Von Frühlingsrollen in der Diaspora und dem etwas anderen Restaurant als »transnationalem Kontaktraum« : über das Essen als Nahrungsmittel und kulturelle Praxis

Rezension zu: Regina Römhild et. al. (Hrsg.) : Fast Food. Slow Food. Ethnographische Studien zum Verhältnis von Globalisierung und Regionalisierung in der Ernährung. Kulturanthropologie Notizen. Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie der Universität Frankfurt am Main, Band 76, Frankfurt, 2008, ISBN 978-3-923992-78-2 ; 226 Seiten, 19 Euro

Time-Spaces of In/dependence and Dis/ability

The article highlights the temporal construction of everyday spaces that make up the societal relevance of in/dependences and dis/abilities. Employing an account of empirical philosophy, the article links self-conducted empirical research with philosophical ideas. Introducing Heidegger's notion of `time-space', the proposed view tries to avoid bifurcating in/dependences and dis/abilities a priori as the effect of given realities. Rather, they appear as highly fragile mediations of heterogeneous elements that make up the times and spaces of emerging in/dependences and dis/abilities. With special reference to `visual disability', I explore how ordinary acts of `dealing with money' and `going shopping' configure multiple `blind' times and spaces of in/dependence and dis/ability

Realities to be-come: on Cosmopolitics

To assume that all things we want to describe – humans and non-humans alike – can be done so properly only in terms of 'societies', requires a contrast – a momentum of cosmopolitics – to the very abstract distinctions upon which our classical understanding of sociology and its key terms rests: 'The social' as defined in opposition to 'the non-social', 'society' in opposition to 'nature'. The concept of cosmopolitics tries to avoid such modernist strategy that A. N. Whitehead called 'bifurcation of nature' (cf. Whitehead 1978, 2000). The inventive production of contrasts names a cosmopolitical tool which does not attempt to denounce, debunk, replace or overcome abstract, exclusivist oppositions that suggest divisions as 'either…or'-relations. Rather, as the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers stresses, 'the contrast will have to be celebrated in the manner of a new existent, adding a new dimension to the cosmos' (Stengers 2011: 513). Cosmopolitics, then, engages with 'habits we experiment with in order to become capable of new experiences' (Stengers 2001: 241) and opens up the possibility of agency of the non-expected Other, the non-normal, the non-human, the non-social, the un-common. 'The Other is the existence of a possible world', as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1994: 17-18) have put it. It is 'the condition for our passing from one world to another. The Other (...) makes the world go by.

The social, cosmopolitanism and beyond

First, this article will outline the metaphysics of ‘the social’ that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of lassical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates the cultural sphere from the natural objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology – in order to be cosmopolitan – is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines ‘the social’ as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of ‘the social’ that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well

Realities to be-come: on Cosmopolitics

To assume that all things we want to describe – humans and non-humans alike – can be done so properly only in terms of 'societies', requires a contrast – a momentum of cosmopolitics – to the very abstract distinctions upon which our classical understanding of sociology and its key terms rests: 'The social' as defined in opposition to 'the non-social', 'society' in opposition to 'nature'. The concept of cosmopolitics tries to avoid such modernist strategy that A. N. Whitehead called 'bifurcation of nature' (cf. Whitehead 1978, 2000). The inventive production of contrasts names a cosmopolitical tool which does not attempt to denounce, debunk, replace or overcome abstract, exclusivist oppositions that suggest divisions as 'either…or'-relations. Rather, as the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers stresses, 'the contrast will have to be celebrated in the manner of a new existent, adding a new dimension to the cosmos' (Stengers 2011: 513). Cosmopolitics, then, engages with 'habits we experiment with in order to become capable of new experiences' (Stengers 2001: 241) and opens up the possibility of agency of the non-expected Other, the non-normal, the non-human, the non-social, the un-common. 'The Other is the existence of a possible world', as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1994: 17-18) have put it. It is 'the condition for our passing from one world to another. The Other (...) makes the world go by.

Caring about social complexity in nanomedicine

Reproduced with permission from Nanomedicine as agreed by Future Medicine Ltd.ArticleMaterials in our website and publications are subject to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. To read more about Creative Commons Licenses please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/In this paper, I will discuss from a ‘Science and Technology Studies’ perspective three different modes of caring about the social complexity in biomedical and nanomedical research. Nanomedical research unfolds a variety of issues that generate different concerns, questions, problems, requirements and interests that connect with different systems of action (in vitro, in vivo), different kinds (human, nonhuman) and different scales of action (nano, micro, macro). To adequately address the social complexity, I will discuss three possible modes of caring about social complexity: Laboratory Experiment and Scientific Analysis, Public Expert Controversies, and Publics. These different modes of caring share an experimental ethos that engages nanomedical issues for which no common solutions are availabl

More than seeing : the materiality of blindness

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Black Box Wissenschaft - Produktive Kontraste in der Wissenschaftsforschung

Article