Narratives Crossing Boundaries: Storytelling in a Transmedial and Transdisciplinary Context

As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient into focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which covers the subject in an interdisciplinary way from various perspectives: game studies and media studies, but also sociology and psychology, to take into account the great influence of storytelling on social discourses and human behavior

Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship

Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship

Ideas, Interests, and Institutions in Ralf Dahrendorf's Materialist Liberalism

This thesis offers a comprehensive account of Ralf Dahrendorf’s liberal political thought between the early 1950s and the late 1980s, with particular emphasis on the role that his methodological ideas played in his conception of politics. It argues that materialist conceptions, borrowed from Karl Marx and other materialist theorists, informed his liberal outlook throughout his career, transcending his early abandonment of political socialism. Situating Dahrendorf within a tradition of debate about necessity and contingency in German social thought from the end of the First World War to the Positivism Dispute of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the cultural turn of the 1970s and the 1980s, the work studies his attempt to overcome the social-scientific ideas of Talcott Parsons and other structural-functionalists and to recast sociology as a causality-oriented discipline that takes interests and social structure rather than ideas and values as its subject. This also affected Dahrendorf’s academic politics. Examining his role in the foundation of the University of Constance between 1964 and 1966, it shows how an anti-idealist critique of German higher education and political culture informed his attempt to create an institution for the social sciences that could break the perceived dominance of the humanities and overcome the central role of Law departments in the formation of the Federal Republic’s elite. The final two chapters discuss Dahrendorf’s engagement with neoconservatism and neoliberalism. Covering his interaction with scholars such as Daniel Bell and Samuel Huntington at settings including the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Trilateral Commission in the wake of the student movement, it discusses the development of his ideas vis-à-vis an emerging consensus that politics had turned into a cultural – rather than socio-economic – conflict. Finally, the thesis discusses Dahrendorf’s critique of Friedrich Hayek, Thatcherism, and constitutional economics during the 1980s. Here, it highlights a divergence between Dahrendorf’s agonistic liberalism and a new liberalism built on the assumption that the vast influence of ideas meant that politics was highly contingent and unpredictable. Combining the history of political thought and the history of the social sciences, this thesis revises established readings of Dahrendorf as a straightforward ‘Cold War liberal’. By doing so, it provides a new perspective on the history of liberalism and political thought more broadly before and after the paradigmatic shifts of the ‘cultural turn’.Faculty of History PhD Bursary Pembroke College Studentshi

Power and its Logic: Mastering Politics

Power is the essence of politics. Whoever seeks to understand and master it must understand its logic. Drawing on two decades of international experience in political consulting, Dominik Meier and Christian Blum give profound and honest insights into the inner workings of power. Introducing their Power Leadership Approach, the authors provide a conceptual analysis of power and present the tools to successfully exercise it in the political domain. "Power and its Logic" is a guidebook for politicians, business leaders, civil society pioneers, public affairs consultants and for every citizen who wants to understand the unwritten rules of politics

Taking Sides

Is there an option to oppose without automatically participating in the opposed? This volume explores different perspectives on dissent, understanding practices, cultures, and theories of resistance, dispute, and opposition as inherently participative. It discusses aspects of the body as a political instance, the identity and subjectivity building of individuals and groups, (micro-)practices of dissent, and theories of critique from different disciplinary perspectives. This collection thus touches upon contemporary issues, recent protests and movements, artistic subversion and dissent, online activism as well as historic developments and elemental theories of dissent

Physics and Literature

Physics and Literature is a unique collaboration between physicists and literary scholars, the first book to explore together the relations between both fields in depth. Contributors analyze central aspects of literary and scientific thought and representation, and the forms of exchange between them. They clarify how narrative, fiction, metaphor and language interact with models, experiment, measurement and mathematics, across eras and genres

Power and its Logic

Power is the essence of politics. Whoever seeks to understand and master it must understand its logic. Drawing on two decades of international experience in political consulting, Dominik Meier and Christian Blum give profound and honest insights into the inner workings of power. Introducing their Power Leadership Approach, the authors provide a conceptual analysis of power and present the tools to successfully exercise it in the political domain. "Power and its Logic" is a guidebook for politicians, business leaders, civil society pioneers, public affairs consultants and for every citizen who wants to understand the unwritten rules of politics

Digital Roots

Several of the most known and discussed concepts of the digital age predated the digitalization itself and have been previously used in the “analogue times”. Other concepts were coined for the digital society but have transformed and are continuously transforming over time. This edited book selects some of these concepts and starts a time travel through their history, heritage, reinvention, and reinvestment in media and communication studies