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Two decades after the predicted “end of ideology”, we are observing a re-emphasis on party ideology under Hu Jintao. The paper looks into the reasons for and the factors shaping the re-formulation of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideology since 2002 and assesses the progress and limits of this process. Based on the analysis of recent elite debates, it is argued that the remaking of ideology has been the consequence of perceived challenges to the legitimacy of CCP rule. Contrary to many Western commentators, who see China’s successful economic performance as the most important if not the only source of regime legitimacy, Chinese party theorists and scholars have come to regard Deng Xiaoping’s formula of performance-based legitimacy as increasingly precarious. In order to tackle the perceived “performance dilemma” of party rule, the adaptation and innovation of party ideology is regarded as a crucial measure to relegitimize CCP rule.
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in Marcuse's critical theory. This can be partly ascribed to Marcuse's interdisciplinary approach to humanities and social sciences. Many of Marcuse's ideas and concepts are tacitly present in contemporary social and ecological movements. Contemporary literature on Marcuse is positively inclined to his theory while the critique of Marcuse dates back to the '70s, and remains largely unimpaired. This fact poses significant challenges to the revival of Marcuse's critical theory. This study sets out to report on current interest in Marcuse's critical theory trying to correct "past injustices" by responding to negative criticism. The main flaw of such criticism - as we see it - is in failing to perceive interdisciplinary character of Marcuse's critical theory. Marcuse's renaissance cannot be complete without, to use dialectical term, sublating the history of negative criticism.
The paper assesses current rising reparations claims for the Maafa/ Maangamizi (‘African holocaust,’ comprising transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism) from two angles. First, it explores the connectivity of reparations and global justice, peace and security. Second, it discusses how the claim is justified in international law. The concept of reparations in international law is also explored, revealing that reparations cannot be limited to financial compensation due to the nature of the damage and international law prescriptions. Comprehensive reparations based in international law require the removal of structures built on centuries of illegal acts and aggression, in the forms of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Reparations must also lead to the restitution of sovereignty to African and indigenous peoples globally. They are indispensable to halt the destruction of the earth as human habitat, caused by the violent European cultural, political, socio-economic system known as apitalism that is rooted in transatlantic slavery.
Repertoires of counter-contention: conceptualizing institutional responses to social movements
(2016)
The ways in which political authorities respond to societal challenges is a key element in the interaction between social movements and state institutions. Two conceptual distinctions are important when studying such repertoires of counter-contention: authorities’ responses may (1) aim at either including or excluding challengers, and they may (2) either respect their autonomy or try to control them.
Aim: Replicate the analysis conducted by Prof. Dr. Alexander W. Schmidt-Catran (Goethe University Frankfurt), Prof. Dr. Malcolm Fairbrother (Umea University), and Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Andreß (University of Cologne) that was published in a special issue on Cross-National Comparative Research in the German academic journal Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie in 2019. Result: Almost all calculations, tables and graphs from Schmidt-Catran et al. (2019) could be replicated sufficiently well in R.
The first case of COVID-19 infection in Africa was recorded in Egypt on 14 February 2020. Following this, several projections of the possible devastating effect that the virus can have on the population of African countries were made in the Western media. This paper presents evidence for Africa’s successful responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and under-reporting or misrepresentation of these successes in Western media. It proceeds to argue for accounting for these successes in terms of Africa’s communitarian way of life and conceptions of self, duty, and rights; and that a particular orientation in theorizing on global justice can highlight the injustices inherent in the misrepresentation of these successes and contribute shared perspectives to formulating a framework of values and concepts that would facilitate the implementation of global policy goals for justice. The paper is thus grounded in a rejection of the insular tenets of theorizing prevalent in the global justice debate and to persistent inclinations in Western scholarship to the thinking that theorizing in the African context that draws inspiration from the cultural past has little to contribute to the quest for justice globally. On the contrary, it argues that reflexive critique of cultural history is a necessary source of normative ideals that can foster tolerant coexistence and a cooperative endeavour toward shared conceptions of justice in the contemporary world.
This working paper gives insights on a theoretical perspective on class formation in the context of global financial markets and presents first empirical findings regarding the formation of a global financial class. It draws on numerous encounters with financial professionals that were inter- viewed in Frankfurt (Germany) and Sydney (Australia). As a preliminary conclusion from those inves- tigations on a micro-perspective, we state that acting on the market creates a sense of global socia- bility, whereby organizations only play a secondary role. Careers in finance follow internationally homogenized pathways. This process of global class formation is taking place prominently in global financial centers. Therefore we link the level of investigation on a micro-perspective (experience of financial professionals) with global city life and the fabric of the city. This results in empirical findings on a meso-level from an ethnography of the social and professional urban environment of finance in the two global cities. Symbolic struggles engraved in the built environment of Frankfurt and Sydney are traced and discussed against the background of every-day-practices of aspiration in the financial districts investigated.
We live in tragic times. Millions are sheltering in place to avoid exacerbating the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How should we respond to such tragedies? This paper argues that the human right to health can help us do so because it inspires human rights advocates, claimants, and those with responsibility for fulfilling the right to try hard to satisfy its claims. That is, the right should, and often does, give rise to what I call the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve embodies a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Contra critics, we should not reject the right even if it cannot tell us how to ration scarce health resources. Rather, the right gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of fulfilling everyone’s basic health needs.
Ibegin by providing some background to conceptions of responsibility. I note the extent of disagreement in this area, the diverse and cross-cutting distinctions that are deployed, and the relative neglect of some important problems. These facts make it difficult to attribute responsibility for climate change, but so do some features of climate change itself which I go on to illuminate. Attributions of responsibility are often contested sites because such attributions are fundamentally pragmatic, mobilized in the service of a normative outlook. We should be pluralists about responsibility and shape whatever conceptions can help to explain, guide, and motivate our responses to climate change. I sketch one such notion, ‘intervention-responsibility’, and argue that it should be ascribed to international regimes and organizations, states and other jurisdictions, individuals, and firms. Each has different capacities and thus different intervention-responsibilities responsibilities, but these differences are not always mirrored in public discussion. In particular, the moral responsibility of firms has been greatly neglected.
This paper addresses the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. I argue that there is scope for an account of asylum as compensation owed to those displaced by the impacts of climate change which needs only to appeal to minimal normative commitments about the requirements of global justice. I demonstrate the possibility of such an approach through an examination of the work of David Miller. Miller is taken as an exemplar of a broadly ‘international libertarian’ approach to global justice, and his work is a useful vehicle for this project because he has an established view about both responsibility for climate change and about the state’s right to exclude would-be immigrants. In the course of the argument, I set out the relevant aspects of Miller’s views, reconstruct an account of responsibility for the harms faced by climate migrants which is consistent with Miller’s views, and demonstrate why such an account yields an obligation to provide asylum as a form of compensation to ‘climate migrants.’
