Where do the Italians Belong? - Assessing Globalization and Identity

The processes of globalization interfere in every aspect of life. Like societies, nations and communities; individuals and their national identity are also under severe pressure from globalization. The purpose of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of how globalization transforms identity and belonging. Using written literature and qualitative interviews this thesis creates a theoretical overview and concludes that globalization indeed transforms identity and belonging and that a crisis of belonging is arising. The case study, where this theoretical framework is applied, shows how the Italians are divided into three large groups of belonging. The Italians either feel a belonging to Europe, Italy or their region/city. All three sets of belonging have roots in history, but this thesis argues that globalization makes them stand out even more. It is concluded that an identity crisis is present and that identity and belonging clashes with the processes of globalization. Identity and belonging are therefore fragmented and undergoing constant changes. The thesis hence addresses the problematic relationship between globalization and belonging and emphasizes the problems of Italian national identity

Neural dynamics of social behavior : An evolutionary and mechanistic perspective on communication, cooperation, and competition among situated agents

Social behavior can be found on almost every level of life, ranging from microorganisms to human societies. However, explaining the evolutionary emergence of cooperation, communication, or competition still challenges modern biology. The most common approaches to this problem are based on game-theoretic models. The problem is that these models often assume fixed and limited rules and actions that individual agents can choose from, which excludes the dynamical nature of the mechanisms that underlie the behavior of living systems. So far, there exists a lack of convincing modeling approaches to investigate the emergence of social behavior from a mechanistic and evolutionary perspective. Instead of studying animals, the methodology employed in this thesis combines several aspects from alternative approaches to study behavior in a rather novel way. Robotic models are considered as individual agents which are controlled by recurrent neural networks representing non-linear dynamical system. The topology and parameters of these networks are evolved following an open-ended evolution approach, that is, individuals are not evaluated on high-level goals or optimized for specific functions. Instead, agents compete for limited resources to enhance their chance of survival. Further, there is no restriction with respect to how individuals interact with their environment or with each other. As its main objective, this thesis aims at a complementary approach for studying not only the evolution, but also the mechanisms of basic forms of communication. For this purpose it can be shown that a robot does not necessarily have to be as complex as a human, not even as complex as a bacterium. The strength of this approach is that it deals with rather simple, yet complete and situated systems, facing similar real world problems as animals do, such as sensory noise or dynamically changing environments. The experimental part of this thesis is substantiated in a five-part examination. First, self-organized aggregation patterns are discussed. Second, the advantages of evolving decentralized control with respect to behavioral robustness and flexibility is demonstrated. Third, it is shown that only minimalistic local acoustic communication is required to coordinate the behavior of large groups. This is followed by investigations of the evolutionary emergence of communication. Finally, it is shown how already evolved communicative behavior changes during further evolution when a population is confronted with competition about limited environmental resources. All presented experiments entail thorough analysis of the dynamical mechanisms that underlie evolved communication systems, which has not been done so far in the context of cooperative behavior. This framework leads to a better understanding of the relation between intrinsic neurodynamics and observable agent-environment interactions. The results discussed here provide a new perspective on the evolution of cooperation because they deal with aspects largely neglected in traditional approaches, aspects such as embodiment, situatedness, and the dynamical nature of the mechanisms that underlie behavior. For the first time, it can be demonstrated how noise influences specific signaling strategies and that versatile dynamics of very small-scale neural networks embedded in sensory-motor feedback loops give rise to sophisticated forms of communication such as signal coordination, cooperative intraspecific communication, and, most intriguingly, aggressive interspecific signaling. Further, the results demonstrate the development of counteractive niche construction based on a modification of communication strategies which generates an evolutionary feedback resulting in an active reduction of selection pressure, which has not been shown so far. Thus, the novel findings presented here strongly support the complementary nature of robotic experiments to study the evolution and mechanisms of communication and cooperation.</p

Education policy and refugees in England and Germany: racist nativism and the reproduction of white supremacy

This paper argues that education policy in England and Germany racialises young refugees and asylum seekers and contributes to upholding white supremacy in the education system. Previous research in both countries has shown that education policy reproduces race inequality, and in England, it has been argued that education policy itself is an act of white supremacy (Gillborn 2005). However, to date there has been little consideration of the specific role of refugee policies in maintaining race inequality in education. In this study we connect research on refugee education, the raced nature of the education systems in both countries and the racialised context and position of refugees in society. We draw on insights from Critical Race Theory and on the concept of racist nativism, ‘the link between race and immigration status’ (Pérez Huber 2011) to argue that refugees, already racialised in society, are also racialised by education policies and systems via the privileging of both nativist and white norms

Bedeutung von Nachhaltigkeitsawards in der Bio-Branche am Beispiel der milchverarbeitenden Industrie

Sustainability awards in the German food industry are a novel instrument in corporate communications. The purpose of those awards is to recognize and honor the achievements of particularly outstanding corporations. We conducted the first study to assess the importance of sustainability awards in organic and non-organic milk processing companies

Historical contingency affects signaling strategies and competitive abilities in evolving populations of simulated robots.

