The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century - Softcover

Lindenfeld, David F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226482421 ISBN 13: 9780226482422

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

Synopsis

Drawing on the work of Foucault and Bourdieu, David Lindenfeld illuminates the practical imagination as it was exhibited in the transformation of the political and social sciences during the changing conditions of nineteenth-century Germany. Using a wealth of information from state and university archives, private correspondence, and a survey of lecture offerings in German universities, Lindenfeld examines the original group of learned disciplines which originated in eighteenth-century Germany as a curriculum to train state officials in the administration and reform of society and which included economics, statistics, politics, public administration, finance, and state law, as well as agriculture, forestry, and mining. He explores the ways in which some systems of knowledge became extinct, and how new ones came into existence, while other migrated to different subject areas.

Lindenfeld argues that these sciences of state developed a technique of deliberation on practical issues such as tax policy and welfare, that serves as a model for contemporary administrations.

About this title

About the Author

David F. Lindenfeld is professor of history at Louisiana State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226482421
• ISBN 13: 9780226482422
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392