This book is about authority, more precisely, about figures of authority. The editors have put together an international group of renowned scholars to discuss the emergence of modern notions of authority from different angles. Modern authority is no longer legitimated by status and social position, but rather by institutional affiliation and performance. To research the genealogy and intricacies of this kind of authority, the chapters in this volume cast a closer look at the various institutional actors on whom authority has been bestowed. The authors use a case study approach to look at the instances in which modern authority emerged, was ridiculed, contested, or even failed. Taken together, the individual contributions shed new light on the intricate relationship between the subjects and their organisations; they challenge any Whig historiography of rationalisation and modernisation, and they help us to rethink the inter-relationship between modern and even postmodern institutional arrangements on the one hand, and their subjects on the other.

The Editors: Peter Becker teaches modern and contemporary history at the University of Linz, Austria. He has held teaching and research positions at the European University Institute, Florence, at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, and at the Max-Planck-Institute of History, Göttingen. His main research interests are in the history of criminology, in the cultural history of state-building between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, and in the more recent history of ‘neuro-politics’. Rüdiger von Krosigk is Marie Curie Fellow (2007-2009) at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Civilisation from the European University Institute in Florence, and was Programme Co-ordinator of the Max Weber Programme for post-doctoral studies at the European University Institute. His main research interests are in the cultural history of state-building and public administration.

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