Power and Society in the GDR, 1961–1979: The “Normalisation of Rule”? is the result of a research project led by Mary Fulbrook at University College London and carried out by her graduate students. Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project was based around a concept—“normalization”—and its use in explicating the history of East Germany. Power and Society begins with a theoretical exposition on the meaning of the term “normalization” by Fulbrook, and is then followed by eleven essays on East Germany and “normalization,” four of which are written by well-known GDR scholars, Jan Palmowski, Ina Merkel, Alf Lüdtke, and Dorothee Wierling—the remaining seven written by Fulbrook's current and former graduate students.

What is this all-important concept of “normalization” and why is it so crucial? Fulbrook wants to make a plea for historians of the GDR to focus on the seemingly uneventful (or “normal” or “stable”) years between the turbulent 1950s and late 1980s. Focusing only on 1953 or 1989 reinforces a Cold-War era view of the GDR as being held in power only by top-down, coercive strategies against the will of the people, she argues. Thus, Fulbrook wants to find a more sophisticated “model” for explaining the GDR that incorporates the participation and acquiescence of the majority of the population of the GDR, without falling into the trap of “Ostalgie” by apologetically claiming that East Germans were generally happy and supportive of the GDR. “Normal” does not imply a value or descriptive judgment, Fulbrook warns, but is rather like a Weberian “ideal type.” It is, as she describes, a process by which “things settle down” and people develop a sense of continuity about their surroundings, in which they learn and internalize the new rules of the system they are in and begin to make “life plans” based on their adaptation to these new rules.

Fulbrook is well aware of the potential pitfalls of the term “normal” or “normalization” as a category of analysis, especially in German history. What is missing from the introduction, however, is a clearer explanation of exactly what this term provides in and of itself toward the history of East Germany. On the one hand, it seems that one could easily remove the discussion of the term and simply discuss the underlying issues of adaption, systemic stabilization, etc., and arrive at a fruitful category of analysis. On the other hand, the term “normalization” can mean so many different things in different situations that its portability to any other field is both far too easy and therefore also not very useful. Fulbrook claims that it is self-evident that it can apply equally to the GDR as to other post-conflict situations such as London after 7/7, New York after 9/11, and Iraq after the March 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein (!). Furthermore, it seems as if what appear to be eras of stability are actually, on further notice, not as “stable” as we think, and that the process of internalizing new rules of the game happens in times of great upheaval as well as times of apparent stability—in fact, especially when one's survival is on the line, such as during 1945, one has an especially acute motivation to learn and effectively use the “rules.” Rule-learning, in short, is a universal human activity and thus says little about any particular phase of GDR history.

Merrilyn Thomas's essay argues that external détente helped Ulbricht and Honecker in their goal of “creating a strong and permanent socialist German state.” Her essay suggests, however, that diplomatic normalization was intended by the west to destabilize socialism, and that this instability was a cause of the rapid expansion of the Stasi empire.

Jeannette Madarasz's essay is a generalized overview of the stabilization in state-run factories over the 1960s and 1970s and an attempt to apply the “normalization concept.” Madarasz's essay is unfortunately too vague, with almost no specific details (though she claims it is the first grassroots study of factories), to explain what “normalization” means. Indeed, she argues that the “rules of the game” changed repeatedly from the 1960s to the 1980s, as the advantage surged toward technologists and then back to workers (pp. 64–65).

George Last's essay is an excellent description of the difficulties experienced by the regime in implementing collectivized agriculture, especially during the turbulent period of the New Economic System (NES). Dan Wilton's essay focuses on what he calls the “societalization” of the state in the area of popular music and sports, involving the creation of state-run committees for music, discos, and sporting events, in a kind of East German Gleichschaltung.

Esther von Richtofen's essay looks at how the functionaries and members of state-run cultural organizations learned the “rules of the game” in the 1960s and 1970s to their advantage. As with Wilton's essay, the problem here is that 1) there were “rules” earlier that people also used, and 2) the focus on state-centered sources excludes spheres of culture that developed outside the state's radar (for a good example, see Leo Schmieding's work on East German hip-hop). Jan Palmowski's essay is a fascinating and detailed look at how the notion of Heimat was adapted—or not—to socialist ideology in two Thuringian towns.

Alf Lüdtke's essay considers five “images” or “types” of workers in the GDR based on his own research, and considers the extent to which these might reflect individual appropriations of identity in the GDR. Ina Merkel then argues that the GDR can be considered “normal” relative to other modern European states, and Dorothee Wierling's essay compares her work on the 1929 generation with that of 1949, concluding that those born “in year one” of the GDR experienced more “stability” than the Hitler Youth generation.

Finally, Angela Brock looks at how the concept of a “socialist personality” was integrated into the educational structure of the GDR, though again she relies only on state sources (a personality is formed by much more than a school system), and Mark Allinson argues the year 1977 was a completely “normal” year in the GDR, meaning nothing “exceptional” happened. This requires that one agree with Allinson's criteria for what counts as normal to begin with, circular reasoning at best—indeed, a number of important things happened in 1977 (as they did every year), for example, the groundbreaking of Marzahn, the flagship settlement in the Wohnungsbauprogramm, the centerpiece of Honecker's regime.

This is an uneven volume. The central organizing concept, “normalization,” is not well explained or applied, and to the extent that the essays claim to apply this rather opaque idea, they disappoint. There are also a number of very useful, well-researched, well-written interventions included that introduce a degree of heterogeneity, however, and thus make this a worthwhile volume to consider for specialists and teachers of East German history.