The institution of Morality: Shocks and crises in Germany and Sweden

It is often argued that Germany and Scandinavia stand at two opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to their response to social-economic disruptions and cultural challenges. Though, in many respects, they have a shared cultural inheritance, it is nevertheless the case that they mobilize different mythologies and different modes of coping when faced with breakdown and disorder. It is at these "critical junctures", the authors argue, that points of crisis and innovation in the life communities that the tradition and identity of national and local communities are formed, polarized and revalued; it is here that social change takes a particular direction.