Dietary moderately oxidized oil induces expression of fibroblast growth factor 21 in the liver of pigs

BACKGROUND: Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), whose expression is induced by peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha), has been recently identified as a novel metabolic regulator which plays a crucial role in glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity and obesity. Previous studies have shown that administration of oxidized fats leads to an activation of PPARalpha in the liver. Therefore, the present study investigated the hypothesis that feeding of oxidized fats causes an induction of FGF21 in the liver. METHODS: Twenty four crossbred pigs were allocated to two groups of 12 pigs each and fed nutritionally adequate diets with either fresh rapeseed oil or oxidized rapeseed oil prepared by heating at a temperature of 175 degrees C for 72 h. RESULTS: In pigs fed the oxidized fat mRNA abundance and protein concentrations of FGF21 in liver were significantly increased (P < 0.05), and the protein concentrations of FGF21 in plasma tended to be increased (P < 0.1) in comparison to control pigs. Moreover, pigs fed the oxidized fat had increased transcript levels of the PPARalpha target genes acyl-CoA oxidase, carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 and novel organic cation transporter 2 in the liver (P < 0.05), indicative of PPARalpha activation. CONCLUSION: The present study shows for the first time that administration of an oxidized fat induces the expression of FGF21 in the liver, probably mediated by activation of PPARalpha. Induction of FGF21 could be involved in several effects observed in animals administered an oxidized fat

Las sociedades aprenden y aún así el mundo es difícil de cambiar

Evolution and learning are two analytically distinct concepts. People learn yet evolution ("change") does not necessarily take place. To clarify this problem the concept of learning is explicated. A first problem addressed is the question of who is learning. Here a shift from the single actor perspective to an interaction perspective is proposed (using Habermas and Luhmann as theoretical arguments for such a shift). Both however idealize he preconditions that interactants share while learning collectively. Against rationalist assumptions it is argued that in order to learn people need a narratively based shared world. What do they learn? They acquire knowledge and they learn how to learn. This still does not solve the problem why they learn. Going beyond the idea of self-propelling learning processes situations of uncertainty are identified as the mechanism of learning, naming situations of breakdown of narrative orders the deepest uncertainty to foster learning. Learning, this is the conclusion, does not guarantee evolution. It however provides the mutations for evolutionary processes to take place.Evolución y aprendizaje son dos conceptos analíticamente distintos. Las personas aprenden y aún así la evolución ("el cambio") no ocurre necesariamente. Para clarificar este problema el concepto de aprendizaje es explicado. Un primer problema tratado es la pregunta acerca de quién está aprendiendo. Aquí se propone un desplazamiento desde la perspectiva del actor individual a una perspectiva de la interacción (utilizando los argumentos teóricos de Habermas y Luhmann para tal desplazamiento). Sin embargo, ambos idealizan las precondiciones que los interactuantes comparten mientras aprenden colectivamente. En contra de supuestos racionalistas, se argumenta que las personas para poder aprender necesitan compartir un mundo narrativo. ¿Qué aprenden? Adquieren conocimiento y aprenden a aprender. Esto aún no soluciona el problema de por qué aprenden. Yendo más allá de la idea de procesos de aprendizaje impulsados por el propio individuo, se identifica a las situaciones de incertidumbre como el mecanismo de aprendizaje. Las situaciones de interrupción de órdenes narrativos representarían la forma de incertidumbre más profunda para fomentar el aprendizaje. La conclusión es que el aprendizaje no garantiza la evolución. Sin embargo, provee las mutaciones para que los procesos evolutivos ocurran

The Paradox of Political Participation: Theorizing Uncivil Society

The paper addresses the phenomenon of civil societies turning into uncivil societies and the capacity of civil societies for self-repair. Confronted with the recent events of the rise and fall of civil society in the “Arab Spring” and in the Ukrainian Maidan movement a conceptual framework is offered for accounting for such rise and fall. It starts with the paradox that participation in public debate equally produces civil and uncivil outcomes, thus taking up the classic thesis of the “fall of reason” formulated in the tradition of “critical theory” on the “dialectics of enlightenment”. Such “dialectics” results from the interplay of three mechanisms that shape the making of a civil society: the rule of law, the market and the forum. These mechanisms have their specific historical legacy in political and social philosophy. Civil society praised by some as the outcome of the rule of law, by others as the outcome of free markets and by others as the outcome of free speech, empirically does not stand up to these normative expectations. These mechanisms produce “perverse effects”, grasped by the metaphor of monsters representing the rule of law and the market: Leviathan (the perverse effects of the rule of law) and Behemoth (the perverse of the market). These perverse effects cumulate in the emergence of uncivil society as the apotheosis of unreason. Fascism is a case for the perverse effects of public communication and political mobilization of people. After identifying the third monster, I will put forward the argument that the forum works not only as mechanism of repairing the rule of law and the market, but also as a “mechanism of self-repair” of civil so­ciet

