Sozialindex für Grundschulen in Mülheim an der Ruhr

The German school system is socially highly unequal, as educational research criticized for a long time. While in some schools socially privileged pupils are the majority, other schools are composed by mostly poor pupils. The combination of socio-geographic and educational geographic considerations leads to a social school index, which clearly shows how strong schools are socially privileged or disadvantaged. The paper presents a practical example of building a social school index for cities and compares the results. The residence-based density index on grid data from German Social Code (book 2) is preferred because it is unproblematic in terms of data protection law and can be extended at the level of 100 × 100?m grids. Calculating detailed and differentiated social school indices with school enrollment data leads to very good results, but is much more work.     

Genderism and the Bathroom Problem: (re)materialising sexed sites, (re)creating sexed bodies

This article introduces the possibilities of a new term, ‘genderism’, to describe the hostile readings of, and reactions to, gender ambiguous bodies. Genderism is used here to articulate instances of discrimination that are based on the discontinuities between the sex with which an individual identifies and how others, in a variety of spaces, read their sex. The article suggests that intersections between queer theories, that destabilise the dichotomy of man/woman, and performative geographies, that recognise the (re)formation of space, could facilitate, and indeed necessitate, a consideration of how the illusion of dichotomous sexes is (re)formed at the site of the body (re)constituting men and women in context. Nine women, who participated in a wider research project about non‐heterosexual women's lives, spoke of being mistaken for men yet understanding themselves and living as women. Using these narratives the ‘bathroom problem’, where women are read as men in toilets and as a result subjected to abusive and even violent reactions, is examined. These policing behaviours demonstrate the instability of sexed norms as well as how sites can be (re)made ‘woman only’ and simultaneously ‘women's’ bodies (re)produced. The article then examines how women negotiate the policing of sexed spaces such that bodies, sexed sites (toilets) and the location of these sites (nightclubs, service stations) are mutually constituted within sexed regimes of power. In this way the article aims to explore how sexed power relations (re)form the mundane ‘stuff’ of everyday life by examining moments where boundaries of gender difference are overtly (en)forced.     

漕控与清代地方社会秩序——以匡光文控漕事件为中心的考察

The cases of caozheng 漕政 (The government administration of the collection and transport of grain taxes by water in the former times) are present in all stages in the Qing Dynasty. The social interaction and interest dispute involve the commoners, officials, and gentries in the localities in all kinds of caozheng cases. Caozheng cases that are inspired by lofty motives and filed under the established procedure are often mingled with trumped-up charges that are pressed through illegitimate means. They are employed as conventional methods by both commoners and officials for their own interests. By virtue of an in-depth analysis of such representative cases as the lawsuit issued by Kuang Guangwen, it is plainly evident that caozheng cases happen on many occasions because the long-standing malpractices spread uncontrollably in the middle and late stages of the Qing. It is both the attitude taken by the local officials towards the management of caozheng and their rationale behind the exercise of power that always dictated how such incidents take place and come to an end and therein lies the crux of a persistent problem. The caozheng cases reflects the pervasive influence that the collection of grain taxes extends on the life of the gentries and commoners, and the far-reaching effect that the taxation exerts on the change of the social order in the localities. In essence the cases reveal, to a greater or lesser degree, the circumstances under which the national affairs of Qing are administered in society in the localities, and the tendencies that are displayed in the social order in the localities.     

Die regionalökonomische Bedeutung der Wissenschaft für das Ruhrgebiet

The Ruhr area has advanced to the largest university region in Germany – often unnoticed within and outside. At the same time scientific institutions have become a major economic factor. Because of the higher and extra-university research institutions about 2.5 billion euros are effective as a demand potential in the region. 1.7 billion euros of this amount are directly associated with investments and operating expenditures of the scientific institutions as well as consumptions of employees and students. Additional 770 million euros result in revenues of many branches such as trade, housing, gastronomy sector, handcraft industry etc. It should not be underestimated that higher and extra-university research institutions generate with their research activities particular funding from the European Union or the rest of Germany for benefit of the region. Each euro spent by the state government for basic funding creates 39 cents third-party funding. These regional-economic effects result in noticeable employment impacts within the region. Around 25,000 people are directly employed in higher and extra-university research institutes or student unions (Studierendenwerke), about 22,000 jobs in other economic sectors are ensured or created by the induced demand. Science has thus become an important economic factor and represents an essential counterbalance to employment decline in shrinking industries of the region. The specific inclusion of science in a regional development strategy and targeted relining with appropriate measures to strengthen the science creates therefore an effective starting point for the design of structural change.     