One of the key innovations during the evolution of life on earth has been the emergence of efficient communication systems, yet little is known about the causes and consequences of the great diversity within and between species. By conducting experimental evolution in 20 independently evolving populations of cooperatively foraging simulated robots, we found that historical contingency in the occurrence order of novel phenotypic traits resulted in the emergence of two distinct communication strategies. The more complex foraging strategy was less efficient than the simpler strategy. However, when the 20 populations were placed in competition with each other, the populations with the more complex strategy outperformed the populations with the less complex strategy. These results demonstrate a tradeoff between communication efficiency and robustness and suggest that stochastic events have important effects on signal evolution and the outcome of competition between distinct populations

Evolving team compositions by agent swapping

Optimizing collective behavior in multiagent systems requires algorithms to find not only appropriate individual behaviors but also a suitable composition of agents within a team. Over the last two decades, evolutionary methods have emerged as a promising approach for the design of agents and their compositions into teams. The choice of a crossover operator that facilitates the evolution of optimal team composition is recognized to be crucial, but so far, it has never been thoroughly quantified. Here, we highlight the limitations of two different crossover operators that exchange entire agents between teams: restricted agent swapping (RAS) that exchanges only corresponding agents between teams and free agent swapping (FAS) that allows an arbitrary exchange of agents. Our results show that RAS suffers from premature convergence, whereas FAS entails insufficient convergence. Consequently, in both cases, the exploration and exploitation aspects of the evolutionary algorithm are not well balanced resulting in the evolution of suboptimal team compositions. To overcome this problem, we propose combining the two methods. Our approach first applies FAS to explore the search space and then RAS to exploit it. This mixed approach is a much more efficient strategy for the evolution of team compositions compared to either strategy on its own. Our results suggest that such a mixed agent-swapping algorithm should always be preferred whenever the optimal composition of individuals in a multiagent system is unknown

Mentoring im fachbezogenen Schulpraktikum : Analyse von Reflexionsgesprächen

This PhD thesis deals with reflective dialogues about biology lessons, students give during teaching practice. The students (mentees) reflect with mentors, who have different expertise: University lectors (university mentors), who implement lectures accompanying the teaching practice, school teachers (school mentors) and fellow students (peers). The aim of this study is to analyze mentoring dialogues (reflective dialogues) held to reflect the biology lessons given by the students, and to analyze the mentoring relationships. Therefore tapes of reflective dialogues were recorded and interviews with the students were conducted and analyzed with qualitative content analysis by Mayring. The following research questions shall be answered by this study: In which manner do student teachers from the University of Bremen reflect their own biology lessons during a teaching practice with their mentors and peers? In which manner is mentoring realized during a teaching practice in schools by student teachers? The study consists of three parts: In a first step, a model for analyzing reflective dialogues about biology lessons, which is based on an extensive literature review (pilot study), is developed in a mixed inductive and deductive way. The basic empirical data comprises reflective dialogues by five students. The theoretical base of the model consists of theories about reflections in the context of teacher education, about professional knowledge of biology teachers and about mentoring processes during teacher education. In a second step, (case study) twelve cases (mentoring relationships between seven students and different mentors or peers) are analyzed. Therefore reflective dialogues and interviews held with the students are evaluated. In a third step (in-depth study), the mentoring relationships between two students and their mentors and peers are examined more deeply. The data prove that these mentoring relationships develop different potential regarding the student´s professional development. For example in the reflective dialogues with peers, the integration of pedagogical knowledge turns out well. Especially orientations to teaching and self-efficacy are addressed in these dialogues. Furthermore, the students appreciate planning and conducting lessons with their peers. According to the students, the school mentors also helped planning their lessons and their positive and encouraging feedback has great value to them. In the reflective dialogues with the school mentors, references to biological pedagogical content knowledge as well as references to pedagogical knowledge are created. The focus of these dialogues lies on evaluating the conducted lessons. From student´s perspective the university mentors contribute to the student´s professional development by giving sophisticated feedback on their lessons. This assessment is reflected in the analysis of the reflective dialogues. It shows that the integration of biological pedagogical content knowledge works well. Additionally, alternative possibilities how to design the lessons are often topics of these dialogues. This is one attribute of a deep reflection. Conclusions for teacher education: Mentoring dialogues held with the different mentors complement each other well. The training of the school mentors should be conducted in close cooperation with the university lectors which are responsible for the university lectures accompanying the teaching practice. Network meetings for the exchange of aims and contents of mentoring dialogues (reflective dialogues) should be conducted more often. The feedback by peers should be a fixed component of mentoring processes

Urbanes Laboratorium Dokk1 in Århus – Kultur- und Demokratieförderung als Standortfaktoren

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die multifunktionale Bibliothek Dokk1, die international als exemplarische Stadtbücherei der Zukunft Bekanntheit erlangt hat. Der erste Teil des Artikels widmet sich einer Beschreibung der raumzeitlichen Konstellationen und sozialen Interaktionen innerhalb und außerhalb des imposanten Gebäudes an der Hafenspitze von Århus. Die in der Beschreibung angewandte raumsoziologische Perspektive wird im zweiten Teil auf die Maßnahmen und Zielsetzungen im Sinne der Demokratieförderung übertragen, wie sie u.a. in den kommunalen Leitdokumenten formuliert worden sind. Da die Orientierung an den Nutzer:innen als wichtigster Grundsatz des Bibliothekspersonals gilt, wird in diesem Beitrag das Verhalten der Besuchenden sowie der Mitarbeitenden als stellvertretend für ein alltägliches demokratisches Aushandeln aufgefasst. Abschließend wird der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern das soziale Miteinander in der Bibliothek und die lokale Demokratie in Århus kommun aufeinander bezogen sein könnten.This article examines the Dokk1 multifunctional library, which has achieved international recognition as an exemplary city library of the future. The first part of the article is devoted to a description of the spatio-temporal configurations and social interactions inside and outside the imposing building situated at the tip of Århus harbour. In the second part, the spatial-sociological perspective applied in the description is transferred to the measures and objectives aimed at promoting democracy, as these have been formulated in the municipal guidelines and other current documents. As user orientation is considered the most important guiding principle for the library staff, the behaviour of both the library users and the staff is interpreted in this article as representative of everyday democratic negotiation. Finally, it explores the question of how far the social togetherness in the library and local democracy in the municipality Århus kommun could be related to each other.Peer Reviewe