Sociological knowledge and Ideology in the German Democratic Republic: the institutionalization processes of a discipline

This article analyzes the dissemination of sociological knowledge in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) and other fields of cultural production in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), from the early postwar period to German reunification. In this regard, I investigate the relationships between sociology and politics, taking into account the specific contexts of the GDR-State and the institutionalization processes of these disciplines. To prevent a deterministic understanding of political power on academic and scientific systems, I adopt the Bourdieusian concept of field (cf. Bourdieu 1966; 1984; 1985; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Bourdieu and Boltanski 2008). This concept allows me to highlight how the relationship between the academic and political fields changed over time by simultaneously looking at the influences of political, cultural, social and economic transformations of GDR society on the political goals of the GDR-State and the strategies of sociologists within the broader field of production of sociological knowledge

No evidence for a shift in pyruvate kinase PKM1 to PKM2 expression during tumorigenesis

The Warburg effect describes the circumstance that tumor cells preferentially use glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation for energy production. It has been reported that this metabolic reconfiguration originates from a switch in the expression of alternative splice forms (PKM1 and PKM2) of the glycolytic enzyme pyruvate kinase (PK), which is also important for malignant transformation. However, analytical evidence for this assumption was still lacking. Using mass spectrometry, we performed an absolute quantification of PKM1 and PKM2 splice isoforms in 25 human malignant cancers, 6 benign oncocytomas, tissue matched controls, and several cell lines. PKM2 was the prominent isoform in all analyzed cancer samples and cell lines. However, this PKM2 dominance was not a result of a change in isoform expression, since PKM2 was also the predominant PKM isoform in matched control tissues. In unaffected kidney, lung, liver, and thyroid, PKM2 accounted for a minimum of 93% of total PKM, for 80% - 96% of PKM in colon, and 55% - 61% of PKM in bladder. Similar results were obtained for a panel of tumor and non-transformed cell lines, where PKM2 was the predominant form. Thus, our results reveal that an exchange in PKM1 to PKM2 isoform expression during cancer formation is not occurring, nor do these results support conclusions that PKM2 is specific for proliferating, and PKM1 for non-proliferating tissue

Community-driven ELIXIR activities in single-cell omics

Single-cell omics (SCO) has revolutionized the way and the level of resolution by which life science research is conducted, not only impacting our understanding of fundamental cell biology but also providing novel solutions in cutting-edge medical research. The rapid development of single-cell technologies has been accompanied by the active development of data analysis methods, resulting in a plethora of new analysis tools and strategies every year. Such a rapid development of SCO methods and tools poses several challenges in standardization, benchmarking, computational resources and training. These challenges are in line with the activities of ELIXIR, the European coordinated infrastructure for life science data. Here, we describe the current landscape of and the main challenges in SCO data, and propose the creation of the ELIXIR SCO Community, to coordinate the efforts in order to best serve SCO researchers in Europe and beyond. The Community will build on top of national experiences and pave the way towards integrated long-term solutions for SCO research. Keywor

The uncertain climate footprint of wetlands under human pressure

Significant climate risks are associated with a positive carbon–temperature feedback in northern latitude carbon-rich ecosystems,making an accurate analysis of human impacts on the net greenhouse gas balance of wetlands a priority. Here, we provide a coherent assessment of the climate footprint of a network of wetland sites based on simultaneous and quasi-continuous ecosystem observations of CO2 and CH4 fluxes. Experimental areas are located both in natural and in managed wetlands and cover a wide range of climatic regions, ecosystem types, and management practices. Based on direct observations we predict that sustained CH4 emissions in natural ecosystems are in the long term (i.e., several centuries) typically offset by CO2 uptake, although with large spatiotemporal variability. Using a space-for-time analogy across ecological and climatic gradients, we represent the chronosequence from natural to managed conditions to quantify the “cost” of CH4 emissions for the benefit of net carbon sequestration. With a sustained pulse– response radiative forcing model, we found a significant increase in atmospheric forcing due to land management, in particular for wetland converted to cropland. Our results quantify the role of human activities on the climate footprint of northern wetlands and call for development of active mitigation strategies for managed wetlands and new guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accounting for both sustained CH4 emissions and cumulative CO2 exchange

