The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism As Science and Practice - Couverture rigide

Wakefield, Andre

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0226870200 ISBN 13 : 9780226870205

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

Probing the relationship between German political economy and everyday fiscal administration, "The Disordered Police State" focuses on the cameral sciences - a peculiarly German body of knowledge designed to train state officials - and in so doing offers a new vision of science and practice during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Andre Wakefield shows that the cameral sciences were at once natural, technological, and economic disciplines, but, more importantly, they also were strategic sciences, designed to procure patronage for their authors and good publicity for the German principalities in which they lived and worked. Cameralism, then, was the public face of the prince's most secret affairs; as such, it was an essentially dishonest enterprise. In an entertaining series of case studies on mining, textiles, forestry, and universities, Wakefield portrays cameralists in their own gritty terms. The result is a revolutionary new understanding of how the sciences created and maintained an image of the well-ordered police state in early modern Germany. In raising doubts about the status of these German sciences of the state, Wakefield ultimately questions many of our accepted narratives about science, culture, and society in early modern Europe.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Andre Wakefield is associate professor of history at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and is the editor and translator, with Claudine Cohen, of the first English edition of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Protogaea, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226870200
• ISBN 13: 9780226870205
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible