Suchergebnisse

"As historical evidence shows, there are multiple roads to such different forms of capitalism as 'traditional commercial capitalism' and 'political capitalism'. And, following Weber, not all of these forms can trigger the long term stable economic growth associated with Western rational capitalism. Although previous sociological analyses have improved our understanding of post-socialism, they have generated more controversy than theoretical convergence. This is because, the author contends, many sociological studies have neglected the political and historical aspects involved in the construction of markets in the former communist bloc. In this paper the author discusses the features of political capitalism in post-communist Romania, a case that has been infrequently addressed by mainstream analyses of Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, the author analyzes the rise of political capitalism as an effect of Romania' s communist and post-communist political-institutional histories." (author's abstract)

"This article addresses the transformation of the diplomatic elite in the post-communist period, based on the results of the comprehensive survey. The analysis demonstrated that in the majority of the countries surveyed diplomats were drawn disproportionately from a very exclusive segment of society: the urban intelligentsia. Furthermore, the picture of a diplomat from a post-communist country is similar to that of a diplomat from any western country. In other words, the diplomats in post-communist countries are recruited from the same strata from which the diplomats in countries experiencing political stability would normally be recruited. In those few countries where a break up with the regime prevented the majority of the urban elite from being considered reliable by new regime, preference was given to persons with rural background, overwhelmingly men." (author's abstract)

"This paper provides a brief overview of elite change and continuity in East Germany as a post-socialist society. To do so, at first, some peculiarities of the former cadre system and elites in socialist East Germany, i.e. the late German Democratic Republic, are addressed with regard to social structure development and the arrangement of generations. Selected empirical evidence is based on cross-sectoral, longitudinal and cohort analyses and the inspection of prosopographic elite data compiled until the end of the 1980s which deconstruct the myth of a levelled egalitarian socialist society. In the second part of the paper, elite change and continuity after the political change of 1989/90 is discussed in the context of the transformation of institutions. Inspired by Bourdieu's analytic paradigm, one central thesis on the career survivals, take-offs, and breakdowns of East German elites is the continued validity and efficacy of social and cultural capital obtained before the fall of the wall, most of all formal qualification. Dimension of vertical social inequality under socialist rule, such as gender and class background, remain to be decisive until today." (author's abstract)

"The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential for generating interesting aggregate data on certain aspect of the lives of thousands of composers, and indeed other creative groups, from large on-line dictionaries and to be able to do so relatively quickly. A purpose-built java application that automatically extracts and processes information was developed to generate data on the birth location, occupations and importance (using word count methods) of over 12,000 composers over six centuries. Quantitative measures of the relative importance of different types of music and of the different music instruments over the centuries were also generated. Finally quantitative indicators of the importance of different cities over the different centuries in the lives of these composers are constructed. A range of interesting findings emerge in relation to all of these aspects of the lives of composers, which might provide insight and productive lines of enquiry for further work as to why certain composers were so successful in different historical periods." (author's abstract)

"In Rekrutierungsprozessen für politische Spitzenpositionen verdichten sich gesellschaftliche und politische Machtverhältnisse, in die vergeschlechtlichte Strukturen eingelegt sind. Durch eine geschlechtervergleichende Untersuchung von politischen Rekrutierungsprozessen können wichtige Schlüsse über die Ausgestaltung dieser vergeschlechtlichten Machtverhältnisse gezogen werden. Im bisherigen Literaturkorpus zu politischer Rekrutierung (und Geschlecht) fehlt die Perspektivierung von Macht. Bourdieus machtzentrierte Begriffskonzepte des Feldes und des Kapitals stellen wertvolle Werkzeuge dar, um in diese Lücke vorzustoßen und eine geschlechtervergleichende (Macht-)Analyse von Rekrutierungsprozessen zu leisten. In diesem Beitrag werden die verfügbaren Kapitalien und die politischen Karrierewege der österreichischen Regierungsmitglieder von 1966 bis 2006 sowie ihre geschlechtsspezifischen Effekte untersucht." (Autorenreferat)

