This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader (...) can therefore observe how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

First published in 2010, Cornelia Vismann’s article has already attained the status of a classic. In a formulation inspired by linguistic theory, the author argues that the relation between cultural techniques and media can be understood in analogy to grammatical operations. Thus, cultural techniques define the agency of media and execute the procedural rules which the latter set in place. Together, they articulate a critique of subjectivity and sovereignty that proceeds by re-examining the notion of ‘culture’ via its agricultural (...) origins to the current moment when the ‘preservation of cultural techniques’ has entered legal and academic discourse. Ultimately, despite their apparent separation from praxis, cultural techniques continue to proliferate through axes of substitution and displacement. (shrink)

Recently, Weisbecker and Goswami presented the first comprehensive comparative analysis of brain size, metabolic rate, and development periods in marsupial mammals. In this paper, a strictly energetic perspective is applied to identify general mammalian correlates of brain size evolution. In both marsupials and placentals, the duration or intensity of maternal investment is a key correlate of relative brain size, but here I show that allomaternal energy subsidies may also play a role. In marsupials, an energetic constraint on brain size in (...) adults is only revealed if we consider both metabolic and reproductive rates simultaneously, because a strong trade‐off between encephalization and offspring production masks the positive correlation between basal metabolic rate and brain size in a bivariate comparison. In conclusion, starting from an energetic perspective is warranted to elucidate relations between ecology, social systems, life history, and brain size in all mammals. (shrink)

Dem Postmarxismus wird haufig ein mangelndes Verstandnis des Staats vorgeworfen. Dieser Band stellt sich dieser Lesart entgegen und zeichnet ein vielfaltiges Bild der Staatsverstandnisse von Abensour, Agamben, Badiou, Balibar, Bauman, Butler, Castoriadis, Deleuze und Guattari, Derrida, Hardt und Negri, Hall, Holloway, Lefort und Gauchet, Laclau und Mouffe, Nancy, Ranciere und zizek. Die Zugange dieser Autor_innen zum Staat werden anhand zentraler Konzepte in leicht zuganglicher Form dargestellt und von marxistischen und neomarxistischen Staatstheorien abgegrenzt. Im letzten Teil werden die gegenseitigen Beeinflussungen zwischen (...) postmarxistischen Staatsverstandnissen einerseits und feministischen und postkolonialen Zugangen andererseits beschrieben, wie auch die Verschrankung postmarxistischer Theorien mit zeitgenossischen politischen Bewegungen. Insgesamt bietet der Band damit einen erstmaligen Uberblick zu den Konzepten und der Bedeutung postmarxistischer Staatsverstandnisse. (shrink)

Influenciado por Thomas Kuhn, Alasdair MacIntyre presenta una teoría conceptualmente relativista sobre las tradiciones de investigación, la cual pretende no sólo describir la estructura de las distintas tradiciones, sino también encontrar un principioque permita resolver las disputas entre ellas. Se..

This book describes the major changes in state relations which have occurred this century and the sources from which they emerged. An invaluable introduction to the structures of modern international relations.

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the prevailing business model underlying the use of social media applications (“apps”) foresees the exchange of personal data for the allowance to use an online service. Such a data business model comes with many potential negative side effects ranging from violation of privacy issues to election manipulation. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to think of alternatives to the current data business model. The present study investigated how strong the support would be for a (...) monetary payment model among a sample of 210 participants. Participants were asked about their willingness to pay for social media, if in turn their data would be private and other problems concerning social media use would be tackled. Only one-fifth of participants (21.43%) supported such a model. From the Big Five Personality traits, Agreeableness was positively associated with support of such a model. Finally, data are also provided on how much participants would be willing to pay for social media on a monthly basis. The present study’s findings are of a preliminary nature and will contribute to the start of an important discussion. (shrink)

Cornelia Dean draws on her 30 years as a science journalist with the New York Times to expose the flawed reasoning and knowledge gaps that handicap readers when they try to make sense of science. She calls attention to conflicts of interest in research and the price society pays when science journalism declines and funding dries up.--.

While generally accepted as an interpretive theory, Bull’s emblematic text demonstrates strong structural characteristics. Subsequent attributions move between the interpretive or ‘reflexive’ and t...

