Humanities & Social Sciences

Deutscher Gangsta-Rap hat es als Ort der symbolischen Austragung sozialer Konflikte seit der Jahrtausendwende zu einiger Bekanntheit gebracht. Hier kommen nicht nur Spannungen zwischen Hoch- und Popkultur, Migrationsgesellschaft und Nationalitäten, wirtschaftlichen Erfolgen und künstlerischem Anspruch deutlich zum Tragen, sondern auch strafrechtlich verfolgbare Beleidigungen und gesellschaftliche Diskursfähigkeit. Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes zeigen, dass dieses Phänomen der pluralen Gesellschaft exemplarisch für die Ambivalenzen der Moderne steht.

Volume 5 is on modern African classical drumming as an instrument of specialization for contemporary concert performances. It contains repertory for solo drumming, drum and voice/saxophone/trumpet duos, and intercultural drum ensemble works. The imperatives of advancing the indigenous philosophy and theory into global classical practices have informed the literary compositions demonstrating indigenous African compositional theory.

The Transfer-Translation-Localization of European Scientific Knowledge in Kopievsky’s Textbooks. The article examines the methods of introducing European scientific knowledge into the Russian language used by Ilya Fedorovich Kopievsky (c. 1651–1714) in his textbooks, compiled and published in Amsterdam by decree of Peter the Great. Particular attention is paid to the strategies and techniques used by Kopievsky when transferring this knowledge into a different linguistic and cultural environment. To denote these strategies and techniques, along with the concepts of “translation” and “compilation,” the article uses the notion of “localization.” In the opinion of its author, this notion more accurately reflects both the essence of Kopievsky’s efforts and the process of transferring European knowledge to Petrine Russia as a whole.

In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wirken neben dem Staat als Hauptträger der öffentlichen Leistungserstellung verschiedene nicht-staatliche Entscheidungseinheiten an der Erfüllung öffentlicher Aufgaben mit und beeinflussen so die Realisation der öffentlichen Planungsziele. Obgleich die entsprechenden Aktivitäten dieser Institutionen weitgehend ausserhalb des staatlichen Budgets ablaufen, sollte eine zielorientierte öffentliche Aufgabenplanung sie nicht ignorieren. Die Arbeit untersucht deshalb die Wirkungen, die von den Handlungen nicht-staatlicher Entscheidungseinheiten auf die budgetären Ausgabenschwerpunkte sowie auf verschiedene Leistungs- bzw. Zielebenen ausgehen.

Ciaran Carson is one of the most challenging and inventive of contemporary Irish writers, exhibiting verbal brilliance, formal complexity, and intellectual daring across a remarkably varied body of work. This study considers the full range of his oeuvre, in poetry, prose, and translations, and discusses the major themes to which he returns, including: memory and history, narrative, language and translation, mapping, violence, and power. It argues that the singularity of Carson’s writing is to be found in his radical imaginative engagements with ideas of space and place. The city of Belfast, in particular, occupies a crucially important place in his texts, serving as an imaginative focal point around which his many other concerns are constellated. The city, in all its volatile mutability, is an abiding frame of reference and a reservoir of creative impetus for Carson’s imagination. Accordingly, the book adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon geography, urbanism, and cultural theory as well as literary criticism. It provides both a stimulating and thorough introduction to Carson’s work, and a flexible critical framework for exploring literary representations of space.

Anti-Empire explores how different writers across Lusophone spaces have engaged with imperial and colonial power at its various levels of domination, while imagining alternatives to dominant discourses pertaining to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and class. Guided by a theoretically eclectic approach ranging from Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Postcolonial Theory, Queer Theory, and Critical Race Studies, Empire is explored as a spectrum of contemporary global power inaugurated by European expansion and propagated in the postcolonial present through economic, cultural, and political forces. Through the texts analysed, Anti-Empire offers in-depth interrogations of contemporary power in terms of racial politics, gender performance, socio-economic divisions, political structures, and the intersections of these facets of domination and hegemony. By way of grappling with Empire’s discursive field and charting new modes of producing meaning in opposition to that of Empire, the texts read from Brazil, Cabo Verde, East Timor, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe open new inquiries for Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies while contributing theoretical debates to the study of Lusophone cultures.

Sharad Chari explores the how people handle the remains of segregation and apartheid in South Africa as witnessed through portals in an industrial-residential landscape in the Indian Ocean city of Durban.

This title is the first ever book-length study of the cinematic representation of Paris in the films of German emigré filmmakers, who found there a first refuge from Hitler. In coming to Paris - the privileged site in terms of production, exhibition as well as the cinematic imaginary of French film culture - these experienced film professionals encountered also a darker side: hostility toward Germans, anti-Semitism, as well as boycotts from French industry personnel, afraid of losing their jobs to foreigners. The book juxtaposes the cinematic portrayal of Paris in the films of Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls, Anatol Litvak and others with the wider social and cultural debates about the city in the cinema.

An entertaining and engaging social and cultural history of the London community of Peckham that offers lessons in urban living.

