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Book Synopsis

This is an unusual book in that it is an important contribution to social psychology and also an absorbing story of four strange years in a German prison camp of World War I. Four thousand men and boys from the most varied walks of life—professors, seamen, jockeys, schoolboys, bank directors, musicians, clerks, scientists—were taken from civilian life and placed in Ruhleben on the outbreak of war; no activities were prescribed for them, no direction was given to their communal life. In the event, this miscellaneous group of people, closed off from the world, create d their own society. This book is the story of how they did it and what the society they made was like; much more than this, the camp provides a gifted and sympathetic social psychologist with a rare opportunity for study and analysis of an important if inadvertent social experiment. The time elapsed between the event itself and the completion of the book may in one way be regretted; it did, however, allow t

Ruhleben

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    A Paperback / softback by J. Davidson Ketchum, Robert B. MacLeod

    £30.60

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      Book details

      Publisher University of Toronto Press
      Published 31 January 2020
      ISBN-13 9781487525750
      978-1487525750
      ISBN-10 1487525753
      Also in:
      Oral history

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      This is an unusual book in that it is an important contribution to social psychology and also an absorbing story of four strange years in a German prison camp of World War I. Four thousand men and boys from the most varied walks of life—professors, seamen, jockeys, schoolboys, bank directors, musicians, clerks, scientists—were taken from civilian life and placed in Ruhleben on the outbreak of war; no activities were prescribed for them, no direction was given to their communal life. In the event, this miscellaneous group of people, closed off from the world, create d their own society. This book is the story of how they did it and what the society they made was like; much more than this, the camp provides a gifted and sympathetic social psychologist with a rare opportunity for study and analysis of an important if inadvertent social experiment. The time elapsed between the event itself and the completion of the book may in one way be regretted; it did, however, allow t

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