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A Fallen Citadel and Other Poems is a powerful collection of over forty prose poems. The poems cover an array of issues ranging from the crisis that ensued after the 2007-2008 elections in Kenya to other social issues: loss of identity, poverty, hopelessness, and AIDs. These poems are powerful, vivid, full of imagery, and delightful. Some begin tragically, but end with hope; they begin with an everyday event, but end with a philosophical question about the meaning of life; and others are not only disturbing, but also thought provoking. Abala's poetic maneuvers in this collection are bound to delight and fascinate any reader.
My Brother, My Sister
(2012)
The fiery passion and epigrammatic terseness with which Loretta Burns re-enacts her experiences and observations as an African American woman in contemporary America reveal her as a poet of life who transcends the labels African American, feminist, and/or womanist. Her poetry captures moments and scenes of living that echo her impressions and intuitions of a world trapped between appearance and reality, illusion and disillusion, expectation and realization, the material and the spiritual. Through her deceptive simplicity of diction, she explores the nooks and crannies of her psyche as well as her society's. It is a poetry written from the depths of the heart that calls attention to the mystery and sacredness of the everyday. It therefore comes as no surprise that Loretta Burns and Bill F. Ndi, the Cameroonian-born poet with a fierce drive for global peace and the oneness of humanity, should collaborate on a collection of poems. With vibrancy and a sense of urgency, their lines evoke humanity's perpetual struggle for freedom and its search for meaning.
Globalization is a term that describes the contradictory economic, political, and cultural processes of world capitalist integration. Although capitalism has been of a global character since the 1400s, the current phase of globalization is manifest by emergent transnational institutions, changing relations between multinational corporations and assaulted paradise of sovereign nation-states and the development of a global monoculture of consumption among feuding class divides. This book examines the relationship between globalization and nation states, the dynamics, contradictions, and crisis of global capitalism, and the developing and maturing class struggles and the prospects for social change and transformation of global capitalism. It examines these class struggles within the context of the globalization of capital and draws out the political implications of this process for the future course of capitalist development on a world scale. In this book Tatah Mentan drives home the point that contemporary neoliberal globalization is in fact an advanced stage of capitalist hegemonism and that the contradictions of 21st century globalization are thus a projection of the contradictions of capitalism on a global scale, with all its inherent exploitative characteristics and militarized class conflicts that will lead to the revolutionary transformation of vulture capitalist society. He argues that dominant global processes are not an immutable feature of capitalism, but are contested by social class actors across these three dimensions.
This book is the fascinating study of Christian enclaves in the Southern Cameroons of the colonial era. The Christian enclaves came into being with absolute spontaneity as a modus vivendi. Oblivious of the danger in store both colonial governments and traditional authorities provided the conditions in which these Christian villages took root and flourished. However what had taken root in the territory as a self-protection mechanism, soon unleashed its lethal, enticing tentacles luring both the wives of royals and commoners into their bosom. This disruptive influence of Christian villages threatened the survival of ethnic groups, arousing the rancour of traditional authorities and civil administrators. In many ways the Christian enclaves inhibited the potential of colonial governments to administer the territory. These states within a state propagated by the missionary in the most insidious and perfidious of all manners sowed within their own bosom the seed of self-destruction. The whole issue of runaway wives of royals and commoners alike who took refuge in the Christian villages troubled both the colonial and traditional authorities. By offering a safe haven to these runaway wives and welcoming women who were outside the traditional male authority in a tribal setup, the missionaries began sowing within the Christian communities the seeds of their own self destruction. Records of wives of Fons and commoners escaping into these enclaves, eloping with a man and returning pregnant remained the regular subject of several colonial intelligence reports. Highhanded methods by missionaries in these villages brought both the missionaries and their work into disrepute. In less than a quarter of a century these enclaves had lost the war of attrition waged by colonial and traditional authorities. Worn out by endless strife and dissension within and without and forced by contingency, what had been conceived to be ideal Christian communities with snowballing effects, saw its premature demise.
When an ex-commando, a man seeking celebrity status, prepares to rob the Louvre Museum of the Mona Lisa, his 'wife' discovers that she is his mistress. In the eye of a cyclone, her son and she base their lives on hope. With a business proposal is another murderer prophesied as 'a demon in human form'. At the Vatican, he once aspired to be the first black pope. He is angry with God and his eyes are set on a billion-dollar heist. The ex-priest baits his archenemy and makes his way to a scaffold. Of the happiness he found after cursing God, he is tired. Scars disfigure his manhood. The two men are fugitives lethally dangerous to the other. While the ex-priest desires to honour the same gods and spirits that wrecked his priesthood, the ex-commando must rise above his limitations or he risks total ruin.
This book brings together six seminal essays by Professor Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, essays first published mostly in the 1960s in ABBIA (Cameroon Cultural Review) and in the pages of leading newspapers in Cameroon. Preoccupied with the cultural dignity, humanity and freedom of Africa and Africans, Fonlon never contented himself with stating the problem. In a very Socratic and scientifically systematic approach, he proposed solutions as well. Patiently pedagogical, philosophical and steeped in the classics he convinced his readers through the force of argument. In 'The Task of Today;' Fonlon invites Cameroonians and Africans to face the challenge of nation-building and development in a world where imperialism is far from dead and buried. 'Random Leaves from My Diary' shares his aspirations and challenging experiences as a young seminarian learning to be relevant to God and the Catholic Church. In 'Will We Make or Mar' Fonlon is worried, and indeed frustrated, by the temptations of material pursuits and the love of money threatening to derail modern elites charged with the postcolonial destiny of African nations. As a member of the Cameroon National Union, in 'Under the Sign of the Rising Sun, ' Fonlon preaches patriotism and compromise. In 'Idea of Literature, ' Fonlon expresses his passion for art as the pursuit of beauty and the sublime, stressing, as he was wont to do, that no race or culture has a monopoly of this aspiration. 'A Case for Early Bilingualism' invites Cameroonians to take advantage of their English and French linguistic colonial heritage, by embracing bilingualism in early childhood and playing a major role in an interconnected world where interpretation and translation is eternally needed.
Faced with a deepening crisis in their universities, African students have demonstrated a growing activism and militancy. They have been engaged in numerous, often violent, strikes for improvements in their deteriorating living and study conditions and the introduction of a democratic culture in the universities and society as a whole, including the right to express their views, organise in student unions and participate in university management. This book focuses on a recent violent strike action in Cameroons state universities, with special attention to the University of Buea the only English-speaking university in the country between 1993 and 2011. Such a detailed study on student strikes is still rare in African studies, and maybe even more important, this book pays special attention to certain elements that have been of great significance to the strike but are often overlooked in narratives of other student actions in Africa, namely the use of cell phones, differences in gender roles of student activists, the religious dimensions of the strike, the central role of some public spaces like bars and cafés for the planning and execution of student strikes, and the power of the photocopier. The book goes far beyond simply documenting the various protest actions of students against the state and university authorities. It also provides ample room for comments from journalists and other civil-society members and groups on various aspects of the strike.
This book offers an intriguing account of the complex and often contradictory relations between music and society in Freetown's past and present. Blending anthropological thought with ethnographic and historical research, it explores the conjunctures of music practices and social affiliations and the diverse patterns of social dis/connections that music helps to shape, to (re)create, and to defy in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. The first half of the book traces back the changing social relationships and the concurrent changes in the city's music life from the first days of the colony in the late 18th century up to the turbulent and thriving music scenes in the first decade of the 21st century. Grounded in this comprehensive historiography of Freetown's socio-musical palimpsest, the second half of the book puts forth a detailed ethnography of social dynamics in the realms of music, calibrating contemporary Freetown's social polyphony with its musical counterpart.
International development has its origins in the histories of nineteenth and early twentieth-century European colonisation. What happens when a leading colonial power decides to transform a model tropical colony, relying on head-loading of goods as the predominant form of transport, into a modern market economy on the back of the greatest British industrial ingenuity of the time - railways? In this meticulously researched book, Komla Tsey brings to light the historical origins of a wide range of issues confronting present-day international development researchers and policy-makers, such as technology transfer, wealth creation versus equity of access, and ways to evaluate the benefits of development work, especially across cultures. In the context of the early twenty-first-century international investment interests in resource-rich Africa, Tsey argues, forensic historical research is required to determine the precise nature and scale of the financial and humanitarian injustices committed by British colonialists during the construction of major public works projects. More than providing opportunities to take possible legal actions for reparations, this research should also serve as a reminder to present-day African policy-makers and their international and local business partners that the injustices and blatant abuses of power of the past should never be repeated.
In the instinct to survive those who are able to dominate the competition go about their activities as if others (humans and non-humans) did not matter or did not have interests. Selfishness becomes more prevalent as a people move from elementary economic systems to modern economic systems. The major reason why economic systems collapse is human selfishness. Despite all the achievements in science and technology, there are still poor people in the world and environmental cataclysms have become daily occurrences. This is because the would-be agents of development, such as Multinational Corporations and states, are largely motivated by selfishness. Unfortunately, poor economies pursue development using borrowed models formulated for selfish reasons. Needless to say, the solution to current economic and environmental challenges does not lie in abstract economic jargons or more advanced technological machinery but in taming the evil of human selfishness. This book makes a strong case for a vaccine against the virus of selfishness, namely, education for altruistic egoism.
This book presents innovative material on ethnography; more specifically, it exposes events where African individuals deal with the supernatural - such as: reaction to the death of a child whose surgical operation was considered an answer to prayers to God, how African students have dealt with evil spirits in their lives, how African people have experimented the phenomenon of 'miracle' with their specific religious background that merges imported religions (Christian and Islam) and their traditional cultural religious beliefs. The material is also of interest to readers concerned with the need for dialogue between religions for the purpose of finding solutions to conflicts arising in the modern world. The book is truly thought-provoking. See for example what happens when a Muslim faces Jesus Christ as recounted in chapter 5. Mevoutsa's testimony in chapter 6 is a perfect example that exposes the way Africans attached to their traditional cultures believe that God may use tradition healers to manifest his presence among his creatures.
This is a dense, erudite collection of finely crafted poems that powerfully reflect on vices such as war, bad governance, deforestation, dissipation, greed, oppression and cruelty. The poems also tackle other important phenomena of life such as love, anxiety, weather, time, politics, morality, economics, justice, culture and the environment. The virtue of these finely tuned poems does not only lie in their philosophical questioning, but their artistic merit and audacious reflection of issues pertinent in human life of all ages. While some of the poems provoke amusement and others tears, the corpus of the collection educates through entertainment. The poetry penetrates into the greater depths of the public's psyche to appraise, query, empty and expose their concerns in such a manner that should hopefully make those who cause or ignite human tribulations to rethink their actions and those haunted by the same to stay vigilant.
When a correlation emerges between a prophecy and a police investigation, and a kidnapper maintains his presence at a crime scene, a woman dreads the passage of time. She cannot understand why a man set an innocent teenager on fire and kidnapped her son. The kidnapped boy's father knows when two warring hangmen stand on the same scaffold, one must bow to the other or die. Into the fray comes a game ranger, an ex-decathlete expert at tracking man-eating crocodiles. However, a Senator twice his age counting her fertility days desperately wants him in bed. She isn't aware her sweetheart is in the belly of a world no criminologist can understand. As mayhem takes centre-stage in a community suffering the brunt of a veiled matrix of calamities, is the ranger further bait, a weapon or a sacrificial ram between crouching outlaws?
So the Path Does Not Die
(2012)
Protagonist Finas search for happiness and belonging begins on the night of her aborted circumcision and continues through her teenage years in Freetown, Sierra Leones capital; her twenties in the Washington Metropolitan Area; and ends with her return to Sierra Leone to work as an advocate for war-traumatized children. The novel explores the problems she encounters in each setting against the backdrop of the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the stranger/immigrant condition and the characters struggles to clarify their ideas about home and abroad. Finas circumcision gets significant, though not sensational, play in the different attitudes toward the practice between her and her fiancé Cammy, a Trinidadian urologist. The differences complicate their relationship at a time when skeletons from their pasts threaten their impending marriage. The stories of Finas friend, African-American Aman and her fiancé, Nigerian Bayo; of Edna (Finas foster sister) and her husband Kizzy; and of Mawaf, a war-traumatized teen, unfold in subplots that merge with the main plot and overarching theme of belonging as characters straddle home and abroad places.
The book investigates what have become of Cameroonian transnational family and friendship ties in the age of the mobile phone and the internet that make people readily available and reachable. Most theoretical literature states that these tools of sociality cement transnational social relationships through instantaneous interaction. To capture the different experiences and impressions on the significance of these media in easing communication for migrants and non-migrants, Tazanu draws on ethnographic accounts based on his fieldwork in Freiburg (Germany) and Buea (Cameroon). He argues that it is mainly the migrants who maintain or are expected to maintain ties with non-migrants back in Cameroon through calls and material support. The main finding of the study is that cell phones and the internet have facilitated discontents, grudges, insults, fights, avoidance, arguments and estrangement of relationships much more than they have contributed to binding friends or families through direct mediation. Underlying these aspects of distanciation are the high expectations and sometimes contradictory motives for instant virtual interaction. Non-migrants' accounts suggest that direct availability and reachability should lead to uninterrupted transnational interaction and also that the cultural practices of remittances from migrants are easily requested and coordinated. Such motives are generally contrary to migrants' wishes, willingness or ability to support friends and families in Cameroon. These unexpected outcomes arising from rapid speed of interaction questions the advantages that are often associated with instant sociality across space and time. The finding is a call for the cultural background and life-world experiences of media users to be taken into consideration when theorising the significance of information technology in the debate on media globalisation.
This book explores the relationship between plantation labour and gender in Africa. Such a study is the more opportune because most of the existing works on plantation labour in Africa seem to have either under-studied or even ignored the changing conceptions of gender on the continent in recent times. One of the book's major concerns is to demonstrate that the introduction of plantation labour during colonial rule in Africa has had significant consequences for gender roles and relations within and beyond the capitalist labour process. The book focuses on two tea estates in Anglophone Cameroon. A study of these estates is particularly interesting in that one of them employs mainly female pluckers while the other employs mainly male pluckers. This allows for an examination of any variations in male and female workers' modes of resistance to the control and exploitation they meet in the labour process. Such a comparative analysis is helpful in assessing the widespread managerial assumption on tea estates that female pluckers tend to be more productive and docile than male pluckers.
This book examines some facets of gender relations in Cameroon - symmetry in male-female relationships, women's access to land in traditional society, socialization into gender roles through language textbooks in schools, the association life of women, widowhood and inheritance, social capital and entrepreneurship, husband-wife relations in early German colonial encounters - as socially and historically constructed realities from a multidisciplinary perspective, bringing together some social sciences and humanities. The studies point to the fact that these relations are as much rooted in traditions and customs fashioned in several benchmark epochs in African history - arming women with formidable social and cultural capitals or making of them victims of social structures over which they have little control - as they are constantly evolving in contemporary times and transforming women into agents in their own affairs as well as those of the new societies in the making.
