Postdemokratie und Engaged Citizenship. Optionen zivilgesellschaftlichen Protests am Beispiel des europäischen Attac-Netzwerkes

Der Beitrag thematisiert das europäische Attac-Netzwerk als eine Lernplattform, über die sich engaged European citizenship im als postdemokratisch beschriebenen Kontext konsti­tuiert. Dem diskursiven Erfolg, der die Kritik des Neoliberalismus und einige Forderungen von Attac in eine Mainstream-Position versetzt, steht dabei die Tatsache gegenüber, dass bislang jeglicher realpolitische Niederschlag dieser Kritiken und Forderungen aussteht. Aus dem Fallbeispiel ergeben sich grundsätzliche Überlegungen zu folgenden Fragen: Wie lassen sich gegenwärtige Dilemmata für Engaged Citizenship (eine engagierte BürgerInnenschaft) in Europa vor dem Hintergrund der Postdemokratie-These verstehen? Welches Licht werfen weitere Ansätze, etwa eine gouvernementalistische Perspektive, auf die beschriebenen Bildungsprozesse? (DIPF/Orig.)The article deals with the European Attac network as a learning platform through which engaged European citizenship is constituted in a context described as post-democratic: The discursive success, which puts the critique of neoliberalism and some of Attac‘s claims in a mainstream position, is confronted with the fact that these critiques and claims have not found any expression in politics yet. Fundamental considerations have emerged from this case study concerning the following questions: How can current dilemmas for engaged citizenship in Europe be understood against the background of the post-democratic thesis? What kind of light do further approaches, such as a governmentalist perspective, shed upon the described education processes? (DIPF/Orig.

The Making of a Paradigm: Exploring the Potential of the Economy of Convention and Pragmatic Sociology of Critique

THE organization of ideas into schools that form around the work of a particular individual or group-often in opposition to another (earlier) school-and are centred within a cosmopolitan-based institution from which their influence then spreads, is a familiar feature of the academic business particularly, although not exclusively, within the humanities and social sciences. Contemporary French social thought contains two notable examples: actor-network theory (ANT), which emerged out of the work of Bruno Latour and Michel Callon at the Ecole des Mines, Paris (see Chapters 5 and 6, this volume), and the 'economy of convention' approach that congealed around the work of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris. Together, these two interrelated strands form the new French 'pragmatic sociology: The term 'pragmatic' here is a reference to the late nineteenth-/early twentiethcentury American pragmatism of Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead. Like their American precursors, the new French pragmatic sociology focuses on the way actors interpret and practically engage with the world. Language, understood as the basic social institution, is conceived here both as the medium of interaction and as a tool that allows actors to constitute and constantly (re-) negotiate reality

Capitalism and the Spirit of Critique: Activism and Professional Fate in a Contemporary Social Movement/NGO

Luc Boltanski's and Ève Chiapello's recent work on the 'new' spirit of capitalism has attracted considerable attention. This article seeks to (1) examine contemporary social movement organization (SMO)/NGO activity in the light of their analysis; (2) ask whether this 'spirit' is a return to the original and 'authentic' 'economic cosmos' that Weber described in 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'. Attac is taken as the indicative case, and our analysis is based upon research into one of its national groupings, namely Attac-Austria. The paper focuses upon the relationship of professional fate ('Berufsschicksal') and extra-professional activity, in this case political activism; a focus which has to be complemented by the conceptual tools of Weber's analyses of individual professions. The latter supplements the abstraction of 'spirit' by relating it to the ineluctable tension between exceptional and ordinary professional action. How, in this context, is political activity shaped by the actual or anticipated project-based professional activities of the current cohort of the politically active

Invoking Humboldt: The German Model

How can one possibly know completely a nation's character without having also studied other nations with which it is in close relation? It is in contrast with them that this character actually came into being and it is only through this fact that it can be fully comprehended. (Humboldt, quoted in Dumont 1994: 120) The present volume is concerned with the sociology of higher education, and thus takes a comparative perspective, much in the spirit of the above Humboldt quotation. In the case of German-speaking universities we are in the fortunate position of having analysis from leading sociologists such as Max Weber (brilliantly updated in the late 1960s by the historical sociologist Fritz Ringer), influential social anthropologists, notably Louis Dumont, through to significant representatives of contemporary critical theory Jürgen Habermas), and systems theory, such as Rudolf Stichweh and Uwe Schimank. This chapter will, selectively, draw on this rich social-scientific tradition to throw light on, first, the ideas and institutions that shaped the higher education system in the German-speaking countries and gave it its distinct - and for a time highly influential - character and, second, the dilemmas that the system currently faces in the light of the emergence of higher education as an international system under - for the moment - Anglo-American hegemony

Invoking Humboldt: The German model of higher education

Higher education in German-speaking countries has a historical claim to be a distinct system, one which, furthermore, exerted considerable influence on other national higher-education systems. This claim is linked to another model, namely the 'Humboldtian' model that was the origin of the modern university, as a place of both teaching and research enjoying a high degree of autonomy and self-direction. This chapter first examines the ideals of the 'Humboldtian university' and accounts of the reality behind it. The model has retained much of its prestige and its underlying principles (notably freedom of and unity between teaching and research) and continues to enjoy wide support within the academic community. The idea of the Humboldtian university has acted as a rallying point across two waves of post-war reform: the massification of universities from the 1970s and the more recent reorganization of higher education influenced by international trends and by new public management (NPM). This chapter discusses these reform waves in both Germany and Austria and concludes by examining some prospects and outlooks

Positioning Higher Education in the Imagined Histories, Geographies and Futures of a European Cross-Border Region

This article examines attempts to develop research cooperation and the research sector in a European cross-border region (CBR), Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino. It reports the result of thirty-one expert interviews with key actors: senior managers in universities and research institutes, and policy-makers and administrators within the region. The focus is on the positioning of higher education and research institutes at various scalar levels: the regional, the respective national contexts (Italy and Austria), the Euroregion, and the international. The paper draws on social identity and positioning theory in analyzing the material and emphasizes the, often paradoxical, dynamic between the scalar levels. It concludes by drawing out some broader implications of the case study for understanding the role of HE and research institutions in emerging knowledge cities or regions

Universities and the Regulatory Framework: The Austrian University System in Transition

This article uses recent changes within the Austrian university system to illustrate some general features and dilemmas of organizational design and reform. We focus upon two recent layers of the sediments left by previous and current system reforms: that left by the events of 1968 on continental university systems, and Austria's late conversion to the path taken by the Anglo-American university system since the late 1970s/early 1980s; namely, towards what Marginson and Considine have called the "enterprise university". These two reform waves are, we argue, neatly reflected in two university laws - UOG 1975 and UG 2002 - which capture with great clarity the spirit of these two policy moments. The Austrian case is thus of interest for two types of reason: first, because of the co-existence of deeply engrained traditions with more recent experiments in organizational democracy (co-determination); secondly, because of the rapidity with which current reforms seek to catch up with what are taken to be international developments in university management. Drawing on arguments advanced by Christopher Hood, Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, and by Albert Hirschman, we seek to draw general conclusions concerning the implications of organizational reform for the management of organizations generally, and of universities in particular