The Tenco effect. Suicide,San Remo,and the social construction of the canzone d'autore

Abstract

Canzone d'autore is an indigenous expression that has no precise equivalent in other languages. Its social use identifies a genre of popular song that presuppose the existence of an ‘autore’ taken in its most vigorous sense, meaning a ‘creator’, an ‘artist’– but how did this claim to artistry originate? How did it insinuate itself into the world of song, a genre that by definition belongs to the realm of what is traditionally called in Italian ‘musica leggera,’ with unmistakably pejorative connotations? In this essay, I will put forward a sociological interpretation of the genesis of the canzone d'autore, using as a strategic conceptual device the idea of cultural trauma. The traumatic event that I propose to explore, making use of this concept and its analytical machinery, is the suicide of the singer-songwriter Luigi Tenco during the seventeenth San Remo ‘Festival della Canzone’ (‘song festival’) – that is the best-known, most controversial, and most influential single event in the field of Italian ‘musica leggera’, an annual event regularly attended every year – via radio, television, or audience participation – by millions of Italians. Through a reconstruction of that suicide and above all of the public and dramatic events that followed in response to it, the paper examines the social process that transformed an individual tragedy into a collective, social drama, a process that not only produced a new musical classification, but also a new cultural and aesthetic category.     

Reading with the Occultists: Arthur Machen,A. E. Waite,and the Ecstasies of Popular Fiction

My article recovers a forgotten moment in the history of popular fiction criticism – the late Victorian advent of what I term occultic literary criticism – to challenge the persistent anxiety thesis that continues to dominate fin-de-siècle studies. In the late 1890s, the close friends, writers, bibliophiles, and, for varying amounts of time, practising occultists Arthur Machen and A. E. Waite used their literary criticism to champion the ecstatic occult potential of mass-circulated popular fiction, insisting that the penny dreadful, the newspaper story, and the popular picaresque as exemplified in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) represented coded versions of ancient mystery tradition rituals. The cheap popular texts could offer to readers, writers, and collectors the kind of joyous direct encounter with the unseen world that sacred texts no longer could. The pair’s conviction that ecstatic occult initiation was just as, if not more, attainable through popular exoteric texts as through their restricted esoteric counterparts offers an important corrective to contemporary understandings of both the late-Victorian reception of popular fiction and of the reach and constituency of the occult revival.     

Study Abroad Field Trip Improves Test Performance through Engagement and New Social Networks

Although study abroad trips provide an opportunity for affective and cognitive learning, it is largely assumed that they improve learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a study abroad field trip improved cognitive learning by comparing test performance between the study abroad participants (n = 20) and their peers who did not participate (n = 365). Test performance was statistically identical between these groups before and immediately after the study abroad program. On the final exam, the study abroad participants scored significantly higher. Qualitative methods were used to identify increased engagement with the course material and the creation of new social networks as likely explanations.     

Hydrology and the Imperial Vision of Bois de Boulogne

SUMMARY: Bois de Boulogne was a key urban design effort of Second Empire France. This essay surveys the landscape of the park with particular attention to water; social practices that engendered the use of water, and social practices which water enabled. The hydrology of the site — the grand lake, streams and waterfalls — is a statement and demonstration of imperial mastery and sensibility. Nearly half of the project budget was devoted to hydraulics and, in the opening years, more than 15% of the municipal water supply was diverted to the park; all of which supported a status-laden array of features attractive to elites of the Second Empire and Third Republic.     

Grüne Infrastruktur in den Städten Nordrhein-Westfalens

Hardly any other city in North Rhine-Westphalia has such a green image as the city of Münster. It embodies the image of a livable city in Germany. Other North Rhine-Westphalian cities also work on their external perception and are approaching the task of getting a greener image for themselves in many ways. A central question is how it is done precisely and whether urban green infrastructure can be a locational factor to affect location-based marketing. This article deals with the strategies of various cities in North Rhine-Westphalia.     