Son of a Red Devil
(2012)
This is the story of Lukemba Gelindo. He was adopted by a former football player, August Hellemans - also called Gustaf - of the national Belgian team - The Red Devils. Gelindo and his brother were adopted after they were abandoned in a nursery home where they had been mistreated. He grew up in a Flemish village where people had never seen a black person. In general, Flemings are still surprised when they hear blacks speaking their language fluently. This can lead to perplexing and frustrating encounters with ignorance and arrogance, such as during a job interview where Gelindo had to justify himself over and over again as to where he learned to speak the Flemish language. This is also the story of the differences in mentality between the Flemings and Walloons viewed from a black perspective through the eyes of someone who is intimately familiar with both cultures. Gelindo's parents were Flemings but he always went to French speaking schools. It is as well, a story about racism, especially racism that stems from Flemings - which is quite implacable, to say the least. Evidence of this statement is not far-fetched; black people are completely absent in the Flemish media, except perhaps as footballers or musicians, meant to entertain but not to claim rights, entitlements or any serious measure of social visibility. More personally, this story is about Gelindo's experience undergoing psychiatric treatment and also about the sexual tensions between his mother and him. Among other things, it is also Gelindo's aim to speak out against the manner in which young black children get objectified by the rich and famous as the latest 'must have' things, designer accessories up for adoption and adaptation. Like in the rest of the world, this trend is also seen in Flemish magazines in which parents pose in photos with their little black trophy children. The account is direct, honest, uncompromising, laced with cynicism, and in many ways therapeutic.
This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while such large-scale violence is commonplace in Venda. It reveals that this difference can be explained by factors such as the variations in local ideas on witches, differences in the role of traditional authorities, and various state interventions on witchcraft matters. The book demonstrates, through a rich collection of detailed cases, that contrary to anthropological theory that views witchcraft as a mechanism for the expression and resolution of social tensions and conflicts, witchcraft may at times become a disturbance of amicable social relations. Witchcraft accusations may occur in a context where strained social relations have not preceded them. The knowledge and experience that people have about witchcraft is sufficient to trigger an accusation and a violent reaction. Different forms of witchcraft account for variations in witchcraft attributions and accusations. This comparison provides a valuable contribution to ongoing witchcraft policy discourse amid widespread citizen anxiety over witchcraft, and the increasing call on the post-colonial state to intervene and protect its citizens against occult aggression.
This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children's traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children's games at the risk of disappearing under globalization. The virtue of the book does not only lie in its modest philosophical questioning of those knowledge forms that consider themselves as superior to others, but in its laudable, healthy appreciation of the creative art forms of traditional literature that features in genres such as endangered children's traditional games. The book is a clarion call to Africans and the world beyond to come to the rescue of relegated and marginalized African creativity in the interest of future generations.
This book brings and blends together a dozen scholarly articles published by the author since the 1970s. It sketches two different yet related stories: first, that of one of the most ancient and prestigious African civilizations, the antiquity and sophistication of which are becoming more and more prominent as field research unfolds their many facets. Second, the story of the researcher himself, who has had to alter and shift his approach to that civilization as he got to meet Grassfielders, colleagues, friends and scholars who changed his views about the Grassfields kingdoms and their people. This book bears witness to those many encounters. Historical and anthropological research is not only a question of relevant theories and methodologies. It is also a human endeavour made of networks and friendships.
This book draws on years of rich empirical research on radio drama production in Cameroon to offer a strikingly new perspective in Development Theatre discourse in Africa. Chronicling the history and evolution of Development Theatre practice in Anglophone Africa and arguing for literary forms that address the basic everyday realities of ordinary people in a medium they understand, the book revisits the crucial question of utilitarian literature in a continent that continues to brandish a begging bowl even as it celebrates fifty years of independence. Radio Theatre's inherent latitude to reach the masses in a manner and matter that they identify with makes of it an invaluable albeit often neglected sub-genre in the universe of Development Theatre. Reaching an enlarged audience through radio drama productions - plays that address the rustic, ascetic and practical realities of the people - is liberating. Through radio plays and their capacity to provide for an enormous degree of authenticity, ordinary people are able to enhance their self-esteem. Like main stream Development Theatre, Radio Drama sets out to address the concerns of all in an all-embracing approach that explores interactive learning characterized by continuous questioning of and adaptation to reality. It disparages the omniscience of the superstructure meant to be perceived as indispensable and all-knowing. As a medium of development communication with unique aesthetic qualities found in and not limited to sound and silence, Radio Drama creates events and condenses reality into dramatic constellations with a high sense of authenticity that invites its audience to participate in the creation process with a strong sense of direction in a story, a plot and a moral. This people-oriented culture re-animation process is the fertile ground for grassroots empowerment. It is the point of departure for feasible development initiatives that this book explores.
The bicultural polity of Cameroon has become problematic over the years. In addition to the increasing marginalization experienced by its English speaking component in many domains (politics, administration, economy, culture), it is facing mounting inequality and disarray despite the nation-building aspirations at reunification in 1961. This book examines the very basis of the union crisis by tracing the causes to the asymmetrical nature of negotiations between the contracting partners the founding fathers of the union and the politics of guile and force that has characterized the regimes in Yaound. From a federal model that takes the equality of the contracting parties as a given, the polity has developed into an ethno-regional patchwork designed by its architects to be essentially unequal in nature. Consequently, the segmented Anglophone community can exist only in contradiction within itself. They have been worked into the regimeís statecraft of consciously maintaining or re-activating ethnic boundaries inherited from colonialism. An analysis of the cultural and linguistic dimension of the union shows contrasting drives between the assimilation/attempts to dominate by the French-speaking component and resistance by Anglophones. The analyses further show the projected harmonization and rollback by the State, the creative blends and the crystallization around continuing or reproduced colonial experiences, a fierce competition between elites with a drive to impose the culture of the demographically dominant and a refusal to accept the idea of a linguistic minority. The contentious experience, Yenshu Vubo argues, can still be remedied by reforms in a politics of possibilities.These reforms must be ready to re-examine the constitutional basis of the union by revisiting the often dismissed question of the form of the state defined as one and indivisible (a new federal architecture as requested by several political voices). Institutions should be restructured to attend to diversity issues and essential linguistic differences while consolidating any strategic gains of the union such as the creative blends and the acceptance of specifi cities of each community, statutory equality of citizenship and the essential clauses of the fi rst federation.
Since the end of World War II, global capitalism, spearheaded by US financial interests and backed by the most lethal military force that has ever been assembled, has consolidated its power over the world economy. In the past decades, especially, transnational corporations have tightened their control over national governments and international institutions. The imposition of free trade policies and the increasing privatization of social services have facilitated the accumulation of fabulous wealth for the owners of capital at the expense of working people and the environment worldwide. Contemporary capitalism now dominates every major sector of the world economy. The social and environmental costs of contemporary capitalism are prohibitive. The global megatrends of rising inequality and absolute poverty, political instability, and global climate change-all compounded and accelerated by this predatory mode of production-are adversely affecting the lives and threatening the future of every inhabitant of nations and the entire world. In view of these megatrends and the current global economic crisis, the conclusion that contemporary capitalism does not serve the interests of the vast majority of the people on the planet and is both economically and environmentally unsustainable, is self-evident. History offers harsh lessons. The political violence of the 20th century, which resulted in an estimated 200 million deaths and untold economic and environmental destruction, cautions us to work for socialism in the 21st century with every means at our disposal except violence. Facing the awful power and willingness of capitalism to coerce and corrupt, we must find ways to make soft power prevail. Clearly, a revolution is in order-it is time to place the socialist alternative on the national and world agenda.
The Trials of an Half Orphan
(2012)
Death strikes and claims the mother of Martin Smith when he is still in primary five, leaving him and his siblings at the mercy of a volcanic tempered and cruel father. No longer prepared to accept any beatings from his father, he runs away from home and takes up residence in a deserted house in a neighbouring village with little to live on. His fate appears sealed. Just when all hope seems lost, appears Mr Finley Banks - a Peace Corp Volunteer and teacher. Martin Smith is pleased to be treated like a son once more, only for Mr Finley Banks to come to the end of his stay in the country five years later. How will things turn out with him gone? Set in Cameroon and Italy, this is a story of opportunities and opportunism. It is the story of the trials, thrills and tribulations of a young African half orphan boy determined to make it in life.
It is in Mauritius that the first newspaper of the African continent was published. Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers was created in 1773 by the French administration for the islands of Mauritius and Reunion. Since its independence from Britain in 1968, Mauritius has known a very rich media history with an impressive number of publications and a relatively good level of press freedom. However, many challenges remain. Confrontational episodes in the relationship of the local media with the political sphere, the rise of sensationalist journalism, increased concentration of ownership in the industry as well as market uncertainties have taken their toll on a profession which often prides itself in the defence of freedom of speech and democracy. The media conference jointly organised by UNESCO and the University of Mauritius in 2010 offered a singular opportunity - the first time ever in Mauritius - for media practitioners, regulators, lawyers, politicians, academics and civil society to discuss the state of the media as part of the country's democratic systems. Media roles and functions, the legal and regulatory framework, self-regulation, market issues and new trends such as citizen journalism were thoroughly examined. This book brings together papers and conclusions from that conference. Whilst much ground has been covered especially since the emergence of private radio stations, much still needs to be done to move towards a true media democracy. The book points to media governance, access to information, training of and professionalism among media practitioners as areas of unfinished business. This is an invaluable contribution to on-going debates about press regulation, liberalisation of electronic media, new forms of journalism, continuous training and professionalization in Mauritius.
This book is largely the personal account by Patrick Mbunwe Samba, of how life in his home village of Binshua has been permeated throughout by belief in witchcraft. The book not only provides a historical account informed by his reminiscences of his childhood, it shows as well that even today, belief in witchcraft is very widespread. Witchcraft exerts a profound influence on society in Binshua and in Cameroon in general. The book also provides accounts of the experiences of others, some of them very recent, and gives examples of what injustices and suffering can be caused by the notion that any misfortune must have been caused by witchcraft. For the overwhelming majority of people in village communities such as Binshua, Samba argues, anything not immediately understandable is witchcraft - which is synonymous with mystery. Many educated Africans, too, revert to such traditional attitudes in stressful situations. It may be thought surprising that in spite of the impact of Christianity, Western culture and the improved level of education, the majority of people still believe in witchcraft, and that this phenomenon not only persists but is actually increasing. The book perplexes and challenges by avoiding to provide simple answers to the question whether which witchcraft is real or imagined.
Roselyne M. Jua has taught English and American Literature and Creative Writing at the Universities of Yaounde (1986-1993) and Buea (1993-2012). At the University of Buea, she served as Dean of Faculty of Arts from 2010 to 2012. She is Director of Academic Affairs at the University Bamenda, North West Region, since August 2012. Dr Jua has published articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited the plays of Victor E. Musinga among which+are The Barn+and+The Tragedy of Mr. No-Balance. She is co-author with Bate Besong of+To the Budding Creative Writer: A Handbook.
First Harvests are expressions of impressions on a variety of local and universal phenomena and states of being. It is the first ever poetry collection by a few sons and daughters of Nkongho-Mbo, a subgroup of the Mbo ethnic group of Cameroon, on which very little has been published. The poems however transcend the geographical, cultural and emotional landscapes that have inspired them.
Background: Mammalian fossils from the Eppelsheim Formation (Dinotheriensande) have been a benchmark for Neogene vertebrate palaeontology since 200 years. Worldwide famous sites like Eppelsheim serve as key localities for biochronologic, palaeobiologic, environmental, and mammal community studies. So far the formation is considered to be of early Late Miocene age (~9.5 Ma, Vallesian), representing the oldest sediments of the Rhine River. The stratigraphic unity of the formation and of its fossil content was disputed at times, but persists unresolved.
Principal Findings: Here we investigate a new fossil sample from Sprendlingen, composed by over 300 mammalian specimens and silicified wood. The mammals comprise entirely Middle Miocene species, like cervids Dicrocerus elegans, Paradicrocerus elegantulus, and deinotheres Deinotherium bavaricum and D. levius. A stratigraphic evaluation of Miocene Central European deer and deinothere species proof the stratigraphic inhomogenity of the sample, and suggest late Middle Miocene (~12.5 Ma) reworking of early Middle Miocene (~15 Ma) sediments. This results agree with taxonomic and palaeoclimatic analysis of plant fossils from above and within the mammalian assemblage. Based on the new fossil sample and published data three biochronologic levels within the Dinotheriensand fauna can be differentiated, corresponding to early Middle Miocene (late Orleanian to early Astaracian), late Middle Miocene (late Astaracian), and early Late Miocene (Vallesian) ages.
Conclusions/Significance: This study documents complex faunal mixing of classical Dinotheriensand fauna, covering at least six million years, during a time of low subsidence in the Mainz Basin and shifts back the origination of the Rhine River by some five million years. Our results have severe implications for biostratigraphy and palaeobiology of the Middle to Late Miocene. They suggest that turnover events may be obliterated and challenge the proposed ‘supersaturated’ biodiversity, caused by Middle Miocene superstites, of Vallesian ecosystems in Central Europe.
"Wo sein Pferd vorbeigeritten ist, wächst Gras", erklärt Andre Bazin mit Blick auf den Westernhelden, der dem französischen Filmkritiker und ersten wichtigen Theoretiker des Westernfilms als archetypischer Wegbereiter der Zivilisation gilt. Mit seiner Ankunft, so ließe sich Bazin verstehen, verwandelt sich die Wüste in einen Garten, bricht eine neue Zeit an, genauer: wird durch die Kultivierung das zeitlose Sein der Wildnis in Geschichte überführt. Natürlich stellt diese Transformation nichts anderes als einen Mythos dar, der seinerseits die Geschichte tilgt, um sie in ein komplexitätsreduziertes und widerspruchsfreies Narrativ zu verwandeln. Hierin offenbart sich seine speziell von Roland Barthes profilierte reinigende Kraft, die wir im ältesten Filmgenre der Welt allerorten am Werk sehen, wobei sie in Handlungen zum Tragen kommt, die genau genommen von nichts anderem als Säuberungsakten berichten. Denn um Kulturbringer sein zu können, muss der Westernheld sich reinigend betätigen, das heißt zum Cleaner werden, der der heranrückenden Zivilisation Platz schafft. Er tut dies, indem er die Zivilisationsverweigerer- und -arretierer, die Indianer und Banditen, wahlweise ins Reservat, Gefängnis oder Grab, mindestens aber aus der Stadt befördert.
Wie aus dem Nichts heraus entstanden zu Anfang des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. befestigte Siedlungen, die eine ganze Region im Trans-Ural vollständig veränderten. Im »Land der Städte« erblühte an der Grenze zwischen Europa und Asien für mehr als zwei Jahrhunderte eine Kulturlandschaft, die ihresgleichen sucht. Wer waren ihre Bewohner, und woher kamen sie? Was wollten sie in dieser bis dato nahezu unbesiedelten Region? Wie kommt es zu den zahlreichen Innovationen, zu denen neue Pferdeschirrungen und die ältesten Streitwagen der Welt
zählen? Ein deutsch-russisches Forscherteam ist angetreten, diese Rätsel zu lösen.