The cultural code of modernity and the problem of nature: a critique of the naturalistic notion of progress

The idea of progress has in recent years increasingly been put into question. The key experience contributing to disengaging the idea of progress from the idea of rationality has been the ecological crisis. This crisis has made modern culture look like it fosters a way of organizing social life that is self- destructive. The crisis has nourished cultural movements counter to modernization. There are groups and discourses, everyday ones and intellectual ones, that plead for reenchantment as opposed to disenchantment. Modern culture has started to react to this experience by putting into question its key concepts: rationalization and rationality. Modernization based on rationality appears to be only one of many alternative ways of organizing modern social life. It appears to be nothing but the social form forced upon the majority of societies in the world by a dominant European culture and its American and Russian derivatives. Modernity is a cultural force that has imposed upon us a form of social evolution that cannot control its own consequences. New, alternative ideas and movements are increasingly being directed against this type of modern rationality. These counterprocesses are not adequately described as antimodern or traditionalistic regressions. Instead, they represent another type of rationality and rationalization within the legacy of modern culture. The increasing concern with nature that we experience today is symptomatic of a fundamental cultural cleavage within the culture that underlies, accompanies and regulates the development of highly complex societies in European-type modernization processes. This cultural cleavage is traceable to the Semitic and Greek origins of modern culture. Two conflicting traditions, one of bloody sacrifice and one of unbloody (vegetarian!) paradise, still define the cultural universe within which we live. Expanding the notion of cultural traditions constitutive for the European experience of modernization and conceptualizing it as the manifestation of competing codes of modern culture, we are able to identify not one but two types of relationships with nature in modern society. Thus we arrive at two types of rationality encountered in modern culture: utilitarian rationality and communicative rationality, and at two types of culture within modern culture: culture as profit and culture as communication. Ultimately, we have the outline of a new theoretical notion of progress. It is one that puts into question any social theory premised on its own progressiveness in terms of the European version of progress. The current ecological crisis has destroyed the last bastion of the belief in natural progress, the mastery of nature. Social theory should continue the task of de-illusioning this self-ascription, of disengaging European-style progress from the notion of modernity.Der Verfasser skizziert zunächst das Rationalisierungsparadigma bei Marx und seine Radikalisierung bei Weber, um vor diesem Hintergrund nach neuen theoretischen Perspektiven zur Erfassung der Kultur der Moderne zu fragen. Im Mittelpunkt seines Ansatzes stehen zwei alternative Optionen moderner europäischer Kultur - die griechische und die jüdische Tradition. Jede dieser beiden Traditionen hat ein eigenes Verständnis von Natur und dementsprechend ein eigenes Muster des Umgangs mit Natur. Der kulturelle Code der Moderne ist dementsprechend ein doppelter, wie der Verfasser in der Gegenüberstellung der Gegensätze Rationalität und Romantik, Evolution und Gleichgewicht sowie utilitaristische und kommunikative Vernunft zeigt. Die konfligierenden Naturbegriffe kommen in unterschiedlichen Versionen der praktischen Vernunft zum Ausdruck, in der utilitaristischen und der kommunikativen Vernunft. Der Verfasser zeigt abschließend, wie sich die Handlungsfelder Natur und Kultur sowie die Handlungsorientierungen Kommunikation und Nutzenoptimierung zu vier Möglichkeiten einer praktischen Nutzung des Fortschrittskonzepts kombinieren lassen. (ICE

The Paradox of Political Participation: Theorizing Uncivil Society

The paper addresses the phenomenon of civil societies turning into uncivil societies and the capacity of civil societies for self-repair. Confronted with the recent events of the rise and fall of civil society in the “Arab Spring” and in the Ukrainian Maidan movement a conceptual framework is offered for accounting for such rise and fall. It starts with the paradox that participation in public debate equally produces civil and uncivil outcomes, thus taking up the classic thesis of the “fall of reason” formulated in the tradition of “critical theory” on the “dialectics of enlightenment”. Such “dialectics” results from the interplay of three mechanisms that shape the making of a civil society: the rule of law, the market and the forum. These mechanisms have their specific historical legacy in political and social philosophy. Civil society praised by some as the outcome of the rule of law, by others as the outcome of free markets and by others as the outcome of free speech, empirically does not stand up to these normative expectations. These mechanisms produce “perverse effects”, grasped by the metaphor of monsters representing the rule of law and the market: Leviathan (the perverse effects of the rule of law) and Behemoth (the perverse of the market). These perverse effects cumulate in the emergence of uncivil society as the apotheosis of unreason. Fascism is a case for the perverse effects of public communication and political mobilization of people. After identifying the third monster, I will put forward the argument that the forum works not only as mechanism of repairing the rule of law and the market, but also as a “mechanism of self-repair” of civil so­ciet