Rethinking concepts of peace
(2017)
Motivated by a structural blind spot of Peace Studies regarding the (manifoldness of) definitions of its central concept "peace", I argue that this blind spot is especially manifested in the Eurocentric view on peace. My claim: Non-"Western" concepts of peace should be considered more in Peace Studies...
Die Wahlen über den Verbleib Großbritanniens in der EU haben die europäische Ordnung erschüttert. Der Vortrag/Die Präsentation soll nicht nur die Hintergründe beleuchten, sondern auch zeigen, welche Chancen die neue Situation eröffnet, Chancen, die es vorher so nicht gegeben hat...
The established notion of political representation is challenged on multiple accounts—theoretically, conceptually, and empirically. The contributions to this thematic issue explore the constructivist turn as the means for rethinking political representation today around the world. The articles included here seek to reconsider representation by theoretically and empirically reassessing how representation is conceptualized, claimed and performed—in Western and non-Western contexts. In recognition that democratic representation in Western countries is in a process of fundamental transformation and that non-Western countries no longer aim at replicating established Western models, we look for representation around the world—specifically in: Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, China, and India. This enables us to advance the study of representative democracy from a global perspective. We show the limits and gaps in the constructivist literature and the benefits of theory-driven empirical research. Finally, we provide conceptual tools and frameworks for the (comparative) study of claims of representation.
The debate about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015, is moving very quickly. Weighing in on this debate, we argue that if the SDGs are to be as effective as they can realistically be, concrete responsibilities must be assigned to specific competent actors, measurement methods involved in development targets must not be allowed to be changed midway, and the tracking of progress must be left to independent experts. New development goals should aim for inequality reduction, a more comprehensive view of poverty, and, most importantly, systemic reforms of global institutions. The world will not make decent progress against poverty until the most powerful agents accept real action commitments, not only in the marginal area of development assistance, but in all their policy and institutional design decisions, at both the domestic and especially the supranational level. We end with eight examples of institutional reform goals – ranging from deterring trade barriers to mitigating the effects of lost corporate tax revenues on poor populations – that should be included in the new list.
Persons traveling to participate in foreign conflicts by no means constitute a new phenomenon that is intrinsically tied to the ‘Islamic State’ (‘IS’). However, law enforcement agencies all over the world increasingly focus on foreign fighters travelling to Syria and Iraq due to a considerable rise in their number as well as the perceived threat they pose upon their return. Currently, around 650 German residents and citizens have travelled to the region to support jihadist groups such as the ‘IS’.
Many theories of global distributive justice are based on the assumption that all humans hold common ownership of the earth. As the earth is finite and our actions interconnect, we need a system of justice that regulates the potential appropriation of the common earth to ensure fairness. According to these theories, imposing limits and distributive obligations on private and public property arrangements may be the best mechanism for governing common ownership. We present a critique of the assumption that this issue can be solved within the private–public property regime, arguing that the boundaries of this regime should not be taken for granted and that the growing literature on the democratic commons movement suggests how this can be accomplished. We consider that, if the earth is defined as a common, the private– public property paradigm must be open to questioning, and democratic commoners’ activities should be considered.
Rhetoric and global justice
(2008)
Activists have long recognized the importance of rhetoric and emotional appeal in building support for the global justice movement. However, many political theorists worry that the use of rhetoric may obstruct clear presentation of the issues at stake, and may result in our policies being determined by where the sympathies of the best rhetoricians lie. In this article I examine the ways in which contemporary theorists try to accommodate the need for rhetoric and emotional appeal, and I argue that their attempts are unsatisfactory because they view rhetoric as a tool or skill that can be used to manipulate people to support any position. Yet if we question the sharp separation between rhetoric and reason, then the aims of building support for a cause, identifying the causes we ought to support, and treating others with respect need no longer conflict. Re-examining the radical liberal theories of J.S. Mill, L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson, will help us to see how this separation might be questioned and rhetoric recovered as a respectful and respectable form of argument.
This is the fifth article in our series Trouble on the Far-Right.
The threat that the far right poses to civil society changes across time and space. In Britain this threat has generally been in the form of hate-crimes and public disorder, yet in the past two decades there has been a shift towards solo-actor terrorism. By examining far right groups in the UK in the post-war period this paper explores the drivers of this change; namely, how membership in extremist groups combined with the proliferation of far right networks created by the internet can create a pathway to radicalisation which ends in acts of terror.
Not unlike the recent report Filling the ranks on the recruitment problems of the British Army shows for the UK, the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) struggle badly to meet their recruitment goals and to fulfill the “Trendwende Personal” (the turnaround in the personnel strength) as proclaimed by the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen. Last year the recruitment department of the Bundeswehr tried a new way of targeting especially young people on YouTube. With a series of 59 episodes called Die Rekruten (The Recruits) YouTube users followed a couple of German Navy recruits through their basic training at the German Navy Technical School.
The series was widely criticised for not showing the serious implications of military service. Two weeks ago, the new series MALI on the deployment of German forces with the United Nations mission MINUSMA in Mali started as a sequel. But does the new series give a realistic impression of the challenges and risks of being a German soldier today and why should this be a requirement for a YouTube series?
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been increasing recently. Although the narrative developed to describe the execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric, Nimr Al-Nimr, as a sectarian dimension of the Kingdom’s policies towards Iran, Saudi Arabia’s goals are not principally fuelling the Shiite-Sunni divide. The Saudi executions were partially an attempt by Saudi Arabia to severe ties with Iran and push the tensions forward. Lifting sanctions against Iran, coupled with oil prices plummeting to around $32 per barrel remains a frightening nightmare for the Saudis...
This is the fifth post in the blog series „Movements and Institutions“.
The article traces a formalization process within the Interventionist Left (IL). Against theoretical expectations that would assume a de-radicalization of aims and repertoires of protest, we find that due to the network’s multi-track strategy, and the claim to radicalize existing social debates, the IL did not de-radicalize despite a formalization process and a partial integration into established systems.
Ruling parties as communities of practice and collective identity in China-Ethiopia relations
(2015)
While it helps to put the overemphasis on Chinese agency in the literature into perspective, the recent debate on the role played by African agency in Sino-African relations generally adopts the same rationalist perspective on international politics, and thus stands to miss important aspects of the relations studied. This paper takes the example of Ethiopia, which is often used to highlight African elites’ strategic use of the new options presented by China’s rise, and analyses it from a constructivist perspective. Such a perspective proposes that we need to take the role played by ideas, discourses and emotions seriously, and that Ethiopian policy makers do not exist outside a dense web of personal relations, common knowledge, and shared practices that inadvertently structure their relations with China. More specifically, it is argued here that the ruling parties of China and Ethiopia are linked together in an international community of practice, that exchanges within this community have strengthened the perception of like-mindedness, and that Sino-Ethiopian relations therefore rest on a different basis than is acknowledged by purely rationalist accounts.
