Norbert Götz
@sh.se
Institute of Contemporary History
Södertörn University
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
W. Brehm and Iveta Silova
Routledge
Norbert Götz and Janne Holmén
Informa UK Limited
Maps are symbolic representations of spatial features. As such, they are by definition projections that involve choices of inclusion and modes of depiction. They are therefore subject to framing, c...
Norbert Götz
Routledge
The Baltic Sea region offers exceptionally rich material for the discussion of civil society. This is because it has witnessed the erosion of communist regimes, the crisis of the welfare state, the increasing importance of new social movements and the shift from a centralist paradigm to one oriented towards networks. This text focuses on the phenomena and prospects for civil society in northeastern Europe which have had a major impact on political and scholarly debates since 1989. Experts from the region provide a comprehensive and comparative account of the history, the present state and the perspectives of civil society in the Baltic Sea area. The reader will learn that civil society should not only be seen in opposition to the state and that it has a major impact on current developments of European integration.
Norbert Götz and Frank Palmowski
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
ZusammenfassungZusammenfassungDieser Artikel untersucht am Beispiel Erfurts die Verteilung humanitärer Hilfsgelder des Londoner „Committee for Relieving the Distresses in Germany and Other Parts of the Continent“ (1805–1815). Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den Jahren 1814 und 1815, denn die Quellen zur ersten Hilfskampagne der Jahre 1805 und 1806 sind spärlich. In beiden Fällen spielten deutsche Immigrantennetzwerke innerhalb der britischen Bibelgesellschaft eine entscheidende Rolle, im hier vorgestellten Falle insbesondere der in Erfurt gebürtige Londoner Pastor Ernst August Schwabe. Der Artikel beleuchtet die organisatorische Abwicklung der Hilfe und zeigt, wie die Londoner und Erfurter Zivilgesellschaft über die Hilfskampagne miteinander verzahnt waren und wie das Erfurter Verteilungskomitee aufgrund seines lokalen Horizonts nicht in die ihm zugedachte überregionale Rolle hineinwuchs. Er macht divergierende Interessen der Geber auf unmittelbare Nothilfe und der Empfänger auf langfristige Nutzung der bereitgestellten Ressourcen deutlich. Ein Großteil der Hilfe kam am Ende einem Fonds für Kriegswaisen zugute, dessen Ausschüttungen in der Praxis vom örtlichen Frauenverein kontrolliert wurden.
NORBERT GÖTZ
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
AbstractSweden's relationship with the United Nations fluctuated considerably between 1941 and 1946. This article examines how the Nordic country's own security interests were sometimes viewed as compatible and sometimes at odds with membership of the United Nations. The discussions surrounding Sweden's accession to the United Nations and actions of its first delegates to the international organisation are explored at length. So too is the discrepancy between Sweden's reputation for neutrality and its enthusiastic support for the United Nations, on the one hand, and its internal debates and policy decisions during the 1940s, on the other. Finally, the article explores the ways in which Sweden used the United Nations as an arena in which to manifest both its indifference to security alignment and its exceptionalism in world affairs.
Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
The London-based Committee for Relieving the Distressed Inhabitants of Germany, and Other Parts of the Continent is an early example of a large-scale voluntary relief programme that has gone unappreciated in the annals of humanitarianism. The present article examines the period in 1808 and 1809 when this committee redirected its relief efforts to Sweden. The case highlights many issues that beset humanitarianism today. With well-preserved recipient records, it offers insight to aspects of humanitarian encounters that have been markedly under-researched. It examines how foreign-policy interests fostered mis-conceptions about those in need and how such misconceptions resulted in corrupt distribution structures. It shows that asymmetries in the development of civil society impeded the relief effort and that the divergent interests of donors and distributors caused the forms of relief to be inadequate and agency to be lost. Moreover, it illustrates how local elites resisted advice from abroad and how the individual personalities involved shaped policy outcomes. These factors remain issues at the present time and the case of two Protestant European countries with a cultural affinity illustrates how significant they are.