‘F&#% autonomy’: Houellebecq,Submission, and Enlightenment’s ‘last dismaying dregs’

ABSTRACT

This article examines the evolution of Houellebecq’s treatment of History across the span of his novels. Focusing in particular on The Elementary Particles, The Map and the Territory, and Submission, I explore a gradual but discernible movement away from a broadly Comtean understanding of historical destiny, which anticipated the decline of theology and metaphysics and the rise of positivism. Over the course of Houellebecq’s novels, this account of historical evolution yields to a circular rendering of history in which theology and metaphysics alternate as religious and secular dispensations trade power. While The Elementary Particles imagines the techno-utopian fantasy of a genetically perfected humanity, Submission abandons these Comtean-inspired utopian ambitions for a religiously grounded social order maintained under Islam. Crucially, I contend that François’ journey towards conversion in Submission, foreshadowed by the character Houellebecq’s conversion to Catholicism in The Map and the Territory, may be read as a narrative of the West’s exhaustion with Enlightenment and the burdens of personal autonomy. Submission is a novel that doubts the positivist pretention that humanity can move beyond religion and metaphysics, and instead suggests that metaphysics and its attendant doctrine of individual rights and freedom inevitably collapses back into theology.     

Mapping the soft city: using cognitive mapping to respond to London-based literature and explore the construction of teenage place-related identity

ABSTRACT

Raban (1974. Soft City: What Cities Do To Us, and How They Change the Way We Live, Think and Feel. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2) distinguishes between the ‘hard’ city of statistics and maps, versus the ‘soft’ city of the ‘creative play of urban living’, ‘an art’ which enables urbanites to mould cities in their desired image. This case study reviews approaches to conceptualising urban space, exploring practical tasks through which London students can engage with, and write about, their place-related identities in order to enhance their readings of the rich range of literature set in their city. Developing an unconventional approach to teaching two A-level (16–18 years old) English Literature coursework texts – John Gay’s (1716) Trivia and Geoff Nicholson’s (1997) Bleeding London – it was hoped that students might be helped to ask whether a comprehensive (‘hard’) knowledge of London can ever be achieved. This case study is primarily an account of the students’ own London maps, a creative task designed to help them engage thematically with the coursework texts.     

Bioarchaeological Patterns of Violence in North Patagonia (Argentina) during the late Holocene. Implications for the Study of Population Dynamics

This work presents bioarchaeological patterns of interpersonal violence inferred for Northeastern Patagonia (Argentina) during the late Holocene. The main goal is to evaluate if there is a significant increase in the frequency of indicators of violence during the final late Holocene, prior to colonial times, in possible concordance with the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (ca. 1150–600 years BP). A sample of skulls (n = 797) was studied through a series of methodological steps that included the evaluation of their state of preservation and the study of potential injuries, taking into account the degree of ambiguity of the diagnosis. The sample was divided into three chronological groups: early (ca. 3500–2500 years BP), middle (ca. 2500–1500 years BP) and late (ca. 1500–400 years BP). The individuals were also separated according to sex, age category and geographical distribution. Although a temporal trend toward increased violence was detected, it was not statistically significant. There was also a higher percentage of positive cases in Northern individuals compared to the Southern ones, and between males compared to females, but neither case had statistically significant differences. Alternative mechanisms, such as population dispersals, exchange and use of buffer areas, that may have functioned to dispel social tensions, are proposed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“A Permanent and Even European Reputation”: The Lost Work of the Reverend Walter Gregor

Vincent Thomas Sternberg's The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire appeared in March 1851 and was the first book to make use of W. J. Thoms' coinage of folklore (dating from 1846) in its title. It was sufficiently successful a publication to call for a second edition that same year, although with the title changed to The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire with Warwickshire Legends and Traditions. The content, however, remains the same. This second edition has hitherto not been noticed by bibliographers of English folklore and copies are scarce; for instance, COPAC records just a single copy of this book at the University of Liverpool.     

Youth geographies of urban estrangement in the Canadian city: risk management,race relations and the ‘sacrificial stranger’

This paper explores the impact of urban social divisions and changing race relations on the experiences of disadvantaged youth living on the periphery of two Canadian cities: Vancouver and Toronto. We analyze a cross-national subsample of 60 disadvantaged youths’ perceptions of urban social conflict and changing race relations in their city and school. We raise the larger question of how and why economically disadvantaged young people might embody particular understandings of safety, race, the other and security in different spatial registers of the city. We utilize an ethnographic methodology drawing from diverse but interrelated fields: border studies, the phenomenology of estrangement and a materialist version of critical race studies [(Ahmed, S. 1999. “Home and Away Narratives of Migration and Strangeness.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 2 (3): 329–347, Ahmed, S. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, Ahmed, S. 2013. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. London: Routledge; Kearney, R., and V. E. Taylor. 2005. “A Conversation with Richard Kearney.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 6 (2): 17–26)].     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

