Film og samfund

The article is an investigation of the relation between social studies and movies and in turn the relevance of movies to the social sciences. The relationship between the world of movies and reality is analyzed through the movies Being there and Storytelling. Three different approaches are presented: The movie society, socio-fiction and movies as ambiguos cultural products

Det uhæmmede begær - Vestens fantasier om Orienten

Desire Unlimited - Western Fantasies of the East This essay focus on the European dis¬course of the Orient taking as its point of departure Alain Grosrichard’s book The Sultans Court - Western Fantasies of the Orient (1998). It focus on historical ana¬lysis of the European discourse on the Orient, and argues that there is a par¬ticular European way to approach the Orient, a way that does not necessarily illuminate the nature of the “despotic” Orient, but rather illustrates the construc¬tion of Europe itself. The distinction be¬tween the Orient and the Occident is central in this discourse. This distinction condenses a number of other distinctions between for example the law and its transgression, heterosexuality and perversion, democracy and despotism. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis and the work of the “Slovenian school” as theore¬tical inspiration, it is argued that these distinctions originate in the projection of perverted excess onto Europe’s “ot¬her”. The existence of fantasies of these excesses elucidate the double bind of European power, which is fundamental¬ly split between official, overt regulations and forbidden, hidden fantasies of trans¬gression. It is imperative to recognize the status as fantasy of these fantasies, which locks us in rigid patterns, and to recogni¬ze that the perverse Orient is a product of European “normalization”

Efterskælv: Pejlinger af terrorfrygtens anatomi

Terroren er intimt forbundet med følelsen af frygt. Artiklen giver en række redskaber til begrebsligt at kunne indkredse denne frygt. Det gøres idehistorisk, individualpsykologisk, socialpsykologisk, sociologisk og med udgangspunkt i terrorens anatomi. Hvad er det ved terroren, som gør at vi frygter den mere end andre trusler mod liv og helbred? Hvordan kan vi begrebsligt indkredse den rystelse, som terroren sætter i os: som frygt eller angst? Og hvilken betydning har det, hvordan vi begrebsliggør truslen: som risici eller katastrofer? Og sidst og ikke mindst, hvad betyder den måde, som vi militært og politisk møder terroren for vores ængstelse for den? Artiklens titel – Efterskælv – sigter til de konsekvenser, terroren har for ikke de umiddelbare ofre, men for alle dem, som ser på eller hører om den. Det vil sige for os alle sammen.Aftershock: Investigating the anatomy of the fear of terror Terror is intimately connected to the feeling of fear. The article offers a number of tools to conceptually narrow down this fear historically, psychologically and sociologically. The starting point is the anatomy of fear. What is it about terror that makes us fear it so much more than other threats to life and health? How can we conceptually narrow down the shock that terror causes as fear or anxiety? What does it mean when we conceptualise the threat as risk or catastrophe? And last but not least, what are the consequences of the way we with our military and politics meet terror in connection with our anxiety? The title of the article – Aftershock – hints at the aftermath of terror – not for the immediate victims, but for all of those who witness or hear about it. That means all of us

Steam treatment of contaminated groundwater aquifers – development of pathogenic micro-organisms in soil

Steam treatment of contaminated soil and aquifer sediment is a promising method of cleaning soil. The treatment is based on steam injection into a water saturated porous aquifer (Gudbjerg et al. 2004), by which the heat transfers the contaminants into the vapour phase, allowing entrapment in an active carbon filter connected to a large vacuum suction device. The treatment is effective against several important groundwater contaminants, including pentachlorophenole and perchloroethylene, typically found in association with industrial processes or dry cleaning facilities. Furthermore, as an example of removal of non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) large amounts of creosote have been recovered after steam injection in a deep aquifer (Kuhlmann 2002; Tse & Lo 2002). Steam treatment is dependent on the complete heating of the soil volume under treatment. The steam has a strongly adverse impact on trees and other plants with deep root systems within the soil, but no other visible effects have been reported. The aim of the activities undertaken during collaborative projects carried out by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DJF) for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency and the local authorities in Copenhagen (Københavns Amt) was to establish to what extent the microbial community was affected by the steam treatment of the soil. A few results from the literature indicate that the microbial activity increases in steam treated soil (Richardson et al. 2002), probably due to microbial degradation of the soil contaminants in combination with microbial utilisation of heatkilled organisms. It is, however, not known whether this increased microbial activity is associated with the development of pathogenic micro-organisms; these are typically able to grow at higher temperatures than the general microbial community in soil