People and Identities in Nueva Germania

Nueva Germania, a rural Paraguayan settlement, was founded at the end of the nineteenth century as a racist, eugenic, and anti-Semitic project. Its founders, Bernhard Förster and Elisabeth Nietzsche, hoped to create the nucleus for a new Germanic empire far away from Jewish influence. This history i...

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Autore principale: Kurzwelly, Jonatan
Natura: Online
Lingua:inglese
Pubblicazione: Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2024
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Accesso online:https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/92396
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author Kurzwelly, Jonatan
author_browse Kurzwelly, Jonatan
author_facet Kurzwelly, Jonatan
author_sort Kurzwelly, Jonatan
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Nueva Germania, a rural Paraguayan settlement, was founded at the end of the nineteenth century as a racist, eugenic, and anti-Semitic project. Its founders, Bernhard Förster and Elisabeth Nietzsche, hoped to create the nucleus for a new Germanic empire far away from Jewish influence. This history is often used to portray present-day inhabitants of Nueva Germania through a reductive prism of events long past. Nueva Germania is, however, a place where different identities and ways of life intertwine, providing an excellent historical and ethnographic point of departure. This book argues that social identities—such as nationality, ethnicity, or race—are best understood as things we do and stories we tell, rather than things we are. The illusory sense that identities constitute fixed and essential characteristics of people can partially be explained through the significance attributed to identities in the process of generating a sense of a continuous and persistent self. By elaborating on this link between social and personal identities this book elucidates the basis for an anti-essentialist theory. Contesting essentialist and identitarian modes of thought is an urgent undertaking not only in social theory, but also as a political act in the context of the global rise of movements and ideologies that prey on such logic. The book’s additional novelty lies in the collaborative research on which it is based. Twelve participants tell stories from their lives which they themselves considered to be important, using words and photographs as the vehicles of their communication. Some elements of these stories are analysed in the theoretical chapters, while other aspects are left to speak for themselves. This methodological and ethical choice breaks with the conventional imposition of a singular scholarly lens. The polyphony of voices introduces Nueva Germania as inherently constituted from different perspectives. This approach transcends identitarian interpretations and proposes a way by which the social sciences might move beyond essentialist identities.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1425072025-04-03T11:37:35Z People and Identities in Nueva Germania Kurzwelly, Jonatan Nueva Germania Bernhard Förster Elisabeth Nietzsche bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences Nueva Germania, a rural Paraguayan settlement, was founded at the end of the nineteenth century as a racist, eugenic, and anti-Semitic project. Its founders, Bernhard Förster and Elisabeth Nietzsche, hoped to create the nucleus for a new Germanic empire far away from Jewish influence. This history is often used to portray present-day inhabitants of Nueva Germania through a reductive prism of events long past. Nueva Germania is, however, a place where different identities and ways of life intertwine, providing an excellent historical and ethnographic point of departure. This book argues that social identities—such as nationality, ethnicity, or race—are best understood as things we do and stories we tell, rather than things we are. The illusory sense that identities constitute fixed and essential characteristics of people can partially be explained through the significance attributed to identities in the process of generating a sense of a continuous and persistent self. By elaborating on this link between social and personal identities this book elucidates the basis for an anti-essentialist theory. Contesting essentialist and identitarian modes of thought is an urgent undertaking not only in social theory, but also as a political act in the context of the global rise of movements and ideologies that prey on such logic. The book’s additional novelty lies in the collaborative research on which it is based. Twelve participants tell stories from their lives which they themselves considered to be important, using words and photographs as the vehicles of their communication. Some elements of these stories are analysed in the theoretical chapters, while other aspects are left to speak for themselves. This methodological and ethical choice breaks with the conventional imposition of a singular scholarly lens. The polyphony of voices introduces Nueva Germania as inherently constituted from different perspectives. This approach transcends identitarian interpretations and proposes a way by which the social sciences might move beyond essentialist identities. 2024-07-23T16:40:23Z 2024-07-23T16:40:23Z 2024-07-21T04:30:24Z 2024 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/92396 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/142507 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/92396/1/KAEE18_kurzwelly_kompr.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/92396/1/KAEE18_kurzwelly_kompr.pdf Universitätsverlag Göttingen 10.17875/gup2024-2625 10.17875/gup2024-2625 af9011e0-03b9-4a5c-9ae6-b9da4898d1b2 AG Universitätsverlage open access
spellingShingle Nueva Germania
Bernhard Förster
Elisabeth Nietzsche
bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences
Kurzwelly, Jonatan
People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title_full People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title_fullStr People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title_full_unstemmed People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title_short People and Identities in Nueva Germania
title_sort people and identities in nueva germania
topic Nueva Germania
Bernhard Förster
Elisabeth Nietzsche
bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences
topic_facet Nueva Germania
Bernhard Förster
Elisabeth Nietzsche
bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences
url https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/92396
work_keys_str_mv AT kurzwellyjonatan peopleandidentitiesinnuevagermania