Increasing Returns and All That: A View From Trade

Do scale economies contribute to our understanding of international trade? Do international trade flows encode information about the extent of scale economies? To answer these questions we examine the large class of general equilibrium theories that imply Helpman-Krugman variants of the Vanek factor content prediction. Using an ambitious database on output, trade flows, and factor endowments, we find that scale economies significantly increase our understanding of the sources of comparative advantage. Further, the Helpman-Krugman framework provides a remarkable lens for viewing the general equilibrium scale elasticities encoded in trade flows. In particular, we find that a third of all goods-producing industries are characterized by scale. (The modal range of scale elasticities for this group is 1.10-1.20 and the economy-wide scale elasticity is 1.05.) Implications are drawn for the trade-and-wages debate (skill-biased scale effects) and endogenous growth.

Law out of History, History by Law

Der transdisziplinäre Sammelband Law and Memory. Towards Legal Governance of History besteht aus insgesamt 19 Artikel zu nationalen und transnationalen Gesetzgebungen rund um kollektive gesellschaftliche Erinnerung. Verschiedene Rechtsprechungen zu Geschichte und Erinnerung werden kritisch diskutiert und somit ein innovativer Beitrag zu der Frage geleistet, in wie fern Gesetze zu Geschichtsschreibung und Gedächtniskonstruktion beitragen, ebenso wie diese regulieren können. Es werden sowohl Fragen nach Wissensproduktion durch Recht als auch nach der Bedeutung transnationaler Vorgaben von Erinnerungspraktiken, wie beispielsweise durch die EU, gestellt und somit überzeugend eine Verknüpfung zweier Themenfelder – Recht und kollektive Erinnerung – unternommen, die bisher noch selten zu finden ist. Eben diese Forschungslücke wollen die beiden Herausgeber*innen mit dem Band füllen, was zwar auch gelingt, jedoch trotz großer Interdisziplinarität noch umfassender hätte erfolgen können, wären Methodiken und Erkenntnisse aus dem Feld der Memory Studies stärker einbezogen worden.The multi- and interdisciplinary volume Law and Memory. Towards Legal Governance of History provides a variety of case studies in both national and international contexts to display the complexity and specificity of disputed laws dealing with historic memory. Tracing back legislations addressing different concerns about history and memory, from the Treaty of Westphalia to the current-day laws of the European Union, this volume contributes to debates on the ways in which law might interfere with or contribute to history writing and the construction of memory. Important questions on potentially prescribed practices of memorialization as well as the (in)compatibility of legal involvement in the shaping of knowledge of ‚historical truth‘ are raised. Furthermore, it brings into conversation not only different viewpoints from History and International Law to Ethics, but also controversial issues on nationalism and the (dis)advantages of transnational legislations. While the volume successfully accomplishes its intent to fill a gap in the current research on memory laws, the analysis of practices of remembrance in the collected texts could have benefitted from integrating methods and theories from established concepts of the study of memory

Prescribed Anti-Racism? Historic and Contemporary Challenges to a Global Memory Imperative

Mit diesem Buch wird ein wertvoller Beitrag zur Diskussion über den nach dem Holocaust formulierten Erinnerungsimperativ ‚Nie Wieder‘ geleistet, indem dieser nicht nur historisiert, sondern auch in verschiedenen nationalen Kontexten eingebettet wird. So lässt sich zeigen, dass die Lehren aus dem Holocaust zum einen bei weitem nicht so universell, weil wechselnd, und zum anderen nicht so offensichtlich und selbsterklärend sind, wie oft angenommen. Letzteres wird von verschiedene Autor_innen daran gezeigt, dass sie die Diskrepanz zwischen Ablehnung der Nazis bei Gleichzeitiger Ignoranz oder gar Befürwortung gegenüber Rassismen in der eigenen Gesellschaft nachzeichnen, wie es etwa in den USA, Südafrika oder Australien der Fall war und ist. Der empfehlenswerte Sammelband stellt mutige Fragen und bringt wichtige Erkenntnisse für alle, die sich mit Holocaust Erinnerung im Kontext von Demokratieerziehung und Antirassismus befassen, ist aber auch darüber hinaus eine lohnende Lektüre.This excellent book on Holocaust Memory and Racism challenges the widespread assumption that learning about the Holocaust automatically makes us better people. In fifteen contributions, the authors assembled in this volume look at various national case studies that demonstrate how, from the early post-war period up until today, it has been all too common to strongly oppose Nazism and its racist policies but at the same time keep racism as an unquestioned organizing principle of one’s own society. To approach the universalization of the Holocaust that turned it into the ultimate “symbol of racism and injustice” (p.5) the publication focusses on societies that have not directly been affected by Nazism. Thereby the different chapters discuss issues of prevailing racism as well as anti-racist engagements and take into consideration the value of empathetic connections between victims of the Nazis and victims of Colonialism. A highly recommended read

Religion is Becoming Virtualised. Introduction the the Special Issue on Religion in Virtual Worlds.

