Open Access Books

This book is unique and of great importance for theologians from diverse traditions but who all share the relevance of the academic Reformed discourse. The book focuses on, and forms part of celebrating 500 years since the start of the Reformation during the 16th century. Its purpose is to commemorate the quincentenary anniversary of the Reformation in Europe and to indicate the way in which the rich legacy of this important period in the history of the church and society still influences globally the theological landscape in the fields of Practical Theology, Missiology and Ethics. Specific attention is given to the manner in which the core principles of the Reformation can be utilised for these disciplines and applied in a contemporary context. The Reformation changed the ecclesiastical landscape of the day and still provides the benchmark for theological principles and praxis in many Protestant denominations. This book illustrates and underscores the practical-theological legacy and importance of the Reformation for church and society. The collected works by various theologians reflect on the impact of Reformed Theology on their respective fields of expertise. The original research is based on literature studies and has not been published previously in any form. Its aim is to stimulate discourse in Theology and related disciplines. Although the chapters represent different perspectives, the collective aim is to propose the vast impact of the Reformational views as they relate to the current context. The target audience is Reformed theologians. This book focuses on ways in which the legacy of the Reformation addresses practical and relevant issues for 21st-century believers, scholars and churches. It explores inter alia important homiletical and liturgical aspects of the Reformation and contemplates the importance of continual reformation in this regard. Furthermore, it discusses a Reformed approach to apologetics, evaluates the driving forces behind the Reformation of the 16th century and its relevance to missions today as well as examines the sola Scriptura principle of the Reformation and provides a critical perspective on Prosperity Theology. Several pastoral themes take centre stage before various aspects of xenophobia and civil prejudice are being investigated – both being very relevant topics throughout the world today. The book also focuses on hermeneutics and ethics in a quest for a biblical ethical approach as well as congregational hymns in the Reformed churches of South Africa today. The research outcomes are relevant not only for the South African context, but also globally.

EU fundamental rights; constitutional law; international

Apartheid and Fragmented Protest in Contemporary Southern Africa examines protest movements through the lens of Apartheid Studies, the first general theory of apartheid which explores how oppression, harm, injustice, poverty, loss, and inequality persist. The book argues that apartheid, which breaks the world of the oppressed into fragments, fomenting diverse experiences of oppression among its victims, frames the nature and course of protests by making them subject to its fragmentation. Protest is thus redefined as good neighbourly and demoted on account of its symbiotic relationship to apartheid. It is observed that the proliferation of protests does not preclude the persistence of apartheid. Rather, protest and apartheid are seen to be compatible. By examining protest hashtags on X from South Africa and Zimbabwe, the book explores and identifies the forms, relations, meanings, trajectories, and effects protests take, evoke, and embody as fragments subsisting in a fractured apartheid universe. It demonstrates how and why life goes on amidst protest, sheds light on the contradictions, paradoxes and complexities that characterise protest movements and invites conversations around protest as a paradigm in the context of apartheid. The book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of social movements, protests, sociology, African Studies, and communication and media studies.

Die Zunahme der Komplexität von Entscheidungssituationen sowie die Knappheit der verfügbaren Ressourcen in Wirtschaft und Politik führen zu wachsenden Anforderungen an die Allokationsplanung. In dieser Studie wird ein interdisziplinäres Modell zur Analyse und Kontrolle der Effektivität praktischer Budgetplanung aus systemtheoretischer Sicht entworfen. Die Anwendung des Modells erfolgt auf das System Berlin (West), wobei aber eine analoge Vorgehensweise auch für größere gewerbliche und öffentliche Unternehmen von Interesse ist. Als Voraussetzung für eine Effektivitätsanalyse der Ressourcenplanung erweist sich die Definition von strategischen Zielen und deren Quantifizierung mittels Zielgewichten sowie die Entwicklung eines Indikatorensystems als Grundlage für die Bewertung der aktuellen Systemqualität. Auf Grundlage der relevanten Finanzströme werden Thesen rationalen Entscheidungsverhaltens simuliert und hinsichtlich ihrer praktischen Relevanz analysiert. Dies führt zu einer Erhöhung der Transparenz und damit zu einer besseren Beherrschbarkeit komplexer Entscheidungssituationen.