Touroultia, a new genus of Onciderini Thomson, 1860 (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae) is described and illustrated. Five new species of Onciderini are also described and illustrated: Jamesia ramirezi from Costa Rica; Peritrox marcelae from French Guiana; Touroultia swifti from Ecuador; Touroultia lordi from French Guiana; Trestoncideres santossilvai from Brazil. Keys to the known species of Peritrox Bates, 1865; Touroultia gen. nov.; and Trestoncideres Martins and Galileo, 1990 are provided. The following new synonymies are proposed: Calliphenges Waterhouse, 1880 (Colobotheini) = Malthonea Thomson, 1864 (Desmiphorini); Paraclytemnestra Breuning, 1974 (Onciderini) = Jamesia Jekel, 1861 (Onciderini); Orteguaza Lane, 1958 (Apomecynini) = Clavidesmus Dillon and Dillon, 1946 (Onciderini). The following new combinations are proposed: Clavidesmus funerarius (Lane, 1958) (Onciderini); Clavidesmus lichenigerus (Lane, 1958) (Onciderini); Ischiocentra insulata (Rodrigues and Mermudes, 2011); Malthonea cuprascens (Waterhouse, 1880) (Desmiphorini); Touroultia obscurella (Bates, 1865) (Onciderini). The following species is restored to original combination: Jamesia lineata Fisher, 1926 (Onciderini). The following 13 new country records are reported: Ataxia hovorei Lingafelter and Nearns, 2007 (Pteropliini) (Haiti); Carterica soror Belon, 1896 (Colobotheini) (Ecuador); Colobothea lunulata Lucas, 1859 (Colobotheini) (Colombia); Curius punctatus (Fisher, 1932) (Curiini) (Haiti); Cyclopeplus lacordairei Thomson, 1868 (Anisocerini) (Colombia); Iarucanga mimica (Bates, 1866) (Hemilophini) (Ecuador); Pirangoclytus latithorax (Martins and Galileo, 2008) (Clytini) (Costa Rica); Porangonycha princeps (Bates, 1872) (Hemilophini) (Colombia); Trestonia lateapicata Martins and Galileo, 2010 (Onciderini) (Brazil); Tulcus dimidiatus (Bates, 1865) (Onciderini) (Colombia); Unaporanga cincta Martins and Galileo, 2007 (Hemilophini) (Colombia); Zeale dubia Galileo and Martins, 1997 (Hemilophini) (Colombia); Zonotylus interruptus (Olivier, 1790) (Trachyderini) (Colombia).
Quanto narrato da Franz Kafka nella Colonia penale (In der Strafkolonie, 1914) è forse troppo noto per raccontarne la trama. Mi limito a ricordare l'essenziale di questo racconto, che è uno die pochi pubblicati dall'autore in vita. Un viaggiatore approda, nel corso di una sua esplorazione, in una terra di nessuno, tra il noto e l'ignoto, tra il familiare e il perturbante. Si tratta di un’isola tropicale che è sede di una colonia penale. I Tropici di Kafka non presentano nulla di esotico; sono piuttosto il luogo della extraterritorialità par excellence, di una "civiltà" arcaica amministrata da una legge brutale, disumana e palesemente ingiusta. Lo strumento di questa "barbarie" è una macchina omicida, che prima era in auge, ma che ormai – essendo stata messa al bando dal nuovo comandante della colonia – ha assunto le sembianze di un relitto del passato. Rispetto a questo vecchio macchinario, che associa al dolore fisico l'ordine sociale, si sta infatti ormai affermando un nuovo paradigma, simbolo di un sistema più moderato. Il funzionamento dell'apparecchio in dismissione, posto in un insolito campo di sperimentazione, viene illustrato all'esploratore da parte di uno zelante oratore. È un ufficiale, orgoglioso e fedele custode "nei tempi nuovi" del macchinario di ieri, ma soprattutto convinto avvocato difensore della tecnica come barbarie.
Alljährlich wird von der "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Objektive Hermeneutik" eine Tagung ausgerichtet, in deren Rahmen Vorhaben und/oder Ergebnisse von Forscher/innen, die mit der Methode der objektiven Hermeneutik arbeiten, vorgestellt und diskutiert werden. Für die diesjährige Tagung wurde mit "Bildung und Unterricht" ein inhaltlicher Schwerpunkt gelegt, der in vier Blöcken diskutiert wurde: "Berufliches Handeln im Kontext von Bildungsinstitutionen", "Wirkungen des Unterrichts und deren Analyse", "Zur Ordnung des Unterrichts"; in einem vierten Block wurden Fragen der Methode aufgegriffen, z.B. inwieweit sich fremdsprachige Unterrichtstranskripte analysieren lassen. Eine der zentralen Diskussionen der Tagung betraf das Verhältnis von Erziehungs- und Sozialwissenschaften. Als strittig erwies sich die Frage, ob die gewinnbringende Anwendung der Methode der objektiven Hermeneutik in der Unterrichtsforschung an eine dem Forschungsgebiet und dessen "Eigenstruktur" verpflichtete theoretische Perspektive gebunden ist.
The regulation of cellular copper homeostasis is crucial in biology. Impairments lead to severe dysfunctions and are known to affect aging and development. Previously, a loss-of-function mutation in the gene encoding the copper-sensing and copper-regulated transcription factor GRISEA of the filamentous fungus Podospora anserina was reported to lead to cellular copper depletion and a pleiotropic phenotype with hypopigmentation of the mycelium and the ascospores, affected fertility and increased lifespan by approximately 60% when compared to the wild type. This phenotype is linked to a switch from a copper-dependent standard to an alternative respiration leading to both a reduced generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). We performed a genome-wide comparative transcriptome analysis of a wild-type strain and the copper-depleted grisea mutant. We unambiguously assigned 9,700 sequences of the transcriptome in both strains to the more than 10,600 predicted and annotated open reading frames of the P. anserina genome indicating 90% coverage of the transcriptome. 4,752 of the transcripts differed significantly in abundance with 1,156 transcripts differing at least 3-fold. Selected genes were investigated by qRT-PCR analyses. Apart from this general characterization we analyzed the data with special emphasis on molecular pathways related to the grisea mutation taking advantage of the available complete genomic sequence of P. anserina. This analysis verified but also corrected conclusions from earlier data obtained by single gene analysis, identified new candidates of factors as part of the cellular copper homeostasis system including target genes of transcription factor GRISEA, and provides a rich reference source of quantitative data for further in detail investigations. Overall, the present study demonstrates the importance of systems biology approaches also in cases were mutations in single genes are analyzed to explain the underlying mechanisms controlling complex biological processes like aging and development.
The synthesis of the recently characterized depsipeptide szentiamide (1), which is produced by the entomopathogenic bacterium Xenorhabdus szentirmaii, is described. Whereas no biological activity was previously identified for 1, the material derived from the efficient synthesis enabled additional bioactivity tests leading to the identification of a notable activity against insect cells and Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of malaria.
Pseudo-Critical Temperature and Thermal Equation of State from Nf = 2 Twisted Mass Lattice QCD
(2012)
We report about the current status of our ongoing study of the chiral limit of two-flavor QCD at finite temperature with twisted mass quarks. We estimate the pseudo-critical temperature Tc for three values of the pion mass in the range of mPS ~ 300 and 500 MeV and discuss different chiral scenarios. Furthermore, we present first preliminary results for the trace anomaly, pressure and energy density. We have studied several discretizations of Euclidean time up to Nt = 12 in order to assess the continuum limit of the trace anomaly. From its interpolation we evaluate the pressure and energy density employing the integral method. Here, we have focussed on two pion masses with mPS ~ 400 and 700 MeV.
The following paper deals with the volume of studies Stadt-Land-Fluss. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Deutschlandreise (Ed. Flegel, Silke, Hoffmann, Frank). The book offers a journey through the history and present time of Germany focusing on such national heritage areas as: literature, language, industrial and structural change, environmental protection, federalism, as well as remembering “the past”. The 216-page volume includes twelve essays on German cultural areas and sites of memory: Leipzig, Halle, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt - as well as regions like the Ruhr and Sachsen-Anhalt. Major streams, such as the Rhine or the Elbe, are also taken into consideration.
This paper gives a critical view to the collective volume Etudes à la loupe… Optikinstrumente und Literatur, edited at the Stefan cel Mare University publishing house Suceava. The contributors propose an ample incursion into optics as a literary motif, opening a multitude of points of view, which serve as guiding cues for interdisciplinary research.
Structural characterization of a polymethylsilsesquioxane (PMSQ) and a DT-type methyl silicone resin (MeDT) has been carried out by various instrumental analyses including GPC, NMR, gas chromatography, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Although the PMSQ had a Mw around 5000, the resin contained a significant amount of low molecular weight species consisting of T2 [MeSi(OH)O2/2] and T3 [MeSiO3/2] units, ranging from T34T23 to T38T22 including many isomers. One isomer of T36T22 was isolated of which structure was determined as a cage structure. The species are supposed to consist mainly of cyclotetra- and cyclopentasiloxanes, but presence of strained rings such as cyclotrisiloxane rings also was suggested. In MeDT, species in which the T2 units in the molecules from PMSQ is replaced with D2 [Me2SiO2/2] were found, for example, T36D22, suggesting that general silicone resins consist of similar structures as silsesquioxanes. The Mark-Houwink exponent for these methyl resins was ~0.3, indicating the molecular shape to be compact. Investigation on the formation chemistry of the cubic octamers indicates that siloxane bond rearrangement is an important mechanism in the molecule build-up process.
The human DNA mismatch repair (MMR) process is crucial to maintain the integrity of the genome and requires many different proteins which interact perfectly and coordinated. Germline mutations in MMR genes are responsible for the development of the hereditary form of colorectal cancer called Lynch syndrome. Various mutations mainly in two MMR proteins, MLH1 and MSH2, have been identified so far, whereas 55% are detected within MLH1, the essential component of the heterodimer MutLα (MLH1 and PMS2). Most of those MLH1 variants are pathogenic but the relevance of missense mutations often remains unclear. Many different recombinant systems are applied to filter out disease-associated proteins whereby fluorescent tagged proteins are frequently used. However, dye labeling might have deleterious effects on MutLα's functionality. Therefore, we analyzed the consequences of N- and C-terminal fluorescent labeling on expression level, cellular localization and MMR activity of MutLα. Besides significant influence of GFP- or Red-fusion on protein expression we detected incorrect shuttling of single expressed C-terminal GFP-tagged PMS2 into the nucleus and found that C-terminal dye labeling impaired MMR function of MutLα. In contrast, N-terminal tagged MutLαs retained correct functionality and can be recommended both for the analysis of cellular localization and MMR efficiency.
Fünf neue Arten aus dem Ranunculus-auricomus-Komplex in Deutschland werden beschrieben und abgebildet. R. pleiophyllus ist weiter verbreitet und bislang aus Rheinland-Pfalz, Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Saarland und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern nachgewiesen. Die übrigen neuen Arten besitzen – soweit bis jetzt bekannt – kleine Areale: R. excisus in Rheinland-Pfalz, R. vertumnaliformis in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, R. biclaterae in Nordbayern und R. ferocior in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern und Nordbayern.
Background: Hybridisation is presumed to be an important mechanism in plant speciation and a creative evolutionary force often accompanied by polyploidisation and in some cases by apomixis. The Potentilla collina group constitutes a particularly suitable model system to study these phenomena as it is morphologically extensively variable, exclusively polyploid and expresses apomixis. In the present study, the alpine taxon Potentilla alpicola has been chosen in order to study its presumed hybrid origin, identify underlying evolutionary processes and infer the discreteness or taxonomic value of hybrid forms.
Results: Combined analysis of AFLP, cpDNA sequences and ploidy level variation revealed a hybrid origin of the P. alpicola populations from South Tyrol (Italy) resulting from crosses between P. pusilla and two cytotypes of P. argentea. Hybrids were locally sympatric with at least one of the parental forms. Three lineages of different evolutionary origin comprising two ploidy levels were identified within P. alpicola. The lineages differed in parentage and the complexity of the evolutionary process. A geographically wide-spread lineage thus contrasted with locally distributed lineages of different origins. Populations of P. collina studied in addition, have been regarded rather as recent derivatives of the hexaploid P. argentea. The observation of clones within both P. alpicola and P. collina suggested a possible apomictic mode of reproduction.
Conclusions: Different hybridisation scenarios taking place on geographically small scales resulted in viable progeny presumably stabilised by apomixis. The case study of P. alpicola supports that these processes played a significant role in the creation of polymorphism in the genus Potentilla. However, multiple origin of hybrids and backcrossing are considered to produce a variety of evolutionary spontaneous forms existing aside of reproductively stabilised, established lineages.
The Arabidopsis arenosa complex is closely related to the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Species and subspecies in the complex are mainly biennial, predominantly outcrossing, herbaceous, and with a distribution range covering most parts of latitudes and the eastern reaches of Europe. In this study we present the first comprehensive evolutionary history of the A. arenosa species complex, covering its natural range, by using chromosome counts, nuclear AFLP data, and a maternally inherited marker from the chloroplast genome [trnL intron (trnL) and trnL/F intergenic spacer (trnL/F-IGS) of tRNALeu and tRNAPhe, respectively]. We unravel the broad-scale cytogeographic and phylogeographic patterns of diploids and tetraploids. Diploid cytotypes were exclusively found on the Balkan Peninsula and in the Carpathians while tetraploid cytotypes were found throughout the remaining distribution range of the A. arenosa complex. Three centers of genetic diversity were identified: the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathians, and the unglaciated Eastern and Southeastern Alps. All three could have served as long-term refugia during Pleistocene climate oscillations. We hypothesize that the Western Carpathians were and still are the cradle of speciation within the A. arenosa complex due to the high species number and genetic diversity and the concurrence of both cytotypes there.
This paper presents epistemological and methodological problems found in work on the subgrouping of Sino-Tibetan languages and the reconstruction of features of the languages. A key problem is the lack of an accepted standard for judging this work, one that can stand up to statistical evaluation. An alternative methodology that involves using fixed sets of features to give us the statistical probability of common origin is suggested.
Chinese is often taken as a prime example of an isolating language. Most relation marking takes the form of particles rather than affixes or inflections. Possibly relevant to the facts that are presented below, Chinese has been argued to not have grammaticalized the sort of pivot constructions normally associated with grammatical relations. That is, it has been argued to not have any particular alignment, as there are no grammatical relations, and the clause pattern is simply topic-comment (Chao 1968, Lü 1979, LaPolla 1993, 1995, 2009; LaPolla & Poa 2005, 2006). We will first talk more generally about structures found in Sino-Tibetan languages, and then focus on Modern Mandarin Chinese.
In terms of the direction of development, I referred to Johanna Nichols' work on head-marking vs. dependant marking. Nichols did not make reference to any languages in Tibeto-Burman, but all of the Tibeto-Burman languages that do not have verb agreement systems are solidly dependent-marking (i.e., they have marking on the nouns for case or pragmatic function); those languages with verb agreement systems, a type of head marking, also have many dependent-marking features (of the same types as the non-pronominalized languages). The question, then, is which is older, the dependent-marking type or the headmarking (actually mixed) type?
Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass die optimale Verteilung von Individuen in Gruppen unter Beachtung ihrer Zeitpräferenzen ein NP-schweres Problem ist. Daher liegt es Nahe, dass für große Teilnehmerzahlen eine optimale Lösung nicht in praxistauglicher Zeit berechnet werden kann. Hier kann eine geeignete Heuristik Abhilfe schaffen.
Da dieses Problem in Universitäten für Studierende bei der Zuteilung der Übungsgruppen für Hunderte von Teilnehmern jedes Semester aufs Neue gelöst werden muss, macht es Sinn, dabei eine rechnergestützte Lösung einzusetzen.