Im vorliegenden Buch wird eine Methode entwickelt, die die Inline-CT zum Zweck der zerstörungsfreien Materialprüfung im industriellen Umfeld beschleunigt. Diese Methode basiert auf der Reduktion der Integrationszeit während eines Scans. Bedingt durch die Verkürzung der Integrationszeit verschlechtert sich die Qualität der resultierenden Bilder deutlich, weil das Rauschniveau in den Rohdaten ansteigt. Durch die Filterung der Rohdaten, der sogenannten Projektionen, kann die Bildqualität der rekonstruierten Volumina dennoch an die Qualität des aktuellen Stands der Technik herangeführt werden. Die Filterung des Rauschens in den verrauschten Projektionen übernimmt das Bilateralfilter. Dieses Filter ist eine Kombination aus zwei Komponenten. Die geometrische Komponente stellt einen Tiefpass dar. Die photometrische Komponente ist die nicht-lineare Komponente und spielt eine wichtige Rolle für die Kantenerhaltung. Wird das photometrische Filter empfindlich gegenüber kleinen Variationen in den Intensitätsunterschieden eingestellt, so können kleine Details im rekonstruierten Volumen erhalten bleiben. Die höchste Empfindlichkeit wird durch die dynamische Parameteranpassung erreicht. Die Implementierung der dynamischen Parameteranpassung ist unter Berücksichtigung der Spezifikation des Detektors möglich. Die erzielten Ergebnisse zeigen, dass unter Zuhilfenahme der vorgestellten Methode bestehend aus der Reduktion der Integrationszeit und der anschließenden Rauschfilterung der Projektionen der Durchsatz der Inline-CT verdoppelt werden kann.

The papers in this volume show the presence of Gottfried Keller, the literary father figure of Swiss literature, in the texts of the Swiss authors from 1960ies, such as Otto F. Walter, Hugo Loetscher, Adolf Muschg, and Urs Widmer. Although these authors work in the democratic tradition of Switzerland and have an almost identificatory relationship to Keller, their role in the changed political life of the 20th century is completely different from that of their great literary model. The volume also contains studies on other Swiss literary classics, such as Robert Walser and Meinrad Inglin, as well as later authors, such as Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Erica Pedretti, Thomas Hürlimann, Silvio Blatter, Peter Stamm, and Gertrud Leutenegger.

This open access book examines how digital technologies are used to promote citizen participation in democratic urban development. It assesses the emergence, use, applicability and functions of digital modes of citizen participation in multiple cities around the world, where political regimes invite ordinary citizens to partake in policy processes through information technologies. The book also explores these initiatives alongside issues of democracy, social justice and power. It is an essential reference for practitioners, policymakers and academics interested in the relationship between citizen participation, technology and urban governance.

Authority is not a word with many positive connotations. It suggests power-hungry dictators, trigger-happy police, stifling bureaucracies, and monumental urban landscapes. In Nonauthoritarian Authority Julian Brigstocke argues that in these shattered times, anti-authoritarianism is not enough: a radical, speculative reinvention of authority is needed. He introduces the idea of nonauthoritarian authority: a form of power that pluralises marginalised and hidden voices, recognises diverse agencies, and amplifies heterogeneous demands. Engaging with key philosophical debates around materiality, experience, feeling, agency, and landscape, Nonauthoritarian Authority stages a series of experiments with thinking, reading, researching, and writing nonauthoritarian authority. Dramatising a speculative search for barely sensed, dispersed authorities, Brigstocke’s experiments in thinking explore the intrinsically spatial nature of authority, through empirical studies of violent urban borders in Rio de Janeiro, colonial material infrastructures in Hong Kong, monumental architecture in Paris, and everyday spaces of encounter in the UK. Offering an intricate and playful reflection on the relationship between authority, urban forms, and writing, each exercise in thinking links form and genre to a distinctive way of imagining authority. Each chapter simultaneously critiques a form of authoritarian authority and searches for a new, nonauthoritarian authority within the rubble of the old.

Steigende Anforderungen in der Industrie beispielsweise in Hinblick auf verkürzte Prozessketten, eine erhöhte Funktionsintegration oder ökologische Aspekte führen dazu, dass die konventionellen Verfahren der Blech- und Massivumformung an ihre Grenzen stoßen. Ein Lösungsansatz zur Erweiterung der Prozessgrenzen ist die Kombination beider Verfahrensklassen in der sogenannten Blechmassivumformung. Eine derartige Kombination resultiert in einem simultanen Auftreten von Bedingungen aus der Blech- und der Massivumformung. Dies führt wiederum zu einem unkontrollierten Stofffluss und einer reduzierten Bauteilqualität. Im Rahmen der Arbeit wurden globale Stoffflusssteuerungsmethoden über eine lokale Einstellung der tribologischen Bedingungen erforscht und im Hinblick auf ihre Wirksamkeit verifiziert. Um dies zu realisieren, wurden die tribologischen Wirkmechanismen der modifizierten Werkzeug- und Werkstückoberflächen identifiziert, um unabhängig vom in der Arbeit untersuchten Parameterraum, den Einsatz der Methoden für die Blechmassivumformung zu ermöglichen.

Despite many scholars noting the interdisciplinary approach of Aboriginal knowledge production as a methodology within a broad range of subjects – including quantum mathematics, biodiversity, sociology and the humanities - the academic study of Indigenous knowledge and people is struggling to become interdisciplinary in its approach and move beyond its current label of ‘Indigenous Studies’. Indigenous Knowledge Production specifically demonstrates the use of autobiographical ethnicity as a methodological approach, where the writer draws on lived experience and ethnic background towards creative and academic writing. Indeed, in this insightful volume, Marcus Woolombi Waters investigates the historical connection and continuity that have led to the present state of hostility witnessed in race relations around the world; seeking to further one’s understanding of the motives and methods that have led to a rise in white supremacy associated with ultra-conservatism. Above all, Indigenous Knowledge Production aims to deconstruct the cultural lens applied within the West which denies the true reflection of Aboriginal and Black consciousness, and leads to the open hostility witnessed across the world. This monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as Sociology of Knowledge, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Ethnography and Methodology.