On the cultural origins and the historical formation of the traditional state: some theoretical considerations

Gegenstand der Untersuchung ist der Einfluss soziokultureller Faktoren auf die Entwicklung des modernen Staates. Ziel ist es, die Grundannahmen des Historischen Materialismus als allgemeiner Theorie der sozialen Entwicklung zu überprüfen. Der Verfasser setzt sich dementsprechend mit der Frage auseinander, ob eine Erklärung der Entstehung des Staates durch Entwicklungsprozesse in primitiven Gesellschaften möglich ist. Er erläutert zunächst die soziologische Konzeption der "sozialen Formation" und zeigt, welche Bedeutung sie für die Erklärung der Entstehung von Staaten hat. Er fragt vor diesem Hintergrund nach dem ideellen Element der Existenz sozialer Beziehungen im Denken und zeigt, dass dieses ideelle Element konstitutiv für staatliche Strukturen ist. Die Frage nach dem Ursprung kognitiver Strukturen im realen gesellschaftlichen Leben führt zu einer theoretischen Konzeption, die die kulturellen Ursprünge und die historische Entstehung des traditionalen Staates erklären kann. (ICE

The rise of counter-culture movements against modernity: nature as a new field of class struggle

Angesichts der vielfältigen selbstvernichtenden Krisen der modernen Gesellschaft, vor allem der ökologischen Krisen, sind in den letzten Jahren zunehmend soziale Bewegungen der Gegenkultur entstanden, deren Ziel darin besteht, die Reproduktion moderner Gesellschaften zu unterbrechen und die soziale Entwicklung der westlichen Industriestaaten besonders im Hinblick auf die globale Umweltkatastrophe zu korrigieren. Der Beitrag befaßt sich mit der Konfrontation zwischen Gegenkultur und modernen Gesellschaften in Europa. Dabei werden veränderte Implikationen diskutiert, die sich alle um das Problem der Differenzierung und Intensivierung der Ausbeutung der Natur zentrieren. Ein Blick auf rationalistische Traditionen innerhalb der modernen Kulturen, einschließlich der marxistischen Kritik der modernen Gesellschaft, zeigt, wie unsensibel diese das Verhältnis von Mensch und Natur behandeln. Die historische Rekonstruktion gegenkultureller Traditionen verdeutlicht dagegen eine starke Bindung an das Thema der Natur. Diese Betrachtung erlaubt, das Aufkommen der neuen Gegenkulturen als Indikatoren für eine neue Qualität des Klassenkampfes zu sehen, dessen Hauptaugenmerk auf der Ausbeutung der Natur liegt. Abschließend werden theoretische und methodologische Folgen dieser Entwicklung für eine Erneuerung der Sozialtheorie diskutiert. (ICH

Learning and the evolution of social systems: an epigenetic perspective

The theory of epigenetic developments in evolution rests upon two assumptions. First, it refers to developmental processes that decouple biological from genetic evolution. Decoupling evolutionary processes from genetic evolution is even more important for social evolution. Second, it claims that the development of an organism plays a vital role in evolution. It takes into account the specific role individual development plays in evolution. Thus epigenesis refers to definite evolutionary processes unintelligible within Darwinian theory (Ho and Saunders, 1982). This special characteristic of epigenetic processes restricts the field of random developments in evolution. The Darwinian processes of variation and selection are seen as of secondary relevance for evolution to take place. The logic of evolution is decoupled from Darwinian logic, which thus loses its pre-eminent role in explaining evolutionary sequences. An epigenetic system that organizes individual development as cognitive learning processes (as does the epigenetic system underlying social evolution) changes evolutionary processes in several respects. It changes (1) the tempo of evolution (2) the internal structures that restrict the relevance of selection processes and (3) the conditions that favour learning processes and therefore the innovations that are necessary for social evolution. The central characteristic of social evolution is that society is produced by such cognitive learning processes. Learning processes allow for the self-production (Touraine, 1973) of society. Of central importance to the process of self-production is a special type of cognitive learning, namely moral learning (Fairservis, 1975). Moral development emerges in learning processes specific to the human species, and is therefore considered to be the key variable in a theory of social evolution (Eder, 1976, 1984; Habermas, 1981).Der Verfasser fragt nach dem Stellenwert der Evolutionstheorie in den Sozialwissenschaften und nach der Rolle des epigenetischen Systems in diesem Zusammenhang. Hierbei spielen Lernprozesse eine besondere Rolle, vor allem eine Spielart des kognitiven Lernens, das moralische Lernen, das als Schlüsselvariable in der Theorie sozialer Evolution gesehen wird. Gesellschaft ist das Produkt kognitiver Lernprozesse. Der Verfasser entwickelt seine Argumentation zur Rolle der Evolutionstheorie in den Sozialwissenschaften in drei Schritten. Zunächst rekonstruiert er die klassische Version der Erklärung evolutionären Wandels in der Geschichte über genuin soziale Faktoren, über die Konflikte zwischen sozialen Klassen (Marx). In einem zweiten Schritt geht es um die soziale Konstruktion des kognitiven Universums. Als Beispiel dient hier die Entstehung des Staates in den historischen Stammesgesellschaften Angolas. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden in einem dritten Schritt die theoretischen Konsequenzen des Axioms einer sozialen Konstitution von Lernprozessen und der gesellschaftlichen Evolution und seine Auswirkungen auf eine Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Evolution diskutiert. (ICE