Representation is a process of making, accepting, or rejecting representative claims (Disch, 2015; Saward, 2014). This groundbreaking insight challenged the standard assumption that representative democracy can be reduced to elections and activities of elected representatives (Pitkin, 1967). It broadened the scope of representative democracy to encompass representation activities beyond those authorized by elections, transformed our thinking and provided a new perspective, putting claims and their reception into the center. This paradigm shift erased the distinction between elected and non-elected representatives and disclosed the potential of non-elected actors’ claims to represent (Andeweg, 2003; Kuyper, 2016; Rosanvallon & Goldhammer, 2008; Saward, 2006, 2009; Van Biezen & Saward, 2008). In spite of this lively debate, we identify an important gap in the literature: while this paradigmatic shift inspired many authors, conceptual frameworks that can be applied for systematic empirical analysis of real-life cases are missing. In this article, we fill this gap and propose frameworks for assessing and validating a variety of real-life claims. Our study provides empirical substance to the ongoing theoretical debates, helping to translate the mainly theoretical ‘claim approach’ into empirical research tools. It helps to transform the conventional wisdom about what representation can (not) be and shines a new light on the potential future of (claims on) representation.
Religion in the Middle East seems to define allies and enemies inside and outside the political borders. On the one hand, Shiite Iran is allies with the Iraqi government, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, revolutionary forces in Bahrain and the Syrian regime. On the other hand, Sunni Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, Egypt, Turkey and Sunni elements in the region form an alliance against what they call the expansion of the Iranian influence. There is an unmistaken pattern of alliance in the Middle East, in which states, monarchies and forces seem to define their allies and enemies based on sectarian dimensions, and by which we witness a minority oppressing a majority when it is possible and vice versa across the Middle East including Israel...
After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fear-mongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal-democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.
Security, arms control, disarmament and confidence building measures in the Baltic sea region
(2017)
Taking into consideration the stalemete of all disarmament negotiations as well as the worsening situation in the Baltic Sea region, I would like to present another paper as well, discussing the security trends in the Baltic Sea region and the potential of confidence building measures in this region as well as to discuss in this context the prospects of arms control and disarmament in general as well as specifically in Europeparticularly in the Baltic Sea region...
This working paper is based on a lecture given at the Summer School “Multiple Inequalities in the Age of Transnationalization”, June 23-27 2014 at Goethe University Frankfurt. In it, I explore the linkages between sexuality and migration and aim to show that instead of deeming them a narrow subfield of migration studies, thinking through these linkages has much wider implications for different fields, including post- and decolonial queer studies, the study of race and sexuality, the study of citizenship and state projects of inclusion/exclusion, and for work that attempts to ce-center the predominant knowledge production focused on the Global North.
This paper discusses two possible difficulties with Catherine Lu’s powerful analysis of the moral response to our shared history of colonial evil; both of these difficulties stem from the rightful place of shame in that moral response. The first difficulty focuses on efficacy: existing states may be better motivated by shame at the past than by a shared duty to bring about a just future. The second focuses on equity: it is, at the very least, possible that shame over past misdeeds ought to be brought into the conversation about present duties, in a manner more robust than Lu’s analysis allows.
This article discusses freedom of movement under the lens of shifting boundaries of membership and traces the tension between the political and the economic rationale of European integration. It first reflects on the normativity of free movement and links it to the foundations of modern democratic citizenship. Subsequently, it discusses the role of free movement in the construction of EU citizenship and argues that the genesis in market integration casts a long shadow which hinders EU citizenship's potential to fully display the logic of political and social equality. Under current conditions of huge wealth discrepancies between member states, the prevailing form of horizontal integration necessarily brings about a tension between mobility and solidarity, which in turn creates a barrier for further developing EU citizenship. It is concluded that strengthening an intra‐European dimension of solidarity is needed in order to substantiate the right to move as an equal European citizenship right.
For more than two decades, the National Planning Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences (NPOPSS) has been managing official funding of social science research in China under the orbit of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) propaganda system. By focusing on “Major Projects”, the most prestigious and well-funded program initiated by the NPOPSS in 2004, this contribution outlines the political and institutional ramifications of this line of official funding and attempts to identify larger shifts during the past decade in the “ideologics” of official social science research funding – the changing ideological circumscriptions of research agendas in the more narrow sense of echoing party theory and rhetoric and – in the broader sense – of adapting to an increasingly dominant official discourse of cultural and national self-assertion. To conclude, this article offers reflections on the potential repercussions of these shifts for international academic collaboration.
Critique, and especially radical critique of reason, is under pressure from two opponents. Whereas the proponents of "post-critical" or "acritical" thinking denounce critique as an empty and self-righteous repetition of debunking, the decriers of "post-truth" accuse critique of having helped to bring about our current "post-truth" politics. Both advocate realism as a limit critique must respect, but I will defend the claim that we urgently need radical critiques of reason because they offer a more precise diagnosis of the untruths in politics the two opponents of critique are rightfully worried about. Radical critiques of reason are possible, I argue, if we turn our attention to the practices of criticizing, if we refrain from a sovereign epistemology, and if we pluralize reason without trivializing it. In order to demonstrate the diagnostic advantage of radical critiques of reason, I briefly analyze the political and epistemic strategy at work in two exemplary untruths in politics.
There are longstanding calls for international organizations (IOs) to be more inclusive of the voices and interests of people whose lives they affect. There is nevertheless widespread disagreement among practitioners and political theorists over who ought to be included in IO decision-making and by what means. This paper focuses on the inclusion of IOs’ ‘intended beneficiaries,’ both in principle and practice. It argues that IOs’ intended beneficiaries have particularly strong normative claims for inclusion because IOs can affect their vital interests and their political agency. It then examines how these claims to inclusion might be feasibly addressed. The paper proposes a model of inclusion via representation and communication, or ‘mediated inclusion.’ An examination of existing practices in global governance reveals significant opportunities for the mediated inclusion of IOs’ intended beneficiaries, as well as pervasive obstacles. The paper concludes that the inclusion of intended beneficiaries by IOs is both appropriate and feasible.
