Open Access Books

The idea of “parliamentary administration” might appear, at first sight, like an oxymoron: parliaments are the domain of politicians, the elected representatives of the people, whereas administrations are commonly understood as the executive bureaucracies carrying out the tasks of governments. The historical development of parliamentary administrations has taken different forms in different countries, making it difficult to generalize. The most delicate issue regarding parliamentary administrations concerns the nature of the activity they perform. The comparative analysis of the data contained in the various country-specific chapters demonstrates several commonalities and differences in relation to certain fundamental organizational and functional options of parliamentary administrations. The very first observation in this context concerns the size of parliamentary administrations. A second dimension of framing the distinctive features of parliamentary administrations is the degree of budgetary autonomy. Looking more closely at recent developments, a number of contemporary challenges can be identified that parliamentary administrations have had to confront in the 21st century.

The work deals with aspects of image and video exploitation for monitoring, surveillance and security applications in non-cooperative application situations. The term "non-cooperative" refers to scenarios in which, for example, the recording parameters (backgrounds, lighting conditions, etc.) are not or hardly known. The goal is to detect man-made modifications (artifacts) in natural environments.

The aim of the present study is to identify educational language devices that primary school pupils produce within non-fiction texts and to examine them with regard to their form-function relationship within non-fiction texts. The study is based on 474 texts written by learners in the second to fourth grades. In order to correspond to the complexity of the object of research, all 474 texts were first examined for the realisation of educational language devices by means of a cross-method triangulation with sequential design with the help of a quantitative frequency analysis on the basis of a deductively developed category system. Subsequently, a partial corpus (n=28) of the data material was selected by means of interleaved sampling and a content-structuring qualitative content analysis was carried out on the basis of a deductively-inductively developed category system in order to relate the educational language devices back to their function. The results of the study complement the findings of previous studies and provide important indications for future research into the means and skills of the language of education. At the same time, the findings enable conclusions to be drawn for the design of language-sensitive subject teaching.

Leonardo’s multifaceted experience has often been celebrated as a key historical legacy placed in a distant past. However, an interdisciplinary investigation of Leonardo’s thought, studies and design intentionality, trying to combine art and science, has highlighted the cornerstones of an ante litteram territorialist vision. To the finished product, Leonardo always prefers the knowledge of the most intimate relationships among components of the territory, always understood as a living being, thus giving posterity an immense gallery of possibilities. Therefore, Leonardo’s complex and integrated vision is a viaticum for the project of today’s manifold territory.

Wartezeiten bilden ein unliebsames Alltagsphänomen, das uns jenseits seiner negativen Zuschreibung tiefe Einblicke in die Zeitkultur der Moderne gewährt. Anhand einer Archäologie von Architekturen und literarisch-künstlerischen Rezeptionen des Wartens zeigt Robin Kellermann am Beispiel des Eisenbahnverkehrs auf, wie sich Rahmung und Wahrnehmung dieses zeitlichen Zwischenraums im Laufe der Moderne von einem Zustand der würdigen Erwartung und Vorfreude zum Störfaktor der beschleunigten Welt wandelten. Damit erweitert er unser Verständnis der Epoche um ihre vielfach erzeugten Momente des Stillstands und erkundet einen Temporalzustand, der konstitutiv für die Verkehrsentwicklung wurde und trotz aller Auslöschungsversuche untrennbar mit ihr verbunden bleibt.

Nach Verlassen der Schule streben Jugendliche nach einem Beruf, der ihnen (auch) ermöglicht, eigene Ideen zu verwirklichen – unabhängig davon, ob sie eine Friseurausbildung ergreifen, ein Kunststudium aufnehmen oder ein Ingenieurstudium beginnen. Die Studie geht auf Basis eines quantitativen und qualitativen Längsschnitts der Frage nach, wie junge Erwachsene zwischen individuellen Ansprüchen und strukturierten Chancen ihr Selbstprojekt ausarbeiten (können) – in Handwerksbetrieben, Kunstakademien und Hochschulen. Dabei geht es auch darum, inwiefern sie ihre Positionen und damit auch soziale Ordnung reproduzieren oder zu eigenwilligen Lösungen kommen. Leitend ist eine interaktionistische Theorieperspektive, die mit der Feldtheorie von Pierre Bourdieu verbunden wird.

"This edited volume covers the development and application of metalanguages for concretely describing and communicating translation processes in practice. In a modern setting of project-based translation, it is crucial to bridge the gaps between various actors involved in the translation process, especially among clients, translation service providers (TSPs), translators, and technology developers. However, we have been confronted with the lack of common understanding among them about the notion and detailed mechanisms of translation. Against this backdrop, we are developing systematic, fine-grained metalanguages that are designed to describe and analyse translation processes in concrete terms. Underpinned by the rich accumulation of theoretical findings in translation studies and established standards of practical translation services, such as ISO 17100, our metalanguages extensively cover the core processes in translation projects, namely project management, source document analysis, translation, and revision. Gathering authors with diverse backgrounds and expertise, this book proffers the fruits of the contributors’ collaborative endeavour; it not only provides practicable metalanguages, but also reports on wide-ranging case studies on the application of metalanguages in practical and pedagogical scenarios. This book supplies concrete guidance for those who are involved in the translation practices and translation training/education. In addition to being of practical use, the metalanguages reflect explicitation of the translation process. As such, this book provides essential insights for researchers and students in the field of translation studies."

How did pre-modern merchants provide for predictability in situations of legal pluralism? What kind of practices did merchants use to make other parties act according to their expectations? In spheres of legal pluralism, different normative framings always overlapped and had to be negotiated in order to manage expectations. How did the actors in premodern trade decide on the framing they would act upon? The contributors discuss various means to cope with legal pluralism in place in Northern Europe, from trust and diplomacy to violence and normative orders. Taken together, the contributions show that merchants and their communities did not strive for a unification and harmonization of laws according to modern statehood, but for an enhancement of their particular group’s position in a pluralist normative field.

