Symbolic and cultural approaches to the origins of World War I: Introduction

Abstract

This forum offers a symbolic and cultural approach for understanding the outbreak of World War I that stresses the interactional and symbolic-cultural aspects of German decision makers’ brinkmanship during the July crisis of 1914. Contrary to excessive structuralist accounts, the contributions focus on what actors ‘do’ and ‘feel’ during a crisis. In the German–Austrian case, symbolic interactions during the July crisis were strongly marked by challenges to the ‘face’ of decision makers. The second theme of the Forum is to question the purely ‘material’ nature of those structures traditionally referred to as permissive for World War I. Structures, in fact, are symbolic, too. Like theories on status discrepancy, the Forum stresses the impact of ‘responsibility gaps’. However, the contributors also point to the emotional aspects and internal legitimacy problems caused precisely by those status lags.