Katarina Friberg and Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
The term ‘moral economy’ has had a varied history before acquiring its present meaning, mainly through the formative influence of Thompson’s (1971) article ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd’. With its understanding of popular riots as energised by the notion of violated existential rights, the article launched a broad academic debate about social and economic relations in eighteenth-century Britain, which at the time was the vanguard of the modern world. Both Thompson’s conception of the relationship between economic practice and political economic theory and his empirical findings were widely discussed (Fox Genovese 1973). Scholars across the humanities and social sciences – perhaps most notably the anthropologist Scott (1976) – seized upon the morality of an economy of subsistence and connected it to analytical frameworks in their fields, making use of different elements of Thompson’s article and of his subsequent ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’ (1991). Researchers have explored the concept in a multitude of contexts in the global South and North. Extensive overviews of this literature are included by three contributors to this issue, who take the perspective of conceptual history (Götz), social movement studies (Siméant), and normative ethics (Sandberg). When the concept of moral economy is applied to the field of humanitarianism, the debate is shifted from ordinary people’s sense of their right to subsist to questions of vulnerability and survival in the present-day world. The essays in this collection go beyond popular outrage in examining reactions to existential threats such as social marginalisation or ‘natural’ disasters – crises that disclose the workings of moral economies inherent in various societies. Thus, the authors differ on whether moral economy best serves as a tool to understand the recipients of aid, or the donors and humanitarian protagonists. Thompson’s moral economy takes into account the concerns of the crowd and the elite alike, and shows that such perspectives need not be mutually exclusive, although his balanced model was followed by a pronounced bottom-up approach. Other articles in this issue consider the inspiration philosophers and empirically oriented moral economists may take from each other. They show ways of incorporating moral conduct into rational choice theory, or they examine the moral economy of trust in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century economic societies. Analysing how the belief in an ethics of pricing or the right to subsist clashes with modern market economy, the concept of moral economy has been prominent as a heuristic lens with which to examine crises of legitimacy and socio-economic change. Like Polanyi in The Great Transformation (1944), Thompson was concerned with a historical period that challenged an established culture of economic incentive and brought forth a new paradigm of economic allocation. Polanyi wrote concurrently with Bretton Woods and the rise of Keynesianism, while Thompson was contemporaneous with Britain’s economic stagnation in the 1960s and 1970s and the search for a ‘new international economic order’. Our present situation is characterised
Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
This article challenges E.P. Thompson's definition of ‘moral economy’ as a traditional consensus of crowd rights that were swept away by market forces. Instead, it suggests that the concept has the potential of improving the understanding of modern civil society. Moral economy was a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe many things. Thompson's approach reflects only a minor part of this conceptual history. His understanding of moral economy is conditioned by a dichotomous view of history and by the acceptance of a model according to which modern economy is not subject to moral concerns. It is on principle problematic to confine a term conjoining two concepts as general as ‘moral’ and ‘economy’ to a specific historical and social setting. Recent approaches that frame moral economy as an emotively defined order of morals are also misleading since they do not address economic issues in the way they are commonly understood. The most promising current approaches appear to be those that consider the moral economy of welfare, humanitarianism, and civil society. The concept of moral economy may help us to clarify alternative ways of ‘utility maximisation’ through the construction of altruistic meaning for economic transactions.
Norbert Götz
BRILL
Norbert Götz
SAGE Publications
Rationales of Humanitarianism: The Case of British Relief to Germany, 1805–1815 This article examines the British humanitarian relief campaign initiated by the Committee for Relieving the Distresses in Germany and Other Parts of the Continent (1805–1815). It demonstrates the significance of two aspects for the campaign: the activism of London-based immigrant communities on the one hand, and British solidarity with allied countries during the Napoleonic Wars and the related matter of national mobilisation against France on the other. While immigrant activism was a major driving force of the campaign, its impact depended on the integration of immigrants into British society and on the mobilisation of Britons. Moreover, while the alliance with German states was often underlined in the publicity efforts of the campaign, wider humanitarian concerns were also addressed.
Ainur Elmgren and Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
‘Power investigation’, or the need for power to renew and legitimize itself through public self-reflection and self-criticism, has a long history in northern Europe. The tradition has been traced, ...
Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
The transdisciplinary coherence of area studies can be enhanced through a cross-fertilisation of historical and social sciences with concepts derived from philology and cultural studies. The five Scandinavian power investigations (Norway 1972–1982, Sweden 1985–1990, Denmark 1997–2003, Norway 1997–2003, and Finland 2007–2010) are here recognised as a unique body of work. Blending politically guided perspectives with collaborative scholarly analysis, these investigations represent events rather than texts. For this reason the concept of genre does not sufficiently capture their essence. Instead, power investigations are seen as comprehensive politico-cultural practices identified by 14 characteristics imported from the humanities. The utility of these investigations in suggesting transparency and self-reflection enhances the legitimacy of Scandinavian government.
Norbert Götz
Informa UK Limited
This article examines Norwegian policy vis-à-vis the United Nations (UN) through the end of 1945. From here it will become clear that framing foreign policy orientations of the 1940s along conventional lines exaggerates the commitment of Norwegian politicians to two grand ideas. The novel idea of Atlantic alignment, developed by Norwegian circles in London exile, was more ambiguous than generally acknowledged and left room for universal extension. By contrast, the alleged turn in the mid-1940s toward support of the UN was in the form of lip-service as opposed to action that would have engaged actors from Norway. The government outsourced policy-making on the issue to a small circle of experts and made no attempt to exert leadership in regard to UN matters. Norway's indifference toward the UN in the 1940s stands in marked contrast to the country's later reputation as a faithful supporter of the world organization.