Contemporary liberalism and republicanism present clearly distinct programs for domestic politics, but the same cannot be said when it comes to global politics: the burgeoning literature on global republicanism has reproduced the divide between cosmopolitan and associational views familiar from long-standing debates among liberal egalitarians. Should republicans be cosmopolitans? Despite presence of a range of views in the literature, there is an emerging consensus that the best answer is no. This paper aims to resist the emerging consensus, arguing that republicans should be cosmopolitans. The considerations offered against cosmopolitanism generally rest on an incomplete understanding of the relationship between economic inequality or poverty on the one hand, and domination on the other. Insofar as republicans agree that promoting freedom from domination should be our central political aim, they should regard the reduction of economic inequality and poverty at home and abroad as equally pressing.
Correspondence study field experiments with political elites are a recent addition to legislative studies research, in which unsolicited emails are sent to elites to gauge their responsiveness. In this article, we discuss their ethical implications. We advance from the viewpoint that correspondence study field experiments involve trade-offs between costs and benefits that need to be carefully weighted. We elaborate this argument with two contributions in mind. First, we synthesize ethical considerations in published work to explore what the specific trade-offs are and how they can be mitigated by experimental design. We conclude that correspondence study field experiments with political elites are worth pursuing given their potential to further good governance. But they also involve distinct trade-offs that are particularly challenging. Second, we draw from our own considerations while designing a comparative correspondence study field experiment and stress challenges resulting from cross-national designs. In sum, we aim to facilitate further reasoned discussion on an important methodological issue.
International society consists of states and the rules and institutions they share. Although international society has become a mundane feature of the world and the principal research focus of International Relations, it has become meaningless. More specifically, the technical rules that determine what states are and how they relate to other features of the world are units of semantic meaning, but their rampant, unprincipled proliferation has corroded their capacity to contain existential meaning. This deterioration is to be deplored because it alienates subjects from each other, it is totalising and excludes alternatives, and it is theoretically irreversible. To connect the two kinds of meaning, the first step is to reconceptualise international society as consisting strictly of constitutive rules whose meaning depends on the context they jointly compose, which implies that these rules can in turn be represented as signs in a semiotic structure. In order to evaluate the capacity of the signs to contain existential meaning, the next step is to adapt Baudrillard’s hierarchical typology of semiotic systems, ranging from the most meaningful systems based on symbolic exchange value to the vapid terminus of hyperreality based on sign value, in which semantic meaning is without value and existential meaning is impossible. The narrative traces the history of the signs of international law from the premodern period, when Christendom was understood as an approximation of the divine kingdom and a vehicle for salvation, to the present postmodern period, in which hundreds of articles of international maritime law make the decision to go to war over isolated rocks intelligible – even rational – and international trade law catalogues potato products to six digits. Three cases in particular exemplify this devolution in international law: the laws determining the territorial sea, the most-favoured national principle of international trade law, and nationality as a normative basis for statehood.
The article focuses on the way events are connected with preceding events of the same type carrying out a participatory observation on a golden wedding celebrated in a small village in the middle of Germany. Events are formally connected by their participants. In contrast to participant networks, the chronological order of event-event networks is evident. Different models for the connection of events are discussed with reference to a classic dataset of the "Deep South" study DAVIS, GARDNER and GARDNER (1941). A stability of forms (in the sense of SIMMEL's "formal sociology" [1908]) was found with a variation of some elements. The main reason for the stability is the uncertainty that arises when people temporarily change their position from that of guest to host. They fall back on approved forms for their celebration. Professionals are the other important position. They ensure that events will take place as they did in the past. It is proposed that an analysis of the chronological order of networks between events can lead to a renaissance in the cultural analysis of forms. The analysis presented is an approach to an investigation of the development of culture.
Children from upper-class families have better cognitive outcomes and fewer behavioural problems than those from working-class families. Previous studies highlighted that the class gap in child development is partially driven by differences in parenting styles, but they rarely looked at multiple, more specific dimensions of parenting, i.e., inductive reasoning, parenting consistency, warmth and anger. This study provides a systematic account of how parental social class shapes these four dimensions of parenting, and how these dimensions affect children’s cognitive outcomes and behavioural problems. Using high-quality, longitudinal data, and both hybrid models and the generalized methods of moments, this study reports two main findings. First, upper-class parents significantly differ from lower-class parents in two parenting dimensions, displaying more inductive reasoning and parenting consistency, but no relevant class differences are found in the two emotion-type dimensions of parenting (i.e., warmth and anger). Second, all four parenting dimensions have a strong impact on children’s behavioural problems, while they do not affect cognitive outcomes. An exception is consistency, the only dimension that affects both types of child outcomes. The study underscores the relevance of analysing parenting and child development from a multidimensional approach to better understand how upper-class parents transmit advantage to children.
In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents’ perceived work–family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for child care and leave from paid work, are capable of reducing work–family conflict as well as the gender and educational gaps in work–family conflict. We use data from the European Social Survey 2010 for 20 countries and 5296 respondents (parents), extended with information on national policies for maternity and parental leave and child care support from the OECD Family Database. Employing multilevel analysis, we find that mothers and the higher educated report most work–family conflict. Policies supporting child care reduce the level of experienced work–family conflict; family leave policy appears to have no alleviating impact on working parents’ work–family conflict. Our findings indicate that family policies appear to be unable to reduce the gender gap in conflict perception and even widen the educational gap in work–family conflict.
Women’s protection has been largely discussed in conflict and gender scholarship and promoted as a key priority for governments, NGOs and international community. However, when critically analysed, the meaning of protection in conflict settings and the understanding of who should provide protection in emergencies, conflict and complex humanitarian crisis remain ambiguous. In long-term conflict settings for example, it is unclear whose role it is to protect civilians...
The present essay is the revised version of a talk given at the meeting of the German Sociological Association (DGS) on 'Social Theory and Social Practice', which was held on 16-18 February 1989 in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Bielefeld. The original German version of that talk was published in Jenseits der Utopie : Theoriekritik der Gegenwart / ed. by Stefan Müller-Doohm. - Frankfurt : Suhrkamp, 1991, S. 15-47: "Soziologie und Zeitdiagnose: oder: Die Moderne im Selbstbezug" s.a. http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/volltexte/2007/3906/
Social movements and institutions are central actors in national and transnational politics as well as core categories of social inquiry. Despite their importance, both terms are still haunted by a lack of thorough definitions. We introduce a blog series with ten weekly contributions on their interrelation, outlining several innovative approaches and suggesting some vantage points for rethinking ‘Movements’ and ‘Institutions’ in a productive manner.
Chris Armstrong argues that attempts at justifying special claims over natural resources generally take one of two forms: arguments from improvement and arguments from attachment. We argue that Armstrong fails to establish that the distinction between natural resources and improved resources has no normative significance. He succeeds only in showing that ‘improvers’ (whoever they may be) are not necessarily entitled to the full exchange value of the improvement. It can still be argued that the value of natural and improved resources should be distributed on different grounds, but that the value of improvements should be conceived differently.