Öffentlich finanzierte Erwachsenenbildung hat nur selten zur Mehrung von Bildungsgerechtigkeit beigetragen. Oft genug profitierten jene, die ohnehin schon breit an Bildung und Beruf teilhatten. Dies zeigt der Autor in einem Durchgriff durch die deutsche Nachkriegsgeschichte der Weiterbildung, innerhalb derer er mehrere Konjunkturen der Mittelverteilung identifiziert. Zunächst adressierte die Erwachsenenbildung Bildungsbeflissene, bevor im Zuge der "realistischen Wende" sozialpolitisch motiviert das Lernen der Arbeitnehmer in den Blick geriet. Die Förderung durch die Arbeitsagentur wird auf der Folie bildungsökonomischen Nutzenkalküls vorgestellt. Dass sich kein Bundesrahmengesetz zur Weiterbildung durchsetzen konnte, wird im Blick auf die Gerechtigkeitsfrage als endgültiger Gestaltungsverzicht gewertet.

"Der vorliegende Text behandelt die brutalen Frauenmorde (feminicidio), die seit 1993 in den mexikanischen Grenzstädten Ciudad Juärez und Chihuahua stattfinden, als extremes Beispiel für misogyne Gewalt und Verletzung der Menschenrechte. Die Nichtverfolgung der Täter und die damit verbundene Straflosigkeit sowie die Normalisierung von Gewalt gingen der aktuellen Toleranz von Gewalt im mexikanischen 'Drogenkrieg' voraus. Die Auflagen, die der Interamerikanische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte dem mexikanischen Staat im Kontext des Falles 'Campo algodonero' machte, werden nicht angemessen erfüllt." (Autorenreferat)

Latin American legislatures have gone largely unstudied, with the functioning of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies prior to the 1980s being an entirely unexplored subject. This paper fills that gap by examining the organization of the Chamber, with particular focus on its standing committee system from 1946 to 2001. We assess the portability of two U.S.-based theoretical approaches to legislative organization by applying them to committee assignments. An original data set of Argentine deputies was constructed and a way of measuring political power in committees was devised for this study. Despite weak democratic governments, military interventions, and changes to the electoral system, we find that ruling parties have consistently influenced the committee system, shaping its structure and securing an over-proportion of their deputies in key committee positions. These results support the applicability of the U.S. originated Cartel Theory of legislative organization to understanding and studying legislatures outside that country. (GIGA)

This paper presents some of the choices made by the Mongols in the uses and representations of Mongol rulers' portraits in sculpture and in painting, to understand what were the portraits made for and what were their symbolic roles in state ideology. As in medieval Europe, the portrait developed from funerary statues to a political and religious symbol linking the past sovereign to the present ruler. Sculpted portraits were supports for the soul, to feed and worship the ancestor. Under Buddhist influence during Khubilai's reign, the statues were replaced by painted and woven portraits. Statues were reserved for Buddhas and holy lamas. These portraits also give us much information on self-representation, costume, gender statute, ancestor worship, and conventions. They reflect the highly personalized nature of politics for Mongols

This paper presents some of the choices made by the Mongols in the uses and representations of Mongol rulers' portraits in sculpture and in painting, to understand what were the portraits made for and what were their symbolic roles in state ideology. As in medieval Europe, the portrait developed from funerary statues to a political and religious symbol linking the past sovereign to the present ruler. Sculpted portraits were supports for the soul, to feed and worship the ancestor. Under Buddhist influence during Khubilai's reign, the statues were replaced by painted and woven portraits. Statues were reserved for Buddhas and holy lamas. These portraits also give us much information on self-representation, costume, gender statute, ancestor worship, and conventions. They reflect the highly personalized nature of politics for Mongols

International audience This paper discusses the ʿIlājāt-i Dārā Šikōhī by Nūr al-Dīn Šīrāzī which is one of the largest Persian medical manuals composed in Mughal India (1526-1857). Šīrāzī was a physician attached to the Mughal court and dedicated his work to the Mughal prince Dārā Šikōh (d. 1659). A major characteristic of the ʿIlājāt-i Dārā Šikōhī is its incorporation of Indian knowledge and it can be considered as one of the most important attempts of describing in the same volume both the features of Muslim and Indian medical arts. Another important intellectual feature of the ʿIlājāt-i Dārā Šikōhī is its synthesis of secular and religious medical traditions of Islam and it is certainly not fortuitous that a book like this was dedicated to a personage such as Dārā Šikōh, both a Sufi scholar and an eminent student of Indian traditions.