Democratization and museum policy in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This article examines the two distinct historical policy paths taken by the South Korean government in the late twentieth century towards the democratization of museums. One was based on the creation of a museological public sphere as an extension of the political democratization movement of the 1980s. This demonstrated the potential to become a valuable component of the wider incipient national public sphere within which civic subjects could discuss their individual and collective historical memories. However, despite this potential, a museological public sphere failed to influence the general trajectory of national policy regarding the democratization of museums that had been in development since the early 1980s. This other policy path towards cultural democratization was triggered by the award of the Seoul Olympics in 1981. It was based on public participation and entitled the ‘cultural Olympics’. An important strategy of the cultural Olympics was the construction of a new institutional infrastructure to expand the public right to enjoy culture. This path facilitated an increasing entanglement with neoliberalism in 1990s. Finally, the 1997 IMF crisis furthered the association between a superficial idea of democratization through institutional expansion and the practices of neoliberalism, a trend which continues within South Korean museum policy today.     

Development in Nunavik: How Regional and Local Initiatives Redefine Sustainable Development in Nunavik

ABSTRACT

For more than 50 years, the Inuit of Nunavik have been subjected to development plans devised in the south by the Government of Canada and Quebec that has a profound impact on Inuit people and their culture. The latest plan, known as Plan Nord, proposes sustainable development for the North based on the protection of 50 percent of the territory. However, the Inuit of Nunavik face many social challenges and this is reflected in the socioeconomic indicators of the region. In order to alleviate these social circumstances, numerous regional and local initiatives are attempting to establish programs better suited to the culture and needs of Nunavimmiut. Examples at the regional level include childcare and midwifery services supported by Quebec. At the local level, initiatives such as the Unaaq Men’s Association and the Innavik Project are making an effort to address local needs. In this paper, following a presentation of the Nunavik governance architecture, we will analyze how local (Unaaq, Innavik) and regional initiatives (Midwifery Program, Childcare, Preparation for Post-Secondary Education, Nunavik Parks) contribute to the sustainable development of Nunavik.     

Stages of War,Stages of Man: Quincy Wright and the Liberal Internationalist Study of War

American legal scholar Quincy Wright's 1942 A Study of War was a milestone in the study of warfare, and a monumental text in the history of liberal internationalism and the social sciences. Yet, it was quickly forgotten, and neglected ever since. This paper seeks to recover Study by elucidating its historical significance, and placing it within the intellectual and institutional contexts of its time. Study, I argue, encapsulated both an interwar liberal internationalist conceptualisation of warfare as well as a pre-Realist social scientific approach to war in international relations. Through the 1,500 page Study Wright attempted to take the emergent discipline of international relations in new directions by developing a multidisciplinary and multidimensional historical, theoretical and empirical approach to warfare. He incorporated sociological and anthropological approaches and developed themes found more broadly in existing Anglo-American studies of war. Study's multidimensional approach was framed by liberal internationalist concerns and concepts, and yet also reflected the development of the social sciences in the interwar period. Study points to the more realist direction liberal internationalism may have turned to if it had not succumbed to the power-political realist conceptualisations international relations which would ascend in the 1940s.     

Integrating isotopes and documentary evidence: dietary patterns in a late medieval and early modern mining community,Sweden

This study explores the relationship between dietary patterns and social structure in a pre-industrial mining community in Salberget, Sweden c. 1470 to 1600 A.D. using a combination of different research approaches and tools, including archaeology, osteology, bone chemistry and history. The correlation between demographic criteria (sex and age) and archaeological variables (burial type and burial location) shows that Salberget was a highly stratified community. Group diets were investigated through analyses of stable isotopes (carbon, δ ¹³C, and nitrogen, δ ¹⁵N) of bone collagen from a sub-sample of individuals buried at the site (n = 67), interpreted alongside data from human dental lesions and deficiencies, animal bone waste and information on eating habits extracted from the extensive historical documents regarding mining activities at Salberget. These integrated analyses provide a clear association between social status and diet and confirm that social status, and to a lesser extent sex, gender and age, likely governed food choice and opportunity in this diverse community.