Citizenship policies in the New Europe: expanded and updated edition

De twee recentste uitbreidingen in de EU hebben het hedendaags begrip van soevereiniteit, natieontwikkeling en burgerschap binnen de EU vergroot. Dit boek beschrijft de staatsburgerschapswetten van de nieuwe lidstaten (en kandidaten Turkije en KroatiC+) en bevat een analyse van hun historische achtergrond.The two most recent EU enlargements in May 2004 and in January 2007 have greatly increased the diversity of historic experiences and contemporary conceptions of statehood, nation-building and citizenship within the Union. How did newly formed states determine who would become their citizens? How do countries relate to their large emigrant communities, to ethnic kin minorities in neighbouring countries and to minorities in their own territory? And to which extent have their citizenship policies been affected by new immigration and integration into the European Union? Citizenship Policies in the New Europe describes the citizenship laws in each of the twelve new countries as well as in the accession states Croatia and Turkey and analyses their historical background. Citizenship Policies in the New Europe complements two volumes on Acquisition and Loss of Nationality in the fifteen old Member States published in the same series in 2006

Psychoanalysis and the law beyond the Oedipus : a study in legal fictions.

PhDThe present thesis considers the function of law in the political from the perspective of psychoanalysis, a discipline which foregrounds the subject. Drawing from the Lacanian contributions to psychoanalytic theory, I begin by assessing the validity of the Oedipal hypothesis for the purposes of understanding the dynamics of collective life. My analysis of civilisation in psychoanalytic terms will expose the subject as the seat of 'certain key phenomena which, despite their deeply intimate character, play themselves out in the field of law, in the confines of the institution, or again in the political realm: essentially, culpability, belief and love. I will argue that, although these phenomena irretrievably obstruct the rational unfolding of discourse, they also impel the precipitation of the subject's attachment to the political, and permit the consolidation thereof through the medium of transference. Yet, and in contradistinction to other strands of psychoanalytic jurisprudence, in this work psychoanalysis will be used neither as an hermeneutic tool nor as an analogical model. Indeed, my purpose is to evidence the existence of a certain continuity between the unconscious as discourse and the political order. This continuity between the unconscious and the political will be presented in terms of the logic of exception, which structures the subject's relation to language, and which Lacan identified as the structural core of the Oedipus complex. I will then apply Lacan's hypothesis of the exceptional structure of discourse to the theories of three political thinkers, chosen for the distinctness of their approach: Legendre, Bentham and Foucault. Finally, I will argue for the dispensability of the function of the Ideal, parasitic occupier of what should remain the structurally `empty' place of exception

Beyond Dissociation and Appropriation: Evaluating the Politics of U.S. Psychology Via Hermeneutic Interpretation of Culturally Embedded Presentations of Yoga

Psychology in the United States (U.S.) is partially constituted by a cultural history of intellectual imperialism that undermines its altruistic intent and prevents disciplinary reflexivity. The scholarship and clinical application of Yoga exemplifies the way U.S. psychology continues to give lived authority to imperialism as part of the neoliberal agenda. Through a hermeneutic literature analysis of two source Yogic texts and peer-reviewed articles that exemplify the dominant discourse on Yoga in U.S. psychology, this dissertation identified themes that describe culturally embedded presentations of Yoga and their sociopolitical implications. Through interpretation, Yoga was conceptualized as: (a) a 5,000 year-old tradition that prescribes a life path to achieving one’s full potential and includes (but is not limited to) an expression of psychology unique to Yoga that encompasses a complex moral framework, theory of mind, conceptualization of suffering and illness, and rich collection of healing technologies; (b) a phenomenological state of being, or unwavering realization of the self as undifferentiated unified consciousness; and (c) an artifact of U.S. psychology that enacts dissociated, unformulated, and unarticulated sociopolitical arrangements and events. Themes were presented as dialogue, allowing Yogic theory, philosophy, psychology, and morality to call into question facets of U.S. psychology as they relate to the human condition, psyche, mental illness, and healing technologies. Within the scope of the dissertation, there were four articulated pathways for Yoga to influence U.S. psychology without reverting back to the unconscious inclination to dissociate or appropriate: (a) participate in the tradition of Yoga rather than trying to possess it; (b) acknowledge what the moral framework of Yoga highlights about the complicity of U.S. psychology in the neoliberal agenda; (c) discontinue practices that normalize and sustain intellectual imperialism; and (d) commit to disciplinary refinement and integrity. Also addressed were the limitations of this project and fruitful avenues of further inquiry, including possible steps towards disciplinary refinement and integrity

