Open Access Books

Das vorliegende Gutachten wurde im Auftrag der Arbeitsgemeinschaft kommunale und kirchliche Altersversorgung (AKA) e. V. erstellt. Es untersucht ausführlich unter ökonomischen und versicherungsmathematischen Gesichtspunkten die Finanzierung der Altersversorgung im öffentlichen Dienst. Die Analysen gehen dabei von den gegebenen Versorgungsregelungen aus und konzentrieren sich auf den kommunalen und kirchlichen Bereich. Somit sind etwaige Änderungen der Versorgungsregelungen selbst sowie die Versorgungssysteme des Bundes und der Länder nicht Gegenstand der Untersuchung. Das Gutachten liefert – notwendigerweise allgemein gehaltene – Vorschläge den wachsenden Finanzierungsschwierigkeiten der Versorgungseinrichtungen des öffentlichen Dienstes zu begegnen.

How can “Speaking Rights to Power” construct political will to respond to human rights abuse worldwide? Examining dozens of cases of human rights campaigns, this book shows how communication politics build recognition, solidarity, and social change. The book presents an innovative analysis of the politics of persuasion, based in the strategic use of voice, framing, media, protest performance, and audience bridging. Building on twenty years of research on five continents, this comprehensive study ranges from Aung San Suu Kyi to Anna Hazare, from Congo to Colombia, from Arab Spring to Pussy Riot. It includes both well-chronicled campaigns like the struggle to end violence against women, as well as lesser-known efforts, such as interethnic human rights alliances in the United States. Cases of relative success are carefully compared with unavailing struggles. The author's analysis is grounded in the concrete practice of human rights campaigns and derives testable strategic guidance for human rights struggles. “Speaking Rights to Power” addresses cutting edge debates on human rights and the ethic of care, cosmopolitanism, charismatic leadership, communicative action, and political theater, and the role of social media. It draws on constructivist literature from social movement and international relations theory, and analyzes human rights as a form of global social imagination. Combining a normative contribution with judicious critique, this book shows how human rights rhetoric matters—and how to make it matter more.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com Taking its cue from the study of ‘lived religion’, Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.

This volume brings together scholars from archaeology, historical linguistics and comparative mythology to explore how early Indo-European communities imagined death and what lies beyond. From poetic visions of the afterlife to the ritual logic of cremation and the etymology of mourning, Indo-European Afterlives examines how the transition from life to death was conceptualized and ritualized across the Indo-European world. Topics include the eschatological power of poetry, the symbolic role of fire in funerary rites, linguistic reconstructions of underworld deities and rituals and the significance of mythic figures such as the Valkyries, the R̥bhus and Orpheus in navigating the boundary between life and the afterlife. By interweaving philological analysis, archaeological evidence and mythological narratives, the volume offers new perspectives on how notions of death and the beyond were embedded in early Indo-European belief systems. Interdisciplinary in scope, Indo-European Afterlives will appeal to scholars and curious readers alike.

"The essays collected in this volume wonder about different aspects of the crisis we are experiencing and discuss the interpretative models best suited to approach them. From the actor's theory to the transition theories; from the degenerations of capitalism and liberalism to the role of Europe; from the social implications of science to the transformations that affect work; from the training to the experiences of the young generations, we have here a path that combines theory and social research, rigorous observations and images of a better world."

La Monarquía Mística de la Iglesia, hecha de jeroglíficos sacados de humanas y divinas letras, la obra más importante, ambiciosa y conocida del cisterciense Lorenzo de Zamora, es un auténtico compendio y enciclopedia, en ocho tomos, de la vida cristiana, de la teología, de la historia de la Iglesia y de la ascesis. En este volumen se edita la primera parte, que Trata de la cabeza invisible de la Iglesia, de la visible y sus perfecciones, precedida de la Apología de las letras humanas, que fue publicada en 1604. Entre 1598 y 1624 las obras de Lorenzo de Zamora tuvieron una difusión e influencia sin precedentes. Fuera de España se realizó casi una veintena de ediciones y traducciones de sus escritos.

In this contribution, it is argued for the potential of empirical moral philosophy in the context of the regulation of self-driving cars. This chapter focuses on the use and abuse of capturing the moral preferences of the general public and including these in the regulatory process. The Moral Machine Experiment is used as an example of collecting evidence on public moral preferences to help program self-driving vehicles. After a comprehensive presentation of the aim and methodology of the study, criticisms are discussed and partly refuted. It is concluded that the findings of the Moral Machine experiment are an impressive collection of data that has indeed contributed to the ethical and legal debate of how to regulate moral dilemmas caused by self-driving cars. Future empirical research in the field can continue along these lines. While the methodological limits of the Moral Machine experiment have to be acknowledged, it is nevertheless important to consider public moral preferences in the ethics of self-driving cars.