In dieser Arbeit werden die gängigsten in Deutschland und insbesondere an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main verwendeten Gruppeneinteilungssysteme untersucht. Alle aktuell eingesetzten Lösungen weisen offensichtliche Mängel auf. In dieser Arbeit wird analysiert, weshalb es dazu kommt und gezeigt, wie diese Mängel vermieden werden können. Außerdem werden Kriterien entwickelt und diskutiert, die ein gutes Gruppeneinteilungssystem erfüllen sollte.
Es wird beschrieben, inwiefern eine gute mit einer Heuristik schnell berechenbare approximative Lösung des Gruppeneinteilungsproblems besser als eine perfekte Lösung sein könnte. Mehrere Heuristiken werden verglichen und eine für dieses Problem gut passende wird entwickelt und implementiert. Mithilfe der Beispielimplementierung und anhand anonymisierter Anmeldedaten für die Veranstaltungen aus vergangenen Jahren wird gezeigt, welche Ergebnisse bei dem Wechsel zu einem solchen System erreicht werden können.
Weiterhin wird analysiert, wie ein solches Gruppeneinteilungssystem an die anderen an Universitäten eingesetzten digitalen Systeme angekoppelt werden kann. Das ist notwendig, um zu vermeiden, dass die redundanten Studierendendaten doppelt gepflegt werden müssen. Somit werden Konsistenz und Korrektheit der Daten bei dem Einsatz eines neuen Systems gefördert.
Abschließend wird ein Ausblick in die Zukunft der Gruppeneinteilungssysteme gegeben und beschrieben, welche Aspekte in diesem Bereich weiterhin wichtig sein könnten.
Speech production involves widely distributed brain regions. This MEG study focuses on the spectro-temporal dynamics that contribute to the setup of this network. In 21 participants performing a cue-target reading paradigm, we analyzed local oscillations during preparation for overt and covert reading in the time-frequency domain and localized sources using beamforming. Network dynamics were studied by comparing different dynamic causal models of beta phase coupling in and between hemispheres. While a broadband low frequency effect was found for any task preparation in bilateral prefrontal cortices, preparation for overt speech production was specifically associated with left-lateralized alpha and beta suppression in temporal cortices and beta suppression in motor-related brain regions. Beta phase coupling in the entire speech production network was modulated by anticipation of overt reading. We propose that the processes underlying the setup of the speech production network connect relevant brain regions by means of beta synchronization and prepare the network for left-lateralized information routing by suppression of inhibitory alpha and beta oscillations.
The neural correlates of developmental dyslexia have been investigated intensively over the last two decades and reliable evidence for a dysfunction of left-hemispheric reading systems in dyslexic readers has been found in functional neuroimaging studies. In addition, structural imaging studies using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) demonstrated grey matter reductions in dyslexics in several brain regions. To objectively assess the consistency of these findings, we performed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on nine published VBM studies reporting 62 foci of grey matter reduction in dyslexic readers. We found six significant clusters of convergence in bilateral temporo-parietal and left occipito-temporal cortical regions and in the cerebellum bilaterally. To identify possible overlaps between structural and functional deviations in dyslexic readers, we conducted additional ALE meta-analyses of imaging studies reporting functional underactivations (125 foci from 24 studies) or overactivations (95 foci from 11 studies ) in dyslexics. Subsequent conjunction analyses revealed overlaps between the results of the VBM meta-analysis and the meta-analysis of functional underactivations in the fusiform and supramarginal gyri of the left hemisphere. An overlap between VBM results and the meta-analysis of functional overactivations was found in the left cerebellum. The results of our study provide evidence for consistent grey matter variations bilaterally in the dyslexic brain and substantial overlap of these structural variations with functional abnormalities in left hemispheric regions.
A subgroup of pediatric acute T-lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) was characterized by a gene expression profile comparable to that of early T-cell precursors (ETPs) with a highly unfavorable outcome. We have investigated clinical and molecular characteristics of the ETP-ALL subgroup in adult T-ALL. As ETP-ALL represents a subgroup of early T-ALL we particularly focused on this cohort and identified 178 adult patients enrolled in the German Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Multicenter studies (05/93–07/03). Of these, 32% (57/178) were classified as ETP-ALL based on their characteristic immunophenotype. The outcome of adults with ETP-ALL was poor with an overall survival of only 35% at 10 years, comparable to the inferior outcome of early T-ALL with 38%. The molecular characterization of adult ETP-ALL revealed distinct alterations with overexpression of stem cell-related genes (BAALC, IGFBP7, MN1, WT1). Interestingly, we found a low rate of NOTCH1 mutations and no FBXW7 mutations in adult ETP-ALL. In contrast, FLT3 mutations, rare in the overall cohort of T-ALL, were very frequent and nearly exclusively found in ETP-ALL characterized by a specific immunophenotype. These molecular characteristics provide biologic insights and implications with respect to innovative treatment strategies (for example, tyrosine kinase inhibitors) for this high-risk subgroup of adult ETP-ALL.
„Gehört die Stadt überhaupt? Wir wollen mit der Frage die Möglichkeiten, die eine Stadt bietet, ausfindig machen und vor allem die Grenzen, die die gesamte Stadt durchziehen, benennen und angreifen.“ (Wem gehört die Stadt?-Netzwerk 2008)
Die Frage, ob eine Stadt im Allgemeinen und Frankfurt im Besonderen überhaupt gehört, muss eindeutig mit „ja“ beantwortet werden. Unter kapitalistischen Bedingungen und insbesondere im Zuge der globalen Enteignungsökonomie (Zeller 2004) und der Neoliberalisierung des Städtischen (Heeg, Rosol 2007; Mullis 2011) befinden sich städtische Räume – von der Wohnung bis zum öffentlichen Raum – im Privateigentum und sind zunehmend der Profitorientierung unterworfen. Einher gehen damit massive Ausschlüsse von den städtischen Qualitäten all derer, die gemäß dieser Logik nicht als nützlich, kreativ, angepasst – sprich: verwertbar – gelten.
Während diese Ausschlüsse global zu beobachten sind, ist ihre jeweilige Manifestation pfadabhängig von lokalen Kräfteverhältnissen und Entwicklungen. Exemplarisch lassen sich für die Metropolregion Rhein/Main und insbesondere die Kernstadt Frankfurt fünf zentrale Felder skizzieren, auf denen sich Ausgrenzungsprozesse manifestieren. So gehört erstens das Frankfurter Wohnungsangebot zum teuersten der Bundesrepublik. Der komplette Innenstadtbereich ist durchgentrifiziert und erlebt mittlerweile – wie bspw. im Nordend und in Bockenheim– eine „Supergentrifizierung“ (Holm 2010). In der Folge werden subalterne Bevölkerungsschichten aus diesen städtischen Vierteln verdrängt oder müssen mit immer höheren Belastungen kalkulieren. Die Bugwelle der Gentrifizierung pflügt in den letzten Jahren auch durch ehemals noch relativ bezahlbare Stadtteile – Bahnhofsviertel3, Gallus4, Mainfeld5 und Ostend6 sind hier aktuelle und gravierende Beispiele (Schulze 2012; MHM 2010).
Jahresbericht 2011 / Fachbereich Medizin und Klinikum der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
(2012)
Das Internet ist nicht nur ein Medium, das neue Kommunikationsformen ermöglicht, es ist selbst auch das Produkt eines verstärkten Bedarfs, Wunsches und Drangs nach Kommunikation. Beim Internet handelt es sich um ein hybrides Konstrukt, das auf drei Säulen aufruht: 1. eine neue Ordnung von Daten/ Informationen (Stichwort: Hypertext; Beispiel: Suchmaschinen wie Google), 2. die Entwicklung neuer Formen von Interaktion (Stichwort: neue Kommunikationsplattformen, Beispiele: MySpace, Facebook), 3. die globale Ausweitung der Zugangsformen (Stichwort: erschwingliche Computer und handheld devices, Vervielfältigung der Server, Knoten, Terminals). Diese drei Aspekte des Internets sind das Ergebnis zunächst eigenständiger technologischer Erfindungen und Entwicklungen, die dann miteinander fusioniert wurden. "Es ist an der Zeit, die digitale Revolution, die mehr ist als das Web 2.0, in ihrer ganzen Wucht zu erkennen", schrieb Frank Schirrmacher in der FAZ. Ich werde mich in diese grundsätzliche Debatte über das Internet und die anthropologischen und politischen Konsequenzen der neuen Datenordnung hier jedoch nicht einschalten, die derzeit von Meinungsmachern wie Frank Schirrmacher, Stephen Baker und Sascha Lobo geführt wird, sondern mich nur auf die zweite Säule, die Neugestaltung der Kommunikation durch das Web 2.0 konzentrieren.
Obwohl sie in einer neusten Arbeit über „Theologisches in den großen Romanen Thomas Manns“ ganz fehlen – als ob sie nicht zu seinen größten Werken überhaupt gehörten – , legt schon das allererste Wort ihres Titels nahe, die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull auf die Rolle hin zu befragen, die Religion darin spielt oder nicht spielt: „Bekenntnisse“, lateinisch „Confessiones“ und ins Deutsche rückübersetzt „Beichte“. Aus seiner Nähe zur religiösen Literatur kann der Paratext Erwartungen wecken, denen der so überschriebene Text bei einer darauf eingestellten Lektüre zunächst durchaus zu entsprechen scheint. Und zwar entspricht er ihnen scheinbar bis zu seinem Ende, ja an seinem Ende sogar ganz besonders. Denn die letzten Kapitel des Fragments stehen förmlich im Zeichen des Kreuzes.
Bei Entzündung oder Verletzung peripherer Gewebe und Nerven kommt es zur Bildung reaktiver Sauerstoffspezies (ROS) im schmerzleitenden System. Welche ROS-generierenden Systeme hierbei beteiligt sind, ist jedoch nur ansatzweise verstanden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit konnte gezeigt werden, dass die ROS-produzierende NADPH Oxidase 4 (Nox4) einen wichtigen ROS-Generator im nozizeptiven System darstellt. Nox4 wird in unmyelinisierten nicht-peptidergen sowie in myelinisierten primär afferenten Neuronen exprimiert. In Modellen für akute und inflammatorische Schmerzen zeigten Nox4-/--Mäuse ein ähnliches Verhalten wie ihre wildtypischen Wurfgeschwister, jedoch war ihr Schmerzverhalten in Modellen für neuropathische Schmerzen reduziert. Eine Microarray-Analyse des lumbalen Rückenmarks nach peripherer Nervenverletzung zeigte eine Hochregulation der Expression Myelin-spezifischer Gene in Wildtyp-, nicht aber in Nox4-/- Mäusen. Darüber hinaus wurden in Wildtyp-Mäusen Myelin-spezifische Proteine im N. ischiadicus nach peripherer Nervenverletzung herab reguliert, während in Nox4-/--Mäusen keine Regulation dieser Proteine beobachtet wurde. Diese Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Nox4 eine essentielle Rolle bei Myelinisierungsprozessen spielt und so die Verarbeitung neuropathischer Schmerzsignale beeinflusst.
Neben dem ROS-produzierenden System Nox4 wurde auch die Rolle des Peroxid-abbauenden Proteins Sestrin 2 (Sesn2) im nozizeptiven System untersucht. Nach peripherer Nervenverletzung wurde Sesn2-mRNA in den Spinalganglien und Sesn2-Protein im peripheren Nerv hochreguliert. Sesn2-/--Mäuse zeigten ein normales Verhalten in Modellen für akute und inflammatorische Schmerzen. Ihr Schmerzverhalten war jedoch im Formalin-Test und nach peripherer Nervenverletzung verstärkt.
Diese Ergebnisse lassen vermuten, dass sowohl Nox4 als auch Sesn2 bei der Verarbeitung neuropathischer Schmerzsignale wichtige Funktionen einnehmen. Während Nox4 pronozizeptiv wirkt, weist Sesn2 antinozizeptive Effekte auf. Die Produktion reaktiver Sauerstoffspezies scheint daher ein wichtiger endogener Faktor der Sensibilisierung im Rahmen von neuropathischen Schmerzen zu sein.
Die Rolle von NO und cGMP in der Schmerzverarbeitung im Rückenmark ist in den letzten Jahren durch viele Berichte untermauert worden. Nicht vollständig bekannt sind hingegen die Mechanismen, derer sich cGMP bedient, um die Transmission von Schmerzen zu beeinflussen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde deshalb untersucht, welche cGMPabhängigen Phosphodiesterasen (PDEs) hierbei eine Rolle spielen könnten und wie sich diese Beteiligung funktionell äußert. Dazu wurden immunhistochemische Färbungen von Rückenmarkschnitten angefertigt und Western-Blot-Analysen von Rückenmarkgewebe durchgeführt. Beide Methoden lieferten Hinweise dafür, dass die PDEs 1A, 1B, 3A,3B, 5A und 11A keine Rolle in der Verarbeitung von Schmerzen spielen. Demgegenüber scheinen die PDE1C, 2A und 10A in schmerzrelevanten Gebieten des Rückenmarks lokalisiert zu sein. Die funktionelle Relevanz der PDE2A und PDE10A im Rahmen der Schmerzverarbeitung wurde mit Hilfe des PDE2A-Inhibitors BAY 60-7550 und des PDE-10A-Inhibitors Papaverin in nozizeptiven Tiermodellen untersucht. Dabei bewirkte, im Modell der Complete Freund’s Adjuvant (CFA)-induzierten mechanischen Hyperalgesie, die i.p. Applikation von BAY 60-7550 oder Papaverin eine Verstärkung der Hyperalgesie. Weiterhin war die Leckzeit in der 2. Phase des Formalin-Modells bei einer Inhibition von PDE10A signifikant verlängert. Insgesamt bestätigen die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit frühere Berichte, dass cGMP an der Schmerzsensibilisierung im Hinterhorn des Rückenmarks beteiligt ist und deuten auf eine Rolle insbesondere von PDE2A und 10A im Rahmen der Schmerzsensibilisierung hin.
Wenn das Begehren liest...
(2012)
Das queere Lesen entdeckt anscheinend vor allem solche Bedeutungen und Zusammenhänge, die nicht primär zu sehen sind und unter der Text/Bild-Oberfläche verborgen liegen. Epistemologisch gesehen rechnet es also mit der Kategorie des Verstecks, wie sie von Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick beschrieben ist. Als ob es um das Sehen des Versteckten, des Nicht-Sehbaren gehen würde, also im Prinzip um eine Vorstellung, eine Imagination, das Sehen dessen, was man sehen möchte.
Both Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno consider ‘aesthetical experience’ as an “image experience” assuming a power of images “to set free forces” directed to produce or support aesthetical-political (Benjamin) or aesthetical-critical (Adorno) requirements. Profane illumination, ‘thinkimages’, phantasmagory, dialectical images, decayed ‘aura’ and technicalized images in Benjamin’s theory of aesthetical modernity. Expressive feature or “mimetic” eloquence in nature and art countering reality, dismantled ‘aura’ in contemporary desacralized work of art, but also persisting ‘aura’ in its meaningful dimension in Adorno’s aesthetical theory.