Sir Hersch Lauterpacht as a prototype of post-war modern international legal thought: analysis of international legalism in the universalisation process of the European law of nations

This thesis explains how Sir Hersch Lauterpacht constructed his international legal theory in the universalisation process of the European law of nations. Introduction presents the general background of the universalisation process of the European law of nations. Chapter 1 discusses the situationality of Lauterpacht, which affected his life as an international lawyer, namely his Jewish background, the influence of Kelsen and the English tradition of international law. Lauterpacht's normative conception of the international community in the inter-war period is explicated in Chapter 2. hi Chapter 3,1 examine how Lauterpacht dealt with legal problems in the outlawry of war from the inter-war period to the end of the Second World War. Chapter 4 holds Lauterpacht's attempts to reconstruct the international community after World War E. Being opposed to political realism, Lauterpacht employed the Grotian Tradition in order to prove the historical value of his idealism. He moulded the function of states into the framework of his normative conception of the international community as civitas maxima with regard to recognition, collective security and the international protection of human rights. I demonstrate how Lauterpacht contributed to the work of the International Law Commission in Chapter 5 from 1952 to 1954. Chapter 6 examined the problems of the responsibility of international judges, namely their neutrality, legal reasoning, and the compatibility of’ automatic' reservation with the ICJ Statute. The conclusion is an appreciation of legalism within the framework of the universalisation of international law in the era of decolonisatio

A State of Peace in Europe

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s West German foreign policy underwent substantial transformations: from bilateral to multilateral, from reactive to proactive. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was an ideal setting for this evolution, enabling the Federal Republic to take the lead early on in Western preparations for the conference and to play a decisive role in the actual East–West negotiations leading to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Based on extensive original research of recently released documents, spanning more than fifteen archives in eight countries, this study is a substantial contribution to scholarly discussions on the history of détente, the CSCE and West German foreign policy. The author stresses the importance of looking beyond the bipolarity of the Cold War decades and emphasizes the interconnectedness of European integration and European détente

Constellations of Adornian theory and film: readings of Adorno with Tarkovsky and Haneke

This thesis engages in analysis and interpretation of certain ideas within the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). These analyses are placed into a constellational relationship with some filmic works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke. In doing so, I aim to highlight the ongoing relevance and validity of at least some core elements of Adornian theory in a contemporary context. The thesis consists of four substantive chapters. The first chapter functions as an extended introduction to and justification for the thesis as a whole, and it provides the theoretical background to the project before explicating the idea of a constellational method. The second chapter explores the notion of mimesis in Adorno’s thought and Tarkovsky’s films as a crucial rejoinder to the prevailing ‘communicative’ paradigm instituted in large part by Jürgen Habermas’ work. The third chapter considers the importance of marginality to the task of social critique by analyzing Adorno’s theoretical reflections on the matter and how these can be related to and supported by Haneke’s filmic work. The fourth and final chapter examines the relationship between humanity and nature within two preeminent ecological discourses, in contrast to Adorno’s critical theory and some of Tarkovsky’s films, with the intention of showing how the latter offer a more nuanced and dialectical understanding of this relation. Throughout the analyses herein, I defend and demonstrate the fertility and pertinence of Adornian theory, for both the interpretation of film and robust criticism of extant social and political conditions. The thesis shows that by constellating Adorno’s critical theory with film one may bring out important insights that enhance and enable people’s capacity to critically respond to the woefully inadequate status quo

Procedural identification : algorithmic role-playing in video games

Video games and role-playing games both possess the ability to structure the player’s experience of themselves around their underlying and internal structures. Tabletop role-playing games do so through complex rules involving random dice rolls whereas video games do so through their basic algorithmic and software structure. This thesis investigates how the combination of properties from both media in the form of video role-playing games, or vRPGs, can impact and structure the player’s sense of identification with the player character. This thesis draws heavily on Wendy Chun, Alexander Galloway and Ian Bogost’s theories of procedurality in games as well as both modern and post-modern theories of identity and identification in order to argue that vRPGs have the ability to actively guide and construct the player’s identification. When looked at as procedural media, one quickly discovers that games are capable of interacting and responding to the player. I chose to call this quality of games “procedural identification”. This thesis also foregrounds the importance of the played aspect of games in order to highlight the fact that the sense of identification that comes from playing a game is both active and the result of the player’s interactions with the game’s programmatic interface. In essence, the meaning of a game emerges only during and after play. By structuring this play according to underlying algorithmic processes, games are capable of structure the player’s interaction and experience in unique and incredibly rich ways.Radio-Television-Fil