Humanities & Social Sciences

The study explores the lifeworld of distance learning students. These are usually older students who have already acquired distinctive experiences in private life, in everyday working life or during a first degree course and therefore have a wealth of competences in private, professional and student life. The study asks about these competences and at the same time finds out what influence they have on learning success in distance learning. On this basis, a typification of ambitious, relaxed, networking and isolated distance learners can be made. Finally, recommendations for distance learners and distance teachers are derived from the results.

The Aulikaras were the rulers of western Malwa (the northwest of Central India) in the heyday of the Imperial Guptas in the fifth century CE, and rose briefly to sovereignty at the beginning of the sixth century before disappearing from the spotlight of history. This book gathers all the epigraphic evidence pertaining to this dynasty, meticulously editing and translating the inscriptions and analysing their content and its implications.

Attitudes towards diversity; International large-scale assessment; International Civic and Citizenship Study; ICCS; Comparative and international education; School segregation; Intergenerational transmission of inequality; Open classroom for discussion; Measurement invariance; Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling; Tolerance

Always and at any age, regular physical activity can act as a powerful elixir with a beneficial effect on health and well-being. The wide variety of health effects that physical activity can have, for example on our cardiovascular system, back and joints, is scientifically well proven. At the same time, we spend most of our time sitting – at school, at the office or in the car. Our bodies, however, want to be on the move! This fundamental instinct is deeply rooted in human nature and this basic urge to move does not really suit our modern sedentary lifestyle.That is why it is important to know what kind of, and how much, physical activity is most effective in improving the health of which sectors of the population. However, we also need to know the specific ways in which we can most effectively motivate people to become physically active. For the very first time, this publication sets out National Recommendations for Physical Activity and Physical Activity Promotion for the Federal Republic of Germany. The recommendations apply to children and adolescents, adults and older persons as well as to adults with chronic diseases. In their present form, they are geared particularly to experts in different areas and institutions. The recommendations are characterized by their solid scientific grounding. Highly respected scientists from the fields of sports science, sports medicine and public health were involved in drawing them up. As with their creation, the recommendations’ further development and implementation will be accompanied closely by the working group on physical activity promotion in everyday life (“Bewegungsförderung im Alltag”) at the Federal Ministry of Health. This platform provides a forum for numerous organizations involved in health promotion, physical activity and sport in Germany and is part of the National Action Plan “IN FORM – German national initiative to promote healthy diets and physical activity”.

Knowledge and failure are intricately connected, as the current culture wars and polarized discussions regarding climate change index. This volume initiates a new set of conversations in American Studies. It examines the nexus of knowledge and failure in U.S. cultural history with a focus on the present, where knowledge has become highly contested. Combining such approaches as Queer Studies, Black Studies, anti-colonial critique, Critical Digital Studies, and environmental humanities, the contributions to this volume explore both the ‘failure of knowledge,’ that is, moments in which knowledge is ignored, denied, challenged, or fails to elicit action, and ‘knowledges of failure,’ that is, the situated knowledges of those considered ‘failed’ in a given social order such as neoliberal capitalism or heteropatriarchy. The volume collects the research results of the research network “The Failure of Knowledge – Knowledges of Failure,” which the German Research Foundation funded from February 2020 through January 2024. The collective expertise that is brought to bear on the nexus of failure and knowledge far surpasses the expertise that is contained in single-authored / co-authored monographs. The theoretical rigor of the contributions makes it attractive to specialists in American Studies and the History of Knowledge, while the specific case studies appeal to students in American Studies, Queer Studies, Black Studies, and Media Studies.

Este libro es un ensayo extendido sobre las dinámicas de desarrollo y resistencia desatadas por los avances del extractivismo, una forma de capitalismo que se caracteriza por una crisis multidimensional de alcance global. El extractivismo toma diversas formas, pero el epicentro en su más reciente encarnación es América Latina. La región ha sido el principal blanco de sus impactos socioecológicos negativos, pero también el escenario de las fuerzas más poderosas de resistencia. El autor aborda tres dimensiones críticas de este proceso, incluyendo la nueva geoeconomía y geopolítica del capital, las resistencias en la frontera extractiva y las alternativas propuestas por los gobiernos formados en el »ciclo progresista« en la política, y construidos desde abajo por las comunidades indígenas y no indígenas en la frontera. Finalmente, cierra con una reflexión sobre la posibilidad de una transición postextractivista a un otro mundo de solidaridad social y armonía con la naturaleza, en condiciones de justicia social y ecológica.

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.

