Political Science: Reflecting on Concepts, Demystifying Legends
Reflexionen auf ein produktives Spannungsverhältnis
1st Edition
Published on 4. April 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
129 pages
978-3-8474-0506-1 (ISBN)
Description
Rainer Eisfeld's book highlights the merits of socio-historical research into topics infrequently covered by mainstream political science. Directing attention to the need for carefully scrutinizing the convenient "truths" of established - post-Nazi, post-Communist - political narratives, its chapters encourage reflection of the discipline's history and state of the art. A companion volume to the 2012 book entitled Radical Approaches to Political Science: Roads Less Traveled (also published by Barbara Budrich), this collection is likewise based on an approach to political science informed by a theory of participatory pluralism and grounded in history. The chapters focus on the discipline's fragmentation and its retreat from public debate; on the varying roles of political science and international relations as champions of more or less democracy; on normative and analytical concepts developed by Hannah Arendt, Klaus von Beyme, and Robert A. Dahl; on the deconstruction of the "Peenemünde Legend" about the unspoiled rule of science at the Third Reich's missile development center; on reasons for the Peenemünde engineers' actual complicity in the exploitation of concentration camp labor to mass-produce their V-2 missile. "Rainer Eisfeld's leadership in the fields of pluralism and analysis of the discipline in the International Political Science Association means that he has quite a background to share with us in this, his most recent, collection of essays." John Trent
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04/2016
1st Edition
Verlag Barbara Budrich
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Person
Rainer Eisfeld is Professor emeritus of Political Science at Osnabrück University, Germany. Rainer Eisfeld has long served as a member of the Buchenwald/ Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial's Board of Trustees and, in recent years, also of the International Political Science Association's Executive Committee. He taught at UCLA as a Visiting Professor.
Content
Introduction Preface What Political Science May (Not) AchieveSpecialization and Teamwork: Current Challenges to the Discipline Political Science and Transition to Democracy: The German Experience Standing on the Shoulders of GiantsThe "Three Pillars of Hell": Hannah Arendt's Concept of Total Rule i- Sources, Merits, Limits Prospects of Pluralist Democracy in an Age of Economic Globalization and World-Wide Migration: A Tribute to Robert A. Dahl The Political Scientist as Global Scholar and Public Intellectual Two Profoundly Different Schools of Political SciencePolitical Science in Great Britain and Germany: The Roles of LSE and DHfP From the Berlin Political Studies Institute to Columbia and Yale: Ernst Jaeckh and Arnold Wolfers Peenemunde: Challenging the Myth of Nonpolitical TechnologyPeenemunde, the V-2 and the Exploitation of Slave Labor. A Study in Reactionary Modernism The Peenemunde Legend: Origins, Perpetuation, Demise Sources