Ambivalenzen der Zivilgesellschaft: Gegenbegriffe, Gewalt und Macht

Die Beiträge dieses discussion papers gehen auf einen Workshop am WZB im Dezember 2002 zurück, der historische Forschungsperspektiven des Konzepts Zivilgesellschaft zum Gegenstand hatte. Sie dokumentieren einen zentralen Strang der Debatte: um die – explizit oder implizit – enthaltene regulativ-normative Tendenz in der Konzeptualisierung von Zivilgesellschaft. Hervorgehoben werden drei Aspekte, die in den geläufigen, vielfach normativ geprägten Begriffsbestimmungen von Zivilgesellschaft übergangen oder externalisiert werden: die Konzeptualisierung von Zivilgesellschaft aufgrund von Gegenbegriffen, die Ursprünge von Zivilgesellschaft in Krieg und Gewalt, schließlich die Bedeutung von Macht innerhalb von Zivilgesellschaften. Die Beiträge sind durch die Annahme verbunden, daß sich an der Frage, ob Macht und Gewalt als Gegensatz oder Teil, gegebenenfalls als Bedingung zivilgesellschaftlicher Strukturen aufgefaßt werden, Art und Grad normativer Konzeptualisierungen von Zivilgesellschaft entscheiden. Der normative Gehalt zivilgesellschaftlicher Konzeptbildung wird problematisiert, indem er mit den Ambivalenzen (zivil)gesellschaftlicher Realität konfrontiert wird. Gezeigt wird, wie seit der Frühen Neuzeit das Konzept der Zivilgesellschaft in Entgegensetzung zu den Feindprinzipien des Fanatismus und der Barbarei entwickelt wurde (Colas); inwieweit die Entstehung von Zivilgesellschaften durch Gewalt und Krieg bedingt war (Leonhard); schließlich welche Verhältnisse von Macht und Zwang, Sozial- und Selbstdisziplinierung für zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationsformen typisch waren und sind (Llanque, Sarasin, Bröckling, Priddat). Die Beiträge wollen zu weiterer, empirischer Forschung über die Ambivalenzen der Zivilgesellschaft und ihre „dunklen Seiten“ anregen.The contributions to this paper result from a workshop on the concept of ‘civil society’ from a historical perspective, held at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin in December 2002. They document a central topic of the debate: the (explicit or implicit) regulative and normative implications of the civil society concept. Three aspects are pointed out that traditional, mostly normative, concepts of civil society tend to neglect or externalise: a possible conceptualisation of civil society by opposite terms, by locating its origin in war and violence, and by reflecting the impact of power within civil societies. All contributions are based on the idea that the problem of power and violence, whether they are opposite to civil society, or rather part (or even precondition) of it, might be an indicator to which extent conceptions of civil society in fact imply normative assumptions. Such assumptions are confronted with the ambivalence of (civil) societal reality. It is shown how the concept of civil society at the beginning of modern times emerged from opposite notions such as fanaticism and barbarianism (Colas); from violence and war (Leonhard) and, finally, which interrelations of power, enforcement, and discipline were typical for organisations in civil society at the time and today (Llanque, Sarasin, Bröckling, Priddat). This paper aims at stimulating further empirical research on the ambivalence of civil society and its “dark sides”

Tuning of 3-tap Bandpass Filter During Acceleration for Longitudinal Beam Stabilization at FAIR

During acceleration in the heavy-ion synchrotrons SIS18/SIS100 at GSI/FAIR longitudinal beam oscillations are expected to occur. To reduce longitudinal emittance blowup, dedicated LLRF beam feedback systems are planned. To date, damping of longitudinal beam oscillations has been demonstrated in SIS18 machine experiments with a 3-tap filter controller (e.g. [1]), which is robust in regard to control parameters and also to noise. On acceleration ramps the control parameters have to be adjusted to the varying synchrotron frequency. Previous results from beam experiments at GSI indicate that a proportional tuning rule for one parameter and an inversely proportional tuning rule for a second parameter is feasible, but the obtained damping rate may not be optimal for all synchrotron frequencies during the ramp. In this work, macro-particle simulations are performed to evaluate, whether it is sufficient to adjust the control parameters proportionally (inversely proportionally) to the change in the linear synchrotron frequency, or if it is necessary to take more parameters, such as bunch-length and synchronous phase, into account to achieve stability and a considerable high damping rate for excited longitudinal dipole beam oscillations. This is done for single- and dual-harmonic acceleration ramps

Design and tuning of digital filters for RF feedback loops in heavy-ion synchrotrons

Damping of longitudinal coherent bunched-beam oscillations are needed in SIS18 and SIS100 to stabilize the beam, prevent emittance growth and keep beamloss low during acceleration. In last year’s work several approaches of digital filters for beam-phase control have been examined. An FIR (finite impulse response) filter with 3 taps, cf. [1], has been successfully used at GSI in several machine experiments for a beam- phase control system and a longitudinal feedback system. In principle, much more taps can be used, but it is still an open topic, whether more complex filters will lead to better results. Therefore, a detailed control-theoretic study has been started and the progress is reported in the following

Dietary fibers inhibit obesity in mice, but host responses in the cecum and liver appear unrelated to fiber-specific changes in cecal bacterial taxonomic composition

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Update of D3/D7-Brane Inflation on K3 x T^2/Z_2

We update the D3/D7-brane inflation model on K3 x T^2/Z_2 with branes and fluxes. For this purpose, we study the low energy theory including g_s corrections to the gaugino condensate superpotential that stabilizes the K3 volume modulus. The gauge kinetic function is verified to become holomorphic when the original N=2 supersymmetry is spontaneously broken to N=1 by bulk fluxes. From the underlying classical N=2 supergravity, the theory inherits a shift symmetry which provides the inflaton with a naturally flat potential. We analyze the fate of this shift symmetry after the inclusion of quantum corrections. The field range of the inflaton is found to depend significantly on the complex structure of the torus but is independent of its volume. This allows for a large kinematical field range for the inflaton. Furthermore, we show that the D3/D7 model may lead to a realization of the recent CMB fit by Hindmarsh et al. with an 11% contribution from cosmic strings and a spectral index close to n_s=1. On the other hand, by a slight change of the parameters of the model one can strongly suppress the cosmic string contribution and reduce the spectral index n_s to fit the WMAP5 data in the absence of cosmic strings. We also demonstrate that the inclusion of quantum corrections allows for a regime of eternal D3/D7 inflation.Comment: LaTeX2e, 55 pages + appendices, 8 figures; v3: added appendix F and a note at the end of the conclusions in order to clarify the relation of our results to the recent work by Burgess et al. (arXiv:0811.1503

Seeing through the String Landscape - a String Hunter's Companion in Particle Physics and Cosmology

In this article we will overview several aspects of the string landscape, namely intersecting D-brane models and their statistics, possible model independent LHC signatures of intersecting brane models, flux compactification, moduli stabilization in type II compactifications, domain wall solutions and brane inflation.Comment: 94 pages, Review paper invited and accepted for publication by JHEP, revised version contains several new references and other minor modification