The starting point of Demirovic's text is Adorno's idea that concepts as forms of thinking are constellations of power. Differently from many interpretations of Adorno as resigned, Demirovic shows that this assumption enables Adorno to give his own theory the character of interventions in the ideological consensus of everyday life with regard to emancipation.
It is widely thought that the international community, taken as a whole, is required to take action to prevent terrorism. Yet, what each state is required to do in this project is unclear and contested. This article examines a number of bases on which we might assign responsibilities to conduct counterterrorist operations to states. I argue that the ways in which other sorts of responsibilities have been assigned to states by political philosophers will face significant limitations when used to assign the necessary costs of preventing terrorism. I go on to suggest that appealing to the principle of fairness—which assigns obligations on the basis of benefits received from cooperative endeavours—may be used to make up the shortfall, despite this principle having received relatively little attention in existing normative accounts of states’ responsibilities.
Conflict and insecurity have largely been the major driving factors behind the current wave of population influx in Europe. It is desirable that to understand the current migrant crisis in Europe, it is essential to understand the nature of the on-going conflict and existing insecurities in the home states from where the migrants are coming...
Parties should develop a consistent issue profile during an electoral campaign. Yet, manifestos, which form the baseline for a party’s programmatic goals in the upcoming legislative period, are usually published months before Election Day. We argue that parties must emphasize policy issues that are of key relevance to their likely voters in the last weeks of the election campaign, in which an increasing share of citizens make up their minds in terms of which party they will choose. To test this notion empirically, we draw on a novel data set that covers information on party representatives’ statements made during the final weeks of an election campaign in nine European countries. Focusing on the campaign messages of social democratic and socialist parties, we find that these parties indeed intensify their emphasis of unemployment policy, which is a salient issue for their core voter clienteles, particularly in times of economic hardship.
This is the fourth article in our series Trouble on the Far-Right.
Terror from the extreme right has again gained a wider public attention in 2011 with the devastating attacks carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway and the detection of the right-wing terrorist cell called “National Socialist Underground” (NSU), which had committed ten murders, three bombings and a dozen bank robberies during more than a decade of time in Germany. In many Western countries violence motivated by racism, anti-government hate, anti-Semitism or other aspects of right-wing extremism, appears to be a regular part of criminal activities. Hate crime legislation and statistics vary strongly but show that next to high intense terrorist attacks such as 9/11, the attacks in London, Madrid or Paris, right-wing violence and terrorism is the most dangerous politically motivated threat. In the United States for example Perliger (2012) counted 4,420 right-wing terrorist incidents between 1990 and 2012 causing 670 fatalities and 3,053 injuries. In Germany official statistics counted 69 right-wing attacks between 1990 and 2015 causing 75 casualties, while civil society watchdogs count up to 184 deaths. In Russia some experts speak of approximately 450 right-wing motivated killings between 2004 and 2010. Nevertheless, this specific form of political violence remains largely under-researched and misunderstood as non-terroristic. In consequence the threat from the far right is continuously downplayed with severe consequences for victims and the internal security.
Structural alienation: Lu's structural approach to reconciliation from within a relational framework
(2019)
In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural injustice. First, I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap.
Sublimity, negativity, and architecture. An essay on negative architecture through Kant to Adorno
(2015)
Architecture defines and consumes people. It exposes them to a multitude of varieties of different aesthetic engagements. Architecture becomes a lived experience. However, this lived experience is always caught in the inner workings of the social and more specifically within cultural ideology. In modern capitalism, culture pervades every aspect of our lives. It shows its presence everywhere from our own homes to the public streets. Culture is everywhere, and architecture is a tool used for both the benefit and detriment of the “culture industry”. Kant speaks of the sublime as a profound moment of reason realizing its ability to overcome its own limits. In this experience is it possible to be completely ravaged and descend into hades and melancholy? Is there a beauty in this descent? More specifically, can architecture become banal or pedestrian, uplifting or depressing? According to Theodor Adorno, our subjectivity is defined by the constant dialectical struggle between freedom and unfreedom (among other things). It is realizing our freedom in the face of our unfreedom that makes us truly able to attain some form of resistance. The sublime experience can be transformed into a spirit of revelation and beautifully allow us to in a way resist the one-dimensional tendencies of modern capitalism. Architecture, which is immersed in our societal being and contributes to many of our own subjective unfreedoms, comes to define our lives as inhabited space. When does architecture produce a sublime experience? Can architecture’s authentic “aura” stand out amongst the reproduced city and produce a sublime feeling that can be a form of resistance against the culture industry? Does Grand Central Terminal provide the key to an architecturally sublime experience? Using dialectical experience and examining the sublime feeling (in a critique of the Kantian sublime) as the key to breaking through the culture industry’s banal architectural hold on our subjectivity, this essay will examine the experience of the sublime as a key to unfolding resistance in the face of the banality of modern architecture in the city and opening our minds to the Great Refusal through the exploration of Grand Central Terminal.
This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines.
In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed.
This paper1 investigates changes in the domestic work sector when passing from the informal to the formal labor market. The issue is explored within the context of the housework voucher policy (titres-services), which allows households to officially purchase weekly housework services from an authorized agency, through vouchers. This contribution has therefore a twofold focus: observing changes in labor market dynamics and investigating workers’ perception of this change. In order to discuss these issues, I will firstly look at the step from informal to formal labor market through two aspects: ethnic niches and individual labor dynamics – two bedrocks of Brussels domestic work market. Then, I will analyze workers’ personal experiences when acquiring a declared job in the voucher system.
Analyzing objective and subjective changes, a entral question of this article is to which extent the switch to the housework voucher system can bring empowerment to domestic workers. The sector work quality, in objective and subjective terms, has improved mainly by the setting of rules and by allowing workers to enjoy labor rights and a work status. The formal market dynamics of the housework voucher system remain, however, profoundly ethicized and marked by women’s presence, as was/is the shadow market.
The article shows that workers’ understanding of the transition from an informal to a formal sector is largely a result of their previous experiences and social position, mainly regarding migration status. This change will be thus much more assertive for workers who had their migrant status regularization and work formalization processes concomitantly, demonstrating that the most empowering shift is the one of acquiring papers, and not of entering declared work.
Since 2013, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) has warned of a heightened threat emanating from jihadi terrorism in Switzerland. According to FIS’s assessment, the threat has continuously risen since then and reached a new high in 2016. This is a new situation for a country that has, since the two attacks conducted by Palestinian groups targeting an El Al airplane in Kloten in 1969 and the bombing of a Swissair machine in 1970, remained largely unscathed by terrorism. This has remained true even in the decade after 9/11 when a wave of jihadi terrorism inspired and often directed by al-Qaeda struck urban centers in Europe and elsewhere on multiple occasions...