Wie erleben pädagogische Fach- und Leitungskräfte ihren Alltag in der Kita? Wie gestaltet sich die pädagogische Praxis? Wie wird in Kitas mit dem Thema »Diversität« umgegangen? Diese und weitere Fragen werden mithilfe der TALIS Starting Strong-Studie untersucht, einer internationalen Fachkräftebefragung der OECD, die 2018 von den Autor_innen dieses Bandes in Deutschland zum ersten Mal durchgeführt wurde. Hierzu werden die Daten vertieft zu den Themen »Leitung«, »Arbeitsbedingungen«, »pädagogisches Handeln« und »Diversität in Kitas« für Deutschland ausgewertet und mit den Ergebnissen der acht anderen Teilnehmerländer verglichen. Die Ergebnisse der Studie weisen auf Herausforderungen im deutschen Kita-System hin, die zur Auseinandersetzung mit frühkindlicher Bildung und Betreuung in anderen Ländern einladen.

Wer Design-Based Research (DBR) im Kontext der Hochschullehre praktiziert, braucht Orientierung. Die Autor*innen bieten sie: Mit dem Forschenden Entwerfen stellen sie eine theoretisch begründete und an die Hochschuldidaktik angepasste Form von DBR vor. Heuristiken und Instrumente unterstützen in den verschiedenen Dimensionen des Forschungshandelns und helfen dabei, Entscheidungen reflektiert zu treffen sowie eigene Stärken zu nutzen. Prägnante Empfehlungen, z.B. zu Qualitätsstandards oder Ergebniskommunikation, und ein weiterführendes Literaturverzeichnis runden das Handbuch ab und machen es zum idealen didaktischen Begleiter für Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen und Hochschullehrende.

In Dostoevsky’s binary poetics, an opposition can be drawn between two fundamental stances – asceticism and incontinence. Ascetics adhere to an ethos of self-restraint in response to the desires of the flesh. Incontinents act spontaneously to gratify their desires. The current study draws an analogy between the behavior pattern of Dostoevsky’s self-denying intellectual heroes and that of exiled castrate (skoptsy) communities. Dostoevsky’s ascetics represent a cerebral mindset attracted to visions of social utopia; their intellectualizing detaches them from the life of the body and thus weirdly parallels the strictures of the skoptsy. An encounter between an ascetic and a prostitute serves as a central plot moment in works such as Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground.

The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000. Offering a valuable corrective to the Anglocentric narratives of previous English-language textbooks, scholars from all over Europe have pooled their knowledge on comparative themes such as identities, cultural encounters, power and citizenship, and economic development to reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the European experience. Rather than another grand narrative, the international author teams offer a multifaceted and rich perspective on the history of the continent of the past 500 years. Each major theme is dissected through three chronological sub-chapters, revealing how major social, political and historical trends manifested themselves in different European settings during the early modern (1500–1800), modern (1800–1900) and contemporary period (1900–2000). This resource is of utmost relevance to today’s history students in the light of ongoing internationalisation strategies for higher education curricula, as it delivers one of the first multi-perspective and truly ‘European’ analyses of the continent’s past. Beyond the provision of historical content, this textbook equips students with the intellectual tools to interrogate prevailing accounts of European history, and enables them to seek out additional perspectives in a bid to further enrich the discipline.

The book series is dedicated to the study of the multifaceted dynamics of wordplay as an interface phenomenon. The contributions aim to bring together approaches from various disciplines and present case studies on different communicative settings, including everyday language and literary communication, and thus offer fresh perspectives on wordplay in the context of linguistic innovation, language contact, and speaker-hearer-interaction.

How African societies influenced the two major global conflicts of the 20th century. The First and Second World Wars were pivotal events in modern global history. Although colonial empires were involuntarily drawn into both global conflicts, most studies of the World Wars have given scant attention to the contributions of colonial societies or the wars’ profound impact on their populations. This pervasive neglect of the significant role played by European colonies on behalf of the Allies is not only historically problematic but also hinders our comprehensive understanding of these wars and their broader impact on humanity. Adopting a global intellectual history lens, this volume examines the influence of African societies and ideas on these two major global conflicts. In doing so, it expands the historiography of both World Wars by offering fundamental new insights. The essays in this collection explore various themes related to both wars and societies within the empire, with a focus on the African experience and its intersection with European empires, colonialism, race, economy, and global conflagrations.

In June and July 2014, philologist Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei and photographer Marco Mazzi undertook the Albanian Lapidar Survey, a project to map, document, and photograph the large majority of Albanian lapidars, a particular type of monument, mainly produced in the period that the communist Labor Party of Albania ruled the country (1945–1990) to commemorate the partisan victims, battles, and military units from the National Anti-Fascist Liberation War (which coincided with World War II), as well as historical figures from before the liberation and the accomplishments of socialism in Albania afterward. These lapidars, which can still be found, albeit in ever decreasing numbers, all over the country — in cities and villages, alongside roads, in forests and on mountain passes — are witness to an enormous expenditure of labor and resources to turn the landscape into a site of what was called “monumental propaganda.” The Albanian Lapidar Survey aimed to capture these monuments as fact. The results of this project are collected into a three-volume, dual-language (English and Albanian) catalogue, under the title Lapidari. The first volume comprises a series of critical reflections on Albanian monumentality of the period 1945–1990 from a variety of perspectives, as well as historical documents and a full indexation of all inscriptions found on the documented monuments. Volume 2 and Volume 3 feature the photographic documentation of all 649 recorded monumental sites by photographer Marco Mazzi.