In reaction to the spread of globalization, recent years have seen considerable growth in the number of intentional communities established across the world. In this collection of articles and lectures, many of them previously unpublished in English, the author analyzes various aspects of the philosophy of the kibbutz and draws parallels with other societies and philosophical trends, in the hope that a close look at the ways of thought of the kibbutz – arguably the best-established communalist society – may help other communalists crystallize their own social philosophies. Utopian thought and communal experience are brought to life through the extensive use of the voices of some of the most influential thinkers and kibbutz members of the past hundred years, including Martin Buber and David Ben Gurion.

The history and archaeology of Hellenistic Commagene is a rich field of study, not in the least because of the remarkable monuments and inscriptions of king Antiochos I (c. 70–36 BC). Over the last decades important new work has been done on Commagene proper, providing novel interpretations of the epigraphical and historical record or the archaeological data and individual sites, like Nemrud Dağ, Samosata or Arsameia. Simultaneously scholars have tried to better understand Hellenistic Commagene by situating the region and its history in a wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern context. This long-awaited e-book provides a critical evaluation of all these new data and ideas on the basis of a theoretically embedded, state-of-the-art overview for the history and archaeology of Hellenistic Commagene. From this volume a new picture emerges in which Hellenistic Commagene is no longer understood as peripheral and out-of-the-ordinary, but as an important node in a global Hellenistic network, from Ai-Khanoum to Pompeii and from Alexandria to Armawir.

Das "Forum Sprachvariation" der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen und das Nachwuchskolloquium des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung bieten lebendige Diskussionen zur Variationslinguistik. Einige Projekte und Ergebnisse bündelt der neue Sammelband zu den Kolloquien. Sein Schwerpunkt liegt auf innovativen theoretischen und methodischen Zugängen zur Dynamik in den deutschen Regionalsprachen. Dabei werden sowohl gebrauchs- als auch wahrnehmungsbasierte Ansätze vorgestellt, die unter Verwendung unterschiedlicher Datengrundlagen und Theorien spezifische Winkel des gemeinsamen Forschungsgegenstandes ausleuchten. Die Beiträge betreffen ebenso hochdeutsche wie niederdeutsche Regionalsprachräume.

This volume presents a sampling of papers devoted to different phenomena of Polish (and theoretical) morphology and syntax. The focus of attention of the Authors of the present volume is concentrated mostly on questions of syntactic and morphological analysis of Modern Standard Polish with exception of W. Mańczak's and (in part) G. Hentschel's articles, which take the diachronic perspective.

The aim of the volume is to analyze the ‘practical implementation’ of the anti-modernist measures of Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi (September 8, 1907) in the Roman Catholic Church. For the first time, the reports on Modernism produced by bishops and religious orders – and scattered in the Roman archives – are studied and compared, offering the reader an international picture of the widespread effect of anti-modernism until 1914 and, at least indirectly, of the general situation of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time, the various local interpretations and strategies come into focus, as well as the somewhat competition-driven inner-curial handling of the reports.

Die Choreographin Meg Stuart arbeitet mit Tänzern, Schauspielern, Musikern, Videokünstlern und bildenden Künstlern zusammen. Auf diese Weise entstehen Choreographien, die weniger auf der reinen Tanzbewegung aufbauen als vielmehr auf Relationen zwischen Körperbewegung, Stimme, Videobild, Kostüm und Raumanordnung. Die Unterteilung der Bühne, die Gleichzeitigkeit und das Nebeneinander von unabhängigen Momenten, die Bewegung auf der Stelle heben die Linearität des Verlaufs auf. Die Choreographien entgrenzen sich in Richtung Bewegungs- und Sprachstudie, Installation und Tableau vivant. Die Studie betrachtet diese Merkmale erstmals unter dem Gesichtspunkt eines erweiterten Bildbegriffs. Dabei werden Themen wie die Projektion, die Blicklenkung, die Pose, der Affekt und die Duration ausgearbeitet. Die Frage nach Bildqualitäten in der Ordnung von Bewegung und Choreographie geht über die Fokussierung auf Meg Stuart hinaus und liefert einen wichtigen Beitrag für die Bild- und Kunstwissenschaft.

‘Leadership’ is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array of social science disciplines who are interested in contemporary understandings of leadership in the public domain. Their work on political, administrative and civil society leadership represents a stock-take of what we need to know and offers original examples of what we do know about public leadership. Although this volume connects scholars living in, and mostly working on, public leadership in Australia and New Zealand, their contributions have a much broader scope and relevance.

The book reflects the productive approaches of multidimensional educational concepts in the redesign of municipal educational landscapes against the background of expanded educational concepts and the current educational discourse in Germany. In addition, the educational policy orientation of child and youth welfare is discussed as an ambivalent guiding norm and the various approaches to cooperation between youth welfare and schools and full-time education are presented.