This is the seventh article in our series on refugees. This article deals with the accommodation of Syrian refugees living in Germany. Based on my personal experience living in a refugee camp („Heim“) in the city of Cologne (Köln), and based on relevant literature, the article will, firstly, address the different types of temporary residences for refugees in Germany, and, secondly, the process through which refugees pass while looking for a permanent accommodation. Thirdly, and most importantly, the article discusses the ongoing shift within Köln’s urban and social structure in the light of the emerging resettlement of refugees. Although the urban structure of Köln, like many other German cities, has a certain level of urban segregation manifested in the settlement of immigrant communities (Friedrichs 1998, p.1), I argue that, on the contrary, the resettlement of Syrian refugees shows coherence and dispersion. The article is accompanied by a mapping survey that investigates on the spatial aspect of the accommodation distribution...
When the Iranian revolution embarked against Muhammad Reza Shah’s regime in the late 70s, it wasn’t a social revolution aiming at changing the society, but rather a political one with legitimate demands similar to what Syrians once were looking forward to achieve in 2011. When all this started in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the most central and inspirational figure in the Iranian revolution was still in exile. This is a story that happened 35 years ago and we cannot but see the rhyming of its events with the current Syrian imbroglio...
The notion that democracy is a system is ever present in democratic theory. However, what it means to think systemically about democracy (as opposed to what it means for a political system to be democratic) is under-elaborated. This article sets out a meta-level framework for thinking systemically about democracy, built upon seven conceptual building blocks, which we term (1) functions, (2) norms, (3) practices, (4) actors, (5) arenas, (6) levels, and (7) interactions. This enables us to systematically structure the debate on democratic systems, highlighting the commonalities and differences between systems approaches, their omissions, and the key questions that remain to be answered. It also enables us to push the debate forward both by demonstrating how a full consideration of all seven building blocks would address issues with existing approaches and by introducing new conceptual clarifications within those building blocks.
Atheism remains one of the most extreme taboos in Saudi Arabia. It is a red line that no one can cross. Atheists in Saudi Arabia have been suffering from imprisonment, maginalisation, slander, ostracisation and even execution. Indeed, atheists in Saudi are considered terrorists. Efforts for normalisation between those who believe and those who don’t remain bleak in the kingdom.
Despite constant warnings of Saudi religious authorities of “the danger of atheism”, which is, according to them, “equal to disbelieving in God”, many citizens in the kingdom are turning their back on Islam. Perhaps inter alia the Saudi dehumanising strict laws in the name of Islam, easy access to information and mass communication are the primary driving forces pushing Saudis to leave religion. Unfortunately, those who explicitly do, find themselves harshly punished or forced to live dual lives.
A short while ago, an interested reader inquired about one of my articles on the topic of jihad and terrorism. I am thankful for the inspiring question. The reader asked me to clarify why there seems to be no difference between terrorism and jihad nowadays, and why this boundary has disappeared in debates by many people in the social media and in other places...
Here we go again. Recent terrorist attacks against another European capital city in less than a year continue to shake the core of world politics. It is worth to note that terrorist attacks are not only happening against European states, but also against other countries, most notably Turkey and Indonesia. Is it a clash of cultures, religions, or it is merely politics? How do we keep serving Daesh (Islamic State)?
When Angela Merkel arrives at the United Nations for the opening of the 62nd session of the General Assembly on Tuesday [25 September] to deliver her first address as German chancellor she will be very well received. Just after two years in power she has already become something like a foreign policy legend...
Readers of Hannah Arendt’s now classic formulation of the statelessness problem in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism abound at a moment when the number of stateless peoples worldwide continues to rise exponentially. Along with statelessness, few concepts in Arendt scholarship have spawned such a volume of literature, and perhaps none have provoked as much interest outside of the field of philosophy, as ‘the right to have rights.’ Interpreting this enigmatic term exposes the heart of our beliefs about the nature of the political and has important consequences for how we practice politics on a global scale because it implicitly takes plural human beings, and not the citizen, as its subjects. Arendt’s conceptualization of this problem remains unsurpassed in its diagnosis of the political situation of statelessness, as well as its intimate description of the human cost of what she refers to as ‘world loss,’ a phenomenon that the prevailing human rights and global justice discourse does not take into account. And yet, as an alternative framework for thinking about global politics, the right to have rights resists easy interpretation, let alone practical application.
This is the 14. article in our series Trouble on the Far-Right.
country’s domestically weak far right has managed to send its representatives to the European Parliament (EP). Prior to 2014, these MEPs remained largely isolated, retaining a non-affiliated status. Initially, Volen Siderov’s far right party Attack, the first of its kind in post-communist Bulgaria, won three seats in the legislative body in 2007. Formed in 2005, Attack quickly gained electoral support, conveying a strong xenophobic and anti-minority rhetoric combined with emphasis on Orthodox Christian values and opposition to globalization. No other Bulgarian party has previously sought to attract voters using such a strategy. Attack participated in the short-lived Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group in the EP. Further efforts for constructing a lasting political grouping on the far right with the participation of Bulgarian parties remained futile, making their influence on debate-shaping and decision-making hardly possible. Winning a seat less in 2009, Attack remained outside of any recognized EP political group...
The paper argues that the current global market is organized by a system of transnational law whose development is best characterized as ambivalent. On the one side, legal juridification can lead to a hegemonic system of international law that lacks legitimacy, paradoxically creates extralegal spheres, promotes the ‘privatization’ of political areas, and, thereby, reduces the competences of states. On the other side, legal codification can also function as an engine of transnational democratization and as a barrier to an unhampered growth of transnational administrative and executive power. Scholarship on the idea of legitimacy in law and transnational governance in political and legal theory has to reflect these aspects of juridification on a world scale. Most approaches to the issue, however, have serious flaws: they neither offer an adequate empirical diagnosis of the de-embedding of international economic and legal processes, nor do they provide convincing proposals as to how such processes could be domesticated. Against this background, the paper lays out a critical analysis of legal codification processes as well as proposing an account of democratic governance, based on a realistic conception of deliberative democracy.