Culture and crisis: making sense of the crisis of the work society

Whether there is a crisis in advanced industrial societies is open to debate. But there is undeniably a discourse on crisis. Politically, it focuses on the crisis of the welfare state, economically on the ecological limits of growth, and culturally on the loss of meaning in modern life. Even the social sciences, whose job it is to identify and monitor such discourses, are sometimes thought to be affected. Whether the crisis exists or not, there is at least a strong cultural pessimism in intellectual and everyday life that fuels the discourse on crisis. But there is no consensus as to its extent or its character, not even a consensus as to what is meant by a crisis. This makes it difficult to transcend cultural pessimism and turn to social analysis, to an "objectifying" account of this supposed crisis. We will try to clarify the notion of crisis using the German discussion of the "Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft" or "crisis of the work society" (Matthes 1983). This social science discourse on crisis - we claim - is a new version of the never-ending discourse on crisis in modern society. It is a discourse that puts crisis into perspective as the result of an accumulation of either changes in the objective structural conditions of work (e.g. the labor market) and/or changes in the cultural conditions of work (e.g. the work ethic). But these changes are not sufficient in themselves to explain the supposed crisis. We need an additional argument that distinguishes between situations of crisis and non-crisis. Crisis - we suggest - ensues when social changes lead to a situation where the capacity of a society to control the course and direction of its own development is blocked. Crisis is - to put it bluntly - a block in the capacity of society to control its course and direction of change.Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der Bedeutung und dem Stellenwert der Diskussion um das "Ende bzw. die Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft" in der Bundesrepublik. Generell wird dieser sozialwissenschaftliche Diskurs als Spielart des "nicht enden wollenden" Räsonierens über die "Krise der Moderne" interpretiert. Der Begriff der "Arbeitsgesellschaft" wurde von Ralf Dahrendorf 1980 in die Soziologie eingeführt und war 1982 Thema des 21. Deutschen Soziologentages in Bamberg ('Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?'). Hinweise, dass die gegenwärtige Gesellschaft nicht mehr als "Arbeitsgesellschaft" aufgefasst werden kann, waren der Rückgang der durchschnittlichen Lebensarbeitszeit und die Zunahme von in Aus- und Weiterbildungsprozessen befindlichen Gesellschaftsmitgliedern; strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit und institutionalisierte Unterbeschäftigung; Entfaltung des Freizeitlebens und Anwachsen seiner Wertigkeit; Rückgang der subjektiven Bedeutung von Berufsarbeit für die Lebensauffassung und die Befindlichkeit; das Anwachsen postmaterialistischer Werte; Verblassen der klassischen Konflikte zwischen Kapital und Lohnarbeit. Die Ausführungen zeigen insgesamt, dass sich nicht die "Arbeitsgesellschaft" nach dem Kriege aufgelöst hat, sondern dass die "traditionelle" Arbeiterklasse mit ihrer ausgeprägten Arbeiterkulturbewegung erodierte. (ICA

Pandora’s box: The two sides of the public sphere

The public sphere is the site where the collective will of the people is formed. The thesis is that to the extent that the people are constructed as entities that pre-exist their collective will, the public sphere contributes to fostering the evil among a people and between the people. This is discussed using the cases of nationalism, sovereigntism and populism. The narrative of Pandora’s box provides the analytical leverage for retelling the theory of the public sphere. The story is that after the evils escaped Pandora’s box, hope remained. This leads to two propositions: hope as preventing the closing off of the future of a people and hope as fostering collective learning processes that rectify the evils. These propositions provide the ground for a critical theory of the public sphere in which the force of the better argument is insufficient to explain the capability of a people to rectify the bad. It is a theory in which social relations matter that turn individuals into a people beyond national, statist or populist containers, making a people that is open to define and redefine itself in collective learning processes.Peer Reviewe