In light of the sociological insight that it is left to the art system what counts as art, new artistic forms inevitably alter the prevailing concept of art. The article examines how artistic morphogenesis occurs in a twofold manner in the case of contemporary art: as self-referential process through new form combinatorics or asynchronous artistic operations whose artworks elude the gaze, and as other-referential relation. One of the main features of contemporary art lies in its strong reference to the present, (...) based on a conception of operative time. Time is not understood as a sequence of past, present, future, but rather as the linking of respective presences. Contemporary art shares this understanding of time with event-based social theories. This is analysed as other-referential act of synchronization within the art system with its societal environment. Empirical evidence is provided by select works of art and by self-descriptions of the art system. (shrink)

Powerful ultrastructural tools are providing new insights into neuronal circuits, revealing a wealth of anatomically‐defined synaptic connections. These wiring diagrams are incomplete, however, because functional connectivity is actively shaped by neuromodulators that modify neuronal dynamics, excitability, and synaptic function. Studies of defined neural circuits in crustaceans, C. elegans, Drosophila, and the vertebrate retina have revealed the ability of modulators and sensory context to reconfigure information processing by changing the composition and activity of functional circuits. Each ultrastructural connectivity map encodes multiple (...) circuits, some of which are active and some of which are latent at any given time. (shrink)

Influenced by Thomas Kuhn, Alasdair MacIntyre develops a conceptually relativistic theory of research traditions, aimed at describing the structure of these traditions and finding a principle that makes it possible to resolve the disputes among them. The article discusses this theory and analyzes its compatibility withThomism, a tradition that MacIntyre claims to belong to, and with liberalism, a tradition he emphatically criticizes.

In view of the increasing social and economic inequality in recent decades, both globally and locally, more and more attempts are being made in political philosophy to understand social structures not only in terms of their symbolic and idealistic constitution, but also in the light of their underlying political-economic foundations. However, the concepts of materialism used in these works, especially in feminist thought over the last ten years, have caused much confusion due to their different meanings, especially when they are (...) considered transnationally. This article discusses the numerous publications on materialism in feminist and queer thought and situates them in their respective contexts of origin. Their analysis is then placed in a broader context of philosophical debates on materialism in order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics at play but also in order to better grasp the contributions of feminist and queer thought to the philosophical study of materialism. (shrink)

Das von Mitgliedern des Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungszentrums der Universitäten Mainz und Trier sowie des Gutenberg-Museums in Mainz gemeinsam vorbereitete Ausstellungs- und Katalogprojekt veranschaulicht anhand von Beispielen aus unterschiedlichen Forschungsrichtungen die enge Beziehung von Wissen und Raum. Die Resultate interdisziplinärer wissenschaftlicher Arbeit werden so - im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes - veranschaulicht und ihre Aktualität für ein breites Publikum einsichtig gemacht. Die Ausstellung, die vom 30. Oktober 2008 bis zum 29. März 2009 im Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz zu sehen sein wird, vermittelt also (...) nicht nur kunst- und kulturhistorisches Faktenwissen. Vielmehr soll die Ausstellung die bewusste Auseinandersetzung mit Wissen und seiner Verortung fördern. Die Verbindung von Wissen und Raum lässt vielfältige Assoziationen zu. Denkt man zunächst an Schulen und Universitäten, Bibliotheken, Archive und Museen, kommen dann auch noch andere Wissensräume in den Blick: das Internet, unser Schreibtisch, Kirchen, Bücher, Zeitschriften, Filme, Bilder, Landkarten, das menschliche Gehirn. Überall wird Wissen in den unterschiedlichsten Räumen gesammelt, aufbewahrt, geordnet und zugänglich gemacht. (shrink)

This paper explores one organisation’s journey into non-financial reporting, initially motivated by a crisis in public confidence that threatened the organisation’s legitimacy to the present with the organisation embracing integrated reporting. The organisation’s journey is framed through a legitimation lens and is illustrated by aligning internal reflections with external outputs guided by predominant paradigms of good practice, such as the GRI guidelines and more recently integrated reporting 〈IR〉. We find that the organisation’s relationship with external guidelines has evolved from pragmatic (...) adoption as a means of seeking external legitimation to the present position where those that prepare external reports are informed by the organisation’s strategic positioning and not constrained by the promulgation of voluntary guidelines. From the case study, we suggest that the International Integrated Reporting Council may face two hurdles: First, organisations may define social norms based on a broader definition of stakeholders than the definition currently published by the IIRC. The second hurdle is to convince report preparers that adopting integrated reporting 〈IR〉 will positively impact on capital flows. (shrink)