Die Autorin behandelt am Beispiel Brasilien das universelle Thema der Gewalt gegen Frauen in einem international vergleichenden und interkulturell kommunikativen Zusammenhang. Wichtiges Anliegen ihrer Fallstudie zur Gewalt gegen Frauen ist deutlich zu machen, dass die kontextbedingt aktive Bewegung der Frauen wider Gewalt in Brasilien sich nicht nur von Aktionen und Diskursen aus dem internationalen Bereich inspiriert hat, sondern einen beachtenswerten eigenen Beitrag leistet, von dem auch andere Frauenbewegungen lernen könnten. Voraussetzung hierzu ist allerdings, dass in allen diesen Gesellschaften, denen innerhalb der stratifizierten globalen Zusammenhänge unterschiedlicher Status zugewiesen wird, ein interkulturell kommunikativer Lernprozess stattfindet. In der Einleitung zu dieser Studie wird auf die spezifische Problematik des Themas hingewiesen, die Untersuchungsmethode und die eigene Argumentationsweise vorgestellt, die eng mit der Motivation zur Behandlung des Themas verwoben ist. Im ersten Kapitel wird die Gewalt gegen Frauen als zugleich universales wie auch partikulares Problem diskutiert, und dementsprechend die divergierenden Definitionen der Gewalt gegen Frauen, die vielfältigen Ansätze zum Verständnis von Frauen aus verschiedenen Gesellschaften und schließlich die Vielfalt der Erfahrungen von Frauen gegenüber Gewalt im Licht der interkulturellen Kommunikation vorgestellt und kritisch analysiert. Im zweiten Kapitel werden die diskursiv analytischen Interpretationen der Gewalt gegen Frauen im Licht der interkulturellen Kommunikation behandelt. Die Autorin knüpft an das diskursive Modell der Bedürfnisinterpretation von Nancy Fraser an und wendet es als methodischer Ansatz zur Interpretation der Gewalt gegen Frauen an. Sie weist auf die gesellschaftspolitischen und kulturellen Grenzen dieses Modells (auf die nördliche Hemisphäre beschränkt) hin und versucht es im Lichte des Ansatzes von Patrick Dias zu interkulturellem Lernen im Kontext der international ungleichen Machtstrukturen kritisch weiterzuentwickeln. Das dritte Kapitel analysiert die relevanten gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen mit ihren diskursiven Konstruktionen zum Verständnis von Frauen und deren Stellung im spezifischen Kontext Brasiliens. Das vierte Kapitel stellt die brasilianische Frauenbewegung wider Gewalt gegen Frauen in ihren historischen Zusammenhängen dar: von ihren Anfängen über deren Strategien in den Achtzigern bis im ausgehenden zwanzigsten Jahrhundert hinein; und es schließt mit den Diskussionen im 21. Jahrhundert ab, die verstärkt unter der Metapher der Cidadania (Aufbau der Zivilgesellschaft) steht. Kapitel fünf fasst die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zusammen und führt den in der Studie angewandten diskursiv analytischen Ansatz im Rahmen der interkulturell immer noch bestehenden herrschaftlichen Kommunikationsstruktur mit einem Plädoyer für ein interkulturelles Lernen, das die globalen Ungleichheiten nicht verkennt, weiter.
The main sources for the discussion of the category “relation” were Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics. Before their translation into Arabic in the 8th and 9th centuries, Christian theologians and in their footsteps Syriac scholars considered Aristotle’s works to be a useful tool in Christological discussions. This article analyzes the category of relation and its development in Arabic-Islamic philosophy in authors such as Kindī and his student Aḥmad Ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib as-Saraḫsī, Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, Ghazālī, Ibn Rušd, the Sufi Ibn ʿArabī and others.
The flying geese model, a theory of industrial development in latecomer economies, was developed in the 1930s by the Japanese economist Akamatsu Kaname (1896–1974). While rarely known in western countries, it is highly prominent in Japan and seen as the main economic theory underlying Japan’s economic assistance to developing countries. Akamatsu’s original interpretation of the flying geese model differs fundamentally from theories of western origin, such as the neoclassical model and Raymond Vernon’s product cycle theory. These differences include the roles of factors and linkages in economic development, the effects of demand and supply, as well as the dynamic and dialectical character of Akamatsu’s thinking. Later reformulations of the flying geese model, pioneered by Kojima Kiyoshi, attempt to combine aspects of Akamatsu’s theory with neoclassical thinking. This can be described as the “westernization” of the flying geese model. It is this reformulated interpretation that has become popular in Japan’s political discourse, a process that might be explained by the change in Japan’s perspective from that of a developing to that of an advanced economy. The position taken by Japan in its recent controversy with the World Bank, however, shows that many basic elements of Akamatsu’s thinking are still highly influential within both Japan’s academia and its government and are therefore relevant for understanding current debates on development theory.
The paper will outline a research project – its goals and methods – that focuses on what 1) makes humans flee from their home, land and country, at the risk of losing their lives, 2) seek refuge in another place, 3) what individual assessments they made before, during and after flight, and 4) how they assess the question of return to their countries/places of origin when the original causes of their flight – e.g. civil unrest, civil strife or civil war – are not any more directly present in the country or place from which they fled...
International politics is characterized by a lack of women. The few women holding high political positions are more likely to be criticized and judged based upon, what the author calls, ‘the construction of masculinity in international relations’. Tracing the origin and logic of this construction, the article critiques the dominant theories of international relations (namely, realism and liberalism) and argues for the aptness of a radical feminist social constructivist approach to the study of international politics. The article also illuminates the strong focus on men and men’s perspectives of these influential mainstream theories on their conception and interpretation of war. An examination of the concept of war reveals how masculinity and femininity are portrayed on matters of war and national security and what side effects this has on women in politics, particularly women with political positions.
What’s that again? Blasphemy law? An Egyptian court sentenced the Islamic scholar and theologian Islam Al-Buhairi to one year in prison for blasphemy. Al-Buhairi was accused of insulting Islam in his TV show “With Islam Al-Buhairi” on “Al-Qahira wa Al-Nas” channel. Al-Buhairi questioned the “Islamic heritage”, which angered the Al-Azhar scholarship...
This article deals with the analysis of Frankfurtrt's theorists, especially Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Horkheimer, and their relevance in relation to education. Motivation, faced with a world in which extreme-right values and religious fundamentalisms are promoted, such a scenario motivates us to question the role that education plays in combating extremism and intolerance. Scope of relevance. This article is directly related to the philosophy of education. Justification and relevance. This topic is justified because it deals with teleological aspects of the function of education. In the sense of questioning the teleological character of education based on philosophical concepts that seek the autonomy of the subject instead of just the human being to what is settled. As a methodology, it resorts to bibliographical studies and critical reflections on education and its political character in the construction of an emancipated social conscience of values that legitimize oppression. Results and discussion. A study on Critical Theory of Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Habermas and Marcuse was conducted as contributions to the construction of an education that, in addition to seeking inclusion, also seeks to be a political instrument to combat prejudice, which is nowadays alive again with the rise of religious fundamentalisms, xenophobia and the rise of extreme-right political ideas. Conclusion. It is concluded that the school has the political purpose to educate for a world of solidarity and respect for differences.
