Authority, state and national character

"This book presents a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative study, combining historical macro-sociology and a sociology of emotions with historical anthropology and cultural studies. Drawing on the concepts and theories of Norbert Elias on the Civilizing Process, it sets out to pin down and compare qualities that are simultaneously instantly recognizable and highly elusive, that is a kind of typical 'Englishness' and of 'Austrianness' that developed contemporaneously in the period up to the First World War."--BOOK JACKET.