For decades, the dominant research paradigm has included trials conducted in clinical settings with little involvement from communities. However, concerns about the relevance and applicability of the processes or outcomes of such research have led to calls for greater community engagement in the research process. As such, there has been a shift in emphasis from simply recruiting research participants from community settings to engaging community members more broadly in all aspects of the research process. The move toward community engaged research (...) is in part driven by the recognition that inclusion of diverse perspectives in multidisciplinary teams is essential to addressing complex problems. Investigators have come to recognize the inherent value of engaging community members as collaborators in multidisciplinary teams that are conducting research on issues of concern to communities. The insider perspective from community members is now recognized as essential in designing effective and well-received recruitment strategies, culturally appropriate measures, and identifying meaningful and broad-reaching venues for dissemination. (shrink)

Baselitz is one of the most important artists of today. His works can be found in major museums around the world. For over 30 years, photographer Benjamin Katz has been documenting Baselitz at work in different studios. This volume now captures Baselitz's exceptional life at work and at home. Benjamin Katz is famous for his photographic portraits of artists. Among his previous subjects are Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and Martin Kippenberger. Because Katz is friends with most (...) of the artists, he is able to capture them when they are completely at ease. But, as he explains in this book, he prefers to photograph people while they are in the process of doing something. Katz shows Baselitz with paintbrush and hammer, and dog and cigar - the close relationship between the two artists is almost palpable. The photographs are the result of a friendship in an artistic world that they have been sharing for many decades. Cornelia Gockel's essay discusses Katz's unique, new window on the world of Georg Baselitz. (shrink)

In spite of many attempts to define courage, from Plato’s Laches and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to recent moral philosophy, courage remains ambiguous: it is a classical virtue and a requirement of soldiers, and yet, it is not clear what courage means in specific situations. In this article, I investigate courage in view of a complex military context stretching beyond the battlefield into an ethically grey area of war and military operations, namely, a case from ISAF Afghanistan. I explore courage in (...) relation to context-specific factors that inspire soldiers’ judgments and choice of action, and look at the meaning of both physical and moral courage in the given context. The relationship between character and situation plays an important part in the quest to be courageous, and courage proves to be a notion dependent on such factors as level of risk. One of the more essential questions regarding courage seems to be: What should soldiers fear? I argue that we need a deeper understanding of risk and fear to understand courage in complex military contexts. Furthermore, courage is dependent on other virtues, which corresponds with an understanding of courage that is close to Plato’s notion of the unity or interdependence of the virtues. (shrink)

The reign of paper files would seem to be over once files are reduced to the status of icons on computer screens, but Vismann's book, which examines the impact of the file on Western institutions throughout history, shows how the creation of order in medieval and early modern administrations makes its returns in computer architecture.

From the discovery of distant galaxies and black holes to the tiny interstices of the atom, here is the very best on physics and astronomy from the New York Times! The newspaper of record has always prided itself on its award-winning science coverage, and these 125 articles from its archives are the very best, covering more than a century of breakthroughs, setbacks, and mysteries. Selected by former science editor Cornelia Dean, they feature such esteemed and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers as (...) Malcolm W. Browne on teleporting, antimatter atoms, and the physics of traffic jams; James Glanz on string theory; George Johnson on quantum physics; William L. Laurence on Bohr and Einstein; Dennis Overbye on the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson; Walter Sullivan on the colliding beam machine; and more. (shrink)

The following text provides a conceptual and theoretical introduction to a collection of essays written by members of the multidisciplinary network of scholars, artists and cultural producers named ‘Poetics of Resistance’, which seeks to analyse and encourage discussion of the relationships between creativity, culture and political resistance, in the context of neoliberal globalization. The introduction also provides a critical glossary of a set of loosely interlinking keywords, following Raymond Williams, that mark points of encounter and departure between the approaches of (...) the various authors (not to be confused with the list of keywords used to index each article). Rather than presenting a completed research project, this issue serves as a basis for continuing collaborative research and dialogue in the field, and invites readers to join in the ongoing debate. The contributors to this issue are Paulina Aroch Fugellie, Burghard Baltrusch, Arturo Casas, María do Cebreiro Rábade Villar, Roberto Echavarren, Marcos Giadas Conde, Cornelia Gräbner, Nathalia Jabur, Thomas Muhr and David Wood. (shrink)