In the latest contribution to the Democracy Papers, Thomas Zittel explores when and how polarization becomes a cause for democratic anxiety. He argues that polarization over traditional policy issues is not in itself harmful, and can even be beneficial for democracies. However, he warns that polarization in which parties become divided over the acceptable rules of the game is a problem for democracies. Unfortunately, this latter type of division is increasingly common on both sides of the Atlantic today.
On 11 February, the World Fought back against Mass Surveillance. See those capital letters? They denote Things that Matter – somehow. We don’t necessarily know who ‘We’ are, what the ‘World’ is, nor whether the Mass Surveillance We’re against is the big and sexy kind run by acronymized (foreign) government agencies that We all recently learned about through Edward Snowden or the everyday kind conducted by means of cookies, computer profiles and GPS data we all send to whomever is watching in the course of a normal day’s activities, like checking Facebook, leaving the house to buy some bread or sending family pictures over the holidays via email. But ‘We’ ‘Fought’ ‘Them’, or maybe ‘It’.
Over the last three decades, countries across the Andean region have moved toward legal recognition of indigenous justice systems. This turn toward legal pluralism, however, has been and continues to be heavily contested. The working paper explores a theoretical perspective that aims at analyzing and making sense of this contentious process by assessing the interplay between conflict and (mis)trust. Based on a review of the existing scholarship on legal pluralism and indigenous justice in the Andean region, with a particular focus on the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador, it is argued that manifest conflict over the contested recognition of indigenous justice can be considered as helpful and even necessary for the deconstruction of mistrust of indigenous justice. Still, such conflict can also help reproduce and even reinforce mistrust, depending on the ways in which conflict is dealt with politically and socially. The exploratory paper suggests four proposition that specify the complex and contingent relationship between conflict and (mis)trust in the contested negotiation of pluralist justice systems in the Andean region.
The discussion about the interplay between digital technologies and the process of globalization is often focused around the following question: who has access to global information networks and who benefits from digital communication technologies? These are essential questions and it can hardly be denied that they confront us with a series of political and ethical questions. However, we also need to recognize the ongoing digitalization of the globe, a process where more and more people are put on various kinds of maps...
The article aims to sharpen the neo-republican contribution to international political thought by challenging Pettit’s view that only representative states may raise a valid claim to non-domination in their external relations. The argument proceeds in two steps: First I show that, conceptually speaking, the domination of states, whether representative or not, implies dominating the collective people at least in its fundamental, constitutive power. Secondly, the domination of states – and thus of their peoples – cannot be justified normatively in the name of promoting individual non-domination because such a compensatory rationale misconceives the notion of domination in terms of a discrete exercise of power instead of as an ongoing power relation. This speaks in favour of a more inclusive law of peoples than Pettit (just as his liberal counterpart Rawls) envisages: In order to accommodate the claim of collective peoples to non-domination it has to recognize every state as a member of the international order.
The dualism of movements and institutions. A structurational approach towards the two concepts
(2016)
In studies of social mobilization, the distinction between institutions and organizations is often as blurry as the instant of time from which on we can actually speak of a proper movement. Using the idea of a `duality of structure’ as a starting point, this article suggests a way of fixing the boundaries: a brief analysis of the South African Landless People’s Movement demonstrates the merit of conceiving of movements as aggregate actors with shared common objectives and common norms, which institutionalize particular modes of cooperation by purposefully drawing on existing institutions in order to shape functioning internal structures.
This article inquires the relevancy of multiple temporalisations for the discourse analysis of testimonial interviews. Step by step and by help of a range of empirical cases, the author widens the analytical scope (from questions, lines of questions, to supported interrogation by help of files and archives). He does so in order to reconstruct the efficient resources and means of forensic and administrative interrogations. The interviews turn out to be most powerful once they establish duplicity, meaning a partial separation of speech-production and speech-reception. Conclusively the author argues for a symmetrical view on scientific (qualitative) interviews and forensic interrogation. The separation of production and reception is widely ignored in qualitative methods.
This thesis develops a conceptual framework for a better understanding of the impact of slow-onset climate and environmental changes on human migration in developing countries. Its regional focus is on the West African Sahel, where the majority of the population depends on agriculture and thus is highly vulnerable to environmental changes. Migration from fragile environments is predominantly considered one of several household strategies to adapt to and minimise the risk of environmental stress. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from two selected rural study areas, Bandiagara in Mali and Linguère in Senegal, this thesis analyses the drivers of migration from the two areas.
The findings illustrate that, even though people highly depend on the natural environment, migration motives are manifold and that migration often is not a household strategy to cope with environmental changes. Although environmental conditions shape migration in the region and the migrants’ support is crucial for most households, environmental stress plays a relatively small role as a driver of migration - at least in Mali, where it is considerably less important than in Senegal. On the contrary, migration is often driven by better opportunities elsewhere rather than by livelihood stressors in the home area. Particularly the migration of young people is often an individual rather than a household decision and influenced by individual aspirations, such as aspirations for consumer goods or a better future, rather than by environmental stress.
This thesis claims that research should consider people’s capabilities to migrate or to stay as well as their individual aspirations and preferences - in addition to the household’s needs and the opportunities elsewhere. This is important in order to explain why some people stay in and others migrate from an area affected by environmental stress, though living under similar conditions. Depending on people’s capabilities to choose freely between staying and migrating and their preferences and aspirations for one or the other activity, people can either be “voluntary migrants”, “voluntary non-migrants”, “forced migrants” or “trapped people”.
Moreover, it is important to consider social trends and transformation processes in the analysis of the linkages between environment change and migration. Higher education levels and aspirations to a “modern” lifestyle among young people, for instance, might decrease the impact of environmental factors on migration, despite worsening environmental conditions.
This is the ninth article in our series Trouble on the Far-Right.
Since around 1990, the state of the Austrian far right1 has been characterized by the strength of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ – Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, more precisely translated as Freedomite Party of Austria2) and the relative weakness of extra-parliamentarian far right activism. Far from a mere coincidence, these two features are to be understood as closely linked: the FPÖ’s electoral successes have brought far right causes and talking points unto the political center stage on a national level, given them ample media coverage and made street militancy increasingly pointless. Insofar, the Austrian far right spectrum could – at least until recently – be described as a photographic negative of the situation in Germany: successful party politics, weak bottom-up mobilizations and a comparatively low incidence of street violence. Currently, however, the long held hopes of German right-wingers for a party both in the mold, and strength, of the FPÖ are apparently being fulfilled by the emergence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Conversely, both legal and illegal street activism have been on the rise in Austria in recent years, particularly since the start of the asylum crisis in Europe. Numerous violent incidents were reported in 2015, including a minimum of 25 attacks on housing facilities for asylum seekers.