Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police - Softcover

Glaeser, Andreas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226297845 ISBN 13: 9780226297842

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

More than a decade after unification, Germany remains deeply divided. Following East and West German police officers on their patrols through the newly-united city of Berlin and observing how they make sense of one another in a fast-changing environment, Andreas Glaeser explains how East-West boundaries have been maintained by the interactions of institutions, practices, and cultural forms-including diverging patterns of understanding rooted in vastly different social systems, readily revived Cold War images, the continuing search for an adequate response to Germany's Nazi past, and the politics and organization of unification, which impose highly asymmetrical burdens on east and west. Glaeser also leverages his ethnography to develop an innovative approach to studying identity formation processes. Central to his theory is an emphasis on the exchange of identifications and the particular ways in which they are deployed and recognized in interpretations, narratives, and performances as parts of face-to-face encounters, political discourses, and organizational practices.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

When the Berlin Wall fell and the reunification of Germany began, Willy Brandt predicted that "what belongs together will now grow together." But this study of Berlin's police force in the aftermath of reunification shows that forty years of separation left the nation with deep rifts between east and west that few would have ever suspected.

About the Author

Andreas Glaeser is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226297845
• ISBN 13: 9780226297842
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400