From Control to Terror: German Prostitution Policies in Eastern and Western European Territories during both World Wars

In both World Wars, the German armies enacted a prostitution policy in all the occupied territories of Western and Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study, this article uses archival research in Poland, France, Belgium and Germany as well as existing studies in five languages to examine the continuities and discontinuities in German prostitution policies between the Western and the Eastern territories during both wars. In exploring the question of continuity, we consider the interaction of local authorities with occupation forces and how prostitution policies in Western and Eastern countries differed from the German ‘home front’. Strong continuities existed between the First and Second World War, including a severe backlash against the abolitionist trend in Europe and the extension of regulatory controls beyond the prostitutes to include other ‘suspect’ women, often justified by concerns over the spread of venereal diseases and public morality and health. Despite these continuities, prostitution policies were even more regressive during the Second World War, with the racial ideology of Nazism as the main trigger for the brutalisation of prostitution policies. German authorities pushed the system to greater extremes, overseeing its evolution from control to terror.     

Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

Research projects undertaken in the Cantabrian region since 1980 have produced new, high-quality information about the neolithisation process(es) in this area. It is now necessary to review this archaeological information and test the main hypotheses put forward to explain it. This paper presents an update on the archaeological evidence (sites, chronological dates, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and technological information) for the early Neolithic in the Cantabrian region. It summarizes recent research on neolithisation in the region, and assesses the impact of this process during the early Neolithic, and its later consolidation. Although the available information is still incomplete, it is now possible to identify the focal point of the introduction of elements characteristic of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Current evidence suggests that it is in the eastern sector, where the earliest arrival of domesticates and new technologies such as pottery has been attested. The existence of continuities—such as sustained reliance on hunting and gathering and the coexistence of old and new funerary rites—suggests the persistence of native populations, which gradually participated in the neolithisation process after an ‘availability phase’.     

Between a principled and a consequentialist logic: theory and practice of secession in Catalonia and Scotland

This paper inquires into whether the three types of arguments usually formulated in the normative literature on the legitimacy of secession – i.e. communitarian, choice, and remedial arguments – are articulated (or not) by separatist parties in Catalonia and Scotland. It concludes that these actors do use such arguments, but they tend to merge them in different combinations making a pluralist case for independence rather than developing monist reasoning as most political philosophers do. Furthermore, it finds a fourth type of argument which is under‐theorised in the relevant literature. This is an instrumental argument whereby independence is depicted not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve better welfare and governance for the national population. It further proposes a fourfold theoretical scheme that links communitarian and choice arguments to a principled logic based on the belief in the existence of an absolute right to self‐determination and remedial and instrumental arguments to a consequentialist logic that legitimates secession on the condition that it serves the achievement of specific ends.     

Zukunft Ruhr 2030

Zusammenfassung  Regionale Entwicklungsstrategien werden in der Regel ohne substanzielle Beteiligung der Wirtschaft entwickelt. Das war im Projekt „Zukunft Ruhr 2030“ anders. Hier hat der „Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet“, die Vereinigung gro?er Unternehmen in der Metropolregion Ruhr, Entwicklungsperspektiven für die Region aus Sicht der Wirtschaft entworfen. Sechs führende Unternehmensberatungen haben in Zusammenarbeit mit Experten aus Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft verschiedene Themenfelder untersucht, eine Vision entwickelt und daraus eine Entwicklungsstrategie für die kommenden Jahre abgeleitet.