Into the Spiral of Problematic Perceptions: Modern Anti-Semitism and gebildetes Burgertum in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This article attempts to relate modern anti-Semitism to theincreasingly close interactions of Jews and non-Jews in an ageof political emancipation and social integration. It arguesthat the changing mutual perceptions of Jews and Protestantsin the German educated bourgeoisie are of central importancein this regard. In nineteenth-century Germany, literature movementssuch as realism, and various human sciences such as anthropology,Protestant theology or philology provided ample material fordiscussing the Jewish character. These fields suggest four waysof perceiving Jews: the Jew as parvenu, as Talmudist, as materialistand as nomad. Indeed, bourgeois Jews themselves contributedto these literary and scholarly debates. Their discussions werefrequently shaped by the attempt to confront anti-Jewish misconceptions.Moreover, they propagated their own interpretation of the Jewishcharacter: the figure of the humanistic Jew. This Jewish interpretation,which identifies a universal mission, proves to have a twofoldnature: it is not only a counter-attack against anti-Semiticpolemics, but also a particular result of the peculiar Jewishadaptation of bourgeois culture. As the article argues, however,this humanistic perception of Jewish identity caused concernon the Protestant side, which led to further polemics and thusfurther Jewish defence. The resulting spiral of problematicperceptions was the consequence of the growing social intimacyof bourgeois Jews and Protestants in nineteenth-century Germany.Modern anti-Semitism, it is thus argued, can be interpretedas a specific form of rejection of ambivalence and the establishmentof neat binary codes in the confusing closeness of Jews andnon-Jews.     

Discourses of Mobility and Polycentric Development: A Contested View of European Spatial Planning

This article carries out an analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a policy document which represents a critical moment in the emergence of a new discourse of European spatial development. The analytical approach probes at the power relations which have shaped the ESDP framework and its contents, focusing on the twin core themes of spatial mobility and polycentricity. The analysis concludes that in the contested policy process a new spatial discourse of economic competitiveness is emerging at the expense of social and environmental interests. This new discourse will be further contested as implementation takes place in an uncertain policy environment.     

Trump: Transacting trickster

Donald Trump's recent election victory has been greeted with horror and disbelief by many. In particular, the glaring inconsistencies and open self‐contradictions that marked his campaign should have rendered him unelectable by the standards of conventional reasonable political practice. But rather than being a problem to be explained away, it is Trump's open embrace of contradiction that explains much of his appeal. By holding contradictory trends and opinions simultaneously, he presents himself as being capable of embodying seemingly mutually exclusive social trends, such as an intensification of economic competition on the one hand and a radical denunciation of that competition's effects on some of the losers from that process on the other. By doing so, he presents himself as a powerful figure with charismatic abilities to contain such contradictions within himself – abilities that are not available to ordinary career politicians, but that are strikingly reminiscent of the powers attributed to so‐called ‘trickster’ figures in anthropological literature.     

Semantically Enhanced 3D: A Web-based Platform for Spatial Integration of Excavation Documentation at Alken Enge,Denmark

ABSTRACT

The photorealistic and geometrically accurate 3-dimensional representation of excavations, provided by image-based modeling, has the potential to transform the process of excavation documentation, making it easier to share observations with other researchers. Paradoxically, however, spatial representation lacks the ability to convey archaeological interpretations. By example of excavations in Alken Enge, Denmark, this paper explores how a web-based 3D platform is able to facilitate the collaborative exchange of 3D excavation content and how the integration of spatial and attribute data into one common event-based data model may be advantageous. This includes enhancing the semantic value of field-recorded 3D models by segmenting the geometry using various techniques, such as 3D projections and machine learning. Accordingly, the paper demonstrates a framework for interactive 3D models, which includes attributed classification based on segmented 3D content correlated with traditional raster, vector, and textual data, delivering a spatially integrated platform for collaborative research.