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Cited by 358German History and SocietyMigration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical GeographyPost-Communist Economic and Political Transition

Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland

Berdahl, Daphne·1999·University of California Press eBooks
DOI 10.1525/9780520921320
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Abstract

When the Berlin Wall fell, people who lived along the dismantled border found their lives drastically and rapidly transformed. Daphne Berdahl, through ongoing ethnographic research in a former East German border village, explores the issues of borders and borderland identities that have accompanied the many transitions since 1990. What happens to identity and personhood, she asks, when a political and economic system collapses overnight? How do people negotiate and manipulate a liminal condition created by the disappearance of a significant frame of reference? Berdahl concentrates especially on how these changes have affected certain "border zones" of daily life—including social organization, gender, religion, and nationality—in a place where literal, indeed concrete, borders were until recently a very powerful presence. Borders, she argues, are places of ambiguity as well as of intense lucidity; these qualities may in fact be mutually constitutive. She shows how, in a moment of headlong historical transformation, larger political, economic, and social processes are manifested locally and specifically. In the process of a transition between two German states, people have invented, and to some extent ritualized, cultural practices that both reflect and constitute profound identity transformations in a period of intense social discord. Where the World Ended combines a vivid ethnographic account of everyday life under socialist rule and after German reunification with an original investigation of the paradoxical human condition of a borderland.

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  • The acquisition of desirable goods went hand in hand with having established important social ties.

    “The acquisition of desirable goods went hand in hand with having established important social ties (Berdahl, 1999).”

    From Anti-consumption in East Germany: consumer resistance to hyperconsumption (2010) · cites this paper as Berdahl, 1999

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Authors
Berdahl, D.
Corresponding author
Berdahl, Daphne
Venue
University of California Press eBooks
Publisher
University of California Press
Published
1999-05-10
DOI
10.1525/9780520921320
OpenAlex
W4246822231
Cited by
358
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 47 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 23 · 2012: 15
FWCI
44.69
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
University of California Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › German History and Society
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition
Keywords
Berlin Wall, German reunification, borderland identity, post-communist transition, liminality, personhood, social organization, gender, religion, nationality, everyday life under socialism, cultural practices, ritual

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