Autoritarismus von unten: Lokale Politik in Ägypten

Steigende Nahrungsmittel- und Energiekosten in Vebindung mit hoher Arbeitslosigkeit und Hyperinflation haben 2008 häufig zu Streiks und Protesten in vielen arabischen Staaten geführt. In Bahrain protestierten Anfang Februar Arbeitsemigranten gegen die sinkende Kaufkraft. Im Mai nahmen junge Leute im algerischen Oran die Niederlage ihres Fußballclubs zum Anlass, um allgemein ihrem Frust wegen der Perspektivlosigkeit und Machtarroganz der Herrschenden Luft zu machen. Im Nachbarland Tunesien kam es im Juni in Gafsa, im ärmeren Südwesten des Landes, zu Massenprotesten gegen die im nationalen Vergleich überdurchschnittliche Arbeits- und Perspektivlosigkeit. Auch in Ägypten war 2008 ein Jahr mit intensiver politischer Mobilisierung bei Streiks, Sit-Ins und Protesten gegen steigende Lebensmittelpreise sowie sogar einem Aufruf zum Generalstreik

Provincializing and Localizing Core-Periphery Relations

The paper engages with core-periphery conceptions because they are a useful Denkfigur in a time of increasing global interconnectedness. I argue that the coreperiphery metaphor is a useful one because it provides us with a relational tool of analysis and at the same time with a focus on asymmetric power relations. But it also has some serious limitations, such as a tendency to be over-deterministic and to be too global in scale. In order to address these limitations, I suggest rescaling Prebisch, Amin and Wallerstein's global conception of core and periphery to the local scale. I hold that we need to "provincialize" the core-periphery metaphor, to borrow Chakrabarty's (2000) famous term, and to make the agency of local actors more relevant to our understanding of political dynamics in the MENA region. This paper sketches how "provincialized" and "localized" ways of using the core-periphery metaphor could look. This part builds on the main ideas Malika Bouziane, Anja Hoffmann and I developed in the introduction to our volume Local Politics and Contemporary Transformations in the Arab World, as well as my approach of a "state analysis from below.

Staging The Illusion Director as Magician

This thesis serves as an examination of the process I underwent to arrive at answers to those questions. Chapter I examines differences between Pierre Corneille\u27s seventeenth century L\u27Illusion Comique and Kushner\u27s modern-day adaptation. Chapter II takes a closer look at textual analysis specific to Kushner\u27s adaptation. Chapter III documents pre-rehearsal and designer collaboration. Chapter IV follows the production process from casting to performances. This chapter also includes many of the problems encountered and solutions reached. Chapter V, the summary, includes an assessment of the entire process, including; rehearsals, production, and my role as director. A summary of audience evaluations also is included in this chapter. The appendixes follow with a transcription of the audience discussion, backward analysis, floor plan, photos, and the playbill

Mobility and Belonging: A Printer in Nineteenth-Century Northern Europe

This article examines intra-European migration in the early nineteenth century and ways in which the notion of belonging began to change in this mobile age. I will argue that strategies of making someone (not) belong differed on a local and national level and were influenced by intersecting categories of difference. To date, migration history has often focused on structures and policies, or on questions of assimilation and integration, while interactions between migrants and local communities were mostly overlooked. Based on a petition for naturalization, the article looks at one migrant’s attempt to stay in his new region of residence in the early 1840s. Correspondence related to the petition is examined to determine how politics and practices of migration were linked to ideas of belonging and were also an effect of negotiations. Focusing on this case study, I discuss belonging as a means of power, since the sources reflect the constant intersection of social status/class, education, and gender. Thus, inclusion and exclusion were practiced differently before nationality (and race/ethnicity) became established as categories of social inequality

Submarine mass wasting processes along the continental slope of the Middle American Trench