Introduction the the Special Issue on Religion in Virtual Worlds

At the Limits of Transformation? Human Rights Education Between Colonial Conditions and Emancipatory Counter-Projects

Der Sammelband mit dem Titel Critical Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy Education, Entanglements and Regenerations ist in diesem Jahr bei Bloomsbury erschienen und von André Keet und Michalinos Zembylas herausgegeben. In insgesamt dreizehn Kapiteln unternehmen die Autor_innen aus verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen sowie aus der pädagogischen Praxis eine Bestandsaufnahme aktueller Menschenrechts- und Demokratieerziehung und der ihr zugrundeliegenden Wissensbestände. In den jeweiligen Artikeln wird immer wieder auf die Unzulänglichkeiten wie auch ontologischen Verwicklungen des Menschenrechtsdiskurses mit eurozentristischen Denktraditionen hingewiesen und diesen insbesondere dekoloniale Perspektiven entgegengestellt. Anhand ausgewählter Aspekte und Fallbeispiele wird somit auf Widersprüche wie auf notwendige Kritiken der Theorie und Praxis von Menschenrechtserziehung eingegangen, aber auch das emanzipatorische Potential dieses globalisierten Bildungsprojekts ausgelotet. The collection of articles titled Critical Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy Education, Entanglements and Regenerations and published as a part of Bloomsburry’s series on Critical Education revisits some of the numerous engagements with the human rights project and its educational forms. The aim is to draw attention to controversies and a necessary critique of the concept of global pedagogy for human rights, democracy, and citizenship, in order to underline what many critical theorists and specifically post- and decolonial scholars have been stressing for decades: The ongoing suppression of various voices, namely those from the global south, whose perspectives on human rights might disrupt the hegemonic narrative of the global north – a narrative deeply intertwined with racism and colonial violence. Mindful of these entanglements, the authors within the volume probe into the limits of human rights as a critical endeavor and push for answers to the question of whether a critical human rights project is possible

Virtual Religion. An Approach to a Religious and Ritual Topography of Second Life.

Kerstin Radde-Antweiler gives an overview or a cross section about the religious and ritualistic settings within “Second Life” and explores the question why studies in and around Virtual Worlds represent an important issue in the Study of Religions. In her article about “Virtual Religion. An Approach to a Religious and Ritual Topography of Second Life” she introduces the theoretical concept of an “actor-related religious historiography” which tries to take into account the religiousness of the individual actor

Is Free Trade Good for the Environment?

This paper sets out a theory of how openness to international goods markets affects pollution concentrations. We develop a theoretical model to divide trade's impact on pollution into scale, technique, and composition effects and then examine this theory using data on sulfur dioxide concentrations when it alters the composition, and hence the pollution intensity, of national output. Our estimates of the associated technique and scale efforts created by trade imply a net reduction in pollution from these sources. Combining our estimates of scale, composition, and technique efforts yields a somewhat surprising conclusion: freer trade appears to be good for the environment.

Rituals Online : Transferring and Designing Rituals

Kerstin Radde-Antweiler stresses the aspect of ritual construction by the individual believers in her paper Rituals Online. Transferring and Designing Rituals. In addition to the potential of the Internet to offer interaction and new processes of communication in the context of rituals – the so called "Online-Rituals" –, this medium also offers much information about rituals and instructions how to perform a ritual, in and outside the Internet. This varies from the publication of – at first glance - fixed ritual prescripts to texts on how to design a ritual by him- or herself. These fixed texts are often identified as old traditional scripts, whereas critical analyses show explicit or implicit transfers and receptions of various religious traditions. In the paper, different ritual prescripts presented on Wicca- and Solitaire Homepages, which are often seen as continuation of pre-Christian, matriarchal, Celtic and Germanic cults and mythologies, are analysed and their transfer processes are exemplified. Instances that show the processes of ritual transfer are the choice of the owner-names, the mixture of deities of different religions, the integration of different feasts and festivals etc. The assertion of perpetual continuity from the insider perspective seems contradict those texts which encourage the believers to develop their own individual ritual. Therefore, the elements of newness and invention as well as the phenomenon of Ritual Design in their processes of gaining legitimacy and authority has to be examined