Dieser Beitrag leistet eine Reflexion von Ethnografie als einem Ansatz, der eine Vielzahl an sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden umfasst. Zunächst werden hierzu allgemeine Information zu den Ursprüngen der Ethnografie und ihrer Verknüpfung mit anthropologischen Studien gegeben. Dann wird die klassisch-normative Vorstellung der ethnografischen Methodik hinterfragt und es wird – anschließend an die Unterscheidung zwischen Methode, Methodologie und Verfahren – ein Konzept vorgestellt, das ethnografische Forschung mit einem strategischen Prozess verbindet, in den Forschende ihr methodisches Erfahrungswissen und Kreativität und persönliches Engagement einbringen können und sollen. Im Verlauf dieses Prozesses wird die Güte sichergestellt entlang der Prinzipien "Kreativität", "System", Transparenz" und "empirische Referenz", die aus meiner Perspektive Schlüsselkriterien für Methodendefinitionen überhaupt sind.

"The First and Second Secretaries of the District and County Councils of the East German Communist Party (SED) were the provincial vicegerents of the regime and, thus, belonged to the most powerful exponents of the socialist society. As files from the Berlin Document Center prove, a considerable share of secretaries from counties that nowadays form the German State of Thuringia had been members of the NSDAP before 1945. However, this information is not confirmed by SED party records, foremost of which are the handwritten CVs in secretaries' cadre files. Although an 'automatic' or 'unconscious' 1944 NSDAP enlistment of youngsters has been a common interpretation among historians, new indications raise the questions to what extent the SED deliberately invited young careerists who had a tainted biography and whether or not a mutual agreement of silence and record forgery was made. At least one secretary (who later even became a GDR minister) admitted that he had joined the NSDAP and noted it in his post-1990 memoirs. Most remarkably, the autobiographical writings also refer to an early confession - absolution was received from a merited and elder Communist. It can be argued that the case was not a singularity." (author's abstract)

"Wir untersuchen Arrangements der Aufteilung von Erwerbsarbeit und Kinderbetreuung in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Ostdeutschland, vor und nach 1989. Basierend auf dem institutionalistischen Ansatz untersuchen wir, wie, wann und weshalb sich zwei unterschiedliche Arrangements in dieser Region entwickelt und durchgesetzt haben. Als die Konflikte des modernisierten Gender-Modells offenkundig wurden, schlugen die politischen Entscheidungsträger in der Tschechoslowakei und der DDR verschiedene Pfade ein, um Erwerbsarbeit und Kinderbetreuung in Einklang zu bringen. Infolgedessen entstanden zwischen den Ländern grundlegende Unterschiede in der Kombination von Erwerbsarbeit und Kinderbetreuung und in den damit verbundenen Werten und Normen. Wir erklären ausgehend von der Analyse des institutionellen und kulturellen Erbes dieser Länder, weshalb der Übergang von einem totalitären zu einem demokratischen Gesellschaftstypus mit einem hohen Maß an Kontinuität in den Arrangements der Kombination von Erwerbsarbeit und Kinderbetreuung einherging. Ein zentrales Ergebnis unserer Untersuchung ist, dass neuere Änderungen der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen der Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie in Tschechien, der Slowakei und in Ostdeutschland nicht auf die massiven Umwälzungen im Zuge des Mauerfalles zurückgehen, sondern in einer Phase relativer Stabilität stattfanden." (Autorenreferat)