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The conception and the implementation of the Excellence Initiative goes along with many metaphors, one of the most popular is the metaphor “Lighthouses of science”. The essay traces the linguistic and graphic use of this metaphor in the media and looks for an answer to the question, why the image of the lighthouse is particularly suited to transport the political ambition of a higher vertical differentiation...
Even in the 1990ies international law was still characterized by a “culture of impunity” concerning sexualized and gender-related violence. Only when transnational women’s movements became the direct agents of this process of transnationalization of law was it possible to scandalize and gradually transform these power relations. Against the background of a feminist approach to legal theory this change...
According to Bourdieu shared positions in the social field determine whom we choose to love. Examples from novels and results from recent social research on marriage patterns are provided to indicate that the choice of spouses is still strongly influenced by similarities of habitus in the sense of Bourdieu. The resulting social selectivity of love is, paradoxically, reinforced when traditional educational...
The article addresses the changes of borders and border controls in the OECD-world and identifies three major transformations of the border-regimes. Contemporary border regimes differentiate more and more between particular groups of people, facilitating movement for some, while excluding others from mobility (selectivity). Border control is framed in international cooperation between states and non-state...
In “No God but God” US-American religious scientist Reza Aslan argues that Islam at present is in a historical phase comparable to the Christian Reformation of the 16.th century. The article tries to find out if this is true. It goes through some central aspects in the social and intellectual life of Muslim societies now and Christian societies then. The intellectual personal of Church and Ulema are...
In the debate that is taking place in political theory constitutional patriotism, “Leitkultur”, and multiculturalism do not appear as competitive concepts, but draw attention on different important aspects, which should be taken into account concerning today’s challenges. If constitutional patriotism means a specific citizen’s attitude that embraces not only abidance by the law but moreover loyalty...
Property rights on human body parts and property titles on human bio-data are often discussed under the heading of the ‘commercialization of the human body’. The author describes the structure of the discussion on data protection and compares the legal situation of a number of models on questions of property-, usage-, and disposal-rights in the area of bio-data. The protagonists in these models are...
This contribution investigates the empirical foundation of the claim that civil society participation mitigates the democratic deficit of international governance. In a first step, two potentially democratizing functions of organized civil society are identified: direct channelling of citizens’ interest into international negotiations and a contribution to the emergence of a transnational public sphere...
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