Since its official launch on 9 July 2002 in Durban, South Africa, the African Union (AU) has taken on the complex mantle of promoting peace, governance, development, and continental integration—building on the legacy of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). While the OAU championed the liberation and unity of African states, the AU expanded this vision under the broader framework of Pan-Africanism, aligning it with modern challenges and aspirations. As the AU marked its 20th anniversary in 2022, there emerged a critical need to evaluate its performance, particularly in relation to Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want—a strategic vision for Africa’s long-term transformation adopted in 2013. Understanding the AU’s trajectory requires reflection on the historical struggles that shaped Pan-Africanism, including colonialism, apartheid, and racial injustice. Key milestones such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) reflect progress, but limited advancement in flagship projects like the Free Movement of Persons and “Silencing the Guns” initiative highlights persistent challenges. This book, African Union and Agenda 2063: The Past, Present, and Future, undertakes a critical assessment of the AU’s 20-year record, aiming to reinvigorate Pan-African consciousness and examine the structural and political constraints hindering the Union’s effectiveness in achieving lasting peace, prosperity, and unity across the continent.

Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued.

Under the slogan ‘Merdeka!’ the Republic of Indonesia rushed into a battle for independence – a struggle of which no one could predict the outcome. Harry Poeze and Henk Schulte Nordholt provide a new narrative about the revolution, one that focuses not only on the fight against the Dutch but also on the precarious rise of the Republic. After the horrors of the Japanese occupation, the Republican leaders needed to somehow build a new state. From the Dutch side, they had to deal with short-sighted politicians and warmongering soldiers. On its own side, the Republic was confronted with wayward and combative youths, autonomous military leaders, conservative federalists, revolutionary communists, and radical Muslims. Coup d’états, a civil war and two Dutch military attacks threatened the survival of the Republic. That is why the victory finally achieved by the Indonesian leaders is the revolution’s greatest miracle.

This is the first study to discuss the affinity between Grass’s complete works and baroque literature. Grass’s employment of baroque literature is of particular interest because it takes up a tradition from which German literature has long broken away. Alexander Weber’s argument moves from an outline of general thematic parallels in the early works to an analysis of the conscious use of baroque literature in Der Butt and Das Treffen in Telgte. He offers both a close reading of Grass and general reflections on how a past literary tradition can be adopted by a modern writer. The study focuses on the themes of vanity, carpe diem, and Senecan Stoicism in the early works; it discusses parallels between the rhetorical structure of the courtly-historical novel and Der Butt and traces the artist’s melancholy and baroque allegories in Der Butt and Das Treffen in Telgte.

Wilhelm Stepp – from pioneer of vitamin research to co-architect of Nazi nutrition policy. An ambivalent figure in the shadow of the dictatorship. The essential organic substances collectively known as ‘vitamins’ are now an integral part of contemporary food-related discourse and constitute a market worth billions in Germany. A pioneer of German vitamin research was the internist Wilhelm Stepp, born in Nuremberg in 1882. He reached the pinnacle of his academic career in 1934 with his appointment to the University of Munich. Simon Gronewold analyses his work across the political turning points of the 20th century and the accompanying shift in the discourse on nutrition and vitamins. From 1933 onwards, Stepp clearly aligned himself with the Nazi regime and acted as a propagandist for its vision of ‘healthy public nutrition’. The author outlines the tension between scientific ambitions, political expediency and ideological co-optation within which Stepp’s career unfolded. As a member and chairman of the German Society for Internal Medicine and as a participant in nutritional policy measures, Wilhelm Stepp linked science with ideology. However, conflicts with the Nazi university structures and his assistance to people persecuted by the regime result in an ambivalent assessment of Stepp.

Digital self-tracking devices and data have become normal elements of everyday life. Imagining Personal Data examines the implications of the rise of body monitoring and digital self-tracking for how we inhabit, experience and imagine our everyday worlds and futures. Through a focus on how it feels to live in environments where data is emergent, present and characterized by a sense of uncertainty, the authors argue for a new interdisciplinary approach to understanding the implications of self-tracking, which attends to its past, present and possible future. Building on social science approaches, the book accounts for the concerns of scholars working in design, philosophy and human-computer interaction. It problematizes the body and senses in relation to data and tracking devices, presents an accessible analytical account of the sensory and affective experiences of self-tracking, and questions the status of big data. In doing so it proposes an agenda for future research and design that puts people at its centre.

The court of Duke Louis IX of Bavaria-Landshut (reigned 1450-1479) was one of the most influential and dazzling courts of its time. Not least because of the Landshut wedding in 1475, it is still known today. Against the backdrop of humanist discourses, this book analyses selected architecture and works of art that were created at the court of Louis IX and in his circle. The focus of the analysis is on the transfer of these discourses and their artistic realisation. Using the example of the three core themes of humanism – the discovery of the individual, landscape, and history – it is shown how humanist discourses travelled from the university towns of northern Italy to Landshut through so-called learned councils and were reflected in art there.

The ‘knowledge turn’ in curriculum studies has drawn attention to the central role that knowledge of the disciplines plays in education, and to the need for new thinking about how we understand knowledge and knowledge-building. Knowing History in Schools explores these issues in the context of teaching and learning history through a dialogue between the eminent sociologist of curriculum Michael Young, and leading figures in history education research and practice from a range of traditions and contexts. With a focus on Young’s ‘powerful knowledge’ theorisation of the curriculum, and on his more recent articulations of the ‘powers’ of knowledge, this dialogue explores the many complexities posed for history education by the challenge of building children’s historical knowledge and understanding. The book builds towards a clarification of how we can best conceptualise knowledge-building in history education. Crucially, it aims to help history education students, history teachers, teacher educators and history curriculum designers navigate the challenges that knowledge-building processes pose for learning history in schools.