Nella sua opera estrema, Teoria estetica, Adorno menziona Paul Valéry una ventina di volte. Già questo fatto basterebbe ad attestare l’importanza che Valéry riveste per la riflessione adorniana sull’arte e sull’estetico. Infatti Teoria estetica, sebbene costituita nel suo complesso da un corpus testuale di mole imponente, è avara di citazioni e sono tutto sommato pochi gli autori (sia artisti sia filosofi) i cui nomi ricorrono numerose volte tra le sue pagine. Oltre a Kant e Hegel, e oltre a Benjamin, più frequenti di Valéry sono solo Baudelaire, Beckett, Beethoven e Schönberg, mentre all’incirca egualmente frequenti sono Brecht, Goethe e Nietzsche. Vista la parsimonia con la quale Adorno centellina i propri referenti espliciti nel momento in cui compie il massimo sforzo di condensazione teorica di una lunga riflessione sull’estetico, sarebbe avventato relegare il dato della frequenza del nome di Valéry in Teoria estetica nel novero degli accidenti meramente estrinseci. L’impressione della rilevanza di tale riferimento risulta poi sicuramente rafforzata se si vanno a leggere i luoghi in cui viene effettuato il rimando a Valéry.
In order to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Benjamin's death, the conference "Dialectic images and sudden constellations: Warburg, Benjamin, Adorno" was held in Florence. The idea, common to the three authors, of a truth content that can only be realised in its concrete and istantaneous configuration, was embodied here in the form of a "philosophical concert", where contributions by philosophers, philologists and historians of arts and architecture succeeded each other.
The paper aims to investigate the impact of Axel Honneth’s work – in particular his theory of recognition – within sociology. After indicating the sociological elements of his theoretical proposal and comparing some current discussions, the paper sketches out the main empirical applications of the theory of recognition: contemporary identitarian configurations, the social exclusion of minority groups, social movements, intercultural relations and the changes in the world of work in late modern society. In the final part, the paper highlights some developments in contemporary sociological theory that could limit the sociological reception of Honneth’s work.
Der Fokus dieser kumulativen Dissertation liegt auf der Untersuchung des Managements
öffentlich-privater Informationstechnologie (IT)-Partnerschaften. Daher werden
im Rahmen dieses Kapitels zunächst die Bedeutung der Forschung über öffentlichprivate
Partnerschaften (ÖPP) im IT-Bereich und anschließend die untersuchten zentralen
Forschungsfragen erläutert. Im Anschluss wird die Struktur dieser Arbeit kurz vorgestellt,
um darzustellen, wie die zentralen Forschungsfragen adressiert wurden.
...
Wie in der Einleitung beschrieben, bestand die zentrale Motivation für diese kumulative
Dissertation in der fehlenden Forschung zur Konzeptionalisierung öffentlicher und privater
Organisationskulturen und der Analyse deren Auswirkungen auf die erfolgreiche
Realisierung von IT-ÖPPs. Daher zielten die durchgeführten Fallstudien darauf ab, zu
untersuchen, wie IT-ÖPPs trotz anfänglicher Schwierigkeiten erfolgreich gestaltet werden
können und wie eine IT-ÖPP über die Zeit hinweg etabliert und aufrechterhalten
werden kann.
Das Ziel der ersten zentralen Forschungsfrage konzentrierte sich daher auf die Analyse
der Unterschiede von öffentlichen und privaten Organisationskulturen. Artikel 1 beantwortet
diese Forschungsfrage durch die Konzeptionalisierung öffentlicher und privater
Organisationskulturen (bestehend aus divergierenden Denkweisen, Wissensbasen
und organisationalen Strukturen) und liefert erste Einblicke in deren Auswirkungen auf
die öffentlich-private Zusammenarbeit sowie den Erfolg von IT-ÖPPs. Dadurch leistet
Artikel 1 einen Beitrag zur IT-ÖPP-Forschungsdomäne. Außerdem trägt Artikel 1 zur
theoretischen Domäne organisationaler Kulturunterschiede dadurch bei, dass er den
Einfluss öffentlicher und privater Normen sowie deren Werte auf organisationsspezifisches
Verhalten aufdeckt. Zusammenfassend illustriert Artikel 1, dass die Etablierung
einer nachhaltigen IT-ÖPP das Bewusstsein sowie Verständnis für Unterschiede von
öffentlichen und privaten Organisationskulturen erfordert, um einen Kooperationsmodus
zu verhandeln.
Artikel 2, 3 und 4 erweitern die Erkenntnisse der Auswirkungen unterschiedlicher Organisationskulturen
auf öffentlich-private Zusammenarbeit in IT-ÖPPs durch die Analyse
der Gründe und Vorgehensweisen zur erfolgreichen Gestaltung einer IT-ÖPP trotz
anfänglicher Schwierigkeiten. Dadurch antworten die Artikel auf die zweite zentrale
Forschungsfrage. Der Beitrag von Artikel 2 zur Forschungsdomäne besteht in der Untersuchung
der Rolle divergierender Verständnisse und Erwartungen, deren Auswirkungen
durch den ÖPP-Kontext verstärkt werden, für das Scheitern von IT-ÖPP-Projekten.
Der theoretische Beitrag hingegen bezieht sich auf die Identifizierung der Ursachen der
Verletzung des psychologischen Vertrags auf einer individuellen Ebene in IT-ÖPPs.
Abgeleitet von diesen Erkenntnissen veranschaulicht Artikel 2 die Bedeutung der Aufrechterhaltung
informaler Beziehungen für die Realisierung von IT-Projekten im ÖPPKontext.
Artikel 3 setzt auf den Ergebnissen von Artikel 2 auf und illustriert die organisationalen
Voraussetzungen sowie Management-Praktiken (auch beeinflusst durch
den spezifischen ÖPP-Kontext) für die Wiederherstellung einer nachhaltigen Partnerschaft
in scheiternden IT-ÖPP-Projekten. Dadurch leistet Artikel 3 einen Beitrag zur
IT-ÖPP-Forschungsdomäne. Aus einer theoretischen Perspektive erweitert Artikel 3 die
bestehende Literatur über das Brückenspannen durch die Untersuchung der notwendigen
Voraussetzungen und Aktivitäten des Brückenspannens auf einer organisationalen
Ebene, um die kulturelle Kluft in interorganisationalen Kooperationen zu überbrücken.
Basierend auf diesen Erkenntnissen zeigt Artikel 3, dass die Trendwende eines negativen
Verlaufs von IT-ÖPP-Projekten die Etablierung einer unbelasteten öffentlichprivaten
Beziehung und die kontinuierliche Pflege der Partnerschaft sowie der Beziehungen
zu den Anspruchsgruppen erfordert. Artikel 4 analysiert ebenfalls die Gründe
sowie Vorgehensweisen für erfolgreiche IT-ÖPPs. Basierend auf der Konzeptionalisierung
von öffentlichen und privaten Organisationskulturen von Artikel 1 erweitert
Artikel 4 die Analyse von Artikel 1 durch die detaillierte Darstellung, wie organisationsspezifische
Verhaltensweisen begründet sind und wie sie die öffentlich-private Zusammenarbeit
erschweren. Zusätzlich erweitert Artikel 4 die Erkenntnisse der IT-ÖPPForschungsdomäne
durch die Illustration, wie Unterschiede organisationaler Kulturen
ausbalanciert werden können, um eine nachhaltige Partnerschaft zu etablieren und ITÖPPs
aus administrativer, politischer und betriebswirtschaftlicher Perspektive erfolgreich
zu gestalten. Hinsichtlich der theoretischen Domäne organisationaler Kulturunterschiede
liefert Artikel 4 tiefgehende Einblicke in den Einfluss von Normen und Routinen
öffentlicher und privater Logiken auf die Ausprägungen öffentlicher und privater
Organisationskulturen sowie die detaillierte Erläuterung der Auswirkungen kultureller
Unterschiede auf organisationsspezifisches Verhalten. Abschließend erläutert Artikel 4
die Hierarchie von IT-ÖPP-Erfolgskriterien aus administrativer, politischer sowie betriebswirtschaftlicher
Perspektive und illustriert, dass der Erfolg von IT-ÖPPs von der
Verhandlung von Kompromissen über gemeinsame Partnerschaftsziele und -vorgehensweisen
hinsichtlich der verschiedenen Interessen der Parteien abhängig ist.
Artikel 5 integriert die Ergebnisse der Artikel 1 bis 4 und untersucht die Etablierung
und Aufrechterhaltung einer IT-ÖPP über die Zeit hinweg. Dadurch beantwortet Artikel
5 die dritte zentrale Forschungsfrage. Durch die Analyse des Partnerschaftsentwicklungsprozesses
in IT-ÖPP-Projekten, der der Herausforderung kollidierender öffentlicher
und privater Organisationskulturen ausgesetzt ist, erläutert Artikel 5 die drei
Phasen der IT-ÖPP-Entwicklung und die Ereignisse, die den Übergang zwischen den
Phasen initiieren. Zusätzlich zu diesen Beiträgen zur Forschungsdomäne illustriert Artikel
5 das Zusammenspiel konkurrierender institutioneller Logiken über die Zeit hinweg
und belegt den schrittweisen Austausch konkurrierender Logiken durch eine neue,
dominante Logik. Zusammenfassend zeigt Artikel 5, dass die Etablierung und Aufrechterhaltung
einer nachhaltigen, bilateralen Partnerschaft zwischen öffentlichen und
privaten Organisationen die Verhandlung eines Kooperationsmodus durch die Aufweichung
öffentlicher und privater institutioneller Normen und Prinzipien sowie die gedankliche
Annäherung der Parteien aneinander erfordert.
Insgesamt liefert diese kumulative Dissertation Erkenntnisse über die Unterschiede zwischen
öffentlichen und privaten Organisationskulturen, wie diese Unterschiede die öffentlich-
private Zusammenarbeit in IT-ÖPPs erschweren, die Management-Praktiken
für die Etablierung und Aufrechterhaltung einer nachhaltigen Partnerschaft über die Zeit
hinweg sowie die erfolgreiche Gestaltung von IT-ÖPPs. Dadurch schafft diese Arbeit
einen Ausgangspunkt für die tiefergehende Erforschung von IT-ÖPP-Management, die
Analyse des spezifischen ÖPP-Kontexts und die Verbesserung der Realisierung von ITÖPP-
Projekten.
Editorial
01 Foreword
Research & Policy
01 WP 12/06: Central Banks - Paradise Lost
02 Staff Member Profile
Events
01 The ECB and Its Watchers XIV
02 Greece: Getting Here and Moving Forward
03 Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves 04 How can Macro-Prudential Regulation be Effective?
05 Globalization and Pluralization of States. Why there will be no “United States of Europe”
06 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2013: Preview
Last but not least
01 Christian Leuz will visit Frankfurt with Humboldt Research Award
02 LOEWE center "Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe"
03 New Senior Fellows at CFS
E-democracy as the frame of networked public discourse : information, consensus and complexity
(2012)
The quest for democracy and the political reflection about its future are to be understood nowadays in the horizon of the networked information revolution. Hence, it seems difficult to speak of democracy without speaking of e-democracy, the key issue of which is the re-configuration of models of information production and concentration of attention, which are to be investigated both from a political and an epistemological standpoint. In this perspective, our paper aims at analyzing the multi-agent dimension of networked public discourse, by envisaging two competing models of structuring this discourse (those of dialogue and of claim) and by suggesting to endorse the epistemic idea of complementarity as a guidance principle for elaborating a form of partnership between traditional and electronic media.
Alexander’s theory of the civil sphere can be placed in the context of development of sociology of law. However, Alexander draws not so much on sociological theories but rather on the approaches of philosophy of law, particularly the ideas of Fuller, Dworkin and Habermas. The civil sphere is presented by Alexander as the embodiment of Dworkin’s principal integrity. Locating law within civil morality Alexander reveals the similarity of his viewpoint to Dworkin’s position. Drawing on Fuller’s works Alexander singles out the procedural foundations of the democratic order. At the same time for Alexander the source of morality of law is not the legal system itself but a certain level of civil solidarity. Like Habermas, Alexander emphasizes the culturally embedded character of the legal norms. Alexander shares Habermas’s understanding of law as a regulative mechanism affecting all spheres of social life. However, Habermas is more sensitive to the danger of colonization of law by the imperatives of the economic and political subsystems. Alexander’s approach can be contrasted with Luhmann’s sociological theory of law. Alexander concentrates on interrelation and mutual penetration of the civil sphere and law while Luhmann regards law as an autonomous system following its own logic. While Alexander claims that his theory is rooted both in sociology and philosophy of law in fact his approach is closer to normative philosophy.
New technologies generate risks, for the evaluation of which various mechanisms have been developed; the most frequent of these mechanisms consists of advice from committees of experts to the bodies whose role is to decide whether a new technology should be implemented or not. Such committees try to measure the magnitude of the threats that accompany the introduction of a new technology in order that the policy-makers may take their decisions in the light of the reports of the experts. The legitimacy of such reports is not only found in the technical capacity of its authors, but also in the impartiality of their recommendations. On numerous occasions, nevertheless, the effective presence of this evaluation finds itself today under suspicion. There are various methods that can be employed to try to resolve this problem. Firstly by reinforcing the mechanisms on which the technocratic evaluation of the risk are based; for example, through transparency in the selection of the experts. Secondly, by means of the incorporation of democratic mechanisms in the scientific-technological policy. The exposure of the internal conditions to the dynamics of the technological change that make possible the institutionalised involvement of society in the control of risk, as well as of the mechanisms to realise it are the principal subjects of this work.
Research aimed at helping to solve pressing societal problems must meet specific quality requirements: The knowledge it produces must not only be sound but also useable. This is particularly true of research that aims at bringing specific knowledge to bear on policy issues relating to sustainable development. This guide provides detailed actor-specific requirements profiles for this type of “policy relevant sustainability research.”
This guide is aimed at research funding agencies and contracting entities, researchers themselves and policymakers1 who participate directly in the research process. It can be used both for cases where the research funding agency/contracting entity and the policymaker are different institutions or where they are identical. However, policy consulting by specialized agencies that do not perform original research is not addressed.
The requirements profiles serve two functions. First of all, they should function as a guide for the three stakeholder groups, aiding them in their efforts to increase and ensure the quality of research processes and research outcomes. And, secondly, they should improve the reflexive communication among stakeholders regarding the means and the goals of research...
The results presented here are part of a research and development project (Research Code Number: 3711 11 701) funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The project was carried out by the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE, project management), the Institute for Ecological Economy Research and the Environmental Policy Research Center for of the Freie Universität Berlin (FFU) (project duration: 09/2011-01/2013).
The aim of the project was to develop concepts that can be used to increase the relevance of sustainability research for the design of environmental policy in Germany. In addition to the requirements profiles for a policy relevant sustainability research presented in this guide, recommendations, based on empirical studies, have been developed regarding how the coordination between different government departments with respect to funding such research can be optimized. The project's final report will be available starting March 2013 from the UBA.
Im Hinblick auf potenzielle Standorte für Offshore-Windenergieanlagen
und die von ihnen ausgehende mögliche
Gefährdung von Vögeln ist es erforderlich, die Kenntnisse
über den Vogelzug über See - insbesondere über den nächtlichen
- zu erweitern. Im Rahmen einer umfassenden ökologischen
Begleitforschung zur Offshore-Windenergienutzung
wurden daher auf einer Forschungsplattform in der südöstlichen
Nordsee auch die Rufe von Vögeln automatisch erfasst.
