept of multiculturalism and examines the experience of pluricultural societies in the present and the past. Examines the multinational and pluricultural experience of the region in a critical, analytic way, free of the methodological nationalism that has characterized much of the writing in this field heretofore. Contains a non-western approach to the understanding of multiculturalism.

The Habsburg Central European Experience

Understanding Multiculturalism

Jan Surman

Franz L. Fillafer

This book is the first to trace the origins and significance of positivism on a global scale. Taking their cues from Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, positivists pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry for studying nature and society—a new science that would enlighten all of humankind. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Uncovering these worlds of positivism, the volume ranges from India, the Ottoman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe, Russia, and Brazil, examining positivism’s impact as one of the most far-reaching intellectual movements of the modern world. Positivists reinvented science, claiming it to be distinct from and superior to the humanities. They predicated political governance on their refashioned science of society, and as political activists, they sought and often failed to reconcile their universalism with the values of multiculturalism. Providing a genealogy of scientific governance that is sorely needed in an age of post-truth politics, this volume breaks new ground in the fields of intellectual and global history, the history of science, and philosophy.

A Global Intellectual History, 1770–1930

The Worlds of Positivism

Multiculturalism has long been linked to calls for tolerance of cultural diversity, but today many observers are subjecting the concept to close scrutiny. After the political upheavals of 1968, the commitment to multiculturalism was perceived as a liberal manifesto, but in the post-9/11 era, it is under attack for its relativizing, particularist, and essentializing implications. The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.

Heidemarie Uhl

Was heißt es, heute Habsburg neu zu denken? Warum beschäftigt sich eine neue Generation von Wissenschaftler/inne/n aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen mit der Vielfalt und Ambivalenz von Zentraleuropa? In 30 Stichworten zeigen renommierte Kulturwissenschafter/innen Zentraleuropa als historischen Erfahrungsraum und als Ressource für gegenwärtige gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen. Auswanderungen – Barock – Christliches Abendland – Demokrat|inn|en – Erinnerungskonkurrenzen – Feindschaften – Geschichtsbilder – Halb-Asien – Helden – Integration – Josephinismus – Judentum und Antisemitismus – Kakanien – Kulinarik – Literatur-Konstellationen – Mehrsprachigkeit – Migration – Nationalism and Indifference – Orientalismus – Österreichislam – Plurikulturalität – Postkolonialismus – Revolution versus Restauration – Schorskes Wien – Theatermacher – (Kulturelle) Übersetzung – Ungarische Tänze – Vielfalt – Wiener Schmäh – Zerfall

Johannes Feichtinger

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