Derzhavin and the Aesopian Tradition in the Eighteenth Century. The literary tradition of the fable genre emerged and developed in the 18th century, starting from A. Kantemir, through the formal experiments of Trediakovskij and Lomonosov, Sumarokov’s “sklonenie na russkie nravy”, and the subsequent original elaboration by undisputed Russian representative I. Krylov. The article examines G. R. Derzhavin’s fable production in the context of the genre’s reception in 18th-century Russia. Derzhavin’s fables were published posthumously and have been little studied to this day. Overall, the poet composed 24 fables, 4 of which are based on the elaboration of Aesopian subjects. The latter are specific subjects of analysis through their comparison with previous literary versions. The work demonstrates how Derzhavin’ Aesopian fables versions are original and interesting as echoes of his creative evolution.

The focus of this volume is on the world of theater. The reign of Frederick II is a subject of considerable attention in the correspondence: from Königsberg come reports about the politics of religion, and from Berlin reports about the politics of science. The Weißenfelser Society of Alethophiles was becoming successful.

This volume reconstructs Carlo Livi (1823-1877)’s biography, focusing on his medical and psychiatric work and on his path as a man and intellectual who lived during the Italian Risorgimento. Livi was a key figure in Italian psychiatry, halfway between the therapeutic optimism of the early 19th century and the pessimism of post-Darwinian psychiatry, both in the practical aspects and in the theoretical elaboration. The study highlights how, in this case, the moral treatment applied by 19th century psychiatry throughout Europe is linked to the events of the Italian Risorgimento. The moralizing and educational request, as well as the anthropological study of the human being, were aimed at the sick, the insane, at children, at criminals and the Italian people in order to carry out a national and secular project of social regeneration in Italy.

Who wants to champion the figure of Don Giovanni in the time of Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo? Don Giovanni is a rapist, murderer, serial seducer, and liar. Can he ever be held up as a role model or seen as a figure to be enjoyed? This is the task that the eminent Italian historian and lifelong feminist, Luisa Passerini, sets for herself in In Defense of Don Giovanni. As she developed the long arc of her distinguished career, Don Giovanni surprisingly became not only her role model but also a secret object of research. Taking her method from oral history, Passerini creates a series of characters with whom she discusses the forms and incarnations of the myth of Don Giovanni across time, from its first appearance in early medieval Spain and Commedia dell’Arte to its many European variations and its transposition to the colonial and postcolonial world in the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa. Pivoting round Don Giovanni’s best known incarnation in Mozart’s opera, Passerini and her interlocutors meet in different locations from Venice and Bern to Paris and Turin. They discuss plays, films, and operas and talk about art, novels, and psychoanalytic interpretations of the myth while also sharing their own life stories, in which Don Giovanni often plays a part that is, by turns, destructive, mischievous, and full of the joy of life. From his early beginnings in the Iberian Peninsula to recent analysis of the sexuality of colonial conquest and postcolonial revenge and return, Don Giovanni shape-shifts between rapacious hypermasculinity, comic trickster, and morally vacuous loser whose annoyingly persistent nemesis Don Ottavio emerges as an alternative and ultimately better object of desire. As she tracks Don Giovanni’s image across the world and through the centuries, however, Passerini comes to see that it also plays another role, that of a mirror, in which women can see themselves emerge as individuals with their own life force.

In diesem Open-Access-Buch werden professionelle Kompetenzen von angehenden Mathematiklehrkräften untersucht, die sie zur Förderung des Mathematiklernens und zur Motivationsförderung von Schüler*innen mit Lernschwierigkeiten benötigen. Dazu werden zunächst Grundsätze der Förderung dieser Schüler*innengruppe formuliert und, unter Berücksichtigung der Forschung zu professionellen Kompetenzen von Lehrkräften, ein Modell der professionellen Kompetenz, motiviertes Lernen zu fördern, entwickelt. In zwei Studien wird die Entwicklung der Kompetenzfacetten im Rahmen einer universitären Veranstaltung mit Praxisphase betrachtet und ein systematischer Einblick in die, in der Praxisphase gezeigte, Unterstützungspraxis der angehenden Lehrkräfte gegeben.

