Is Structural Change “Practical”? Latino Boys & Imagining Otherwise

Most policy discussions around Latino boys aim to foster academic success without fully considering the way unequal outcomes are by design. The zero-sum nature of US education warrants a critical analysis and fundamental reimagining. I employ the lenses of critical social theory and critical discourse studies for a three-fold purpose: (1) examine the (im)possibilities of academic success, (2) examine how discourses of practicality are weaponized against efforts to enact structural change, and (3) engage the concept, imagining otherwise, in the field of education. Special attention is given to contemporary educational and political events to highlight the importance of going beyond “practicality,” abolishing all processes that generate unequal outcomes, and reimagining the forthcoming world of education. I call for a serious interrogation of educational structures, delving into a more critical and imaginative realm

Universalization or localization? Issues of knowledge legitimation in comaprative education

The endeavor to unite the universal and the accidental in both, the physical and the social world into one theoretical framework – the idea of such a unity can be found already in the Chinese concept of Tao – dates back in the modern culture to the Enlightenment. Such a unified knowledge came to be understood as a potential tool of forecasting and controlling societal progress. All through the positivistic 19th century, comparativists followed Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris, who thought educational comparison should become an exact science whose outcomes could be used anywhere and transplanted to any place. It was Michael Sadler who as the first comparative educationalist strictly refused the idea of cultural and institutional borrowing. Under his influence comparative education focused on the variations unique to the single countries and to the factors underlying these variations. Even the later emerging functionalist method remained in the tradition of a „one-dimensional logic“, which, as Marcuse alleged, was inseparably connected with the rationale of domination of nature and society. It is only the postmodern sight, which – without giving up the humanistic ideas of modernity which originated in Western modernization – opens possibilities to enter a cross cultural dialogue and to accept multiple theoretical realities. (DIPF/Orig.)Der Beitrag bietet einen breiten Überblick über grundlegende Tendenzen in der historischen Entwicklung von Vergleichender Erziehungswissenschaft. Dabei unterliegt der Darstellung implizit und explizit durchgängig das Bewußtsein, daß vergleichende Wissenschaft im weitesten Sinne weder ein Monopol der jüngsten Epoche noch etwa eines einzigen Kulturraums darstellt. Mit seiner analytischen, aber auch normativen Interpretation von gegenwärtigen Tendenzen postmodernen Denkens sieht er die Möglichkeit eines transkulturellen Dialogs über die Weiterentwicklung und Erweiterung der etablierten (westlichen) Vergleichenden (Erziehungs-)Wissenschaft. (DIPF/Orig.

Untersuchung strategischer Marketingkonzeptionen deutscher Handelsunternehmen in Russland am Beispiel der Einzelhandelsbranche

Durch die zunehmenden wirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen wird auch der russische Markt für deutsche Unternehmen immer interessanter. Im Rahmen der Globalisierung müssen sich die erfolgreichen Unternehmen neu positionieren, um dem anwachsenden Wettbewerbsdruck einerseits entgegen zu treten und andererseits neue Märkte zu entdecken. Gerade auf dem russischen Markt, der durch die wirtschaftsstrukturelle Umorientierung eine hohe Dynamik aufweist, spielen marketingstrategische Entscheidungen über den Markteintritt für den Erfolg oder das Scheitern des unternehmerischen Vorhabens eine entscheidende Rolle. Speziell der Aspekt des richtigen Einsatzes von Marketing-Mix-Instrumenten unter Berücksichtigung der kulturspezifischen Eigenschaften des russischen Marktes, soll in diesem Zusammenhang eine elementare Frage sein. Die folgende Analyse stellt die Vielseitigkeit verschiedener Internationalisierungsmöglichkeiten als Orientierungspunkte für Newcomer in den Mittelpunkt, die gewisse Unternehmensentscheidungen im Bereich Marketing-Mix-Instrumente im Rahmen eines Russlandgeschäfts unterstützen werden.With the increasing integration of the world economy the Russian market is becoming ever more attractive for German companies. Successful companies must re-position themselves within the context of globalization in order to counteract growing competitive pressures and tap new markets. Particularly in the Russian market – which is highly dynamic due to the structural reorientation of the country’s economy – strategic marketing decisions for market entry play a decisive role in the success or failure of a business venture. In this regard, questions pertaining to the proper use of marketing-mix instruments with a view to the Russian market’s specific cultural qualities will be of elementary concern. The following analysis focuses on the variety of different possibilities for internationalization as a reference point for market newcomers in order to support certain business decisions in the area of marketing-mix instruments within the scope of a Russian venture

Education for Global Citizenship. New ways to think, to act, to learn

In this article the author introduces a pilot project for international educational partnership in the field of Education for Global Citizenship outlining not only the project itself but its conceptual background. (DIPF/Orig.)In diesem Beitrag stellt die Autorin das Projekt Education for Global Citizenship vor. Dieses Projekt kann im Bereich internationaler pädagogischer Partnerschaften als Pilotprojekt angesehen werden. Es wird sowohl das Projekt selbst als auch sein konzeptioneller Hintergrund beschrieben. (DIPF/Orig.

Affective affordances and psychopathology

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies

The Studious University: A Marxist-Psychoanalytic Groundwork

How a pedagogy of study can work against the neoliberal university, from a psychoanalytic-Marxist perspective

Klein-Gordon-Wheeler-DeWitt-Schroedinger Equation

We start from the Einstein-Hilbert action for the gravitational field in the presence of a "point particle" source, and cast the action into the corresponding phase space form. The dynamical variables of such a system satisfy the point particle mass shell constraint, the Hamilton and the momentum constraints of the canonical gravity. In the quantized theory, those constraints become operators that annihilate a state. A state can be represented by a wave functional $\Psi$ that simultaneously satisfies the Klein-Gordon and the Wheeler-DeWitt-Schr\"odinger equation. The latter equation, besides the term due to gravity, also contains the Schr\"odinger like term, namely the derivative of $\Psi$ with respect to time, that occurs because of the presence of the point particle. The particle's time coordinate, $X^0$, serves the role of time. Next, we generalize the system to $p$-branes, and find out that for a quantized spacetime filling brane there occurs an effective cosmological constant, proportional to the expectation value of the brane's momentum, a degree of freedom that has two discrete values only, a positive and a negative one. This mechanism could be an explanation for the small cosmological constant that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe.Comment: 14 pages; typos corrected; journal reference include

The Self-Other Relationship Between Transcendental and Ethical Inquiries

This paper discusses two approaches of the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The Husserlian one, a transcendental phenomenological investigation of the possibility of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and the Waldenfelsian one, an ethical phenomenological investigation of day to day intersubjective interactions. Both authors pretend to give account of the conditions of possibility of intersubjective interaction. However, Husserl starts with the investigation of the transcendental structure of subjectivity, that is, the fundamental conditions required for the appearance of consciousness. By contrast, Waldenfels looks first at practical interaction and draws conclusions on the deeper structure of subjectivity based on the traces he discovers to be characteristic for this interaction. Our interest lies in determining which of the two approaches should be given priority for the investigation of the constitution of intersubjectivity