Chapter Introduction

Repeating Revolutions examines how activists, intellectuals, social scientists, and historians looked to France’s Revolutionary past to negotiate Algeria’s struggle for decolonization from the 1930s to the 1960s. The French Empire justified their claims over Algeria in part through messages of universal progress marked by the political visions tied to the French Revolution. Supporters of Algerian independence confronted those historical claims by identifying the Algerian cause with the French Revolution and by highlighting the apparent contradictions between the history of 1789 and imperial rule. Far-right activists, meanwhile, saw the movement to decolonize Algeria as another manifestation of the revolutionary disorder stemming from the French Revolution. Behind these analogies lay broader changes in the study of North African society and contemporary political relevance of the French Revolution. The focus on analogies to the French Revolution puts different sets of actors in conversation with one another and offers a fresh take on how people’s experiences and expectations changed throughout the Algerian War. This book will appeal to readers interested in the intellectual history of decolonization, the historiography of the French Revolution, the historiography of North African studies, and questions of historical comparison and conceptual change

Gerechte Strafen ohne Gleichheit?

When sentencing, courts must find an appropriate punishment in the area of conflict between individualization and equal treatment. In the dogmatic part, this dissertation shows that individualization is wrongly given priority in case law. The consequences became clear in the course of our own empirical study of almost 240 criminal court judges: there are considerable differences in sentencing between them. The fact that the freest possible discretion leads to appropriate sentences must therefore at least be called into question. The paper concludes by outlining measures to improve the uniformity of sentencing without making it impossible to assess individual cases.Gerichte müssen bei der Strafzumessung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Individualisierung und Gleichbehandlung eine angemessene Strafe finden. Die vorliegende Dissertation zeigt im dogmatischen Teil auf, dass dabei der Individualisierung in der Rechtsprechung zu Unrecht eine Vorrangstellung eingeräumt wird. Die Folgen wurden im Rahmen der eigenen empirischen Untersuchung mit knapp 240 Strafrichterinnen und -richtern deutlich: Zwischen ihnen bestehen erhebliche Unterschiede in der Strafzumessung. Dass möglichst freies Ermessen zu angemessenen Strafen führt, muss damit zumindest in Zweifel gezogen werden. Die Arbeit zeigt abschliessend Massnahmen auf, um die Einheitlichkeit der Strafzumessung zu verbessern, ohne eine Einzelfallbeurteilung zu verunmöglichen

Circulations

In Circulations, Courtney Handman examines the surprising continuities in modernist communication discourses that shaped both colonial and decolonial projects in Papua New Guinea. Often described as a place with too many mountains and too many languages to be modern, Papua New Guinea was seen as a space of circulatory primitivity—where people, things, and talk could not move. Colonial missionaries and administrators, and even anticolonial delegations to the United Nations that spearheaded demands for Papua New Guinea’s independence in the 1950s, argued that this circulatory primitivity would only be overcome through the management of communications infrastructures, bureaucratic information flows, and the introduction of English. Innovatively bringing together analyses of communications infrastructures such as radios, airplanes, telepathy, bureaucracy, and lingua francas, Circulations argues for the critical role of communicative networks and communicative imaginaries in political processes of colonialism and decolonization worldwide. “An intellectually exhilarating book with a wry sense of humor.” — ILANA GERSHON, Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Anthropology, Rice University “Handman’s breadth of imagination and depth of insight make for fascinating reading.” — WEBB KEANE, author of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter “This is an extremely thoughtful—and thought-provoking—book.” — BAMBI SCHIEFFELIN, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, New York University “A must-read for scholars of culture, language, empire, and decoloniality.” — MATT TOMLINSON, author of God Is Samoan: Dialogues between Culture and Theology in the Pacifi

Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse in Deutschland?

Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse zu gewährleisten, ist in Deutschland ein rechtlich verankertes Ziel. Dieses Open-Access-Buch analysiert, welche Aspekte Menschen wichtig sind, wenn es um ein gutes Leben geht, mit welchen Orten oder Regionen sie ihre Lebensverhältnisse vergleichen und was ihnen politisch sinnvoll erscheint, um etwas für gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse zu tun. Zugleich erkundet es, ob diese Sichtweisen Potenzial für räumliche Konflikte und damit Sprengstoff für den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt bergen und ob sie von den Themen abweichen, die in der Politik als Kennzeichen für „gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse“ betrachtet werden. Dafür wurden 913 Seiten Datenmaterial aus Gruppendiskussionen in 24 deutschen Kommunen, 915 Seiten ergänzende schriftliche Befragungen sowie 203 Seiten Transkripte von einordnenden Interviews mit kommunalen Spitzenverbänden ausgewertet. Darüber hinaus informiert das Buch über die Politik und Zuständigkeiten für gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse und den Forschungsstand zum Thema. Es richtet sich an Interessierte aus der Wissenschaft, Medien, Politik, Verwaltung und Zivilgesellschaft