Nastojaščaja kniga prizvana, s odnoj storony, zafiksirovat' dokumental'nymi tekstami odnu iz storon "perestrojki" - etnosocio-lingvističeskuju, s drugoj storony, ona dolžna stat' svoego roda istočnikom dlja specialistov v oblasti etno- i sociolingvistiki (i ne tol'ko ich).

Die Arbeit befaßt sich mit den Finanzierungsproblemen, die durch die prognostizierte Bevölkerungsentwicklung für die Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung entstehen. Zunächst wird herausgearbeitet, daß nur Instrumente, die an den demographischen Ursachen der Finanzierungsprobleme ansetzen, eine wirkliche Reduzierung der Lasten bewirken können. Hier bieten sich eine Erhöhung des Kinderlastenausgleichs und eine verstärkte Einwanderung an. Als Ergebnis einer Wirkungsanalyse des Kinderlastenausgleichs auf der Basis der neoklassischen Fertilitätstheorie wird eine Aufstockung der Mittel um gut 70.000 DM pro Kind für erforderlich gehalten, um den Beitragssatz im Jahr 2030 gegenüber einem laissez-faire Szenario um 1,5 Prozentpunkte zu senken. Durch eine verstärkte Einwanderung ließe sich die gleiche Beitragssatzreduzierung kostengünstiger erreichen.

Christa Frateantonio follows a new line of research in this study of Pausanias` Periegesis, his historical and geographical description of Greece.Her underlying premise is that it is in fact concealed praise (or criticism) of cities, and supports this view by drawing attention to intention "riddles" in the Periegesis. These she expounds in detailed textual analyses, and explains the structures of the work, some of which are unexplained, as the result of rhetorical principles of description, which she considers in their relationship to the cultural context of the Second Sophistic.

This book emerges as a collective effort to rethink Social Work from an ecoterritorial perspective, within a context marked by socio-environmental crises, territorial inequalities, and the reconfiguration of social struggles in Chile and Latin America. The product of the work of the Ecoterritorial Social Work Network, it proposes understanding territory as a social construct permeated by power relations, struggles over meaning, and ways of life in tension. Far from conceiving of the ecoterritorial as a marginal field, it argues that this dimension constitutively shapes intervention, training, and knowledge production, inviting us to problematize practices that have contributed to processes of territorial dispossession. Through diverse voices, the book articulates debates, experiences, and situated practices. From the ecoterritorial turn, it challenges hegemonic development logics and proposes ethical and political horizons oriented toward the defense of life, the commons, and territories. Rather than closing discussions, it seeks to open questions and enable new ways of thinking about and practicing Social Work.

Das Zusammenspiel von Unternehmertum, Gender, Nachhaltigkeit und insbesondere der sozialen Dimension ist komplex und unterschätzt. Diese Studie analysiert Social Entrepreneurship durch eine Gender-Linse und stellt deutsche Sozialunternehmerinnen und ihre politischen, sozialen und ökonomischen Kontexte dar. Im Rahmen eines deskriptiven qualitativen Forschungsdesigns wurden eine Sekundäranalyse verschiedener Dimensionen des Social Entrepreneurship-Systems und fünfundzwanzig Interviews durchgeführt. Die Autorin zeigt, dass dieser Sektor das Potenzial hat, Gender neu zu denken und die Wirtschaft neu zu gestalten, indem er Normen und Grenzen in Richtung eines systemischen Wandels herausfordert.

On 14 February 1995, the Constitutional Court of South Africa was inaugurated by President Nelson Mandela. In his inaugural speech, President Mandela remarked that the “future of our democracy” hinged on the existence and the work of the newly created Constitutional Court. Furthermore, President Mandela rightly asserted that it is the Constitutional Court’s task “to ensure that the values of freedom and equality which underlie our interim constitution – and which will surely be embodied in our final constitution – are nurtured and protected so that they may endure”. These sentiments are as true now as they were almost thirty years ago. However, whether and how the courts have nurtured and protected these sentiments over the last twenty-eight years is the topic that we want to address. This book serves as the first volume in a series of books that considers selected landmark judgments of the South African Constitutional Court.