The 2D:4D-Ratio, as an indirect measure of the fetal testosterone to estradiol ratio, is potentially very important for understanding and explaining different personality traits. It was the aim of the present study to replicate the findings from Fink et al. (2004) about the relation between individual differences in 2D:4D-Ratios and the Five Factor Model in different cultural groups. Therefore a sample of n = 78 Chinese and n = 370 German participants was recruited. Every participant provided hand scans of both (...) hands, from which 2D:4D-Ratios were computed. Moreover, all participants filled in the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Significant sex differences were found for ratios of both hands in the expected direction, with females showing higher ratios than males. With respect to links between personality and the digit ratio, a positive association was observed between 2D:4D-Ratio and Neuroticism in females, as shown in the earlier study. These findings were observed in both female subsamples from China and Germany, as well as in the full sample of participants. But in contrast to the results for the whole and the German female sample, where 2D:4D-Ratio of both hands were related to Neuroticism, in the Chinese female sample only left hand 2D:4D-Ratio was significantly and positively related to Neuroticism. There were no significant correlations found in any of the male samples. Thus, prenatal exposure to sex steroids appears to influence the personality factor Neuroticism in females specifically. This finding potentially has implications for mental health, as Neuroticism has been shown to be a risk factor for various forms of psychopathology. (shrink)

Schanbacer, William D: The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9267-1 Authors Cornelia Butler Flora, Iowa State University 317 East Hall Ames IA 50011-1070 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

The intuitive notion of a binary relation on information-bearers, comparingthem with respect to their closeness to the available information, is oftenconstrued in terms of comparing their symmetric difference with, orcompositional similarity to, the available information. This happens forinstance in some treatments of verisimilitude. We expound an abstractmathematical rendering of the relevant data-dependent relation in theframework of Boolean algebras. For every element t of a Boolean algebra B we construct the t-modulated Boolean algebra Btin which the order relation represents `is at (...) most as compatible with t as'' or `is at best as similar to t as''. In the case of Lindenbaum-Tarskialgebras, t expresses the available information, and the compatibilityrelation turns out to be an entwinement of inferential and conjecturalrelations. It is just classical entailment when no information is available(i.e., when t is logically true) and becomes more boldly abductive themore information is available. The rich algebraic structures of a Boolean algebra –- including its Boolean group structures –- play a significant role in this combination of deduction and abduction and also induce cautious anddaring variants of the compatibility relation. Links with the literature onverisimilitude, abduction, and related topics are indicated. (shrink)

The goal of the article is to offer a framework against which relations between gesture and sign can be systematically explored beyond the current literature. It does so by (a) reconstructing the history of the discussion in the field of gesture studies, focusing on three leading positions (Kendon, McNeill, and Goldin-Meadow); and (b) by formulating a position to illustrate how this can be achieved. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for systematic cross-linguistic research on multimodal use of language in (...) its signed and spoken forms. (shrink)

We are still far from a religious history of Europe (l'histoire réligieuse de l'Europe) which would satisfy the requirements of modern religious scholarship. We do, however, have a picture of the religions of Europe, the old and the new, of their metamorphoses and effects on the intellectual world of European man, which we can use as a temporary survey. A modification in this survey concerns not only scholars; the religious history of Europe is our religious history, regardless of the value (...) it has for the individual as creed or philosophical doctrine. Unlike religion, religious history cannot be repudiated on the basis of doubts as to its truth or its existential validity (could this be “my” religion?). What is more, such a history cannot be side-stepped, for even the repudiation of all religion is an act within religious history; and a presentation of the religious history of Europe which does not concern itself with Nietzsche would not satisfy our demands as scholars. (shrink)

There are two pitfalls which constantly threaten the literary historian who seeks the origins or beginnings of works of the mind such as species of literature or forms of religion, as well as the examples which partake of both. One danger is that the study may become an artificial construction without sufficient concrete basis in proved historical facts; the other is that the author may prefer experience to such constructions and may be too much influenced by what he has known (...) and been impressed with as origin and beginning in his own time. The latter has at least one advantage: where there is no experience at the outset of an investigation, not even that minimum of empeiria which I shall call, with the Greek poet Aleman, peira (peira toi mathesios archa, “experience is the beginning of knowledge”), then there can be no scholarship in the fields of literature, art, and religion. In the history of those three fields we can be competently guided only by “veterans”—not mere theoreticians but men who in a sense are also “practitioners” in the creating of works of the mind. Experience takes first place not only in the natural sciences but also in modern scholarship in these areas, even with the risk that it may be too personal, too time-bound, too small in scope. (shrink)