Competing Metaphors for International Relations

This book examines how the thinking towards international relations of political leaders, researchers, the media and the public is fundamentally metaphorical in nature: the abstract and far away constantly made concrete and familiar through the imaginative rationality of metaphors. It delves into ten competing structural metaphors: international relations as natural selection, as family dynamics, as balancing operations, as building and constructing, as games and play, as business and trade, as journeys and paths, as musical performances, as health or sickness and as puzzles and riddles. Drawing attention to the important role of metaphors in grasping this field and providing explanations for its events and motives for its actors, this study will appeal to scholars and students of International Relations and World Politics. For experts on metaphor theory or cognitive linguistics, this book will offer practical examples and speculate on the concrete consequences of adopting different metaphorical schemes

The Arabic Fable

This is the first attempt to provide a representative inventory of fables documented in premodern Arabic literature. The introduction presents a detailed effort to define the Arabic fable and a condensed historical survey together with a short assessment of the content characteristics of the Arabic fable proper. An annotated bibliography discusses significant contributions to the study of the Arabic fable in detail. The book’s main body surveys a total of 330 numbered fables with short summaries, exhaustive references, and concise comments. The detailed documentation recognizes the Arabic fable as the long neglected equal of its dominantly perceived Graeco-Latin sibling

Sociología pública desde el sur

This is a book written by many hands and originated in a conversation involving many voices. Although heterogeneous in its approaches and content, it is more than a contingent collection of articles. The works that comprise it are interwoven with the common interest generated among its authors by the invitation to debate the challenges of conducting public sociology from the South. Without neglecting their lines of research, the diverse proposals contribute to the question of what it means to conduct public sociology and what it means to think from the South. We know that good questions lead to interesting answers. Likewise, good invitations produce fruitful encounters

Jesuit Missions in Coastal and South India (1543–1773)

Jesuit missions in coastal and South India were among the first foundations of the Society of Jesus in the world. They represented models of apostolic action imitated, debated and reformulated in other parts of the world. This book traces the history of the Jesuit missionary activities in the early modern period and shows how the Jesuits navigated European colonial interests and local conversion to Christianity through proselytizing and accommodation. Jesuit missionary efforts were pragmatically divided between disciplining Portuguese and, later on, French colonial communities and attracting converts living among regional polities under Muslim and Hindu rulers

Mietwohnung oder Eigenheim?

Die Wohnung ist der Ort, an dem wir die längste Zeit unseres Lebens verbringen. Je nach Wohnverhältnissen hält die Wohnung spezifische Erfahrungs-, Prägungs- und Ermöglichungsräume bereit. Aus einer ungleichheitssoziologischen Perspektive sensibilisiert das Buch für den Wohneigentumsstatus – ob Menschen zur Miete oder im Eigentum leben – als vergessene Ungleichheitsdeterminante. Mit einem Fokus auf wohnstatusassoziierte Haltungen (Mentalitäten) und Handlungen (politische Beteiligung) wird theoretisch argumentiert und empirisch gezeigt: Der Wohnstatus ist ein Erklärungsfaktor sozialer Ungleichheit, dem mehr als nur eine ökonomische Ungleichheitsdynamik innewohnt

The Roots of American Politics

This book examines the ways in which American habits and politics replaced the traditional European republican canon. Before the modern era, European republics relied on procedural complexity in office-filling to arrive at neutral government. They did so with such technical consistency over a long span of time as to create a republican procedural tradition. That tradition collided with conditions in the Anglo-American world: with entrenched social deference in politics, quasi-representative institutions, and an ascendant doctrine of majorities. American habits would ultimately overwhelm the European republican canon, but not without a fight. This book suggests that arguments over the abandonment of the procedural tradition shook politics in early America, especially at the federal convention, and that it is difficult to understand the convention delegates’ votes concerning the Great Compromise (apportioning the House and Senate) and the presidential selection system without reference to those arguments. The contest between simple majorities and complexity aiming at comity was not resolved neatly in Philadelphia and continued during the first decades of the republic; this book argues that some political institutions to this day bear the stamp of the imperfect arrangements reached at the nation’s founding which among other things was a moment of inflection between older and newer concepts of republican architecture. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars interested in American Political History, Early American History, and Political Science