Die genaue Artzugehörigkeit insbesondere nachts ziehender
Vögel automatisch zu erfassen und zu bestimmen, ist bis auf
wenige Ausnahmen nur anhand von Rufen möglich. Hier wird
erstmals das artspezifische Vogelaufkommen in der Nähe
einer anthropogenen Offshore-Struktur im gesamten Tagesund
Jahresverlauf dargestellt (Pentadenmittel von zwölf Arten).
Von 2004 bis 2007 wurden insgesamt 100 Arten identifiziert
und die Rufe von 95.318 Individuen (ohne Großmöwen)
analysiert. Drei Viertel aller Registrierungen betrafen Passeres
(überwiegend Drosseln), ferner wurden vor allem Limikolen,
Seeschwalben und Kleinmöwen nachgewiesen. 79,4 % aller
Individuen wurden in der Nacht registriert. Hohe Individuenzahlen,
meist von vielen Arten gleichzeitig, konzentrierten
sich oft auf wenige Tage/Nächte oder gar Stunden. Zur Wegzugzeit
war das Vogelaufkommen wesentlich höher als zur
Heimzugzeit, maximal wurden in der Nacht vom 28. auf den
29.10.2005 über 5.236 Vögel (entsprechend 392 Ind./h) verschiedener
Arten identifiziert. Die Zugzeiten der Kurz/Mittelstreckenzieher
waren anhand der Rufe deutlich, die der Langstreckenzieher unter den Passeres wahrscheinlich wegen
ihrer geringen Ruffreude nicht zu erkennen. Im Juli wurden
überwiegend Kleinmöwen und Seeschwalben, im August vor
allem Seeschwalben und Limikolen (insbesondere Rotschenkel)
und im Winter spät wegziehende Kleinmöwen und Drosseln
registriert. Generell stieg die Häufigkeit mit Beginn der
Nacht stetig an und erreichte ihr Maximum vor Sonnenaufgang,
die wenigsten Vögel wurden am späten Nachmittag
registriert.
Trotz methodischer Einschränkungen stimmen die gezeigten
artspezifischen Phänologien im Großen und Ganzen mit den
Zugzeiten im Offshore-Bereich der Deutschen Bucht nach
Fangzahlen sowie nach Zugplan- und Zufallsbeobachtungen
überein. Wie mit diesen Erfassungsmethoden ist aber auch mit
der akustischen Aufzeichnung eine vollständige Quantifizierung
des Vogelaufkommens nicht möglich. Vermutlich wird
die Zahl der Vögel bei gutem Wetter unterschätzt und bei
schlechtem überschätzt. Wir gehen aber davon aus, dass die auf
der Plattform akustisch erfassten Vögel zumindest den niedrig
fliegenden Anteil der rufenden Arten im jahreszeitlichen Verlauf
und in seiner täglichen Variabilität reflektieren.
Die Möglichkeit, anhand der Rufe auf die Zahl der niedrig
und damit in der Nähe eines anthropogenen Hindernisses
fliegenden Vögel schließen zu können, ist in Hinblick auf die
Beurteilung ihres Kollisionsrisikos und der Einleitung von
Verminderungs- oder Vermeidungsmaßnahmen (Standort,
kurzzeitiges Abschalten der Anlagen und Beleuchtungsoptimierung)
nicht unerheblich.
Automatisierte Methoden der Erfassung von Rufen und Gesängen in der avifaunistischen Feldforschung
(2012)
Der gegenwärtige Kenntnisstand über automatisierte Methoden
zur akustischen Erfassung von Rufen und Gesängen von
Vögeln wird dargelegt. Die Grundlage für eine automatisierte
Erfassung bilden Langzeitaufzeichnungen. Es wird der
Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern Tonaufzeichnungen für eine
qualitative und auch quantitative Analyse von Vogelbeständen
geeignet sind. Spezielles Augenmerk wird autonomen Aufzeichnungsmethoden
und der Auswertung von Langzeitaufzeichnungen
unter Nutzung von Algorithmen der akustischen
Mustererkennung gewidmet. Sinnvolle Einsatzszenarien für
automatisierte Methoden im Rahmen avifaunistischer Feldforschung
sind die Erfassung des nächtlichen Vogelzuges, die
Erfassung nachtaktiver Brutvogelarten und die Datenerhebung
in Kernzonen von Schutzgebieten.
This work derives the value of the neutron capture cross section of 60Fe at the energy of kT = 25 meV. Iron plays an important role in stellar nucleosynthesis, because it is a seed material for the s-process, a neutron capture process in which the elements between iron and bismuth are synthesized.
To determine the thermal neutron cross section of 60Fe, an iron sample produced in the framework of the ERAWAST1 program at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland was irradiated at the research reactor TRIGA2 at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Before the irradiation, the number of 60Fe particles in the sample was calculated using the decay scheme of 60Fe. There were (8.207 ± 0:066 stat 0:298 syst) * 10 14 60Fe particles in the sample.
The irradiation of the sample took place in May 2012. The counting of the reaction product, 61Fe, was undertaken using a HPGe detector located in a laboratory at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Knowing the number of 60Fe particles in the sample, the number of produced 61Fe particles and the neutron flux from the reactor, the thermal neutron capture cross section of ρth60Fe = (0.203 ± 0:021 stat 0:024 syst) b could be determined.
The determination of the thermal neutron capture cross section at the energy of kT = 25 meV constitutes to the first at this energy. There was already a measurement of the neutron capture cross section of 60Fe at the energy of kT = 25 keV in Karlsruhe in Germany. The result of the measurement was 25 keV = (9.9 ± 2:8 syst 1:4 stat) mb and was published in the year 2009 [14].
Adding datapoints for the cross section at different energies improves extarpolation and helps verification of theoretical models for elemental synthesis. For this reason, a measurement of the 60Fe neutron capture cross section at the energy of kT = 90 keV is planned at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Having the neutron capture cross section of 60Fe at the energy of kT = 25 keV measured in the year 2009 in Karlsruhe [14], at the energy of kT = 25 meV measured in May 2012 at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and at the planned energy of kT = 90 keV at Goethe University Frankfurt, there will be three points for the extrapolation of the values for the neutron capture cross section of 60Fe. This will lead to a significant reduction in uncertainty with respect to existing theoretical discrepancies.
Manche besonders artenreiche Lokalitäten mit seltenen Arten wurden von Bryologen über die Jahrhunderte immer wieder aufgesucht. Die dort gefundenen Arten haben auch Eingang in lokale Florenwerke gefunden. Am Nordrand des Sauerlandes in Nordrhein-Westfalen liegen eine ganze Reihe von solchen hot spots wie der Ramsbecker Wasserfall, die Meilerlegge bei Ostwig, die Velmedahöhle oder die Bruchhauser Steine. Will man sich aber über das Arteninventar eines solcher Gebiete orientieren, vermisst man zumindestens zusammenfassende Artenlisten wenn nicht gar Gebietsmonographien. Da hilft es nur, die Floren durchzusehen und die Arten herauszuziehen, in diesem Fall die Mooflora von Westfalen (Koppe 1935-49. Die Nachträge sind nicht mehr so interessant, da darin nur Kleinarten und unwesentliche Nefunde hinzukommen, die Funde sensationeller Arten aber bereits schon im 19. Jahrhundert gemacht wurden). Dabei reicht es, wenn das einmal gemacht wird und nicht jeder, der solch ein Gebiet besuchen möchte, diese Arbeit von neuem leisten muss. Es gibt sicherlich fähigere Bryologen als den Autor, welche die Gebiete besser kennen, was aber nichts nutzt, wenn dieses Wissen in den Köpfen schlummert und nicht verfügbar ist. Daher sind an dieser Stelle solche Artenlisten für einige solcher Gebiete am Nordrand des Sauerlandes zusammengestellt, die der Autor sich für eine Exkursion im Herbst 2011 erstellt hat. Hier haben wir besondere Voraussetzungen für ein Artenreichtum: das Gebiet bist geologisch sehr divers. Das Grundgebirge besteht aus devonischen Schiefern, das ganze Gebiet wird aber von einem schmalen Kalkriff durchzogen, und zusätzlich gibt es plutonitische Intrusionen von Diabas und Quarzporphyr. Mit Höhen von um 450 m haben wir zudem schon entsprechende Niederschläge und Feuchtigkeit. Daher wurde das Gebiet schon frühzeitig von Bryologen besucht, angefangen von H. Müller Lippstadt über Winter, Grebe, Brockhausen, Mönkemeyer bis zu den Gebrüdern Koppe. In letzter Zeit war die Moosflora der Massenkalkfelsen des nördlichen Sauerlandes Thema der Dissertation von Carsten Schmidt (2004), von dem der erste Teil in Buchform veröffentlicht ist. Das Buch ist aber nach Arten gegliedert, lässt somit auch die hier gewünschten Gebietsbeschreibungen vermissen, die man gerne hätte, wenn man solch eine Lokalität aufsucht.
Amino acids can induce yeast cell adhesion but how amino acids are sensed and signal the modulation of the FLO adhesion genes is not clear. We discovered that the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae CEN.PK evolved invasive growth ability under prolonged nitrogen limitation. Such invasive mutants were used to identify amino acid transporters as regulators of FLO11 and invasive growth. One invasive mutant had elevated levels of FLO11 mRNA and a Q320STOP mutation in the SFL1 gene that encodes a protein kinase A pathway regulated repressor of FLO11. Glutamine-transporter genes DIP5 and GNP1 were essential for FLO11 expression, invasive growth and biofilm formation in this mutant. Invasive growth relied on known regulators of FLO11 and the Ssy1-Ptr3-Ssy5 complex that controls DIP5 and GNP1, suggesting that Dip5 and Gnp1 operates downstream of the Ssy1-Ptr3-Ssy5 complex for regulation of FLO11 expression in a protein kinase A dependent manner. The role of Dip5 and Gnp1 appears to be conserved in the S. cerevisiae strain ∑1278b since the dip5 gnp1 ∑1278b mutant showed no invasive phenotype.
Secondly, the amino acid transporter gene GAP1 was found to influence invasive growth through FLO11 as well as other FLO genes. Cells carrying a dominant loss-of-function PTR3647::CWNKNPLSSIN allele had increased transcription of the adhesion genes FLO1, 5, 9, 10, 11 and the amino acid transporter gene GAP1. Deletion of GAP1 caused loss of FLO11 expression and invasive growth. However, deletions of FLO11 and genes encoding components of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway or the protein kinase A pathway were not sufficient to abolish invasive growth, suggesting involvement of other FLO genes and alternative pathways. Increased intracellular amino acid pools in the PTR3647::CWNKNPLSSIN-containing strain opens the possibility that Gap1 regulates the FLO genes through alteration of the amino acid pool sizes.
Im Jahr 2012 feiert die Matej-Bel-Universität in Banská Bystrica ihr zwanzigjähriges Bestehen. Zugleich sind an dieser Universität 15 Jahre lebendiger translationswissenschaftlicher Bemühungen in Lehre und Forschung zu verzeichnen. Ein Jahr zuvor, 2011, konnte auch der SUNG – der Verband der Deutschlehrer und Germanisten der Slowakei – auf zwanzig Jahre ergiebiger Tätigkeit zurückblicken. In diesem Jahr schließe auch ich mit 20 Jahren Tätigkeit in der slowakischen Germanistik als Pädagogin an der Matej-Bel-Universität und gleichzeitig als SUNG-Mitglied an diese Jubiläen an. Seit 1992 bin ich im Umfeld der Neusohler (Bystricaer) Germanistik tätig: zunächst an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät, dann an der "Übersetzerfakultät" – ein Wechsel nach zehn Jahren, der meine professionelle Orientierung entscheidend geprägt hat – und schließlich seit 2007 an der neu formierten Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät.
Da offensichtlich die Zeit gekommen ist, Zwischenbilanzen zu ziehen, regte Prof. Peter Ďurčo von der Hl. Kyrill und Method-Universität Trnava entsprechende Aktivitäten der slowakischen Germanisten an und verankerte sie in einem VEGA-Projekt (Anm.1). In der vorliegenden Studie habe ich mir daher vorgenommen, einen Blick auf die Ergebnisse, Erfolge und Pläne der germanistischen Translationswissenschaft an der Matej-Bel-Universität in Banská Bystrica zu werfen und das Resultat dieser Rückschau als ein sinnvolles Ganzes publik zu machen.
This book, with contributions in both English and French, is a product of collaborative research between the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD, France), the University of Ghana, Legon and CODESRIA. It examines various economic, social and environmental challenges of urbanization that critically affect the capital of Ghana, which has experienced high demographic growth and territorial expansion. The study analyses the Greater Accra city dwellers residential practices, and focuses on two main factors influencing land and rental markets. On the one hand, it interrogates the constraints and dynamics of urban families, their needs and gender characteristics in terms of accommodation. On the other hand, it explores the opportunities and interests in investment on the part of land owners and real estate developers. At these two levels of describing the social and spatial discriminations, the book attempts to explain the difficult choices that this fragmented city faces. It emphasizes the role of mobility in structuring the metropolitan area, and the negative impact of lack of mobility which results in some households and communities suffering more than others. Light is thrown on diagnostics and prospects in the matter of urban planning.
BACKGROUND: The endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) acts as a retrograde messenger and modulates synaptic signaling e. g. in the hippocampus. 2-AG also exerts neuroprotective effects under pathological situations. To better understand the mechanism beyond physiological signaling we used Organotypic Entorhino-Hippocampal Slice Cultures (OHSC) and investigated the temporal regulation of 2-AG in different cell subsets during excitotoxic lesion and dendritic lesion of long range projections in the enthorhinal cortex (EC), dentate gyrus (DG) and the cornu ammonis region 1 (CA1).
RESULTS: 2-AG levels were elevated 24 h after excitotoxic lesion in CA1 and DG (but not EC) and 24 h after perforant pathway transection (PPT) in the DG only. After PPT diacylglycerol lipase alpha (DAGL) protein, the synthesizing enzyme of 2-AG was decreased when Dagl mRNA expression and 2-AG levels were enhanced. In contrast to DAGL, the 2-AG hydrolyzing enzyme monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL) showed no alterations in total protein and mRNA expression after PPT in OHSC. MAGL immunoreaction underwent a redistribution after PPT and excitotoxic lesion since MAGL IR disappeared in astrocytes of lesioned OHSC. DAGL and MAGL immunoreactions were not detectable in microglia at all investigated time points. Thus, induction of the neuroprotective endocannabinoid 2-AG might be generally accomplished by down-regulation of MAGL in astrocytes after neuronal lesions.
CONCLUSION: Increase in 2-AG levels during secondary neuronal damage reflects a general neuroprotective mechanism since it occurred independently in both different lesion models. This intrinsic up-regulation of 2-AG is synergistically controlled by DAGL and MAGL in neurons and astrocytes and thus represents a protective system for neurons that is involved in dendritic reorganisation.
... Es stellen sich auch für das Konzept eines Schuldentilgungsfonds – jedenfalls in Deutschland – verfassungsrechtliche Fragen. Zwar sollen Schuldentilgungsfonds sowie die dadurch bedingte gemeinschaftliche Haftung zeitlich und dem Umfang nach begrenzt sein und seine Errichtung parlamentarischer Zustimmung unterliegen. Das klingt zunächst einmal beruhigend. ...
