Willibald Steinmetz – författare

A promise of equality inherited from revolutionary declarations of rights, enlightened law codes, and constitutions stood at the beginning of the industrial age. Conflicts were inevitable when in reality the law continued to be used, as ever, mostly in support of the rich and powerful. The essays assembled here explore how private law helped to maintain, change, or upset inequalities that were common to all industrialized countries. The book deals with relationsbetween lords and peasants, husbands and wives, masters and servants, landlords and tenants, and producers and consumers. While law-and-society histories have become a growth industry in recent years, most studies in this field tend to be limited by national and disciplinary boundaries. This volume goes beyond such boundaries by comparing legal cultures in Britain, Germany, France, and the United States. Taking analogous, although not necessarily simultaneous, conflicts as a starting point, the essays offer new insights into different attitudes towards the law and different paths of juridification. The book thusenables historians, lawyers, and social scientists to view the history of their own legal culture in the light of others.

The result of extensive collaboration among leading scholars from across Europe, Conceptual History in the European Space represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. It brings together ambitious thematic studies that combine the pioneering methods of historian Reinhart Koselleck with contemporary insights and debates, each one illuminating a key feature of the European conceptual landscape. With clarifying overviews of such contested theoretical terrain as translatability, spatiality, and center-periphery dynamics, it also provides indispensable contextualization for an era of widespread disenchantment with and misunderstanding of the European project.

In an era defined by daily polls, institutional rankings, and other forms of social quantification, it can be easy to forget that comparison has a long historical lineage. Presenting a range of multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume investigates the concepts and practices of comparison from the early modern period to the present. Each chapter demonstrates how comparison has helped to drive the seemingly irresistible dynamism of the modern world, exploring how comparatively minded assessors determine their units of analysis, the criteria they select or ignore, and just who it is that makes use of these comparisons-and to what ends.

The result of extensive collaboration among leading scholars from across Europe, Conceptual History in the European Space represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. It brings together ambitious thematic studies that combine the pioneering methods of historian Reinhart Koselleck with contemporary insights and debates, each one illuminating a key feature of the European conceptual landscape. With clarifying overviews of such contested theoretical terrain as translatability, spatiality, and center-periphery dynamics, it also provides indispensable contextualization for an era of widespread disenchantment with and misunderstanding of the European project.

In an era defined by daily polls, institutional rankings, and other forms of social quantification, it can be easy to forget that comparison has a long historical lineage. Presenting a range of multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume investigates the concepts and practices of comparison from the early modern period to the present. Each chapter demonstrates how comparison has helped to drive the seemingly irresistible dynamism of the modern world, exploring how comparatively minded assessors determine their units of analysis, the criteria they select or ignore, and just who it is that makes use of these comparisons—and to what ends.