eprintid: 28707
rev_number: 14
eprint_status: archive
userid: 3730
dir: disk0/00/02/87/07
datestamp: 2020-07-23 09:14:24
lastmod: 2020-08-20 10:51:22
status_changed: 2020-07-23 09:14:24
type: book
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Oberdiek, Ulrich
title: Striving for 100%: An essay on totality and totalism
subjects: ddc-390
divisions: i-100700
keywords: totality, neoliberalism, religio-economic nexus, political economy, surveillance, nation state, global rule, religious fundamentalism
abstract: This essay reflects on the possibility of a 'total' situation: various cultural tendencies, drives, intentions or processes, which aim to have 'total' control of a situation or a setting; totality being a state, with totalism an agenda or process. Striving for 100%, whether unlimited growth in capitalism, total control of something (like information) or over someone respectively 'all', is described as an imminent danger considering present-day technological possibilities, and ideological programs such as neoliberalism, or various politically totalist strivings. This has been discussed even by Max Weber's critique of rationalism, Bataille's critique of economy, or Zygmunt Bauman's critique of the superpanopticon regarding surveillance. On the other hand, religions can be understood as total systems demanding 100% belief and obedience from believers. Since they operate in 'cultures', they tend to influence or 'color' them with their tenets, and evangelical groups are a particularly aggressive contemporary phenomenon.
date: 2019
publisher: German Anthropology Online
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00028707
schriftenreihe_cluster_id: sr-12
schriftenreihe_order: 4
ppn_swb: 1726586375
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-287077
language: eng
bibsort: OBERDIEKULSTRIVINGFO2019
full_text_status: public
series: Occasional anthropological papers
volume: 4
pages: 19
citation:   Oberdiek, Ulrich  (2019) Striving for 100%: An essay on totality and totalism.    Occasional anthropological papers, 4 .  German Anthropology Online.      
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/28707/1/Oberdiek_Totalitarism_2019.pdf