This Thesis work presents a regional-scale study of submarine mass-wasting phenomena of the continental slope of a subduction zone. The nature of the study makes it a new, outstanding contribution for two main reasons: 1) The large-scale and interdisciplinary characters of the study conform a comprehensive investigation - unmatched by any other previous study- of land sliding processes along the slope of a tectonically-active convergent margin. 2) The investigation is also unique because it looks into the processes at a subduction zone dominated by tectonic erosion. This type of geological setting represents about 50% of the world subduction zone systems, but it has been overlooked in previous studies of mass wasting processes. The study region is located along a segment of the Middle America Trench (MAT) that extends about 1500 km from the Costa Rica - Panama border to the Guatemala - Mexico boundary. The study investigates the structures of the continental slope of the Pacific-Ocean-side of Central America and the trench-region of the incoming oceanic Cocos plate. We have investigated the distribution of submarine slope failures and their deposits, the type of failures, and their seafloor morphology. We have also investigated possible preconditioning and triggering mechanisms, and the relationship of those mechanisms and the variability in failure type to the tectonic processes of this particular geological setting. Finally, we have made some inferences of the significance of mass wasting processes in the long-term evolution of the slope, compared to other geological settings. The Central America subduction zone has been the locus of intense, continued geoscientific investigation since the late 1970s that culminated with the selection of the region as the focus site for the US-Margins program and the German SFB574 during the first decade of the 21st century. Those two programs included research in a broad range of topics that attempted to advance our understanding of the entire subduction zone system. As a result numerous projects from both communities have benefited from close collaborations. This PhD work is integrated within the research project SFB 574, financed by the DFG, that has as main research goal investigations on “Volatiles and fluids in subduction zones and their impact on climate feedback and trigger mechanisms for natural disasters”. We have analyzed a database containing a compilation of multibeam bathymetry of 7 research cruises, 3 cruises of side-scan sonar imagery and core samples of a dedicated cruise. The database has been assembled in a collaborative effort between both USMargins and SFB 574 communities. Based on seafloor morphology and backscatter imagery, and seismic images we have mapped and classified 147 submarine slope failures in the region. Slope failures vary in their type, abundance and distribution along and across the slope to define six distinct segments along the MAT. The lateral extent of the six segments correlates well with similar along-trench segmentation in the character of the incoming ocean plate, expressed as changes in its relief, age and crustal thickness. We have also found that the six along-margin segments display changes in the across-slope structuring of the different geological elements, including changes in the morphological expression of upper, middle and lower slope, total slope width, and slope dip angle. This structuring of the elements of the slope appears to be related to a longterm evolution caused by the tectonic processes associated to subduction erosion. One segment covers the area of under-thrusting of Cocos Ridge under the shelf-slope offshore Osa Peninsula (southern Costa Rica). Here, 1-km-high narrow, sharp ridges and small conical seamounts festooning Cocos Ridge cause slumps often with rock and debris avalanches from a short, steep continental slope. A second segment occurs offshore central Costa Rica, where large conical seamounts and ridges of 1-3 km high and 40 km wide under-thrust the continental slope causing large re-entries of the slope toe, and furrows across the slope formed by collapse, of previously uplifted upper plate, along steep headwalls behind the under-thrusting seamounts. Failures have generated large slumps, debris flows and rock avalanches containing blocks up to 500 m in diameter. In contrast at a third segment in northern Costa Rica, offshore the North Nicoya Peninsula, a smooth incoming plate is parallel opposite by a continental slope lacking relevant mass wasting structures. The contiguous fourth segment offshore Nicaragua displays a steep middle slope with large translational slides opposite an ocean plate with numerous 1-km-tall seamounts and 100s-meter-high horst and graben relief. Under the fifth segment, offshore El Salvador, subducts a well developed horst and graben relief, but somewhat surprising the segment displays a generally failure-free slope, and only the uppermost slope displays a series of small translation slides The plate under-thrusting the sixth segment offshore Guatemala is similarly characterized by a horst and graben terrain. However, here a steeper slope exhibits frequent, small-scale failures, a few km wide, across the entire segment

Quantifying perception of nonlinear elastic tissue models using multidimensional scaling

Simplified soft tissue models used in surgical simulations cannot perfectly reproduce all material behaviors. In particular, many tissues exhibit the Poynting effect, which results in normal forces during shearing of tissue and is only observed in nonlinear elastic material models. In order to investigate and quantify the role of the Poynting effect on material discrimination, we performed a multidimensional scaling (MDS) study. Participants were presented with several pairs of shear and normal forces generated by a haptic device during interaction with virtual soft objects. Participants were asked to rate the similarity between the forces felt. The selection of the material parameters – and thus the magnitude of the shear\ud and normal forces – was based on a pre-study prior to the MDS experiment. It was observed that for nonlinear elastic tissue models exhibiting the Poynting effect, MDS analysis indicated that both shear and normal forces affect user perception

Regionale Neuordnung, translokale Mobilität und Flüchtlingskrise im Nahen Osten

The US strategy of external democratization has failed. Iraq is threatened by state failure, militarization and confrontation shape US-Arab relations. These and other global “Iraq Effects” should not cover the equally important but less recognized developments on the regional and local level of Middle Eastern politics. Thus, Iraq effects have primarily affected political processes beyond the “classical” nation-state level. The Iraq war has decisively contributed to the development of a new regional order of escalating intra-and inter-state violence, the rise of Iran as a regional power as well as a general polarization. Secondly, the Iraq war has affected the emergence and consolidation of new forms of cross-border, trans-local mobility of radical Islamist groups, Kurdish activists, but also of business people. Thirdly, the war has caused a massive refugee crisis in the Middle East which transforms local structures in Iraq’s neighboring states of Jordan and Syria. These complex dynamics constitute the “radiance” of the Iraq war for Middle Eastern politics after 2003

“There is No Silence in the Archive, There are Silencers” : Thavolia Glymph in Conversation about Gerda Lerner with Levke Harders

This text is an edited version of a video conversation recorded on 2 June 2022.This text is an edited version of a video conversation recorded on 2 June 2022