L’autobiographie allemande du XVIIIe siècle,interprétée à la lumière de la sociologie de niklas Luhmann

With the help of Luhmann’s theory, this essay tries to define the connection between the boom of autobiographical writing in the late 18th century and the rise of the middle classes. Central to this, is his definition of “career”, with which he describes the individuals’ behaviour in the new functional bourgeois society. Strictly speaking, the individual gains personal and social identity, through his or her spoken or written autobiography as can be seen clearly in Jung-Stilling’s autobiography, which was published bit by bit. The individual hereby improves its prospects of social advancement. On the other hand, K. P. Moritz in hisAnton Reiser describes his hero’s life as the “career” of a failure whose hyperactive imagination interferes with the formation of his identity. Thus autobiographical writing in the 18th century shows itself as the literary autopoiesis of the authors’ concrete individuality.     

Twenty Years of Mobilising around AIDS in China: The Main Actors and Influences behind Organisational Growth

AIDS-related work and advocacy is one field that has spurred considerable activity among Chinese NGOs in the past two decades. This article explains processes leading to institutional changes that are necessary for allowing more NGOs to emerge and operate, and shows how international, domestic and local actors and influences have steered developments leading to organisational growth. The article applies new institutionalism theory and highlights differences between formal and informal institutions in explaining change and continuity for NGOs and their relations to state and government in this particular field.     

Sociability and Hugo Grotius

Summary

Grotius has a rudimentary theory of sociability. Only with hindsight has a remark about appetitus societatis been promoted to the starting point of a theory that flourished in the writings of later natural jurists. In this article, I address the issue of the appearance in Grotius's natural law of sociability [as the 1715/38 English translation of John Morrice renders appetitus societatis, following Barbeyrac's sociabilité]. Writing in the just war tradition, Grotius is first of all interested in finding out the conditions for peace, and although injustice is a condition of war, it is not per se true that injustice is a perversion of society. Apparently, not all societies are perfect and the violence of war and the legal actions of peace are both instruments for achieving a greater modicum of justice in this world. Yet appetitus et custodia societatis is called the foundation of justice. Grotius achieved this context for sociability in phases, through a series of writings from c. 1600 until De iure belli ac pacis of 1625, and its revision of 1631. In this development the notion of fides plays an intriguing role, through which we can obtain a better understanding of the meaning of appetitus societatis in the later work. The present article is a sequel to a previous publication, on fides in De iure praedae (Ms. 1604/5). Analysing the genesis of appetitus societatis in De iure belli ac pacis, I argue that Grotius was changing his strategy over the years, without however arriving at a definitive solution to the question of what commits men to the pursuit of justice.