Occasionally, in pursuing their adjudicative duties over the course of a legal hearing, judges are called upon to acquire new concepts – that is, concepts which they did not possess at the commencement of the hearing. In performing their judicial role they are required to learn new things and, as a result, conceptualise the world in a way which differs from the way they conceived of things before the hearing commenced. Some theorists have argued that either as a general matter or as a matter specific to judicial practice and the legal context, judges are, with some degree of necessity, incapacitated from acquiring certain kinds of concepts. Such concepts include those possessed by the members of culturally different minority groups. Drawing on contemporary trends in analytic and naturalistic philosophy of mind, this paper explores the extent to which a judge might be incapacitated from acquiring new concepts over the course of a legal hearing and identifies those factors which condition the success or failure of that process.
Financing asset growth
(2012)
We document the existence of a debt anomaly that is in addition to the asset growth anomaly: for a given asset growth rate, firms that issue more debt, as well as firms that retire more debt, have lower stock returns in the 12 months starting 6 months after the calendar year of asset growth. Exploring the reasons for debt issuance, we find that managers of firms for which analyst expectations are more over-optimistic, which suffer from declining investment profitability, and whose earnings-price ratios are relatively high are inclined to rely more heavily on debt financing. On the other hand, firms that retire more debt for a given asset growth rate tend to have improving profitability but to be over-priced. We also find that the financing decision is influenced by the prior debt ratio, the asset growth rate, profitability, and CEO pay sensitivity. We interpret our results in terms of managerial incentives, signaling, and market timing.
Background: Adaptation to low oxygen by changing gene expression is vitally important for cell survival and tissue development. The sprouting of new blood vessels, initiated from endothelial cells, restores the oxygen supply of ischemic tissues. In contrast to the transcriptional response induced by hypoxia, which is mainly mediated by members of the HIF family, there are only few studies investigating alternative splicing events. Therefore, we performed an exon array for the genome-wide analysis of hypoxia-related changes of alternative splicing in endothelial cells.
Methodology/Principal findings: Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were incubated under hypoxic conditions (1% O(2)) for 48 h. Genome-wide transcript and exon expression levels were assessed using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Exon 1.0 ST Array. We found altered expression of 294 genes after hypoxia treatment. Upregulated genes are highly enriched in glucose metabolism and angiogenesis related processes, whereas downregulated genes are mainly connected to cell cycle and DNA repair. Thus, gene expression patterns recapitulate known adaptations to low oxygen supply. Alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are shown for nine genes: six which are implicated in angiogenesis-mediated cytoskeleton remodeling (cask, itsn1, larp6, sptan1, tpm1 and robo1); one, which is involved in the synthesis of membrane-anchors (pign) and two universal regulators of gene expression (cugbp1 and max).
Conclusions/Significance: For the first time, this study investigates changes in splicing in the physiological response to hypoxia on a genome-wide scale. Nine alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are reported, considerably expanding the information on splicing changes due to low oxygen supply. Therefore, this study provides further knowledge on hypoxia induced gene expression changes and presents new starting points to study the hypoxia adaptation of endothelial cells.
Der Begriff 'Verstreute Gedichte' klingt im Deutschen nicht gut, der Terminus 'Einzelgedichte' lenkt den Blick hin auf das Singuläre jedes Texts und weg von Gemeinsamkeiten und Gedichtgruppen. Der Titel "Uncollected Poems", den William Waters für das Treffen der Internationalen Rilke-Gesellschaft in Boston (2011) in Vorschlag gebracht hat, vermag die Balance gut zu halten, allerdings nur in der englischen Sprache. Eine erste, noch provisorische Übersetzung ins Deutsche mit 'Ungesammelte Gedichte' war wenig überzeugend, denn eine solche Fügung findet sich nicht im Repertoire der deutschen Sprache. Zusammen mit der englischen Prägung wird aber sofort klar, was gemeint ist, auch wenn ein passender editorischer Fachbegriff in der deutschen Sprache nur schwer zu finden ist. Ein Blick auf die Editionsgeschichte von Rilkes Werken erklärt, worin die Besonderheit des Falles besteht.
Es hatte sich eingestellt, was für einige Jahrzehnte, nicht nur für Herder und nicht nur für Männer den Weg eines Topos zu einer Gattung und einer Gattung zum Buch bahnen sollte. Und vice versa. Es begann die Karriere ,zerstreuter Blätter', deren Mode - soweit es sich bei der gegenwärtigen Forschungslage beurteilen lässt - um 1800 ihren Anfang nahm und die sich bis um 1900 behauptete. In dieser Erfolgsgeschichte geht es genau um die genannte Titelgebung, deren Herkunft sich aus dem Wortfeld ,zerstreuter Sachen' sozusagen bequem herauskristallisiert. Denn es steht fest, dass die Sprache auch Schriften und Papieren immer schon erlaubte, zerstreut zu werden oder eben einfach chaotisch herumzuliegen. Seit dem frühen 18. Jahrhundert verzeichnen die Kataloge zerstreute Gedanken, Gedichte, Anmerkungen, Nachrichten und Aufsätze. Auch finden sich genug vermischte, gesammelte, ,verlohrene' und natürlich fliegende Blätter, und man begegnet auch jener professionellen Tätigkeit, die später die Herausgeber zerstreuter Blätter kennzeichnen wird.
Eine Reihe von Sprachgesten des jungen Herder haben nachhaltige Wirkung gehabt und wurden zum literaturhistorischen Paradigma des Lebensgefühls einer Generation, zu Merkmalen des Sturm und Drang. Allem voran pflegt man jene Rhetorik zu diesen Gesten zu zählen, mit der sich Herder von den „vielen Beyträge[nl des Jahrhunderts“, d. h. von der zeitgenössischen Gelehrsamkeit distanziert. Tatsächlich werden in seiner Schrift Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774) die „Erfahrung“, die „That“, die „Anwendung des Lebens, in dem bestimmtesten Kreise“ dem „abgezogne[nl Geist“, der selbstgefälligen Sprachgewalt der Aufklärung gegenübergestellt und auch die Institutionen der „Letternkultur“ kritisiert. […] Herders Charakterisierung seiner Epoche als des „Jahrhundert[sl des Bücherlesens“ wird darüber hinaus in der Attesten Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774) verbunden mit einem apokalyptischen Denken, das eine Schelte der Aufklärung einschließt. Für Ralf Simon schafft die Buchkultur eine „medientheoretisch“ signifikante Situation: Das große Archiv, das durch den Buchdruck ermöglicht und bis einschließlich des 18. Jahrhunderts errichtet wurde, erhebt sich über die Zeit und wird zum Medium einer Art papierenen Posthistoires.
From the dawn of civilization, a multitude of religious has developed each very complex. These great differences among religions make it difficult to find a least common denominator or to talk at length of religion in general. On the other hand, focusing on just one specific religion often causes us to ignore or underestimate some of the very broad traits that religions seem to share. The fact remains that we will make no headway into the question of what makes a specific religion a religion if we do not seek some characteristics common to all religions.
Religion is usually associated with the supernatural or the divine.505 However, the notion of a supernatural realm does not occur in the non-theistic schools of Buddhism and functions in very different ways, say, in Taoism, Hinduism, and Islam. These shortcomings suggest that religion is notoriously difficult to define. To me, religion is any action taken through every aspect of our being to release us from our weakness or imperfection, and bring us closer to the divine reality. In other words, it is a human inner desire or activity to unite with an absolute being.
The examination of the intellectual dimension of religion that is, its key beliefs is most beneficial when it is guided and informed. Since epistemology is the theory of knowledge, one would therefore expect epistemological discussions of religion to concentrate on the question whether one could have knowledge of religious beliefs. Religious epistemology is simple to say that it is the epistemology of distinctively religious beliefs, but that will not be helpful in the absence of a definition of religious beliefs.
Philosophers of religion might consider the epistemology of religious belief, pondering questions about the sources and justifications of religious knowledge. Fundamental questions regarding the nature of knowledge are likely to arise in any culture. After all, everyone has some stake in distinguishing truth from error, wisdom from ignorance, and the path to knowledge from the path to ignorance. Epistemologists have discussed, in addition to the defining conditions and the sources of knowledge, the extent of human knowledge. They have asked how far human knowledge can extend. Many philosophers find it obvious that we know at least some things, if only things about personal experiences or household physical objects. Others have claimed, however, that we really have no knowledge. Such philosophers admit that people typically feel confident that they have some knowledge, but these philosophers insist that our apparent cases of knowledge are mere illusions. Many epistemologists aim not to set knowledge beyond our reach or to escape the quest for knowledge but rather to make many of our ordinary claims to knowledge more secure by explaining knowledge. They seek to explain what knowledge consists in and how we get it.506
Therefore, a good deal of the task of general epistemology is to understand the nature of the various truth-relevant merits which beliefs can possess, the necessary and sufficient conditions for beliefs to possess those merits, and the virtues of mind and practice requisite and apt for their presence merits such as being reliably formed, being warranted, being entitled, being scientific, being rational, being justified and indeed being true.
Epistemology in Western philosophical tradition has until recently offered a prominent definition of knowledge that analyzes knowledge into three essential components: justification, truth, and belief. According to this analysis, propositional knowledge is, by definition, justified true belief. Epistemologists typically focus on propositional knowledge. Knowledge that something is the case, as opposed to knowledge of how to do something. The content of propositional knowledge can be expressed in a proposition, that is, what is meant by a declarative sentence. Knowledge how to do something is by contrast, a skill or competence in performing a certain task. Within the last few decades, philosophers have discovers that these three conditions are not really sufficient for knowledge; something else is required. Genuine knowledge requires not only truth and belief, but also the satisfaction of the belief condition be appropriately related to the satisfaction of the truth condition. That is, on the traditional approach, genuine knowledge requires that a knower have an “adequate indication” that a believed proposition is true. The required “adequate indication”507 of truth, according to Plato, Kant, and many other philosophers, is evidence indicating that a proposition is true. These philosophers thus hold that knowledge must be based on evidence, or justifying reason.
The kind of justification crucial to knowledge is called epistemic justification. Even if knowledge requires justification, a justified belief can be false. In allowing for justified false beliefs, contemporary epistemologists endorse fallibilism about justification. Reformed epistemologists contend that belief in the existence of God can, in some circumstances, have an epistemic status high enough to render it worthy of acceptance even if it has no support from the arguments of natural theology or from any other beliefs. The views of Alston and Mavrodes are sometimes said to display an affinity with Reformed epistemology, and Nicholas Wolterstorff has made significant contributions to its development. But Plantinga has clearly been the leading contemporary advocate of this school of thought in religious epistemology. During the earlier phase of their development, Plantinga concentrated on defending the view that theistic belief can be in certain conditions, is justified or rationally held even in the absence of any propositional evidence or supporting argument.508
For the conviction that theistic belief is properly basic, foundationalists carry out a reconstructive project that would put our revised doxastic structures on foundations so firm that they could withstand rather than ignore skeptical challenges. That is, for the classical foundationlist theistic belief requires support from propositional evidence or argument if it is to be rationally or justifiably held. However, it is fairly clear that belief in God’s existence does not satisfy this criterion; it is neither self-evident nor incorrigible nor evident to the sense for humans at any time in this life.
The question of justification attracts philosophers especially in contemporary epistemology. And controversy of this question focuses on the meaning of ‘justification’ as well as on the substantive conditions of a belief’s being justified in a way appropriate to knowledge. William Alston, for instance, has introduced a non-deontological normative concept of justification that relies mainly on the notion of what is epistemically good from the view-point of maximizing truth and minimizing falsity. Alston link epistemic goodness to a belief’s being based on adequate grounds in the absence of overriding reason to the contrary. But for some epistemologists “Epistemic justification” means simply “evidential support” of certain sort.509 To say that s is epistemically justifiable to some extent for you is, on this view, just to say that s is supportable to some extent by your overall evidential reason. According to epistemologist, knowledge entails beliefs, so that I cannot know that such and such is the case unless I believe that such and such is the case.
Robert Audi mentioned that knowledge arises in experience. It is constituted by conclusively justified true belief, meaning that: the believer may be justified by psychological certain of the true proposition in question and this proposition is so well-grounded as to be itself propositionally certain. And knowledge constitute by such belief may be called epistemic certainty. When we come to religious knowledge, Audi says that religious propositions are simply beyond the scope of human knowledge. But the point is why would it be thought that no religious propositions are known? The most common ground for holding this view is namely, that religious propositions, such as that God exists, cannot be known either a priori or on the basis of experience. The concept of justification or evidence would occur with the concept of belief in a more complex analysis of the concept of knowledge.510
In recent decades, questions of knowledge seem to have been marginalized by question of justification. As a matter of fact, however, epistemological discussion of religious belief, at least since the Enlightenment has tended to focus, not on the question whether religious belief has warrant, but whether it is justified. More precisely, it has tended to focus on the question whether those properties are enjoyed by theistic belief - the belief that there exists a person like the God of traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam: an almighty, all knowing, wholly benevolent and loving spiritual person who has created the world. The main epistemological question about religious belief, therefore, has been the question whether or not religious belief in general and theistic belief in particular is rational or rationally acceptable, or whether it is justified?
In its primary sense, rationality is a normative concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in such a way that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought to choose it. Rationality is the use of reason to reach a certain level of reasonableness or unreasonableness. Many positive characterizations of rational beliefs have been proposed by beliefs that are either self-evident or derived from self-evident beliefs by a reliable procedure and beliefs that are consistent with the overwhelming majority of one’s beliefs.511 Analytic epistemology in the twentieth century was conducted as if there were a part from truth itself - just one truth-relevant merit in beliefs, that one typically called either “justification or rationality;”512 and since there was a great deal of disagreement on the answer to that question, there was a great flowering of theories of justification, or theories of rationality.
According to Nicholas Wolterstorff, there are a large number of distinct truth-relevant merits in beliefs, and that neither “Justification” nor “rationality”513 picks out single such merit, both are highly ambiguous terms, each picking out a number of distinct merits. Religious beliefs are formed or evoked by experience of some sort, or by believing what is said in some discourse, or by reflection on the implications of some complex of beliefs that one has previously acquired. Here, we notice that there are no rational activities to understand or justify the experience.
Richard Swinburne considered the nature of actual belief. He saw how in a sense all beliefs given rise to action and must be based on evidence. But he knows that not all beliefs are rational beliefs. For him a beliefs will fail to be rational if it is based on evidence in the wrong way or if it is based on the wrong sort of evidence. According to Swinburne beliefs are rational in so far as they are based on investigation which was, in the believer’s view, adequate, and if the believer believes it to be rational. Swinburne understand by religious beliefs as about transcendent reality, including his belief about whether or not there is a God, and his beliefs about what properties God has (what God is like) and what actions he has performed.514
According to John Hick, the issue is not whether it can be established as an item of indubitable public knowledge that God (or the divine or the Transcendent) exists, or most probably exists, but whether it is rational for those who experience some of life’s moments theistically to believe that God exists, and to proceed to conduct their lives on that basis. Hick looks at a rational belief in general way. For him “belief” can mean a proposition believed or it can be defined as an act or state of believing. The idea of evidence normally presupposes a gap between an observed fact, or body of facts, and an inferred conclusion. Therefore, our ordinary moment - to moment perceptual beliefs contradict the principle that all rational believing must be based upon adequate evidence. It is not that they are based upon inadequate evidence, but rather that the model of evidence-inference-belief does not apply here. Ordinary perceptual beliefs arise directly out of our experience, and it is entirely appropriate, proper, and rational to form these beliefs in this way. The relationship between experience and belief has been much debated in recent work in the philosophy of religion. This discussion has focused upon specifically theistic belief and Hick discusses also in these terms and his argument is that it is rational to believe in the reality of God.