Principi di una sociologia della cultura

The essay represents one of the first attempt of Alfred Weber to formulate organically the theoretical basis of his cultural sociology. The article was written on the eve of the Weimar Republic, in a phase of tumultuous political life and of perceived cultural crisis. If like other German intellectuals of this age Weber shared the idea that the cultural crisis was chiefly due to the increasing intellectualization and rationalization of the modern society, however he never adopted a dichotomous understanding of this process in terms of civilization versus culture

Forme di capitale

Il termine generale che Bourdieu usa per designare le risorse è quello di origine economica di capitale. Capitale è ciò che si possiede e ciò che conferisce agli agenti sociali potere entro gli specifici campi in cui questi sono attivi. A differenza di quanto afferma però la teoria economica per Bourdieu capitale non è solo di tipo economico ma ne individua in questo saggio altre due forme fondamentali: il capitale culturale, soprattutto nella forma di titoli scolastici, e il capitale sociale, che si istituzionalizza in particolare nella forma dei titoli nobiliar

Doing Social Sciences Via Comics and Graphic Novels. An Introduction

Visual communication is far from new and is almost as old as the social sciences. In the last decades, the interest in the visual dimension of society as well as towards the visual as expression of local and global cultures increased to the extent that specific disciplinary approaches took root --- e.g. visual anthropology and visual sociology. Nevertheless, it seems to us that whereas they are mostly engaged in collecting visual data and analyzing visual cultural products, little attention is paid to one of the original uses of visual material in ethnographic and social research, that is communicating social sciences. Departing from some general questions, such as how visualizing sociological concepts, what role non-textual stimuli play in sociology, how they differentiate according to the kind of public, and how we can critically and reflexively assess the social and disciplinary implications of visualizations of empirical research, we collect in the special issues contributions from social scientists and comics artists who materially engaged in the production of social sciences via comics and graphic narratives.The article is divided into three parts. Firstly, we briefly address the rollercoaster history of encounters between sociology and the sequential art. Secondly, we reconstruct the dynamics and processes which lead to the institutionalization of a transnational field of comics studies. Finally, we introduce the contributions collected in the special issue, based on the persona experiences of social scientists, sometimes in collaboration with illustrators

The Economic and Cultural Withdrawal of Academic Teaching in Italy: Adjunct Professors as a Case Study

This article investigates the working conditions and career aspirations of adjunct professors (Aps) in Italy. It is based on the results of a national survey carried out in 2018 collecting information on a representative sample of 5556 respondents distributed across all Italian universities, on semi-structured interviews with 35 APs, and on an auto-ethnographic study conducted in 2018 during trade union assemblies with precarious academic workers at ten Italian universities. APs are considered as a litmus test for observing how the academic structure and career paths have changed in recent decades in Italy. More specifically, we look at how teaching activities' loss of prestige as 'non-market' activities results in both a loss of academic opportunity for pursuing a future career and a worsening of the present teaching work conditions. In this regard, we combined Bourdieu's field theory and Schütz's social phenomenology, with the recent literature on new forms of unpaid work. Departing from this conceptual frame, in the analysis we explore how working as APs may be seen as an invisible form of unpaid work produced by the new logic of the Italian academic field, which also rules the ways in which economic and symbolic capitals are distributed, affecting the possibility of pursuing an academic career. This article is the result of collaborative research work. However, we declare that Barbara Grüning wrote the introduction, the second, third, and sixth sections, and the conclusions; Gianluca De Angelis wrote the third and fourth sections. We thank the FLC-CGIL trade union and the network of precarious academic workers of the University of Bologna for their organizational support in the early phases of our research and for the dissemination of the research outputs

Precariousness and Academic Careers in Italian Universities

The aim of the paper is to investigate those social conditions and experiences which impact on the possibilities of building a career path in the Italian Universities. The paper will focus on adjunct professors as paradigmatic example of some pivotal transformations which affected the (inter)national academic system in the last decades. We especially point out two interlaced processes which play a crucial role in redefining the formal and informal criteria for pursuing an academic career: the increasing centrality of research activities and output for evaluating the efficiency of academic actors and institutes, and the growth and differentiation of temporary positions. The analysis of the case study is based on the findings of a survey (5,556 respondents) carried out in 2018 and semi-structured interviews (35 interviewees) carried out between 2018 and 2020. For supporting our analysis we relate the concept of career as developed by Hughes (1958) with the concepts of (academic) field, habitus and capitals as developed by Bourdieu (1984; 1986), in order to highlight how the different amount and composition of their set of capitals influence their trajectory within the academic field