Alvin Plantinga argues on these manifestation-experiences that they are properly basic.515 That is to say, it is as rational for religious persons to hold these basic religious beliefs as it is for all of us to hold our basic perceptual beliefs. But, more basically, it is the biblical assumption translated into philosophical terms. According to Plantinga this experience is what justifies me in holding (the belief) that is the ground of my justification, and by extension, the ground of the belief itself. He then applies this principle to religious beliefs.
In philosophy, experience is generally what we perceive by the senses what we learn from others, or whatever comes from external sources or from inner reflection. In the sense, experience is associated with observation and experiment. Empiricism stresses that our knowledge must be based on experience, but rationalism claims that experience is a potential source of error and prefers rational certainty to mere empirical generalization. In ordinary usage, for every experience there must be something experienced that is independent of the subject of experience. But in philosophy, the relation between experience as a state of consciousness and independent objects of experience becomes a focus of debate. There are many different kinds of experiences, but it is religious experiences that interest me here.
From the point of view of epistemology the modifications of consciousness consisting our apparently perceptual experience are of importantly different kinds. In addition to true perceptions there are misperceptions, illusions, and hallucinations. Therefore, if anyone misled by any of these forms of perceptual error, he or she is then deluded. In each case the delusion consists in a mistaken implicit belief about the cause of the experience: Applying this concept of delusion to the realm of religious experience, we have to ask whether those who assume that their experience of living in God’s presence is caused by their being in God’s presence are believing truly or are, on the contrary, under a delusion.
In modern philosophy of mind a major theme which bears on many theoretical issues, concerns the alleged privacy of an experience as an event knowable only to its possessor and the possibility of public access to that experience. There is much philosophical debate concerning precisely how perception is to be analyzed. In particular, questions are raised concerning the status of the phenomenon. But there is general agreement that in perception, objects present themselves to us in ways that enable us to know them. Similarly, in religious experience God presents himself in ways that enable us to know him and his actions. For Alston there are, it seems, important differences between ordinary perceptual or sense experience and religious experience. Sense perception is a common experience, whereas religious experience is less common, perhaps, even rare, sense perception yields a great deal of information about the world, whereas religious experience yields apparently little information about God, all humans have the capacity for sense perception, but many seem not to have the capacity for religious experience. These differences, however, do not show that religious experience has a structure unlike perception. For one thing, neither the frequency of an experience nor the amount of information it yields tells us anything about its structure.
On the other hand, the limitation of the rationalist way is that the only truths capable of being strictly proved are analytic and ultimately tautological. But we cannot by logic alone demonstrate any matter of fact and existence; these must be known through experience. For sure if nothing were given through experience in its various modes, we should never have anything to reason about. This is as true in religion as in other fields. If God exists, God is not an idea but a reality outside us, in order to be known to men and women, God must therefore become manifest in some way within their experience. This conclusion is in line with the contemporary revolt against the rationalist assumptions which have dominated much of western philosophy since the time of Descartes.516 Descartes held that we can properly be said to know only truths that are self-evident or that can be reached by logical inferences from self-evident premises.
Therefore, those who stress faith and attack reason often place a great deal of emphasis on religious experience. However, religious experience is by no means a purely emotional “happening”; rather, it involves concepts and beliefs about the being that is experienced. If we tried to separate religious experiences from such concepts and beliefs - from the religious belief-system, as we shall call it - then there would be no way saying who or what is that is experienced, or of explaining what sort of difference the experience ought to make to the person who has it. However, such a religious belief system needs to be understood; at least to some degree - it is hard to see how understanding it is not going to involve the use of reason.
For Rationalisms, in order for a religious belief-system to be properly and rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove that the belief-system is true. Rationalism in this sense implies a reliance on reason, or intelligence, in deciding our beliefs and actions. The central idea of strong rationalism was stated forcefully by W. K. Clifford. According to his opinion, no religious belief-system is capable of meeting the high standard of proof that should govern all of our believing, and so a reasonable (and moral) person must do without religious beliefs. Among the objections to Christian belief, as well as to Judaic and Muslim, Characteristic of the modern intelligentsia is the objection that it is no longer rational, if ever it was, to believe that God exists. Therefore, the rational person will have to make his way in the world without supposing that there exists any God in whom he could trust.517
However, according to Nicholas Wolterstorff, to believe in God is our fundamental human obligation. Central to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike is the conviction that we as human beings are called to believe in God to trust in him, to rely on him, to place our confidence in him. Central also is the conviction that only by believing in God can the deepest stirrings of the human heart be satisfied. Duty and fulfillment here coalesce. The rationality of trusting someone presupposes the rationality of believing that person exists.
John Locke was among the first to formulate articulately the evidentialist challenge to theistic belief. Reason is reasoning for Locke, and clearly he thinks of it as one among others of our belief-forming processes. Faith is another belief-forming process. It, by contrast, consists in accepting something “as coming from God.”518 However, for Locke it still belongs to reason to judge of the truth of its being a revelation, and of the signification of the words wherein it is delivered.
For evidentialist, one’s belief that God exists is rational only if it is formed or sustained by good inference by inferring it from others of one’s beliefs, which in fact provide adequate evidence for it. But, Wolterstorff, see no reason what so ever to suppose that by the criterion offered the evidentialist challenge is tenable. He see no reason to suppose that people who hold as one of their immediate beliefs that God exists always have adequate reason to surrender that belief or ought to believe that they do. However, for him those abstract and highly general theses of evidentialism no longer look very interesting, once we regard them in the light of the criterion offered. Therefore, for him the fact that it is not rational for some person to believe that God exists does not follow that he ought to give up that belief.
But can we accept the Principle of Credulity? One problem is that whereas there is a fundamental uniformity about the way we report both ordinary perceptual experiences and the beliefs about objects of those experiences, there is quite a diversity of reports about religious experiences and the claim based on them. Person give incompatible descriptions of the Reality experienced. Therefore, where perceptions yield conflicting testimony, we must turn to other experiences and rational arguments to determine the truth of the various claims. That is, where there are different accounts, additional considerations must be introduced to help decide which, if any, of the religious experiences are veridical. Although the reports provide a prima facie ground for their acceptance, not all beliefs based on such experiences are true. Just as we at times doubt perceptual claims for good reason, we might do the same for claims based on religious experience.
According to Hick, religion constitutes our varied human response to transcendent reality. Religious experience then is structured by religious beliefs which are implicit within religious experience. But the question is if this complex of experience and beliefs that takes place in different shapes within the different traditions, is to be regarded simply as a human creation or as our response to a transcendent reality, even if a response whose particular forms always involve the creative activity of the human imagination. Of course the problem of terminology is obvious as we see in many parts of philosophy, and without explanatory gloss none of the available descriptive labels for these two possibilities is entirely adequate.
Much of the philosophical discussion of religious diversity continues to centre on the work of John Hick.519 He is not interested in the question of what can justifiably be affirmed in the face of such diversity, rather, he is primarily concerned with the question of which justified response is most reasonable. Moreover, on this question, he leaves no doubt as to his opinion:
519 See John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human response to the Transcendent, (New Haven: Yale University and London: Macmillan press, 1989), 172.
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religious pluralism is by far the most plausible explanation for the pervasive religious diversity we encounter.
Many Westerners will best understand the emergence of inclusivism and pluralism in terms of the history of Christianity. For most of its history, Christianity has been resolutely exclusivist. In late antiquity, it was a new religion, struggling to establish itself in the face of criticism and persecution. It is not surprising to find it making exclusive claims on behalf of its charismatic founder, Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, Christianity is not the only religion to have fostered exclusivist attitudes. In their more militant movements, Muslims have done the same. Some Jews cherish an ethnically exclusive identity as God’s chosen people, and some Hindus revere the Vedas as a source of absolute truth, Buddhists often see in the teachings of Gautama the only dharma that can liberate humans from illusion and suffering.
Hick has set forth a philosophically sophisticated pluralistic hypothesis that may avoid problems of this sort.520 As he sees it, each of the major religious traditions offers a path to salvation or liberation that involves a transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to reality- centeredness.
Religious plurality is simply a fact. There are religious traditions that differ deeply in terms of their doctrines, practices, institutions, scriptures, experiences, and hope. According to pluralism, a single ultimate religious reality is being differently experienced and understood in all the major religious traditions; they all, as far as the philosophers can tell, offer equally effective paths to salvation or liberation.
According to Harold Coward, Judaism is an appropriate tradition in which to begin the stay of religious pluralism and the world religions. The experience of being a minority group in other cultures, which becoming more common place for all the world religions as religious pluralism spreads, has been the norm for Judaism for countless generations. From the biblical period to the present, Judaism has had to formulate its beliefs and practices in the face of challenges from other cultures and religions. The viewpoint of the modern Jew opens the way for relations with Christianity, Islam, and perhaps Hinduism; however, Buddhism - especially Mahayana Buddhism may prove to be in a separate category. The Buddhist consciousness in which no transcendent God is recognized and the Mahayana awareness of the Divine in the
520 Ibid.
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secular may be judged by the Jewish philosopher as a modern idolatry. Therefore, perhaps the most serious challenge for Judaism comes in its response to Buddhism. As long as a religion is founded on the experience of a transcendent God, Judaism seems to be able to enter into spiritual partnership with it. But if that experience does not hold true for the Buddhist - if it is not a transcendent God that is being experienced - can the Jew still embrace the Buddhist as a spiritual partner? This question has yet to be faced by Judaism.521
The relationship between Christianity and the other religions is one of the key issues in Christian self-understanding. Perhaps pluralism is so pressing a challenge because of the exclusivist missionary approaches adopted by Christianity over the past several hundred years.
In the rapidly expanding body of literature resulting from the encounter with other religions, many Christian theologians are concluding that Christian theology cannot continue to be formulated in isolation from the other religions, and that in fact future developments in Christian theology will be the direct result of serious dialogue with the other religions. Although the Churches are altering their ecclesiology so as to open the way for serious dialogue with other religions, the fundamental Christology that underlies traditional ecclesiology has not yet changed.
Through out the centuries the basic Islamic approach to other religions was to search for some fundamental structures that were harmonious with Islam but which lay hidden beneath the other religion’s deviations from true Islam: A major obstacle for understanding other religions was the lack of accurate information. However, Islam has essentially reached the truth toward which all other religions are evolving. Christianity, it seems, has also virtually reached this goal. It is possible that various nations or cultures will reach the truth in their own way. The Qur’an itself teaches that every community in every age has had its prophet. However, modern education will offer Muslims an opportunity to understand each religion in terms of its own culture, history, world view, and claims to truth. This will have an effect on Islamic self-perception.
Therefore, the religious pluralism of the modern world will force Islam, finding itself in much the same position as the other traditions, to come to grips with them rather provincial
521 See Harold Coward, Pluralism: Challenge to World Religions, Harold Coward, 1-12.
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character of some of its past views of other religions.
According to Hinduism, there is one divine reality that manifests itself in many forms. The various religions are simply different revelations of the one divine reality. Hinduism sees itself as being a very open and tolerant religion. But because it asserts that the Vedas are the most perfect revelation of divine truth, Hinduism also sees itself as providing the criteria against which the revelations of all other religions must be tested. Nevertheless, the Hindu view that there is one Divine, which may be reached by many paths, has proven through out the centuries to be a powerful influence upon Hinduism’s interaction with the other religions.522 Therefore, the Hindu contribution to the modern challenge of religious pluralism is to encourage the inquiring spirit and devotion to truth that is larger than any individual tradition.
The Buddhist attitude to other religions has been described as “critical tolerance”523 combined with a missionary goal. Buddhism has demonstrated a remarkable degree of tolerance and flexibility throughout the course of its expansion. Unlike some other religious expansions, the spread of Buddhism has been accomplished more through the dissemination of ideas than by migration of peoples.
Buddhism rejects the worship of God or gods and the performance of religious rituals as a means to release. It also rejects speculations about ultimate beginnings, especially about whether the self and the world were eternal, and a number of speculations about the ultimate state of the self in the future. The tolerant but critical attitude of the Buddha toward the plurality of religious views is shaped into a rigorous philosophic approach by the Madhyamika Buddhists. If, as the Buddha discovered, the goal of religion is compassion, then, say the Madhyamika, the biggest obstacle to realizing that goal is attachment to our own religious beliefs in such a way as to make them absolute. Based on this understanding, the Madhyamika Buddhist’s attitude towards other religions is one of openness and indeed a “missionary desire”524 to enter into dialogue.
The inherent desire to conceptualize and share religious experience is too deeply ingrained in
522 Ibid., 63-80.
523 See K. N. Jayatilleke, The Buddhist Attitude to Other Religions (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1975). And see also Harold Coward Pluralism: Challenge to World Religions, 81.
524 See Harold Coward, Pluralism: Challenge to World Religions, 88.
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human nature to render silence an acceptable answer. In fact the Madhyamika himself has been far from silent. His prescription of silence was only intended to apply to claims of absolute knowledge. As long as the limitation is honored, then discussion, including theological discussion, could take place.
The dialogical approach opens the way for the meeting of Christians with Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. However, the theocentric premise could become an obstacle to meaningful encounters with Buddhists and Advaita Vedantists. Therefore, an unresolved problem for all of these approaches is the Buddhist and even those with considerable exposure to Buddhism and Hinduism seem almost willfully to turn a blind eye to this problem. One possible exception might be found in Tillich’s formulation of the “god above gods” as the “ground of being.”525
Dialogue starts from the assumption that each religion has its absolute claims which cannot be relativized. No amount of reformulation will do away with the difference. But, by letting our theologizing be influenced by others we will be forced to greater honesty and deeper spirituality. The prerequisite for dialogue is not the harmonizing of all beliefs but the recognition that each spiritual person has a committed and absolute conviction, and that these convictions are different.
Therefore, the expected outcome is not the homogenization of particular religions but the mutual deepening of spiritual experience within each particular religion, which may lead to glimpses of a common transcendent reality. This shift in perspective had the effect of drawing attention to the universal nature of religious experience in its many different traditions. In addition to turning attention away from metaphysics, rationalism, or revelation, the focus on the humanity of religion has had the effect of highlighting some of the limitations in human nature that must be taken seriously in all future religion.
Am letzten Freitag ist die zweite Jahreskonferenz des Forschungsprojekts „Sicherheitskultur im Wandel“ erfolgreich zu Ende gegangen. Diesmal standen die Folgen des Wandels von Sicherheitskultur im Mittelpunkt, also die Frage, welche Auswirkungen die gestiegenen und immer weiter diversifizierten Ansprüche der Staatsbürger nach „mehr Sicherheit“ auf den Staat, also die Regierung und die Administration, in Zeiten der Globalisierung haben. Ist der Staat mit der Aufgabe, alle vor jedem erdenklichen Risiko zu schützen, überfordert? Ist das überhaupt seine Aufgabe bzw. geht sie wirklich so weit? Wie könnte eine effektive, aber immer noch legitime und transparente Neugestaltung der Sicherheitspolitik aussehen?